This paper is concerned with refusal strategies, mainly, refusals of invitations and requests. The main aim is to investigate the content of the semantic formulas and their frequencies as used by Arab and American male students in the speech act of refusals when interacting with different interlocutors with different statuses. The assumption here is that speech acts reflect the cultural norms and values which are possessed by the speakers of Arabic and American English. Thus, speakers from each culture are assumed to present different performance in refusals as a result of the different cultures: Arabs’ collectivist culture and Americans’ individualistic culture.