Politeness in Mexico and the United States
A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals
This book explores the issue of politeness phenomena and socially appropriate behavior in two societies, Mexico and the United States, in three different contexts: refusing invitations, requests, and suggestions. In addition to a state-of-the-art review of the speech act of refusals in numerous languages, the book provides a rigorous analysis of data collection methods utilized to examine speech act behavior at the production and perception levels. Many examples of native speaker interactions illustrate the similarities and differences observed in the realization patterns and the perception of refusals by Mexicans and Americans in formal and informal situations. The data are analyzed in terms of refusal sequences and pragmatic strategies which are strategically used to carry out relational work during the negotiation of face. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses are interpreted in light of the notions of face, politeness, and relational work in Mexico and the United States. This publication will be of interest to researchers and students in pragmatics and discourse analysis, cross-cultural communication, and sociology.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 171] 2008. xiv, 195 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 1 July 2008
Published online on 1 July 2008
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
-
List of Figures and Tables | pp. ix–x
-
Transcription conventions | p. xi
-
Acknowledgements | pp. xiii–xiv
-
Introduction | pp. 1–6
-
Chapter 1. The scope of politeness | pp. 7–34
-
Chapter 2. Speech acts in context: Refusals | pp. 35–55
-
Chapter 3. Methodology and organization of the study | pp. 57–83
-
Chapter 4. Results: Relational work and linguistic politeness: The negotiation of refusals by Mexicans and Americans | pp. 85–138
-
Chapter 5. Results: Perceptions of politeness: Cultural values of refusals among Mexicans and Americans | pp. 139–157
-
Chapter 6. Conclusions and discussion | pp. 159–173
-
-
Appendix | pp. 185–190
-
Author index | pp. 191–192
-
Subject index | pp. 193–195
“In Politeness in Mexico and the United States, Félix-Brasdefer presents a well-argued, well-written analysis of refusal speech act sequences and perceptions of refusals in two languages and cultures — Spanish in Mexico (Tlaxcala) and English in the United States (Minnesota). It is an important contribution to the field of cross-cultural politeness research, and it is a valuable resource for sociolinguists who work on and in Spanish. [...] Félix-Brasdefer's study of refusals in Spanish and English is an important and valuable study of cross-cultural politeness, essential for anyone interested in Spanish language variation and linguistic politeness. A particular strength of the book is its clarity, both in the description of the methodology and in the articulation of the analysis. The study is innovative in its combination of several important elements.”
Holly R. Cashman, University of New Hampshire, in Spanish in Context Vol. 8:1 (2011)
“Contrasting how Mexicans in Mexico and Americans in the U.S. use politeness strategies in dealing with matters such as “face”, this volume provides insights into similarities and differences between these two speech communities in terms of how people perceive societal values such as “involvement” and “independence”. The book also constitutes a valuable model for how research tools such as verbal report can be used to enhance the findings from research on pragmatic behavior. The book will undoubtedly be read with keen interest by both researchers and students of pragmatics alike.”
Andrew D. Cohen, University of Minnesota
“It is a very valuable contribution to sociolinguistics because it demonstrates important distinctions in refusal acts between speakers of Mexican Spanish and US English. Awareness of these differences can contribute to a reduction in cross-cultural conflict as well as improvement in second-language pedagogy. Moreover, its all-embracing literature review, methodology, and insightful discussion of the results make it an essential reference for cross-cultural refusal research. A valuable set of references, an author index, and a subject index complement this excellent study.”
Frank Nuessel, University of Louisville, in Language Problems and Language Planning Vol. 33:3 (2009)
“This carefully designed study provides a valuable comparison of refusals in Mexican Spanish and American English. Data triangulation enables the author to investigate not only the production of refusals but also their perception in both cultures, the latter a welcome, largely neglected focus in intercultural pragmatics to date. In addition, the discourse-based perspective taken treats refusals as sequences rather than as single utterances, a perspective which facilitates in analysing their intricate complexity. The book will undoubtedly represent an important resource for future studies in the area.”
Anne Barron, University of Bonn
Cited by (44)
Cited by 44 other publications
Kostromitina, Maria
2024. An exploratory study of intonational variation in L1 and L2 English speakers’ pragmatic production of high imposition
requests and refusals. Applied Pragmatics 6:1 ► pp. 1 ff. 
Ma, Yue & Min Li
2024. Unpacking translanguaging in refusals on Chinese social media: strategies, distribution, and functions. Multilingua 43:4 ► pp. 487 ff.
DiBartolomeo, Megan, Vanessa Elias & Daniel Jung
2023. Chapter 3. Situational and contextual variation in the development of Spanish apologies during short-term study abroad. In Study Abroad and the Second Language Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variation in Spanish [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 37], ► pp. 82 ff.
House, Juliane & Dániel Z. Kádár
2023. Speech acts and interaction in second language pragmatics: A position paper. Language Teaching ► pp. 1 ff.
House, Juliane & Dániel Z. Kádár
2024. An interactional approach to speech acts for applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 15:4 ► pp. 1695 ff.
Gutiérrez-Rivas, Carolina, Stacey R. Lim & Alliete Rodríguez Alfano
2022. Refusal Strategies among Spanish-English Bilinguals: Comparing Adolescents with Hearing Loss to Adolescents with Typical Hearing. Heritage Language Journal 19:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Li, Wei
2022. Saying “no” in emails in Mandarin Chinese and Australian English. Journal of Politeness Research 18:2 ► pp. 367 ff.
