Speech acts’ requesting and apologizing strategies by native and non-native adolescents English speakers. A comparative research on pragmatic competence

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, British University in Dubai, language: English, abstract: Considering the importance of pragmatic competence, this paper analyzed the speech acts for requesting and apologizing strategies between native and non-native speakers of English. To analyze written discourse in the classrooms, four international secondary schools in Dubai, UAE have been selected. The study was conducted in the second semester of the academic year 2012-2013. The study is not controlled for gender as this factor does not have a significant impact on this study, while the age is controlled. In order to analyze written discourse, a mixed methods research for speech acts of requests and apologies was applied. To this end, the DCT of Blum-Kulka et al. was adapted and developed by the researcher. Every DCT contains eight scripted scenarios for requests and the same number of scripted scenarios for apologies. Each describes situations that specify social distance, imposition and power between the participants. The dependent variables are requests and speech act sets of apologies, while the independent variables are social distance, size of imposition, power. In this study, all these variables could be low (L) or High (H).The data revealed that there are some similarities between the participants, supporting the fact that there are universal politeness strategies. However, the data also revealed some differences between the native and non-native speakers’ strategies.