ZENITH International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Year : 2013, Volume : 3, Issue : 11
First page : ( 257) Last page : ( 264)
Online ISSN : 2231-5780.

Comparative structures of the apology strategies in english, Urdu and Punjabi: A pragmatic study

Mr. Majeed Aamir*, Dr. Janjua Fauzia**

*PHD Scholar, Department of English, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad

**Assistant Professor, Department of English, International Islamic University, Islamabad

Online published on 11 April, 2014.

Abstract

The present study aims at comparing the structure of apology speech acts of English, Urdu and Punjabi languages in a multilingual context by investigating their form and sequential pattern. The investigation is based on a corpus of - exchanges collected from the post graduate students at the department of English from the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad in 2012. A Discourse Completion Test (DCT) with 9 different social situations, 3 for each language was used as the instrument of measure. Two important variables; social distance and social dominance between the offender and the affected were controlled to avoid the effects of formality and informality. The findings revealed that the use of systematic, direct and explicit apologies (IFIDs) as head act is higher in English as compared to Urdu and Punjabi and the use of implicit and indirect apology strategies (EXPL, REPR, RESP, and FORB) is highest in Punjabi in comparison with English and Urdu.

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