Developing the ability to refuse: A cross-sectional study of Greek FL refusals

•The use of direct strategies decreases with proficiency.•Indirectness, adjuncts and lexical downgraders increase with proficiency.•Even advanced learners are far from approximating the native-speaker norm.•Grammatical competence and sociocultural knowledge influence development.•The developmental stages proposed for requests can be valid for refusals.

This study investigates developmental patterns in the ability of Greek FL learners to refuse a request. Drawing data from role-plays and verbal reports, it attempts to explore the strategies that learners of three different proficiency levels (lower intermediate, intermediate and advanced) employ when performing refusals in equal and unequal status situations. The results suggest that, although there is a great deal of development with increasing proficiency, even the advanced learners’ performance lags far behind native speakers in several respects. Furthermore, the study investigates the impact of both grammatical development and sociocultural knowledge on the development of these learners’ ability to perform refusals. Finally, it is suggested that the developmental stages of pragmatic competence proposed in the literature in regard to other speech acts and especially requests (Ellis, 1992 and Achiba, 2003) can also be valid for the development of refusals.