Pragmatic competence is an essential skill to master when learning a second or foreign language. In this paper we will address the appropriate formulas to disagree in English. As the act of disagreeing varies from culture to culture, Japanese university students need to understand how to express and respond to a disagreement while maintaining a good relationship with the interlocutor. The purpose of this paper is (1) to identify disagreement strategies that native speakers of English use to mitigate a conflict: linguistic devises such as hedges, modal auxiliaries, and pragmatic devises including shifting responsibilities and giving personal or emotional reasons for disagreeing; (2) to analyze strategies of argumentation in the discourse: how they argue their claim logically with warrant and backing; (3) to present an example of pedagogical applications to improve Japanese university students’ pragmatic competence in disagreement.
