Iprg 2005 2 4 423

Intercultural pragmatics in the speech of
American L2 learners of Russian: Apologies

offered by Americans in Russian
MARIA SHARDAKOVA
Abstract
The study expands the current research on second language acquisition

(SLA) into intercultural pragmatics by introducing data on the develop-
ment of pragmatic competence by American second language learners of
the Russian language. The article discusses learners’ acquisition of pragma-
linguistic and socio-linguistic knowledge in its relation to both their ad-
vancement in linguistic proficiency and study abroad experience.
With pragmatic competence understood as learners’ ability to make their
conversational contributions relevant, polite, and e¤ective (House 1996),
the article examines the ways in which American learners of Russian craft
their apologies within three communicative contexts: a) the context of inti-
macy (communication with a friend); b) the context of unfamiliarity (com-
munication with a stranger); and c) the context of unequal social status
(communication with an authority figure). As the data demonstrate, Rus-
sian native speakers opt for distinctively di¤erent means in each communi-
cative context, while American learners tend to over-generalize their apolo-
gies to friends and carry them over into other communicative contexts. Both
an increase in linguistic proficiency and direct exposure to Russian culture
enable students to align their apologies more closely with the native speaker
(NS) norm. The group that most approximates the Russian norm is the
group of learners with low linguistic proficiency and study abroad experi-
ence. Increase in proficiency without exposure to the target culture often
results in overly polite apologetic behavior and strategy overuse. It is also
found that learners with high linguistic proficiency who study abroad ex-
hibit divergent tendencies, and their apologies become more individualized.
The observed convergence with, or divergence from, NS pragmatic conven-
tions are seen as the result of both learners’ linguistic and pragmatic devel-
opment and their self-reflection: learners do not blindly copy the NS norms,
they create their own interlanguage and an accompanying identity in the
learning process.
Intercultural Pragmatics 2-4 (2005), 423–451 1612-295X/05/0002–0423

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424 Maria Shardakova
The article also suggests some directions for future research and for
classroom practices that would promote intercultural competence and help
American learners of Russian become more e¤ective and successful commu-
nicators in their second language.
1. Introduction
For the past two decades, the study of interlanguage (IL) pragmatics has
accumulated substantial knowledge about apology speech act realization
patterns employed by both native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers
(NNSs). It has also identified ways in which contextual assessments influ-
ence speakers in their selection of apology strategies. Yet to this day there
exist only a handful of studies focusing on the apology speech act from
the perspective of acquisition of pragmatic abilities in a second language,
and no study has been carried out based on Russian data. Currently, in-
terlanguage pragmatics focuses almost exclusively on acquisition of En-
glish as an L2, with a few exceptions (Hebrew in Cohen & Olshtain
1981; Spanish in Koike 1989; Finnish in Muikku-Werner 1996).
This study aims to expand the domain of IL pragmatics by examining
developmental patterns in American learners of Russian at the socio-
pragmatic and the pragmalinguistic levels, by examining the role of L2
proficiency and exposure to the target culture.1 While the primary goal
of the study is to describe and account for linguistic choices and strategies
that distinguish American learners from Russian native speakers, it also
has a pedagogical aim: to determine how to help learners achieve their
immediate communicative goals (i.e., to apologize successfully), how to
foster their overall awareness of ‘‘cultural ways of speaking’’ (Katriel
1985), and how to expand their repertoire for identity construction in L2
(Miller 1999).
After requests, apologies have received the most attention in cross-
cultural and IL pragmatic studies. As the studies have grown in number
and variety, the universality of the apology speech act has become more
evident (Coulmas 1981; Olsthain 1989), as have its realization strategies
(Olshtain & Cohen 1983; Olshtain 1989; Maeshiba et al. 1996). In fact, a
finite set of strategies first identified by Olshtain and Cohen (1983) has
been shown to appear regularly in the apologies of native and nonnative
speakers. Of the five strategies constituting the apology speech act set,
two (illocutionary force indicating device, or IFID, and expression of
responsibility) do not vary, while the other three (explanation, o¤er of
repair, and promise of forbearance) vary depending on the context (Olsh-
tain 1983; Olshtain 1989; Olshtain & Cohen 1989; Vollmer & Olshtain

