A Study on Refusal Strategy for Refusal Verbal Behavior in Online Communication under the Politeness Principle

Abstract

With the popularity of the Internet and social media, refusal verbal behavior in online communication is more common, which is significant to the construction of interpersonal relationships. Based on the politeness principle, this study takes 300 sets of chat records with clear meaning of refusal collected from social platform. It was found that mitigation strategy appeared most frequently, followed by conflict strategy. Under the politeness principle, using mitigation strategy is to follow the maxim of tact in order to maintain good interpersonal relationships. conflict strategy, on the other hand, is less likely to refl ect the politeness principle, and use more direct expressions to achieve the purpose of effective rejection.