Abstract

In the last two decades, many studies have been conducted to investigate speech act performance in general, and the speech act of refusal to suggestion in particular. This genus of research has focused on western languages (Beebe et al, 1990), (Chen, 1996), (Fe´lix-Brasdefer, 2006). However, more recently a number of studies have been carried out in eastern languages (Geyang, 2007), with only a few in Arabic language and its varieties (Nelson, 2002), (Al-Issa, 2003), (Al-Kahtani, 2005). This study is an attempt to investigate the strategies employed by Kurdish students in refusing offers and requesting. This study is also trying to answer two questions related as to whether the participations in question follow the same English strategies classified by Beebe and others (1990) or not, as well as the impact of the gender factor on these strategies. The corpus consists of responses to a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) that consisted of six different situations. The informants were 24 Kurdish native speakers (12 males and 12 females) studying at University of Duhok, Kurdish department 4th stage. The survey was written in Kurdish language to elicit responses that approximate verbal refusals to suggestion that might be given in these situations. The participants are required to provide written data to express their refusals to these situations. The data gathered have been descriptively analyzed according to the content, frequency and order of semantic formulas used by Beebe et al. (ibid). In order to arrive at statistical results, the percentage of the most frequently used strategies was counted.
Key words: speech act of refusal, offer, request, semantic formula.