Reichl, Isabella
2022. Refusals in Early Modern English drama texts. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 253 ff.
Verschueren, Jef
Yang, He
2022. Literature Review. In Language Learning Motivation and L2 Pragmatic Competence, ► pp. 9 ff.
De Marco, Anna
2021. Ruolo del transfer e strategie di rifiuto in apprendenti ispanofoni di italiano L2
Uno studio esplorativo
. In Politiche e pratiche per l’educazione linguistica, il multilinguismo e la comunicazione interculturale
[SAIL
, 18],
Katinaitė, Donata & Inga Hilbig
2021. Lithuanian Refusals and Politeness. Respectus Philologicus :39 (44)
Lin, Ming-Fang, Miao-Hsia Chang & Yu-Fang Wang
2021. “How Dare You Have Another Relationship!”: An analysis of cross-cultural and interlanguage corrections. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 59:4 ► pp. 449 ff.
Solís García, Inmaculada & Nicoletta Santoni
2021. «¿Y si empezamos por arriba a la derecha?» The Functioning of Proposals in Task-Oriented Dialogues in Spanish and Italian. Rassegna iberistica :116
Tariq, Laith Safa & Prof. Sarab Khalil Hameed
2021. A Pragma – Discoursal Analysis of Famous Presidential Gaffes. International Journal of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities 11:3
Živković, Ema
2021. Variation in refusal strategies produced by English and Serbian speakers. Studia Neophilologica 93:3 ► pp. 269 ff.
Flores-Salgado, Elizabeth
2020. La insistencia en la cultura mexicana. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 33:1 ► pp. 84 ff.
Hernández Flores, Nieves
2020. Elrespetocomo valor social. Un estudio de Pragmática sociocultural en encuentros comunicativos de consultas médicas. Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics 7:3 ► pp. 371 ff.
Loewen, Shawn
2020. The Acquisition of Pragmatics. In Introduction to Instructed Second Language Acquisition, ► pp. 166 ff.
Mulo Farenkia, Bernard
2020. Offer Refusals in L2 French. In Second Language Acquisition - Pedagogies, Practices and Perspectives,
Bella, Spyridoula
2019. Offers in Greek Revisited. In From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness, ► pp. 27 ff.
Placencia, María Elena
2019. Chapter 7. Responding to bargaining moves in a digital era. In Technology Mediated Service Encounters [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 300], ► pp. 173 ff.
Kaiser, Heather R.
Jiang, Dan
2017. Use of linguistic devices in conveying refusals in Mandarin Chinese. Researching and Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language 2:1 ► pp. 42 ff.
Jucker, Andreas H. & Larssyn Staley
2017. (Im)politeness and Developments in Methodology. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, ► pp. 403 ff.
Meiners, Jocelly G.
2017. Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Perspectives on the Emotional and Pragmatic Expression of Sympathy in Spanish and English. In The Pragmeme of Accommodation: The Case of Interaction around the Event of Death [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 13], ► pp. 319 ff.
Michno, Jeff
Beltrán-Palanques, Vicente
2016. Assessing pragmatics: DCTs and retrospective verbal reports. In New perspectives on teaching and working with languages in the digital era, ► pp. 303 ff.
Dayani, Roksana & Fazel Asadi Amjad
2016. Shift of Power in David Mamet’s <i>Oleanna</i>: A Study within Grice’s Cooperative Principles. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences 72 ► pp. 76 ff.
Félix-Brasdefer, J. César & Sean McKinnon
2016. Perceptions of impolite behavior in study abroad contexts and the teaching of impoliteness in L2 Spanish. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching 3:2 ► pp. 99 ff.
Glaser, Karen
2016. News from the pragmatics classroom: Contrasting the inductive and the deductive approach in the teaching of pragmatic competence
. Intercultural Pragmatics 13:4 ► pp. 529 ff.
Aijmer, Karin
2015. “Will you fuck off please”. The use of please by London teenagers. Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics 3:2 ► pp. 127 ff.
Falomir, Laura Portolés
2015. Leyre Ruiz de Zarobe and Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe: Speech acts and politeness across languages and cultures. Intercultural Pragmatics 12:2
Gross, Toomas
2015. Religion andRespeto: The Role and Value of Respect in Social Relations in Rural Oaxaca. Studies in World Christianity 21:2 ► pp. 119 ff.
Lin, Ming-Fang
2014. An Interlanguage Pragmatic Study on Chinese EFL Learners’ Refusal: Perception and Performance. Journal of Language Teaching and Research 5:3
Mugford, Gerrard
2014. Examining first-order localised politeness. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 2:1 ► pp. 99 ff.
Mugford, Gerrard
2022. Politeness in professional contexts: foreign-language teacher training. Journal of Politeness Research 18:1 ► pp. 151 ff.
Mugford, Gerrard
2023. Positive Emotions and Pragmatic Choice: Politeness Practices in the Mexican Context. In Advancing (Im)politeness Studies [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 95 ff.
Ren, Wei
2014. A Longitudinal Investigation into L2 Learners’ Cognitive Processes during Study Abroad. Applied Linguistics 35:5 ► pp. 575 ff.
Ren, Wei
2022. The effect of study abroad on the pragmatic development of the internal modification of refusals. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 715 ff.
Bardovi‐Harlig, Kathleen
2013. Developing L2 Pragmatics. Language Learning 63:s1 ► pp. 68 ff.
Abdolrezapour, Parisa
2012. The Effect of Expectation of Compliance on the Preferred Request Strategy: Cross-cultural and Situational Variation in Iranian and American Speech Communities. Australian Journal of Linguistics 32:3 ► pp. 383 ff.
Holmes, Janet
2012. Politeness in Intercultural Discourse and Communication. In The Handbook of Intercultural Discourse and Communication, ► pp. 205 ff.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General