The Sociopragmatic and Pragmalinguistic Strategies in L2 Pragmatic Competence: A Case of Pakistani ESL Learners

ABSTRACT This study contributes to the existing literature on teaching ESL by investigating Pakistani learners’ responses to the apology speech acts. The study considered the two primary aspects of pragmatic competence: pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic. A multimethod data collection approach – a discourse completion task and a scaled-response questionnaire – was employed to elicit performance and perception data from 150 participants divided into three groups. Findings indicate that Pakistani ESL learners mostly produced the semantic content consisting of cultural-specific and language-specific patterns of apology responses. There also occurred pragmatics transfer in the use of apology responses of Pakistani ESL learners. Findings suggest the inclusion of sociopragmatic competence into the ESL curriculum.