Wongsittikan, Nattapra & You, Seok-Hoon. 2017. An Interlanguage Pragmatic
Study of Refusals by Thai Learners of Korean. Language Information. Volume
25. 93-128. This study aims to investigate the refusal productions by Thai learners
of Korean in second language and foreign language environment to see how
language exposure influences learners’ acquisition of pragmatic knowledge. Four
sample groups are recruited for this study: 70 Korean native speakers (KNS);
30 Thai learners of Korean in a second language environment (KSL); 30 Thai
learners who majored in Korean in a foreign language environment (KFL-major)
and 30 Thai learners minored in Korean in a foreign language environment
(KFL-minor). Korean language exposure questionnaire and a written discourse
completion task (WDCT) are used to collect the data. The data from the native
Korean speakers (KNS) is used as the baseline of the analysis. The results show
that both power and social distance have effect on the realization of refusals.
The refusals by KFL-minor deviate more from the Korean norm than those by
the KSL and the KFL-major, but there are no major contrast between the KSL
and the KFL-major. This suggests amount of language exposure influences the
acquisition of pragmatic knowledge over the learning environment.

Key words: Interlanguage pragmatics, speech act, refusal, refusal strategies,
Korean as a second language (KSL), Korean as a foreign language (KFL)