| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis, I aim to investigate the interlanguage produced by Brazilian learners of L2 English at two different proficiency levels, looking for potential L1 transfer of politeness strategies. To fundament the investigation and provide tools for the analysis, a presentation of relevant theory will be conducted, especially regarding Pragmatics, Second Language Acquisition, and Politeness theories and the core notions within the fields, as speech acts, language transfer, interlanguage, and pragmatic failure will be defined as of use for this study. In addition, an extensive review of previous studies regarding L2 refusals, particularly concerning English and Brazilian Portuguese, will be performed. This study has a pseudo-longitudinal design and considers learners at different proficiency levels in the L2. The participants in this study were 60 Brazilians and 30 Americans between 20 and 30 years old. The Brazilians were divided into two groups according to their proficiency level in L2 English: intermediate learners and advanced learners. The instrument used for data collection was a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), containing 12 different situations (requests, offers, invitations, and suggestions). It is identical to Beebe, Takahashi, and Ullis-Weltz’s (1990), with minor modifications. This DCT has been extensively used in interlanguage pragmatics research and thus provides the possibility for replication and comparison of L2 refusals from different language groups. The research questions leading this study are five, and the first three attempt to answer how L1 English speakers, L1 BP speakers, and L2 English learners perform refusals in the 12 different situations provided in the DCT. The fourth research question aims to contrast refusals by L1 English and L1 Brazilian Portuguese speakers, seeing how the politeness strategies used differ between the groups and if they lead to differences in their politeness systems. Finally, I will consider whether transfer is visible in the L2 English learners' interlanguage, and if so, how it looks like and whether novice learners present more transfer than advanced learners. The data produced by the participants was classified according to a modified version of Beebe, Takahashi, and Ullis-Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal strategies and adjuncts. I also considered Brown and Levinson's (1987) notions of positive and negative politeness extensively when considering the different strategies in the analysis. The types of refusal strategies and adjuncts used were classified, and their frequencies were established and converted to percentages. The participants’ performance was then compared and discussed. Overall, there were more similarities than differences between the groups, good news for Brazilian L2 English learners. There were no striking, systematic differences in how Americans and Brazilians refuse in different contexts regarding indirectness levels, number of refusal strategies, and number of adjuncts. However, the results suggested fundamental differences between the American and Brazilian politeness systems, where the Americans had a greater preference for negative politeness while the Brazilians favored positive politeness expressions. Moreover, L1 transfer was suggested in both learner groups, at different degrees, yet being more visible in the intermediate learner group. However, this investigation presented some shortcomings, particularly concerning the uneven distribution of participants in the two L2 proficiency levels; therefore, further research is needed. In addition, a general larger population for all groups would allow for statistical significance tests to be run and provide a more comprehensive picture of refusals in both cultures, shedding further light on L2 learners' pragmatic competence development. | eng |