Apology Strategies of Native and Nonnative Speakers of English

Learning appropriate social behavior patterns is one of the biggest challenges for learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) especially because conventions of usage of speech acts depend on culture and not just on knowledge of language. Apology is one of such speech acts and is called for when social norms have been violated, whether the offence is real or potential. Researchers and teachers in the field of language learning and teaching have paid attention to how ESL learners implement apology strategies in English and how it can be most effectively taught (e.g., Bataineh & Bataineh, 2008; Bagheri & Hamrang, 2013). Previous research suggests that language users across languages and cultures do not use the same grammatical forms or structures in order to perform a same speech act including apology (Blum-Kulka, 1982). The current study explored how native and non-native speakers of English use different apology strategies across situations varying in terms of social factors such as power, distance and age. Participants were 20 ESL (advanced proficiency level) students who were enrolled either in regular or English language classes at a US college. Ten native speakers (college-aged) also participated in the study to provide a baseline data for the current study. The data were collected using two measures; Discourse Completion Test and Multiple Choice Questionnaire. The analyses of data focused on various apology strategies such as the use of semantic formulas of responsibility and offer of repair, as well as the over expression of apology. The analysis also looked at modifications on apologies by through downgraders and intensifiers. The preliminary results indicated that non-native speakers (ESL learners) differed much from their native speaker counterparts in their strategies in apology across situations. For instance, non-native speakers used mostly Sorry as the realization of the explicit apology in situation where native speakers tended to use excuse me. Moreover, the non-native speakers tended to intensify their expression of apology more than native speakers and varied more in their choice of intensifying expressions such as terribly, awfully, and truly. Being a small scale research, it is hard to draw a definitive conclusion on the basis of the current finding. However, the current study strongly suggests that future research should focus more on the acquisition of speech acts and more explicit method of teaching second language pragmatics might be needed in instructing ESL students