Refusal Politeness within Anime: How the Japanese Youngsters Learn to Refuse

Abstract

The manners or social conduct of refusal is an invaluable part of Japanese culture that youngsters can learn by observing anime. The present research aimed to elaborate on how Japanese anime might provide insights for youngsters to learn polite refusal strategies. This research relied heavily on dialogue transcripts from the anime Kaguya-Sama: Love is War as the data source. The methods for collecting data in this research included simple and complex recording, participant observation, and active engagement. Data analysis was done through thorough observation and auto-expert judgments. The research findings showed that there were two types of refusal speech-act strategies: direct speech acts and indirect speech acts. The direct speech-act politeness strategies employed direct non-performative verbs within refusal speech acts, while the indirect speech-act politeness strategies consisted of refusal speech acts through presenting reasons, refusal speech acts with a statement of principles, refusal speech acts with a statement of apology, and refusal speech acts with a way of evasion.

Keywords

• computer
• culture
• animation
• youth
• learning