| Apology, as one of the speech acts, has been the subject of extensive research in the fields of pragmatics and socio-linguistics. Negative pragmatic transfer, which is always considered as the prime cause of pragmatic errors and pragmatic failures, has attracted many researchers' attention. Although both negative pragmatic transfer and the speech act of apology have been amply documented, few researches aim at the investigation of negative pragmatic transfer along with the speech act of apology. This thesis, therefore, focuses on investigating how negative pragmatic transfer affects the selection of apology strategies made by Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL learner) by a contrastive study with the selection of apology strategies made by native speakers in order to detect if there is any correlation between negative pragmatic transfer and Chinese EFL learners' selection of apology strategies and to give some implications for English teaching and learning. The instruments of the thesis are two kinds of questionnaires. One is discourse completion test (DCT for short) in which 7 situations are described and the other is an assessment of such social factors as social distance, social power, severity of offence and obligation of apology. Actually, the questionnaires used in this thesis are made by Jiang Zhanhao (2004). In 2003, Jiang made a contrastive study on English apology strategies used by Australian college students and Chinese college students, which emphasized on cultural effect on the selection of apology strategies. Since in Jiang's study, there were only 32 valid subjects of normative speakers the sample size of which may not be large enough to ensure generalizable finds of Chinese EFL learners, as for the data used in this thesis, the data of Chinese EFL learners are collected by the author in Chengdu Institute of Sichuan International Studies University while the data of native speakers are quoted from a contrastive study on English apology strategies used by Australian college students and Chinese college students by Jiang Zhanhao (2004).The findings are that there are some differences and similarities in apology selection between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers. With regard to the strategies of taking on responsibility, making an explanation or account, offering repair, minimizing the degree of offence and expressing concerned for the hearer, they are used differently because they are situation-specific. The similarity is that both the native speakers and the Chinese EFL learners preferred to use the following strategy: using Elocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs). Both nonnative speakers and native speakers show a high preference to the strategy of IFIDs. In addition, the strategy of promising forbearance is least frequently chosen by the both groups. Meanwhile, it is proved that there is negative pragmatic transfer in apology strategy selection by Chinese EFL learners. The results also indicate that negative pragmatic transfer mainly results from cultural differences and different cultural value judgments. In addition, how to judge the social power and social distance between the speaker and the hearer can affect the selection of apology strategies.The thesis finally discusses some implications for EFL learning: the learners' pragmatic awareness shall be raised; teaching material shall be developed; and the teachers shall help learners to overcome the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failures they make in the foreign language learning and cross-cultural communication. |
