Apologies in EFL: An Interlanguage Pragmatic Study on Moroccan Learners of English

Omar Ezzaoua

Abstract


This study explores the strategies Moroccan Learners of English (MLEs), American English Speakers (AEs)), and Moroccan Arabic speakers (MAs) use when performing the speech act of apology. The study basically investigates the interlanguage of MLE as compared to other groups. Equally important, the aim is to study whether MLEs displayed pragmatic transfer when using apology strategies. To this end, A written discourse completion test/ task was administered to the participants both native and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in order to elicit apologies through five hypothetical situations. The productions of Moroccan EFL learners were analyzed to see where they stand between native speakers norms and Moroccan Arabic norms in terms of strategies choices. In the analysis of the data, all responses were categorized according to Trosborg’s (1995) apology speech act set. The results show that Learners of English in higher education significantly deviated the overall desired strategies as compared to American native speakers of English. Meanwhile, some developmental patterns towards native like norms were perceived.


Keywords


Apologies; Pragmatic transfer; Interlanguage Pragmatics

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ahmed, A. H. (2017). The pragmatics of apology speech act behavior in Iraqi Arabic and English. Front Cover. De Montfort University.

Alfattah, M. H. A. (2010). Apology strategies of Yemeni EFL university students. MJAL, 2(3), 223-249.

Al-Hindawi, F., & Alkhazaali, M. (2016). A critique of politeness theories. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 6(8), 1537-1545.

Al-Zumor, A. W. (2010). Apologies in Arabic and English: An inter-language and cross-cultural study. Journal of King Saud University-Languages and Translation, 23, 19-28.

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1999). Exploring the interlanguage of interlanguage pragmatics: A research agenda for acquisitional pragmatics. Language Learning, 49(4), 677-713.

Bardovi-Harlig, K., Rose, M., & Nickels, E. L. (2008). The use of conventional expressions of thanking, apologizing, and refusing. In M. Bowles, et al. (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2007 second language research forum (pp.113-130). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Bergman, L., & Kasper, G. (1993). Perception and performance in native and nonnative apology. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp.82-107). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Blum-Kulka, S. (1991). Interlanguage pragmatics: The case of requests. In R. Phillipson, E. Kellerman, L. Selinker, M. S. Smith, & M. Swain (Eds.), Foreign/second language pedagogy research: A commemorative volume for Claus Faerch (pp.255-272). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Blum-Kulka, S., & Levenston, E. A. (1987). Lexical-grammatical pragmatic indicators. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 9(2), 155-170. 289

Brown, P., & Levinson. S. (1987), Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHANG, M. et al. (2016). Do Chinese students waffle in their apologies? An exploration into EFL learners’ emails. Email Discourse Among Chinese Using English as a Lingua Franca (pp.61-90). Springer.

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge and Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Cohen, A. (1996). Investigating the production of speech act sets. In Gass and Nue (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language (pp. 21-43). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Cohen, A. D. and Olshtain, E. (1981). Developing a measure of socio-cultural competence: the case of apology. Language Learning, 31, 113-134. 291

Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2003). Declining an invitation: A cross-cultural study of pragmatic strategies in American English and Latin American Spanish. Multilingua, 22(3), 225-256.

Hassall, T. (2001). Modifying requests in a second language. International Review of Applied Linguistics (IRAL,) 39, 259-283.

Jung, E. H. S. (2004). Interlanguage pragmatics. In C. L. Moder and A. Martinovic-Zic (Eds.), Discourse acrosss languages and cultures (pp. 99-116). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Kasper, G. (1992). Pragmatic transfer. Second Language Research, 8(3), 203-231.
Kasper, G. (2004). Speech acts in (inter)action: Repeated questions. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(1), 125-133.

Kasper, G., & Blum-Kulka, S. (Eds.) (1993). Interlanguage pragmatics: An introduction. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (p.294). New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Leech, G. (2005). Politeness: Is there an East-West divide. Journal of Foreign Languages, 6(3).

Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.

Lim, T. (2003). Language and verbal communication across cultures. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Cross-cultural and intercultural communication (pp.53-72). California: Sage Publication, Inc.

Luo, X. & Goa, J. (2011). On pragmatic failures in second language learning. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 1(3), 283-286.

Márquez-Reiter, R. (2002). A Contrastive Study of Conventional Indirectness in Spanish. Pragmatics. Quaterly Publication of The International Pragmatics Association (IprA) 12(2), 135-151.

Reiter, R. M. (2000). Politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A contrastive study of requests and apologies. John Benjamins B.V.

Searle, J. R. (1971). What is a speech act? In J. R. Searle (Ed.), The philosophy of language (pp.44-46). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage. International review of applied linguistics (IRAL), 10(2), 209-231.

Takahashi, T., & Beebe, L. M. (1987). The development of pragmatic competence by Japanese learners of English. JALT Journal, 8, 131-155.

Takahashi, T., & Beebe, L. M. (1993). Cross-linguistic influence in the speech act of correction. In G. Kasper and S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp.138-157). New York: Oxford University Press.

Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in interaction - An introduction to pragmatics. New York: Longman Publishing.

Triki, M. (2013). A Pragmatic Approach to the Study of English /Arabic Translation Errors. Journal Academica, 3(1), 39-51.

Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints, apologies. Mouton De Gruyter, New York.

Yan, L. and Zhuang, Y. (2010). Reflections on the nature of pragmatic failure. US-China Foreign Language, 8(1), 1-7.

Yates, L. (2010). Speech act performance in workplace settings. In A. Martínez-Flor & E. Usó-Juan (Eds.), Speech act performance: Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues (pp. 109- 126). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Yoshitake, M. (2004). Critique of J. L. Austin‘s speech act theory: Decentralization of the speaker-centered meaning in communication. Kyushu Communication Studies, 2, 27- 43.

Youn, S. J. (2014). Validity argument for assessing L2 pragmatics in interaction using mixed methods. Language Testing, 32(2), 199-225

Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zamborlin, C. (2007). Going beyond pragmatic failure: Dissonance in intercultural communication. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(4), 21-50.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/11640

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2020 Omar Ezzaoua

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Share us to:   

 

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard

Please send your manuscripts to sll@cscanada.net，or  sll@cscanada.org  for consideration. We look forward to receiving your work.


We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; sll@cscanada.net; sll@cscanada.org

 Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office

Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail: office@cscanada.net; office@cscanada.org; caooc@hotmail.com

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture