Pragmatic competence from a contrastive perspective: the case of 'lo siento' and other expressions of apology in Spanish
Abstract
This paper follows the line of research of the preliminary study conducted by Chodorowska-Pilch (2019) on the overgeneralization of the expression lo siento in the apologies of English-speaking students due to the transference of sorry from English. The principal objective of the present study is to consider the influence of linguistic competence when it comes to choosing between different apology expressions in Spanish. The apologies produced by native speakers in the Spanish series “Vivir sin permission” (‘Unauthorized Living’) are used as a database and point of reference. In order to test whether students learning Spanish select apologies that correspond to or are close to native speakers’ use, a survey was developed with fragments uttered by the protagonists of the series. The final objective is to demonstrate that competence in sociocultural pragmatics affects the use of apology expressions by students learning Spanish and to provide possible recommendations for teachers interested in improving the performance of English-speaking students in the production of apologies.
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