本研究主要探討台灣學生英語的拒絕語言行為(refusal speech act)與美國學生之異同，並探討社會地位高低及啟始行為(initiating acts)兩個變數對語言行為之影響。此外在拒絕時,所使用的句法修飾(syntactic mitigation)及詞彙修飾(lexical mitigation)之類型與頻率,其所用的句型是否與美國學生不同, 以進一步探究學習者母語對其中介語(interlanguage)是否有負面移轉作用。 本研究採用質性及量化研究方法，研究對象為40位以中文為母語的大學學生, 40位英語為母語的美國大學學生,及40位學習英語為外語的大學學生, 各組男女各半。研究工具為言談填充測驗(Discourse Completion Test), 包含12個不同情境(4個請求, 4個建議, 4個邀請),藉此問卷收集受試者語言行為之表現。 本研究的主要發現如下：間接拒絕策略是最常被三組學生使用的拒絕行為。其次,社會地位高低及啟始行為(initiating acts)兩個變數下對三組學生語言行為有不同影響, 而以後者影響尤鉅。除此之外, 台灣學生的英語中介語的語用能力,不僅反映在句法修飾及詞彙修飾兩方面, 同時在直接拒絕行為也與美國大學學生有顯著差異。本文進一步發現學習者母語對拒絕行為之影響, 拒絕之語序及直接與間接拒絕策略的負面移轉作用。本論文並提出教學上之應用建議，讓學生英語學習更有成效。 / Refusals can be regarded as a pragmatic universal, but refusal performance varies with cultures and is constrained by factors like status and initiating acts. However, the relative weight of these factors placed on each type of refusal strategy varies from culture to culture, or even within the same speech community due to intra-lingual variations (Blum-Kulka, 1987). In order to find out the complexity of cross-cultural differences in the realization of this face-threatening act, we investigated refusal speech acts performed by native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, EFL learners and native speakers of American English with the variation of social status and initiating acts. In addition, we compared EFL learners and Americans on linguistic structures including common directive forms, syntactic and lexical refusal mitigation as well as types of errors in the interlanguage of refusals. We also observed evidence of negative pragmatic transfer in EFL learners’ performance in three main categories of refusal strategies and refusal sequences, and tried to explain the causes of the transfer. Three groups of subjects participated in this study: 40 native speakers of American English (NE), 40 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese (NC), 40 Chinese EFL low-intermediate proficiency learners. They were asked to react by writing in the format of discourse completion task (DCT), which consisted of scripted dialogues with the manipulation of the interlocutors’ social status and initiating acts. The results were coded based on the taxonomy developed by Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990), and were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Results showed that indirect refusals were the most frequently used main strategy type in the three groups examined. The effect of social status and initiating acts affected the three groups’ performance to a different degree; initiating acts seemed to be a more decisive force in influencing groups’ refusal behaviors. In terms of refusal mitigation, we have found that significantly more syntactic mitigation like interrogatives, conditionals, conditional clause, etc. were employed by Americans to soften the force of refusals. However, similar to the findings in Chen (2006), EFL learners mainly limited their use of modality in their refusals on types of deontic and epistemic modalities whereas Americans were more flexible in using different kinds with the variation of context. Generally, EFL learners’ refusal performance exhibited deviations from native speakers’ norms. Therefore pedagogical implications were suggested which included that teachers should build up EFL learners’ linguistic knowledge, teacher-fronted talk can be supplemented by additional activities that broaden the range of speech acts and provide a broader opportunities for learners. Also, instructors should provide contextual information regarding the similarities and/or differences between L1 and the target language under the influence of social status. Types of initiating act should be included in EFL teaching so that students’ awareness of these social constraints could be activated and they can integrate such information to facilitate their interlanguage system.

本篇論文目的在探討兒童在同儕對話中所使用的請求言語行為，研究問題如下：1.在同儕對話中，兒童採用哪些請求策略？、2.兒童使用哪些稱呼語(alerter)和修飾語(modification)來調整他們的請求言語行為?。研究語料來自兩人一組的兒童在玩耍時的對話，兒童的年紀在四歲三個月到五歲六個月之間(平均年齡為五歲三個月)。本研究主要採用Blum-Kulka等人的請求言語行為策略分類，包含中心行為策略(head act)、稱呼語(alerter）、修飾語(modification)三個部分。研究結果發現，在中心行為策略的三個策略中—直接請求、規約性間接請求、和非規約性間接請求，兒童使用較多的直接請求策略，特別是祈使語態句(mood derivable)，顯示出兒童在同儕互動中傾向使用直接且有效力的請求策略。研究結果也發現兒童會使用稱呼語和修飾語來調整請求言語行為；在稱呼語方面，兒童使用了呼喚語(vocative)和名字(name)這兩種表親密的稱呼語來吸引同儕的注意，顯示出兒童不只能判斷對話者的注意力，也知道他們與同儕之間的對等、親近關係；在修飾語方面，兒童使用較多的緩和修飾語(mitigating modifiers)，而在所有修飾語中，兒童最常使用的三種分別為語氣弱化詞(downtoner)、 原因解釋(grounder)、強化詞(intensifier)，另外，我們也發現到兒童有時會使用兩種以上的修飾語在單一個請求行為中，從兒童使用的各種修飾語結果顯示，兒童在做請求時，能考量不同情況和跟同儕間的關係來調整請求言語行為。本研究對於漢語兒童在同儕互動中的請求言語行為的使用，不僅顯示出他們的溝通技巧與語用能力，也反映出同儕互動的特性。 / The purpose of this study is to explore preschool children’s performance of requests in peer talk. We aim to investigate what request strategies children employ when interacting with peers and how children adjust their requests with alerters and modifications. The data analyzed were the natural conversations produced by dyads of children aged from 4;3 to 5;6 (mean age: 5;3). The analytical framework adopted in this study is mainly based on the categorization of Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), including the three components of head act, alerter, and modification. The results show that among direct request, conventionally indirect request and non-conventionally indirect request, children employed more direct request strategies, especially mood derivable. It reveals that children’s requests tend to be direct in interactions with peers as the use of direct requests is more effective to attain compliance. In addition, children were found to use alerters and modifications on some occasions to get attention and to lessen or aggravate the request force. There were two types of alerters used by the children, which were name and vocative, and vocative was used more frequently than name. The children’s use of the two intimate alerters indicates that not only can children assess the focus of their interlocutors’ attention, but also that they are aware of their equal and close relationships with their peers. Regarding the use of modifications, it was found that children used more mitigating modifiers than aggravating modifiers, and that the children used downtoner, grounder, and intensifier more frequently among the modifiers. Moreover, although the children commonly used one request with one modifier, there were some cases where the children used more than one modifier in one request. The diversity in the use of modified requests reveals the children’s sensitivity to the situations in which they and their peers are engaged, and their consideration for the maintenance of interpersonal relationships. It is concluded that Mandarin-speaking children’s use of requests not only demonstrates their communicative skills and pragmatic competence, but also reflects the nature of peer interactions.