Refusal Speech Act Within the Framework of Prototype Theory

戴虹

1. Introduction

Refusal speech act is a kind of speech act that is frequently used in daily communication. According to Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary （2004， 6th edition）， refusal refers to an act of saying or showing that you will not do， give or accept something， such as the refusal of a request， an invitation， an offer. It shows speakers unwillingness to accept something offered by the hearer or a third party， or the resistance to doing something that the hearer or a third party asks to do. Chen et al. （1995：121） defined a refusal as a responding act in which the speaker denies to engage in an action proposed by the interlocutor. （Song Xiaoyan， 2010） It is the “non-cooperative” option which is directed towards the interlocutors request， invitation， suggestion or offer. （WeiYing， 2011）

Refusal speech acts are so widely used in social communication that many studies on them have been conducted from different perspectives. For example， from the pragmatic perspective， the most striking feature of the refusal speech act is face-threatening which calls for the application of politeness strategies. （Song Xiaoyan， 2010） From the sociolinguistics perspective， researches on gender differences in using refusal strategies are conducted. Besides， many comparative studies on refusal speech acts have been conducted from the cross-cultural perspective and second language acquisition perspective.

However， studies on refusal speech acts following the prototype theory approach have been relatively few. Prototype theory is a powerful instrument in explaining many linguistic phenomena such as syntax， the acquisition of vocabulary and tense， etc. As has been mentioned above， refusal speech acts are widely used in social communication， using the prototype theory to analyze them can shed new light on the understanding of refusal speech acts as well as extending the fields to which prototype theory can be applied.

This paper attempts to explain refusal speech acts from the point of view of prototype theory. It aims to reach the conclusion that refusal speech acts have distinct components and that these components are of different degrees of importance. That is to say， these components form a prototypical category with fuzzy boundaries and that they differ in prototypical status.

This paper is divided into four sections. Section 1 is a brief introduction of refusal speech act and the significance and purpose of analyzing refusal speech act following the prototype theory approach. Section 2 is mainly concerned with the theoretical basis of the paper， including prototype theory and speech act theory. Section 3 utilizes prototype theory to analyze the components of refusal speech acts and their different degrees of importance. Section 4 summarizes the discussion and draws the conclusion that the components of refusal speech act form a refusal speech act category and that their status differ in the category. That is to say， there are typical members of refusal speech act category and non-typical members in the category.endprint

2. Theoretical Basis

2.1 Prototype Theory

In the past few decades， there has been considerable debate on the nature and structure of categories within cognitive psychology. Roughly speaking， there are mainly two approaches of the studying of categorization：the classical approach to categorization and the prototype approach to categorization. Prototype Theory remains one of the most important theories in the field of cognitive linguistics. （Tian Qiuyue， 2009） And in this paper， we will mainly use Prototype Theory to analyze refusal speech act. The development of the prototype theory has gone through 4 main steps， i.e. Wittgensteins work on family resemblance， Berlin and Kays studies on colors， Labovs experiment and the work of Rosch. （Yang Qingqing， 2011） We are going to briefly introduce Roschs theory of prototype and the characteristics of the prototype category.

2.1.1 Roschs theory of prototype

The prototype is a mental representation and some sort of cognitive reference point. （Li Fuyin， 2008） It is described by Rosch as the most central instance of any given category and is the clearest case of category membership defined operationally by peoples judgments of goodness of membership in a category. The prototype effects indicate that the membership between category members is asymmetric， and most of the categories are formed in terms of prototypes， with different degrees of membership. People do not categorize things on the basis of necessary and sufficient attributes but according to the resemblance of things to the prototypical member of a category. The prototypical members， which possess the cognitive salience， are the most typical exemplars of a category. It takes relatively less cognitive effort to be stored in brain and is easy to be accessed to. So when a category is mentioned， it is the prototype members that people first think of. （Yang Qingqing， 2011）

2.1.2 The characteristics of the prototype category

The characteristics of the prototype category can be summarized as follows.

（1）Categories are not defined in terms of a set of necessary and sufficient features. Rather， category members are connected by a network of overlapping similarities （which is defined as “family resemblance” by Wittgenstein）

（2）The boundaries of cognitive categories are fuzzy， i.e. neighboring categories are not separated by rigid boundaries， but merge into each other.

（3）All members of a category do not share equal status. Cognitive categories are made up of prototypes and peripheries， of good examples and bad ones. Between prototypes and boundaries， cognitive categories contain members which can be rated on a typicality scale ranging from good to bad examples.endprint

（4）Prototypical members of cognitive categories have the largest number of attributes in common with other members of the category and the smallest number of attributes which also occur with other members of neighboring categories. This means that in terms of attributes， prototypical members are maximally distinct from the prototypical members of other categories. Bad examples （i.e. marginal category members） share only a small number of attributes with other members of their category， but have several attributes which belong to other categories as well.

