Refusal Strategies Used by Iraqi EFL University Students

Abstract
Actually, if someone wants to reject in a foreign language, s/he will face difficulties because rejection requires a linguistic and a pragmatic competence. Additionally, s/he must possess knowledge about the culture peculiar to that language. Hence, the refuser may transfer the rules of his native language to the foreign one causing impolite response or pragmatic failure that may ruin communication. This study attempts to answer the following inquiries: (1) What are the refusal strategies that Iraqi EFL university students employ in requests, invitations, suggestions and offers?; (2) What are the most frequent patterns of combinations that they use in refusal?; (3) Which status do they care more about?; and (4) Do they employ inappropriate refusal strategies? A discourse completion test has been applied to 40 Iraqi EFL university students and the outcomes of the research are: (i) Iraqi EFL university students employ 34 strategies in rejection, (ii) the most recurrent combinations of strategies are: apology+ excuse, apology+ unspecified excuse, no+ intensified refusal, and apology+ negative ability, apology+ negative ability+ excuse, wish+ excuse, and negative ability+ excuse, (iii) they use more strategies with individuals of higher position because Iraqi society is more polite with people of higher rank, (iv) they have often recourse to transfer in some of the strategies they use.