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Articles 61 - 61 of 61

Full-Text Articles in Linguistics

How To Say "No" Without Saying "No": A Study Of The Refusal Strategies Of Americans And Germans, Astrid Maria Beckers Jan 1999

How To Say "No" Without Saying "No": A Study Of The Refusal Strategies Of Americans And Germans, Astrid Maria Beckers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cultures have been shown to vary drastically in their interactional styles, leading to different preferences for modes of speech act behavior. Culturally colored interactional styles create culturally determined expectations and interpretative strategies, and can lead to breakdowns in intercultural and interethnic communication.

This dissertation investigated the differences between Germans and Americans in the speech act of rejection which can be explained by the general cultural differences. The native speaker subjects in this study were graduate students enrolled at four American Universities and at four Universities in the Federal Republic of Germany. The elicitation method used for this data collection was …