Apology Strategies Among Libyan Learners of English at Omar Al-Mukhtar University

Abstract

A good body of research has been conducted to investigate the realization of apology speech act. Much of the literature investigated focused on western languages. The increase of research on apology has lead other non-western scholars to explore apology in their languages. However, fewer have addressed this issue in Arabic language varieties in general, and Libyan Arabic in particular. This has presented us with a challenge worthy of a deeper investigation. The rationale behind investigating apology as a speech act is to indicate how findings can be used to facilitate the way people of diverse socio-cultural backgrounds interact with each other. The aim of this study is to discuss selected points relating to the type and use of apology strategies in Libyan Arabic. The investigation is based on a corpus of Libyan apologies collected from fifty students at Omar Al-Mukhtar University (OMU). This article uses a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) that comprised 10 situations to elicit apology strategies from the participants. The findings indicated that the informants used the expression of remorse in situations in which the offended person was a friend, an elderly and a teacher/supervisor/boss who has some authority. A reasonable number of informants refused to admit responsibility for the harm and used explanations to put the blame on other sources. Strategies, such as self-blame, reparation, intensification, and use of Allah’s name were also used in this study.

The results of this paper, it is hoped, could have profound implications for researchers seeking to address this issue or any other area pertinent to inter-cultural communication further.