Pragmatic Transfer In Apologies By Chinese Learners Of English

The study of Interlanguage Pragmatics has become a growing concern of linguists and scholars in recent years. Pragmatic Transfer, as an essential component of Interlanguage Pragmatics, is not only a difficult problem of second language learning, but also one of the key factors leading to cross-cultural communication failure. Apology, as an important speech act, has long been regarded as a hot research topic in pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Although a large number of studies have been made on speech acts and pragmatic transfer specifically, few studies combine the two together. This study aims to investigate the evidences of pragmatic transfer in apologies produced by Chinese learners of English and also to explore its social factors.Based on the theory of pragmatic transfer and speech act theory, this paper mainly investigates the phenomenon of pragmatic transfer in apologies produced by Chinese learners of English through a comparative analysis. This paper will also endeavor to explore the socio-pragmatic factors. The research questions of this thesis can be summarized as:1) What are the evidences for pragmatic transfer existing in the speech act of apology?2) Is there any connection between pragmatic transfer and gender?3) Is there any correlation between pragmatic transfer and the subjects'major?4) What are the contextual factors for pragmatic transfer in apologies produced by Chinese learners of English?The author designs an apology questionnaire of Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The data in this paper are from three groups of subjects. Group1: 50 native speakers of Chinese (NSCs); Group2: 150 Chinese learners of English (also called non-native speakers of English) (NNEs); Group3: 22 native speakers of English (NSEs). This DCT questionnaire comprises of an English version and a Chinese one with the same content, and was designed for 10 apology situations. The questionnaire consists of two parts: questionnaire (A) and factors assessment questionnaire (B). Native speakers of Chinese are asked to answer the 10 different apology situations of the Chinese version in Chinese, while Chinese learners of English and native speakers of English are required to respond in English to the same 10 situations of English version. Data is analyzed for type and frequency of semantic formulas used among three groups in the speech act of apology. Native speaker data is used as baseline for cross-cultural comparison and for detecting instances of pragmatic transfer. Chinese learners of English were compared with native speakers to identify deviations and problems which may cause some pragmatic transfer. To ensure the validity of the questionnaire, this thesis also makes a piloting test in the first stage. The data collected is analyzed with SPSS 13.0 to make a significant test of percentage differences among groups. .Research findings indicate that there are some similarities and differences among three groups of subjects in the same speech act of apology. Data shows that pragmatic transfer really exists in the speech act of apology by Chinese learners of English through analysis. In addition, there are also some differences in pragmatic transfer between males and females when they perform the speech act of apology. Females show more pragmatic transfer in speech act of apology than males due to some traditional Chinese culture or some psychological characteristics. Chinese learners of English from different disciplines (arts, engineering and science) do not show many differences in pragmatic transfer. Although these three types of Chinese learners of English are from three different majors (arts, engineering and science), their performance in the distribution and frequency of pragmatic transfer are very similar. Finally, there are also some differences among these three groups of subjects in the four apology assessment factors, namely, social distance, social power, severity of offence and offender's obligation to apologize. Especially, the first two factors influence Chinese native speakers and Chinese learners of English more, to some extent, which is probably due to some Chinese traditional culture.The conclusions of this paper have some implications on foreign language teaching. In foreign language teaching, teachers should improve the learners'pragmatic awareness, put more western cultures into English teaching and especially strengthen the comparative study of western culture in order to reduce cross-cultural communication failure.