Abstract

This study attempts an overview of different refusal strategies used by characters in the drama genre, and by extension, humans in everyday communication. Although the study is neither strictly a stylistic nor pragmatic analysis of texts, it is an investigation of the stylo-pragmatic components that make the refusals potent and acceptable to the performer of the offer or directive. The drama episodes analyzed in this study are acted in English. In the performance of the speech act of refusing, participants of discourse have to be appropriate and skillful. Indeed, refusing in an appropriate way indexes a participant’s pragmatic competence. When an offer or directive is made, whether the refuser is pleased with it or not, he/she employs a polite refusal strategy which sometimes involves making deceitful propositions. On the whole, refusal strategies in the drama genre and include expression of excuse, reason, willingness, self-defense, explanation, topic shift, alternative and dissuading one’s interlocutor.