From “Sorry very much” to “I'm ever so sorry”: Acquisitional patterns in L2 apologies by Catalan learners of English

This paper analyzes the acquisitional stages of L2 apology realizations in response to discourse completion tasks produced in a cross-sectional study by 78 Catalan learners of English at three different proficiency levels. The average number of explicit apologies (IFIDs) used per situation is examin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Intercultural pragmatics 2007-06, Vol.4 (2), p.287-315
Main Authors: Dalmau, Maria Sabaté i, Gotor, Hortènsia Curell i
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:This paper analyzes the acquisitional stages of L2 apology realizations in response to discourse completion tasks produced in a cross-sectional study by 78 Catalan learners of English at three different proficiency levels. The average number of explicit apologies (IFIDs) used per situation is examined, as are the learners' lexical choice of apology performative verbs, on the one hand, and the degree and type of apology intensification (both lexical and phrasal) they use, on the other. The learner data is compared to analogous British English and Catalan native speaker data. The paper discusses pragmatic transfer, as well as the types of interlanguage behavior of each of the three groups of L2 learners.
ISSN:1612-295X
1613-365X
DOI:10.1515/IP.2007.014