The intercultural style of refusing by German-English bilinguals

This study explores bilinguals' intercultural style of refusing and how it is perceived. The intercultural style hypothesis proposes that bilinguals develop a distinct pragmatic pattern under the influence of the languages they are in contact with. While refusals of requests have been widely studied, research investigating bilingual speakers in both their languages remains scarce. Production data were collected through an oral discourse completion task depicting workplace scenarios from German-English bilinguals (L1 German speakers living and working in the U.S.) and two control groups: Americans in the U.S. and Germans in Germany. Perception data were gathered from raters in Germany and the U.S., who evaluated the bilinguals’ refusals in terms of politeness, directness, and effectiveness. The main findings revealed a complex intercultural style of refusing. Bilinguals exhibited both shared patterns, where the same strategies were used in German and English, and differentiated, language-specific patterns that mirrored the control groups’ styles. Notably, the bilinguals displayed a novel pattern: they produced significantly more indirect refusal head acts, whereas the control groups preferred direct refusal head acts. The bilinguals’ intercultural style was also received positively, though their English refusals were rated as more polite, direct, and effective than their German ones. The findings support the intercultural style hypothesis and its appropriateness and offer new insights into the distinctive pragmatic style of bilinguals. They further suggest that the intercultural style reflects the construction of an intercultural identity and a unique bilingual pragmatic competence.