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Intercultural pragmatics in the speech of American L2 learners 425
1989). This consistency testifies to the universality of pragmatic knowl-

edge and its unrestricted accessibility to L2 learners (Kasper 1992).
Strategies of apology are contingent on both context-external and
context-internal factors. Unequal social relations—as when a speaker
addresses someone with a higher status—have been shown to result in
increased use of explicit apology (Vollmer & Olshtain 1989; Barnlund
& Yoshioka 1990; Maeshiba et al. 1996), intensification of illocutionary
force (Fraser 1980; Olshtain 1989; Vollmer & Olshtain 1989; Maeshiba
et al. 1996), more formal style (Cohen & Olshtain 1981), more acknowl-
edgement of responsibility (Jung 1999), and avoidance of repair o¤erings
(Jung 1999). When the relative power relations are reversed and the
speaker has authority over the addressee, the speaker may refrain from
exclamations (House 1988), use less intensification (House 1988; Mae-
shiba et al. 1996), and apologize less explicitly (Maeshiba et al. 1996;
Jung 1999).
There is less agreement on the role of social distance in predicting apol-
ogy performance. One of the earliest studies found a negative correlation
between expressions of explicit apology and social distance: ‘‘speakers
tend to prefer IFIDs with strangers rather than with closer friends or
acquaintances’’ (Olshtain 1989: 162). In their analysis of data from the
Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP), Wolfson,
Marmor, and Jones (1989) supported the bulge hypothesis advanced ear-
lier by Wolfson (1986, 1989), which says that speakers assume responsi-
bility more eagerly when speaking to acquaintances in the medium social
distance than they do when speaking to intimates or strangers (those at
the two ends of the social-distance continuum). Similar bulge distribution
was observed for explanation o¤erings, as speakers were found to elabo-
rate and negotiate more in unfixed relationships with friends, co-workers,
and acquaintances than in relationships with strangers, those of un-
equal status, and intimates where mutual communicative roles are more
fixed and prescribed (Wolfson et al. 1989). Bergman and Kasper’s study
(1993) observed an opposite tendency: the closer the relationship between
interlocutors, the more likely the o¤ender was to assume responsibility
for the o¤ense.
Of context-internal factors, the severity of the o¤ense has proven most
decisive. Bergman and Kasper (1993) reported a highly positive correla-
tion between severity and speakers’ perceived obligations to apologize,
and almost every study of apology has found that severe o¤enses result
in more forceful apologies (Cohen & Olshtain 1981; House 1988; Olshtain
1989; Vollmer & Olshtain 1989; Tanaka 1991; Bergman & Kasper 1993).
Research into interlanguage apologies has shown that although
learners have full access to the same apology strategies as native speakers

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and are equally sensitive to contextual constraints (Blum-Kulka 1982;

Kasper 1989; Kasper & Blum-Kulka 1996), their apologies still diverge
from the NS norm. This divergence has been attributed to a range of
causes: adherence to di¤erent principles of politeness, preference for
di¤erent strategy-orientations, and quantitative di¤erences in the use of
strategy and in overall verbal production. Garcia (1989) traced illocution-
ary failure of Venezuelan learners of English to their adherence to the L1
positive politeness rules, which require apologies to be couched in terms
of solidarity and familiarity. This type of apology is at odds with the ex-
pectations of American interlocutors, who base their apologies on nega-
tive politeness rules that prescribe demonstrations of reverence and self-
e¤acement. In her comparison of apologies o¤ered by German learners
of British English with those by native speakers, House (1988) found
that the learners preferred self-oriented strategies (e.g., denials of intent
to commit o¤ensive acts or references to self-deficiencies), whereas native
speakers opted for other-oriented strategies (e.g., expressions of interest in
the interlocutor’s state or demonstrations of concern for the o¤ended).
Quantitative di¤erences between learners’ and native speakers’ apologies
have been reported in every IL study. With respect to learners’ overall
production, many researchers have agreed with House’s (1988) observa-
tion that learners typically use more words than native speakers in ac-
complishing similar pragmatic goals. As Edmondson and House (1981)
have pointed out, this verbosity may have been induced by the re-
searchers’ method of elicitation, since all studies reporting this phenome-
non used written discourse completion questionnaires.
Di¤erences between learners’ and native speakers’ apologies have been
detected not only at the level of production (pragmalinguistic compe-
tence) but also at that of assessment (socio-pragmatic competence), and
a causal relationship between the two has been established. Di¤erences
in contextual assessment closely predict di¤erences in apologetic behavior
(House 1988; Bergman & Kasper 1993; Maeshiba et al. 1996). It has also
been noted that learners, particularly those with low proficiency ratings,
tend to transfer socio-pragmatic conventions of their first language into
their second language. This socio-pragmatic transfer is one of the reasons
for learners’ divergence from native norms of speech. There might be yet
another reason for learners’ deviation: a conscious choice not to comply
with the target norm in order to preserve one’s own cultural identity
(Blum-Kulka 1991). Most researchers agree, however, that the primary
reason is a lack of adequate L2 linguistic knowledge and L2 pragmalin-
guistic sophistication (Edmondson & House 1981; Blum-Kulka 1982).
In order to discuss comprehensively the reasons for learners’ di¤erent
apologetic behavior, it is necessary to undertake more developmental

