Pragmatic Transfer in Request and Refusal Used by the Students of English Graduate Program of the State University of Padang.

Different cultures have different interpretations of appropriateness that may cause pragmatic transfer that is the transfer of the communicative strategies from one language to another language. Pragmatic transfer can possibly occur in request and refusal. This research aims at finding out the strategies of request and refusal in Indonesian and English, examining the occurrence of pragmatic transfer in request and refusal, and explaining the reasons for the occurrence of pragmatic transfer in request and refusal. This was a kind of qualitative research in design on phenomenological research. The participants of this research were the students of English graduate program of the State University of Padang enrolled in 2011/2012. The data were collected through Discourse Completion Test (DCT), role play, and interview. The data collected were analyzed by using the theory adapted from Blum-Kulka (1989). The results of the research show that, in request, the participants tend to express it indirectly through hints, and in refusal, they also use indirect strategy through apology followed by reason. This is true for both in Indonesian and English. It means that the participants tend not to directly express request and refusal. It is thus assumed that pragmatic transfer occurs in asking request and refusal. This is supported by the judgment from the English native speakers who confirmed that more than half of the expressions of request and refusal in English expressed by the participants of this research are not commonly used by the English native speakers. It may be caused by some reasons, such as low competence of the target language mastered by the students, lack of interactions with the English native speakers and cultural differences, such as politeness factor. The implication is the appropriate speech acts of request and refusal in English should be mastered optimally by the students so that the pragmatic transfer can be reduced especially in the context of leaning English as a foreign language.