Every nation around the globe certainly has unique characteristics whichuddistinguish them from other nations. The main matter which characterizes is language.udThis also applies to Japanese. Japanese language is what differs Japanese people fromudother people in the world. One of Japanese characteristics in speaking is the habits ofudtalking vaguely or ambiguously. It is known as aimai in Japanese culture, which alsoudmeans ‘vague’, ‘ambiguous’, and ‘indecisive’, or in other words that bear similarudmeanings. It is said that even to refuse a simple thing, Japanese often do not utter theudrefusals directly but tend not to directly speak their point. However a differentudphenomenon was found in one of dialogues of Japanese TV Drama entitled My Girl.udThe dialogue in the drama depicted a female employee expressing her refusal directlyudwhen being asked not to go home early by the more senior employee. Based on thisudphenomenon, the research about how Japanese express their refusals is necessary to beudconducted. The objectives of this research are to describe how Japanese express theirudrefusals, to discover the determining factors, and to observe the implementation of theudcooperation principles when expressing refusals.udThis research studied three Japanese TV dramas, namely: My Girl, Gyne, andudThe Untouchable as the source of data. The data of this research were the lingual unitsudof refusal speech acts. The data of the research were collected through transcribing theudspeech acts found in the three dramas. The collected data were then analyzed by usingudthe Spradley’s data analysis technique i.e. domain analysis to sort and determine theudrequired data, taxonomy analysis to determine the refusal methods, the affecting factors,udand the implementation of the cooperation principles used by the speakers whenudexpressing refusals. The next step was componential analysis to determine theudcorrelation between sub-aspects, and then to find the correlation with the Japaneseudculture.udThe results of the data analysis show that of 45 refusals, 21 (47%) are expresseduddirectly and 24 (53%) are expressed indirectly. The determining factors for the refusalsudare those which generally affect a conversation, namely conversational situation factorudand speaker-listener relationship factor. The data analysis shows that none of those twoudformer factors is the main reason that is significant as to why the Japanese peopleuddirectly or indirectly express their refusals. Japanese express their refusals in a certainudway if some of the conversation factors are fulfilled. Japanese tend to express theirudrefusals more directly when; (a) the listeners are younger or have a lower position thanudthe speakers; (b) the listeners have a good relationship with the speakers; (c) theudlisteners are ‘outsiders’. Likewise, indirect refusal is used when; (a) the listeners areudxxiudolder or have a higher position than the speakers; (b) the listeners have an awkwardudrelationship; (c) the listeners are ‘insiders’.udThe results of this research show a significant change in the way Japaneseudexpressing their refusals. In previous researches show that Japanese tend to express theirudrefusal directly only when their listeners are in a lower or an equal position compared toudthe speakers. However, this research shows that Japanese also express their refusaluddirectly to the listeners who have a higher position than the speakers.udKeywords: Kotowarikata, pragmatics, refusal, soto, speech act, uchi
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