A Contrastive Study of the Speech Act of Refusal between Iranian EFL Learners and Persian Native Speakers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The current study was an attempt to investigate the similarities and differences in using the speech act of refusing between Persian learners of English as a foreign language with some Persian native speakers in Iran. The data of this study was gathered from thirty students in Iran by discourse completion questionnaire, usual interaction, and role play. On the whole, the research findings revealed that Persian native speakers’ refusals were as formulaic in pragmatic structures. These participants were not economical at making excuses and tended to offer different indirect reasons in refusal to avoid annoyance. On the other hand, Iranian EFL learners are more frank and are more likely to refuse their friends’ requests, suggestions, and invitations. Moreover, social distance and power play a vital role in production of refusal among Persian native speakers. More detailed findings and implications are discussed in the paper. Key words: Speech Act; Refusal; Speech Act Of Refusal; Discourse Completion Test (DCT); Persian Native Speakers; Iranian EFL Learners Resume: La presente etude a tente d'etudier les similitudes et les differences dans l'utilisation de l'acte de discours de refus entre les persans qui apprennent l'anglais comme une langue etrangere et certains locuteurs natifs persans en Iran. Les donnees de cette etude ont ete recueillies a partir d'une trentaine d'etudiants en Iran en utilisant le questionnaire de completion de discours, l'interaction habituelle, et le jeu de role. Dans l'ensemble, les resultats de recherche ont revele que les refus des locuteurs natifs persans etaient formalises dans les structures pragmatiques. Ces participants ne sont pas laconiques a faire des excuses et ont tendance a offrir de differentes raisons indirectes comme refus afin d'eviter des desagrements. D'autre part, les apprenants ALE iraniens sont plus francs et plus susceptibles de refuser les demandes, les suggestions et des invitations de leurs amis. Par ailleurs, la distance sociale et le pouvoir jouent un role vital dans la fabrication de refus chez les locuteurs natifs persans. Des resultats plus detailles et des implications sont discutees dans l'article. Mots-cles: Acte De Discours; Refus; Acte De Discours De Refus; Test De ComplETion De Discours (TCD); Locuteurs Natifs Persans; Apprenants ALE Iraniens
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".