A contrastive study on expressing formulas of the speech act of direct refusal of invitations by the Vietnamese and native speakers of American English

Abstract

Refusing an invitation is one of the most frequently performed speech acts in our daily lives. This act is commonly expressed through direct or indirect means of expression, including grammatical structures and semantic formulas in both languages. In this article, the author focuses on a contrastive study on expressing formulas of the speech act of direct refusal of invitations by the Vietnamese and native speakers of American English so as to point out the similarities as well as differences in both languages in terms of means of expression.