Apology Strategies of Iranian ESL Students

Haleh Parsa, Jariah Binti Mohd Jan

Abstract


The main focus of this study, which is of the most important and most frequent speech acts used in multicultural settings, is the speech act of apology. It probes native Persian-speaking ESL university students’ apology and non-apology strategies based on Cohen and Olshtain’s (1981) frame work to evince variations ascribed to gender, mother tongue, and culture. The results of this survey reveal that Iranian male and female respondents use different percentages of apology and non-apology strategies. Considering significance levels, in general, except for a few strategies, there is no statistically significant difference between the groups considering the number and type of strategies used.

 


Keywords


ESL, Sociolinguistics, Politeness, Gender, mother tongue

Full Text:

PDF

References


Abu Amoud, M. S. M. (2008). A study of Apology Strategies among Hebron University students. (Master dissertation, University of Malaya, Malaysia).

Afghari, A. (2007). A socio pragmatic study of apology speech act realization patterns in Persian. Speech communication, 49,177-185.

Alfattah, M. (2010). Apology strategies of Yemeni EFL university students. University of Mysore, Mysore, India.

Bataineh, R. F., & Bataineh, R. F. (2008).A cross-cultural comparison of apologies by native speakers of American English and Jordanian Arabic. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(4), 792-821.

Cohen, A. D., &Olshtain, E. (1985).Comparing apologies across languages. Scientific and humanistic dimensions of language, 175-83.

Deutschmann, M. (2003). Apologising in British English (Doctoral dissertation, Umeå University).

El Samaty, M. (2005).Helping foreign language learners become pragmatically competent. Paper presented at the 10th TESOL Arabia Conference.

Eslami-Rasekh, A., & Mardani, M. (2010).Investigating the effects of teaching apology speech act, with a focus on intensifying strategies, on pragmatic development of EFL learners: The Iranian context. Journal of Language Society and Culture, 30, 96-103.

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.

Ghorbani, M. R. (2009). ELT in Iranian high schools in Iran, Malaysia and Japan: Reflections on how tests influence use of prescribed textbooks. Reflections on English Language Teaching, 8(2), 131-139.

Gonda, Th. (2001). The speech act of apology: Apology behavior of British English and advanced Greek speakers of English, Unpublished master's thesis, University of Essex.

Hatipoglu, C. (2003). Culture, gender and politeness: apologies in Turkish and British English (Doctoral dissertation, University of the West of England at Bristol).

İstifçi, İ. (2009). The use of apologies by EFL learners. English Language Teaching, 2(3), 15-25

Jung, E. H. S. (2004). Interlanguage pragmatics. Discourse across languages and cultures, 68, 99.

Kuhi, D., &Jadidi, M. (2012).A study of Iranian EFL learners’ understanding and production of politeness in three speech acts: Request, refusal, and apology. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(12), 2624-2633.

Kwon, J. (2004). Expressing refusals in Korean and in American English. Multilingua, 23, 339-364.

Liddicoat, A.J. (2000). Everyday speech as culture: implications for language teaching. In: Liddicoat, A. J., Crozet, C (Eds.), Teaching Languages, Teaching Cultures. Applied Linguistics association of Australia, Melbourne, pp. 51-63.

Mir, M. (1992). Do we all apologize the same? An empirical study on the act of apologizing by Spanish speakers learning English. Pragmatics and Language Learning, 3, 1-19.

Munoz, V.I. (2000). A cross-cultural pragmatics study: Puerto Rican return migrant and non-migrant students’ apology performance and evaluation(Unpublished PhD thesis, New York University).

Nagano, M. (1985). " How to Say I'm Sorry": The Use of Apologies in Japan and the United States (Doctoral dissertation, San Francisco State University.).

Nureddeen, F. (2008). Cross cultural pragmatics. Apology strategies in Sudanese Arabic. Journal of pragmatics, 40, 279-306.

Olshtain, E. (1989). Apologies across languages. In Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Juliane House & Gabriele Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 155-173). New Jersey: Ablex.

Parsa, H. (2012). Apology strategies of Iranian ESL students.(Master's Dissertation, University of Malaya, Malaysia).

Rakowicz, A. (2009). Ambiguous Invitations: The Interlanguage Pragmatics of Polish English Language Learners. New York University.

Shahrokhi, M. (2009). A sociopragmatic study of linguistic politeness in Iranian requests and apologies.(PhD dissertation, University of Malaya).

Shardakova, M. (2005). Interlanguage Pragmatics in the Speech of American Second Language Learners of Russian: Apologies offered by Americans in Russian. (PhD dissertation, Bryn Mawr College).

Shariati, M., & Chamani, F. (2009). Apology Strategies in Persian. Journal of Pragmatics, 42 (6), 1689-1699.

Shoja, M. (2011), Bahasa Malaysia for the University of Malaya International Students: A Needs Analysis. (Master's Dissertation, University of Malaya, Malaysia).

Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2008). Gestures in foreign language classrooms: An empirical analysis of their organization and function. In Selected proceedings of the 2007 second language research forum (pp. 229-238).

Tamanaha, M. (2003).Interlanguage speech act realization of apologies and complaints: The performances of Japanese L2 speakers in comparison with Japanese L1 and English L1 speakers. (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, California).

Thijittang, S.(2010).Pragmatics Strategies of English of Thai University Students.(PhD thesis, University of Tasmania).

Todey, E. (2011). Apology Strategies As Used by Native & Non-Native Speakers of English.

Vollmer, H.J. & Olshtain, E. (1989). The Language of apology in German, Cross- Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 197-218).

Walters, J. (1979). Strategies for requesting in Spanish and English: Structural similarities and pragmatic differences, Language Learning, 29 (2), 277-293.

Watts, R. J. (1989). Relevance and relational work: linguistic politeness as politic behavior. Multilingua, 8(2), 3-131.

Wee, L. (2004). ‘Extreme communicative acts’ and the boosting of illocutionary force. Journal of Pragmatics, 36 (12), 2161-2178.

White, R. (1993). Saying please: Pragmalinguistic failure in English interaction. ELT Journal, 47 (3), 193-202.

Wildner-Bassett, M. E. (1984). Improving pragmatic aspects of learners' interlanguage: A comparison of methodological approaches for teaching gambits to advanced adult learners of English in industry. G. Narr.

Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 9, 145-178.

Wolfson, N., Marmor, T., & Jones, S. (1989). Problems in the comparison of speech acts across cultures. Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies, 174-196.

Wolfson, N. (1989). Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. New York: Newbury House.

Wouk, F. (2006).The language of apologizing in Lombok, Indonesia. Journal of Pragmatics, 38 (9), 1457-1486.

Farashaiyan, A., & Amirkhiz, S. (2011). A Descriptive-Comparative Analysis of Apology Strategies: The case of Iranian EFL and Malaysian ESL University Students. English Language Teaching, 4(1), p224.

Yeganeh, M. T. Apology Strategies of Iranian Kurdish-Persian Bilinguals: a Study of‎ Speech Acts Regarding Gender and Education.

Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics.

Zimin, S. (1981). Sex and politeness: Factors in first and second-language use. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 27, 35-58.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.1p.137

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


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

2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. 

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.