The Study of Native Surabaya Young People Refusal Strategy in English

Refusal often ends in misunderstanding and even anger, so people organize and maintain their
refusal to avoid face threats. The people of Surabaya use the native Surabaya language, which
is known as an open and blunt language, so a rejection strategy is assumed similar to this
characteristic. This thesis aims to analyze what types of refusal strategies of native Surabaya
young people use and how they use them in English. It examines how respondents refused the
invitation, request, offer, or suggestion in various situations. This is a qualitative study with 21
native Surabaya young people, the EFL learners completing a Written Discourse Completion
Test or WDCT, which contains several scenarios based on power and social distance. Data were
analyzed using SPSS and the results showed that although the respondents came from Surabaya,
which is known for its outspoken speaking style, in fact only 12.6% of respondents used the
direct refusal strategy, conversely, most respondents used indirect refusal strategy (79.7%) in
expressing their rejection, while the least used strategy was Adjunct (7.7%). The respondents
continued to use the indirect refusal strategies, even though they had more power and less
closeness or have equal power and closeness to the interlocutors.
Keywords: Rejection Strategy, Social Variable, Surabaya native language