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日本英語表現学会 紀要『英語表現研究』第 25 号 英文梗概
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English Usage and Style No.25 Synopsis
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Analysis of Apology Expressions: Comparison between Native Speakers’ Use and EFL Textbooks
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| This paper compares native speaker apology expressions with those used in high school oral communication textbooks in order to analyze what materials can better improve learners’ pragmatic abilities. Ten movie scripts and 26 interview transcripts from the internet were used as a minicorpus of native speaker data. A concordancer was used to search for apology expressions containing the five key words, “sorry,” “excuse,” “forgive,” “apology,” and “pardon.” This corpus yielded 192 examples of native speaker apology expressions that were examined in terms of structure and situation. Similarly, 24 high school oral communication textbooks provided a mini-corpus of typical EFL material, and 103 examples were isolated and examined in the same way. The results show that: (1) The most common form of apology expression is a combination of “apology” and “explaining the reason or situation,” representing over half of the cases in both groups; (2) EFL textbooks focus on very few limited functions, such as a simple apology using “I’m sorry” or “Excuse me” when talking to a stranger, while native speakers’ usage shows far more varied forms and functions; and (3) Some common functions such as rephrasing or correcting your own expressions are simply not dealt with intextbooks. |
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