refusal

The article deals with the refusal in English communication from the perspective of pragmalinguistics. In the introduction the author justifies the relevance of the chosen topic, indicates the material and methods and formulates a hypothesis. The object of study is utterances conveying refusal which function as a means of protecting private space. The aim of the research is to reveal the communicative tactics of refusal which provide the protection of private space as well as the linguistic means of their implementation.

The article studies the addressee’s responses to the requests from the point of view of politeness/impoliteness. The authors analyze linguistic and extra-linguistic factors which allow them to treat the responses as either polite or impolite.