PRESERVING FACE IN REFUSAL SITUATIONS

Individuals often fabricate socially appropriate reasons for rejecting a request while withholding real but hurtful ones. Such, synthetic ob stacles to compliance become conventionalized ways of turning down req uests. However, when socially appropriate reasons are the genuine basi s for refusal, rejecters desiring to comply must signal to the request er that the reason is real rather than synthetic. We conducted an expe riment to explore how rejecters of a dating request adapt their messag es so as to convince the requester that they are interested in going o ut with him or her but really cannot. Although most refusals contained linguistic face-work devices, targets faced with conventional obstacl es, and who wanted to pursue a relationship with the requester, expres sed counteroffers and expressions of interest. Those wishing to avoid future interaction relied on apologies, statements of appreciation for the offer, and expressions of concern for the requester's feelings. I mplications for both encoding and decoding refusal messages are discus sed.