Linguistic Politeness of Czech university students in the English language (L2): Requests and apologies
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Interlanguage pragmatics is the study of pragmatic competence of foreign language students, focusing in particular on interaction and speech acts: it examines students’ ability to use various linguistic means in the target language when interacting in various contexts, and looks at how they are able to devise and appropriately use speech acts, such as requests, apologies and refusal. Requests and apologies are among the most commonly studies speech acts, for two main reasons. First, they are considered to be face-threatening facts and tend to be examined in terms not just of pragmatic competence but also politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Secondly, despite the fact that some pragmatic norms are considered universals, requests and apologies are difficult for foreign language students to grasp, as they are cultural and language-specific expressions. No comparative study of the speech acts of request and apology has yet been done. The aim of my dissertation project is to shed light on the intercultural differences, positive or negative transfer that influence Czech native speakers when using English. Regarding research design, a written discourse completion task was employed containing 10 requests and 10 apologies (social variable: equal-status and unequal-status) in Czech and in English and data was collected from 81 Czech university students. The data from native speakers of English has not yet been collected. Preliminary results: The quantitative analysis of data obtained indicates that Czech students of English in expressing their requests in English opted for a conventionally indirect strategy, namely a reference to preparatory conditions. This is in line with the outcomes of previous studies. The social variable did not seem to play a role in the selection of the strategy. The analysis of apologies indicates that the three most frequently used categories of apology strategy, namely Statement of remorse, Account and Offer of repair, remained the same across formal and informal settings. |
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