Refusing invitations via email: strategy use in Turkish and American-English refusals

The aim of this study is to analyze the similarities and differences between Turkishand American English in the speech acts of refusal via email. It aims to uncoverTurkish and American English refusal strategies employed in emails sent to refuseinvitations, and examine whether social distance between the interlocutors has animpact on strategy use by Turkish L1 speakers (TSs) and American English L1speakers (AESs). It further investigates the content of refusals and the effect of datacollection method on strategy use. To this end, the data have been collected throughnatural emails and discourse completion tasks (DCT) from TSs and AESs. Eachrefusal in the data has been coded and counted. The data have been analyzed tocompare the frequencies of refusal strategies, the effect of social distance on strategyuse across groups, the content of refusals, and the effect of the data collectionmethod. PASW has been used to run descriptive statistics and repeated measures ofANOVA.The results show more similarities than differences in strategy use in Turkishand American English refusal emails. Thus, pragmatic failure might be unlikely forAmerican learners of Turkish and Turkish learners of American English. However,the findings also reveal that there are differences that are language-specific andculturally-shaped. The findings also suggest that natural emails tend to be moreelaborated in that they have more strategies, thus DCTs may not thoroughly reflectthe language in use and should be complemented with methods.