THE SPEECH ACT OF APOLOGY IN THE DISCOURSE OF ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKERS AND MACEDONIAN LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the speech act of apologizing and the similarities and differences that appear in the use of the apologizing strategies employed by native and non-native speakers of the English language. The analyzed data were obtained through an online Discourse Completion Task (DCT) among native and non-native speakers of the English language. The DCT includes ten situations that differ in accordance with the social distance, the social status of the participants, and the degree of the offense. Moreover, the aim was to determine the most common pragmatic strategies of apologizing used by native English speakers as well as by Macedonian learners of English in the given situations. The findings of this study can be helpful to Macedonian EFL teachers and their students in particular as they can raise their awareness with respect to the differences in the use of the apologizing strategies, which, in turn, can contribute to avoiding possible misunderstandings in the communication between these two groups of English language users.