SPEECH ACT OF REFUSAL IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

Nowadays professors and students face situations when they are to refuse or except refusals. The present paper deals with the linguistic phenomenon of refusal speech act in English and Russian languages and investigates it from the perspective of English as a second language teaching (ESL). ESL teaching should include not only linguistic peculiarities but also pragmatic aspects where the efficient refusal strategies can help to regulate the interpersonal relationships between professor and student in order to avoid any kind of communicative failures. The study focuses on similarities and differences between the ways of refusing requests in academic contexts in English and Russian cultures. This research was conducted with the implementation of Speech Act Theory (Searle 1969), Politeness Theory (Brown and Levinson 1987, Leech 1983, 2014, Larina and Leech 2014, Watts 2003), and the Theory of Cultural Scripts (Wierzbicka 1991/2003). The study explores the question of controlling the distance between professors and students using the refusal strategies. The paper suggests practical recommendations for the appropriate behavior and speech patterns. The following methods as participant observation, observation, context analysis, communicative and discourse analysis were implemented in this article. The results of the study can be applied in second language teaching for students of secondary and high schools, as far as in theory and practice of translation.