The Sociopragmatic and Pragmalinguistic Strategies in L2 Pragmatic Competence: A Case of Pakistani ESL Learners

ABSTRACT

This study contributes to the existing literature on teaching ESL by investigating Pakistani learners’ responses to the apology speech acts. The study considered the two primary aspects of pragmatic competence: pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic. A multimethod data collection approach – a discourse completion task and a scaled-response questionnaire – was employed to elicit performance and perception data from 150 participants divided into three groups. Findings indicate that Pakistani ESL learners mostly produced the semantic content consisting of cultural-specific and language-specific patterns of apology responses. There also occurred pragmatics transfer in the use of apology responses of Pakistani ESL learners. Findings suggest the inclusion of sociopragmatic competence into the ESL curriculum.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching ESL
• pragmatic competence
• pragmalinguistic
• sociolinguistic
• apology responses

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Notes on contributors

Tahir Saleem

Dr. Tahir Saleem is serving as Assistant Professor in the Department of English, University of Central Punjab Lahore Pakistan. He holds PhD in Linguistics and Literature from Air University Islamabad. He brings with him an outstanding higher education academic and administrative record. Dr. Tahir’s research interest includes Bilingualism, L2 Pragmatics, PDA, CDA, Descriptive Syntax, and Language Testing.

Uzma Anjum

Dr Uzma Anjum is serving as Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Air University Islamabad, Pakistan. She holds her PhD in Linguistics from National University of Modern Languages Islamabad, Pakistan. She has produced a number of M.Phil and PhD scholars during her professional career. Dr Uzma’s research interest includes Language Documentation, Pragmatics, Morphology, Syntax, and Phonetics and Phonology.

Summiya Tahir

Summiya Tahir is M.Phil in Applied Linguistics from the University of Management and Technology Lahore. Her research interest includes Syntax, Bilingualism, and Language Testing.