Status distance in refusal: polite refusals in the Russian and modern Greek languages

This article explores the influence of status distance on the choice of strategies used in expressing the speech act of polite refusal in response to requests in both Russian and Modern Greek. Specifically, it aims to identify similarities and differences within linguistic means employed by two groups of respondents who are native speakers of Russian and Greek. The data were elicited through the administration of online questionnaires, where respondents were asked to formulate polite refusal in communication scenarios varying in the degree of status distance. The linguistic means employed by the respondents while producing their own refusal speech acts, and assessing the offered speech act options in terms of politeness and situational adequacy were analyzed. The results demonstrate that the status distance significantly increases verbosity, and reduces the frequency of using ‘no’, but also directive advice-giving sentences in both groups of respondents. The status distance also seems to lead to a higher frequency of using direct speech acts of refusal by the Greek speakers, but also to an increased use of the modifier ‘apology’ by the Russian speakers. Significant differences were observed between the linguistic means employed to express refusal in Russian and Greek, notably the much higher frequency of ‘no’ and the modifier ‘apology’ by Russian respondents in both communication scenarios, as well as the direct speech acts and directive sentences (advice) in situations of equal status relations. As regards the Greek speakers, they exhibited more verbosity compared to the Russians.