This paper explores pragmalinguistic abilities of Javanese learners of English in Indonesia as compared with native British English and Javanese speakers when executing refusal strategies. The three speaker groups in general employ identical types of semantic formulae and refusal adjuncts. However the wording of those uttered by the learners and the native Javanese speakers was more similar than either to that of the native speakers of British English proposing L1 pragmalinguistic transfer.