Students’ apologizing in Arabic and English: An interlanguage pragmatic case study at an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia

It is hard to select and produce appropriate semantic formulas of apologizing for paying off violation social norms restore harmony. seems that it even harder realize such processes selection production in a non-native language. The study three folds; namely, examines the realization apology strategies by students senior Boarding School Arabic English as language, effects on contextual factors (external vs. internal) students’ apologizing, pragmatic transfer. participants were 101 male female students, recruited fill Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which consisted eight situations about flouting politeness rules context Islamic boarding school, drawing upon five from Blum-Kulka Olshtain (1983) Cross-Cultural Study Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP) analyzing data. findings show used identical both languages. They prefer use “expression regret” “promise forbearance” strategies. also reveal internal external affected In addition, transfer occurred linguistic areas, namely overgeneralization, inappropriateness, grammatical contrast, conceptual L1 L2, are categorized into two types, micro-negative macro-negative To conclude, these results indicate on-record-negative attitudes towards offended parties, determined lack competence.