Apologies, Requests and Compliments: A Gender-Based Exploratory Analysis of Speech Act Realization Patterns

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Under the K to 12 System, communicative competence, which is the ability of learners to use language effectively and correctly in various contexts is considered essential in English Language Teaching. Learners need to assimilate, in addition to structural rules, a set of sociocultural rules that will guide the learners in the choice of appropriate forms. Therefore, successful speaking is not just a matter of using grammatically correct words and forms but also knowing when to use them and under what circumstances. Research in the area of speech act analysis needs to come to the teacher's rescue with better insights concerning the rules of appropriateness in both the target and the first language of the students.

METHODS

In order to analyze the strategies and semantic-syntactic structures of the target speech acts, this research made use of an Oral Discourse Completion Task to gather responses from the 15 participants who were selected for the study. Each discourse sequence presented a short description of various situations, and the informants were asked to respond orally. The data from 5 male, 5 female and 5 gay respondents were observed, recorded and described systematically, factually and accurately using frequency and percentage as its statistical tools.

RESULTS

It was found out that all speakers of the study overwhelmingly prefer to use the direct realization of apology with sorry as the performative verb. Meanwhile, the male, female and gay speakers employed conventional indirect requests followed by grounder in performing the speech act of request. Finally, it is also found out that compliments of male, female and gay respondents are highly adjectival. All these results proved that the respondents made used of very limited speech patterns in all situations, despite the varying interlocutors, degree of offense and other factors.

DISCUSSIONS

The study reveals that there were no significant difference in the strategies used by the speakers across all concerned genders. The results show that despite the many strategies that can be used, respondents employed very limited set of speech patterns regardless of the situation given and relevant factors considered. Thus, a proposed speech act guide (handbook) was created with an aim to widen the speaker's linguistic capabilities in performing pragmatics. It may be used by the teachers and learners who wish to achieve communicative competence through speech and oral communication.