ANALYZING PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE OF PAKISTANI ENGLISH LEARNERS IN REALIZING SPEECH ACTS OF ADVICE AND SUGGESTION

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to analyze pragmatic competence of Pakistani English learners (here onwards PELs) in realizing two very important, frequently used and lesser investigated speech acts namely advice and suggestion. Specifically speaking the current study attempted to ascertain the differences in terms of semantic formulas and mitigation devices in the responses of both PELs and native speakers (here on wards NSs) from Britain. In order to meet the objectives of the study quantitative research approach was applied. As far as the samples of the study were concerned, 80 students (60 PELs and 20 native students from England) took part in the study. The samples were selected through non-random purposive sampling. Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was used as an instrument to collect data. The analysis of the data suggested that PELs realized speech acts of advice and suggestion differently as compared to native speakers. It was also noticed that PELs were not as pragmatically competent as that of NSs. PELs were found using different strategies for the above mentioned speech acts. They were using directness in their responses while native speakers were demonstrating indirectness in their responses. PELs were also found using fewer mitigation devices and politeness marker ‘please’ contrary to NSs.