A Study On Pragmatic Backward Transfer Of Apology Speech Act In Chinese-English Bilinguals

This paper investigates the apology speech act of Chinese-English bilinguals with the DCT method.First,a comparative study of Chinese apology speech act was implemented respectively between Chinese group and low/medium/high English proficiency groups.This study aimed to verify whether the pragmatic backward transfer has been produced in Chinese-English bilinguals.Next,the low,medium and high English proficiency groups' apology speech act in Chinese were compared with their apology speech act in English.The data presented showed that the intercultural style has been formed.The data of four groups' apology speech act were analyzed by the SPSS software and discussed from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives.This paper comes to the following conclusions: 1)In Chinese-English bilinguals' apology speech act,their mother tongue Chinese was influenced by English,and pragmatic backward transfer phenomenon has produced in some specific circumstances.This phenomenon was caused by different reasons and vary in performance.2)Chinese-English bilinguals' English proficiency affects the degree of pragmatic backward transfer.3)In Chinese-English bilinguals' apology speech act,an intercultural style has been formed in a certain degree and it is still in a process of developing.