（5）Prototypical members are cognitively more salient than non-prototypical members. The former tend to come to mind before the latter as prototypes are more accurately remembered in short-term memory and more easily activated from long-term memory. （Yang Qingqing， 2011）

2.2 Speech Act Theory

Since refusal speech act is a kind of speech act， we cannot avoid mentioning the Speech Act Theory. It was first proposed by the British philosopher John Austin in the late 1950s， and then it was further developed by American philosopher-linguist John Searle. The main proposition of the theory can be concluded as “saying is acting”， “to say something is to do something”. As long as a speaker utters a meaningful， accepted sentence， he has performed a speech act.（Tian Qiuyue， 2009）

2.2.1 Austins Theory

According to Austin， a speaker， when speaking， is performing three acts simultaneously， i.e. locutionary act， illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. The locutionary act is the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference. The illocutionary act refers to the making of a statement， offer， promise， etc. in uttering a sentence， by virtue of the conventional force associated with it （or with its explicit performative paraphrase）. The perlocutionary act refers to the bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence， such effects being special to the circumstances of utterance.（Pragmatics：236） To illustrate， lets take an example.

（1）Shoot her！

In sentence （1）， the locutionary act is the act of saying ‘Shoot her and meaning “shoot” by ‘shoot and “her” by ‘her. The illocutionary act is the act of urging， advising， ordering the addressee to shoot her. The perlocutionary act is the act of persuading， making the addressee shoot her. （Tian Qiuyue， 2009）

2.2.2 Searles Theory

The most important contribution made by Searle to Speech Act Theory is his proposal of the notion of indirect speech act. According to him， instances of indirect language are indirect speech acts， in which “one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another”. So in performing indirect speech acts， two speech acts instead of one are involved， i.e. primary illocutionary act and secondary illocutionary act. The secondary illocutionary act is literal and the primary illocutionary act is not literal， but it identifies with the real purpose of the utterance. For example， the utterance “Its cold in here” literally tells us the condition with regard to temperature where the speaker is. If this is the sole purpose of the speaker in making the utterance， the language he uses is direct. But if apart from telling the hearer what he thinks the condition is like， he means to ask the hearer to do something to make the place warmer， then the use of language is indirect. The primary illocutionary act in this case is a directive， i.e. to get the hearer to do something， and the secondary illocutionary act is a representative， i.e. to say what he believes to be the case. （He Zhaoxiong， 2011）endprint

According to Searle， indirect speech acts can be divided into two subcategories， i.e. conventional and non-conventional indirect speech acts. The conventional has illocutionary force indicator. Conventional speech acts are usually those speech acts which have not only literal meaning but also non-literal meaning. Their illocutionary meaning cannot be figured out through the literal meaning， but can be easily got because they are conventionally used in our daily lives. That is to say， the illocutionary forces of conventional speech acts are taken for granted because of their frequent uses. The hearer deduces the illocutionary force or communicative force conventionally by literal meaning， such as “Can you pass me the salt？”

On the other hand， the non-conventional has no illocutionary force indicators. To understand the illocutionary force or communicative force correctly， the hearer must know the context， and the mutually shared knowledge of the speaker and the hearer. Consequently， non-conventional indirect speech acts are more difficult for hearer to understand than the conventional. （Tian Qiuyue， 2009）

2.2.3 Refusal Speech Act

According to Brown and Levinson， refusals function as a response to an initiating act and are considered as a speech act by which speaker fails to engage in an action proposed by the interlocutor. According to Kline and Floyd， the core component of a refusal is a denial or an expression of unwillingness to comply with a previous request， invitation or offer. They pointed out that refusal is an attempt to bring about behavioral change by encouraging the other to withdraw his/her request；they identify the core component as clearly indicating opposition to granting a request. Refusals involve the rejection of a request which the communicator feels is legitimate to make. By its nature refusal is a complex and flexible issue that can only be categorized according to different content. Yule attempts to classify this speech act into the “commissives”， equal with promises， threats， and pledges；and Hayashi describes it in an unfixable way and lists this speech act under the categories of directive， prohibitive， expressives， constative， assertive， retractive， or dissentive in different situations. （Wei Ying， 2011） The vague identification of the refusal speech act partially reflects the complexity of this speech act.

3. Refusal Speech Act under Prototype Theory

On the basis of classifications of speech act， we divide refusal speech act into direct refusal speech act and indirect refusal speech act. Indirect refusal speech act can be further classified into conventional indirect refusal speech act and non-conventional indirect refusal speech act. We will go through the three components of refusal speech act one by one to see how they form a refusal speech act category and analyze their different status in the category under the framework of prototype theory.endprint