断り場面における韓日の断りへの意識 - 断り場面で用いられる素材や利益関係を中心に -

Abstract

In this study, the opinion survey on 「refusal speech act」 has been conducted and we went over the influence of the subject matter and an interest issue concerned in the scene of refusal acts on the refusal acts themselves. The outcomes of the study suggest that Koreans are more likely to accept the proposals and less likely to refuse the suggestion than Japanese do. Plus, the both countries alike indicate that women tend to refuse offers more often than men do. The further analyses are as follows. First, when it comes to the subject matter used in refusal situation, both of the countries show that “time related subject matter” is the most likely to get the refusal act, and “the personal and private life related subject matter” is second most likely to be turned down, which is followed by money or the goods related subject matter. However, in terms of money related subject matter, it has been shown that Japanese women are about 15 percent less likely to accept a interlocutor's proposal than Korean counterparts do, which can be possibly thought to result in some misunderstandings in communication. Next, in the case of an interest(benefit or disbenefit) issue, Koreans are more willing to accept a proposal, instead of rejecting, than Japanese do when they can benefit from the proposal. That is, Japanese also seem to be influenced by an interest and yet are not so much as Koreans. Looking more closely, however, it turns out that an interest issue in both countries alike has not so much impact on refusal acts as we expected it would, except for the taste related subject matter. We can conclude that the presumption is found wrong that refusal act will be reduced when the upper edge is given by a proposal. These unexpected results actually make this study worthwhile. As the above, this paper includes the analyses of refusal acts centered on a variety of subject matters of refusal situations as well as an interest related settings. Now it is necessary not to restrict the study range on “refusal acts” to the way of expression in refusing but to contemplate how it works in a stream of communication. The further study on this should be carried on.