Abstract
In Pragmatics, scholars have given special attention to study the influence of leaners culture and social rules in understanding and using target language pragmatics. For this purpose, speech acts have been studied quite widely. This study investigates the speech act of responding to apology in Pakistani English, British English and Pakistani Urdu, and tries to highlight whether respondents transfer their cultural and social rules in the target language or not. The present study followed quantitative approach for data collection and analysis. A discourse completion test (DCT), consists of 12 apology response scenarios is used for data collection. The findings illustrate that English-using Pakistanis pragmatic choices are clearly influenced by their perceptions of various sociocultural and contextual variables. The English-using Pakistanis and Pakistani Urdu speakers are found using two main strategies (Acceptance, and Acknowledgment). In contrast, British English speakers tend to use Acceptance and Evasion strategies more often. Further, the findings have indicated that English-using Pakistanis and Pakistani Urdu speakers have used more Rejection strategies than their British English counterparts, though such communicative features are not salient in their ARs, and Pakistanis are surprisingly found quite clear and direct. The findings of the study may be helpful to English teachers who should be made aware that L2 learners’ pragmatic transfer is influenced by learners’ culture and social rules, and, as a result, should not be treated simply as a pragmatic ‘error’ or ‘failure’ to be corrected and criticized.
Highlights
Within the framework of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), Thomas (1983) proposed two kinds of pragmatic failure: sociopragmatic failure, which arises from cross-culturally different perceptions of what constitutes appropriate linguistic behaviour; and pragmalinguistic failure, which is observed when the pragmatic force mapped on to a linguistic token or structure is systematically different from that normally assigned to it by native speakers
The study involved 50 (25 male & 25 female) English-using Pakistanis as target language group (EuP), 50 (25 male & 25 female) British English Speakers (BritE) from Coventry University, UK, University of Leeds, UK, and British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) members, and 50 (25 male & 25 female) Pakistani Urdu speaker (PakU), both EuP and PakU groups consist of whose age ranged from 25-55 years, English native speakers age ranged from 25-65 years
It is clear that EuPs and PakUs differ from BritE in expressing certain subsidiary Apology Responses (ARs) acts and terms
Summary
Within the framework of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), Thomas (1983) proposed two kinds of pragmatic failure: sociopragmatic failure, which arises from cross-culturally different perceptions of what constitutes appropriate linguistic behaviour; and pragmalinguistic failure, which is observed when the pragmatic force mapped on to a linguistic token or structure is systematically different from that normally assigned to it by native speakers. While Bu (2010), Chen and Yang (2010) and Holmes (1995) illustrate that some transfer is conducive to L2 acquisition, some transfer is not conducive and is instead confusing. The latter form of pragmatic transfer results in what would be termed pragmatic failure and is described by Thomas (1983), one of the foremost researchers of pragmatics, as an area of cross-cultural communication breakdown which has received very little attention from language teachers
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
