REFUSAL STRATEGIES APPLIED BY MAIN CHARACTERS IN THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA PRINCE CASPIAN NOVEL RELATED TO GENDER, AGE, AND SOCIAL STATUS

Abstract

Refusal is the condition that the hearers do an unexpected act or response. On the other words, refusal is the opposite response to the acceptance. This study uses The Chronicles of Narnia Prince Caspian novel as the object. It discusses the differences of the refusal strategies used by male and female main characters and the influences of gender, age, and social status in choosing refusal strategies. This is because there is a contrary case in this novel. The characters with superior status who can speak impolitely are children who are expected to speak politely to the other people. This expectation also happens when they employ the refusal strategy. This study applies qualitative and quantitative methods which are called mixed method as the research strategy. The novel is taken from www.androidgallery.net/the_chronicles_of_narnia_prince_caspian/. The data are accessed on August, 12th 2013. The writer only takes the refusal utterances uttered by four main characters. Yule’s eleven refusal strategies theory (1996) is applied to analyze the data. Those strategies are delay/hesitate, preface, express doubt, token yes, apology, mention obligation, appeal for understanding, make it non personal, give an account, use mitigators, and hedge the negative. The results shows that male characters mostly use give an account when they refuse people not only in the same age and status but also in the different age and status. However, female characters mostly use give an account for adults and hedge the negative for children. They mostly employ appeal for understanding, give an account, and hedge the negative for subordinate people. For the people who have equal status with them, they mostly apply hedge the negative and female subordinate character mostly applies give an account for superior people.