The Role of Politeness in Apology Sequences: How to Maintain Harmony between Speakers

The goal of the present paper is to provide a discourse-based teaching approach for the integration of the speech act of apologies from a communicative perspective. In so doing, special attention is paid to how sociocultural norms affect language use. The rationale behind the selection of this speec...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Martínez Flor, Alicia, Beltrán Palanques, Vicente
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/34294
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/11441/34294
https://doi.org/10.12795/elia.2014.i14.03
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Politeness
Pragmatic competence
Speech acts
Apologies
Discourse-based teaching approach
Foreign language didactics
Cortesía
Competencia pragmática
Actos de habla
Disculpas
Enfoque pedagógico desde una perspectiva discursiva
Didáctica de la lengua extranjera
Descripción
Sumario:The goal of the present paper is to provide a discourse-based teaching approach for the integration of the speech act of apologies from a communicative perspective. In so doing, special attention is paid to how sociocultural norms affect language use. The rationale behind the selection of this speech act is based on the fact that the realisation of this pragmatic aspect might be complex for learners of English as a Second/Foreign Language (SL/FL) not only when selecting appropriate utterances, but also in assessing what an offense involves and its severity (Bergman and Kasper, 1993). Taking these aspects into account, this paper provides first a review of politeness theory, then, a description of the speech act under investigation is presented, and finally, pedagogical implications regarding the integration of apologies in the second/foreign language classroom are suggested.