Abstract
Most apology studies in the Jordanian context have investigated apologies based on a corpus of elicited data. Rarely have apologies been observed in the natural data; nor have the contextual factors that obligated these apologies been considered. This study is based on a corpus of 1100 naturally occurring apology events, collected through an ethnographic observation. Semi-structured interview was also used to examine the influence of contextual factors (social status, social distance, and severity of offence) on the choice of apology strategies. The respondents for this study were selected via convenient sampling. The naturally occurring apologies were coded using a modified version of the apology strategy typology outlined by Olshtain and Cohen (1983). There are series of findings that are worth noting; the first is that, acknowledging responsibility was the most common apology strategy in Jordanian Arabic. Second, acknowledging responsibility and swearing by God’s name, formed the most frequent combination of apology strategies in this language. Third, another strategy that was high on the percentage of occurrence and deserving discussion was the non-apology strategies. Fourth, the selections of apology strategies were influenced by social status more than the degree of the severity of the offence or the social distance. Last but not least, new culture-specific apology strategies were detected in the corpus and elaborated in the paper. The findings of the study will assist material developers in preparing for resource books or modules for teaching and training of language and cultural awareness. The findings can also be used to raise the awareness about the sociocultural rules that govern the use of language functions.
Highlights
Speech Acts or communicative acts have proved to be one of the attractive areas in pragmatics and sociolinguistics
discourse completion test (DCT) has been widely used in speech act studies, it is severely criticized by some linguists
Before considering the frequency of apology strategies in Jordanian speech community, as the main concern of the current study, it is important to give a short account of what people were apologizing for, to who and to whom these apologies were given
Summary
Speech Acts or communicative acts have proved to be one of the attractive areas in pragmatics and sociolinguistics. A number of studies have shown that there are significant cross-cultural differences in the speech act performance between two different speech communities (Eslami, 2004; Al-Zumor, 2011; Turnball, 2001; Banikalef & Marlyna, 2013a). To establish universal views of speech acts, it seems essential to examine their typical realization pattern in different languages. This assumption is confirmed by Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989) who state: "If claims to pragmatic universality are to approximate any type of validity, they should be based on the empirical investigation of many more, and diverse languages" This assumption is confirmed by Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989) who state: "If claims to pragmatic universality are to approximate any type of validity, they should be based on the empirical investigation of many more, and diverse languages" (Blum, House & Kasper, 1989, p. 8)
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