Apologies in Emails: Interactions Between Chinese EFL Learners and Their Foreign Peers

Use of Apology Strategies in Emails by Chinese Learners of English: Evidence Based on Naturally Occurring Data

“…As mentioned in the previous section, IFIDs were the most frequently used apology strategy. This was also reported in previous studies such as Holmes (1990) , Rose (2000) , Chang (2010) , Chamanigi and Zareipur (2010) , Shariati and Chamani (2010) , Liu and Ren (2016) , and Chejnova (2021) . Of the three sub-strategies, the highest occurrence belonged to an expression of regret , similar to Chang (2010) , while a request for forgiveness was used least frequently which is in agreement with Hatipoğlu (2004) and Chang (2010) .…”

“…There were also studies on apology emails of L2 learners, but using elicited data. Employing two discourse production tasks, Liu and Ren (2016) investigated email apologies used by two proficiency groups of Chinese EFL learners in two equal-status scenarios (writing to apologize to their foreign peers). Perception analysis showed that both groups had a similar understanding of the severity of offense and social distance in two scenarios.…”

“…As a result, it is of paramount significance to investigate how second language (L2) learners make apologies when offending someone. Unfortunately, a close look at the current literature shows that most studies on apology production of L2 learners ( Afghari, 2007 ; Bella, 2014 ; Liu and Ren, 2016 ; Al Masaeed et al, 2018 ; Beeching, 2019 ; Chang and Ren, 2020 ) used elicited data rather than real-life performances of learners. Due to the hypothetical situation provided when eliciting apology data by either discourse-completion tasks (DCTs) or role plays, participants lack cognition of the consequences of their behaviors, and correspondingly, their reactions lack authenticity ( Malmir and Taji, 2021 ).…”

“…Previous email apology research predominately investigated the apologies of native speakers using authentic data (e.g., Hatipoğlu, 2004 ; Davies et al, 2007 ; Claudel, 2015 ), but employed elicited data when participants were L2 learners (e.g., Liu and Ren, 2016 ; Barón and Ortega, 2018 ). To the best of the knowledge of the authors, there has been no published research on apology strategies of L2 learners using authentic email data.…”

Contrastive Pragmatics and Second Language (L2) Pragmatics: Approaches to Assessing L2 Speech Act Production

“…The contrastive linguistics approach to speech act assessment still permeates the field today. In more recent studies, researchers have used this approach to reveal characteristics of advanced speech act production by documenting which pragmalinguistic forms appear in more advanced-level learners' speech acts, which are missing in beginning-level learners' data (e.g., Al Masaeed et al, 2020;Felix-Brasdefer, 2007;Sabatéi Dalmau and Gotor, 2007;Rose, 2009;Taguchi, 2011a;Chang, 2010Chang, , 2016Flores Salgado, 2011;Bella, 2012Bella, , 2014Göy and Otcu, 2012;Liu and Ren, 2015;Savic, 2015;Lee, 2016). One generalization found in the data is that, in a high-imposition speech act addressed to someone in higher social status and larger social distance, advanced-level learners tend to use more indirect strategies with a greater number of external modification devices than lower-level learners, although their use of internal modifications (e.g., syntactic and lexical mitigations) is still minimal (for a review, see Taguchi, 2018).…”