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studies involving various target languages that would reveal gradual

changes in both learners’ apology production and assessment of contex-
tual factors. At present, only one longitudinal (Kondo 1997) and a few
cross-sectional (Cohen et al. 1986; Trosborg 1987; Linnell et al. 1992;
Maeshiba et al. 1996) developmental studies focusing on apologetic be-
havior have been reported. In these studies, researchers discussed the
influence of two major factors on learners’ production: L2 proficiency
and exposure to the target culture.
Studies of proficiency e¤ects report somewhat contradictory results.
Linnell et al.’s (1992) study compared apologies by L2 English learners
from various linguistic backgrounds and found no di¤erences in usage re-
lated to L2 proficiency. Trosborg’s (1987) extensive analysis of apologies
o¤ered by Danish L2 learners of English found no substantial di¤erences
between the three participating proficiency groups (intermediate, low ad-
vanced, and high advanced). The biggest di¤erence she observed was that
more proficient learners used more modality markers. Trosborg also no-
ticed that lack of linguistic proficiency prevented learners from providing
substantial explanations comparable with the native speakers’. Contrary
to these findings, Maeshiba et al. (1996) reported, based on their investi-
gation of context assessment’s role in predicting L1 transfer in Japanese
L2 learners of American English, that ‘‘advanced learners have a better
ability to emulate American apology behavior than the intermediate
learners’’ (p. 181). They found that advanced learners displayed less neg-
ative transfer than expected, given their higher linguistic abilities. Cohen
et al. (1986) also found that advanced learners refrain from negative trans-
fer in their apologies. These findings challenge Takahashi and Beebe’s hy-
pothesis (1993) that L2 proficiency is positively correlated with negative
pragmatic transfer because higher L2 linguistic knowledge allows learners
to supply L2 linguistic equivalents to L1 pragmatic conventions.
In addition to L2 proficiency, researchers have examined the role of
exposure to the target culture as a factor stimulating the development of
pragmatic competence. Three studies involving IL apologies agree that
study abroad helps learners to refine their apologies and socio-pragmatic
competence in accordance with the target norms. In her longitudinal
production-focused study, Tanako (1997) investigated how study abroad
in an American high school influenced Japanese L2 English learners’
apologies. Her data shows that study abroad2 helped learners decrease
negative transfer from Japanese (particularly, repeated use of IFIDs)
and taught them to incorporate new apology strategies more in line with
the target norm (explanation and o¤er of repair). Tanako also noticed
non-linear and complex relations between L2 pragmatic development and
study abroad. After studying abroad, her participants demonstrated more

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transfer of verbal redress—a characteristic of Japanese apology. This

finding supports Takahashi and Beebe’s hypothesis that negative transfer
increases with improvements in L2 proficiency (1993). In addition, Ta-
nako found that study abroad brought their perceptions of an o¤ense’s
severity and the likelihood of an apology’s acceptance in line with
native-speaker norms. She found no e¤ect, however, in regard to social
distance and power assessments. In their cross-sectional assessment study,
Olshtain and Blum-Kulka (1985) found that learners’ convergence with
native-speaker norms depended on the length of their residence in the
country. The overarching conclusion is that exposure to the target culture
alone is not a good predictor of L2 pragmatic advancement, which
depends on various factors, including the quality and quantity of input
available to learners (Rover 1996), the learners’ ability to recognize input
and convert it into intake (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 1996), pragmatic
salience and input frequency (DuFon 1999), and the target community’s
cultural ideologies and overall disposition toward foreigners (Miller
1999).
As noted above, the present study will explore the combined e¤ects of
L2 proficiency and exposure to the target culture on the development
of pragmatic competence by American learners of Russian. Apologies of-
fered by these students illustrate developmental patterns in their speech
production and in their perception of contextual factors, as compared to
Russian native speakers.
2. Methodology
2.1. Design and research questions
This is an exploratory cross-sectional developmental study that seeks an-

swers to the following research questions:
– Do American L2 learners of Russian di¤er from the native speaker

(NS) patterns in strategy choice and linguistic execution of the apol-
ogy speech act?
– Do American L2 learners of Russian di¤er from native speakers in
their contextual assessment of severity of o¤ense, interlocutors’ rela-
tive power, and social distance?
– What relationship exists between the performance of apologies by
American learners and proficiency levels?
– Does exposure to the target culture a¤ect American learners’ apology
strategy preference?

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2.2. Participants
A total of 131 subjects participated in this study: 41 Russian native
speakers (29 female and 12 male participants) and 90 American learners
of Russian (52 female and 38 male participants). The Russian group is
made up of young people (at the time of the research from 17 to 25 years
old [Mean ¼ 21:68; SD ¼ 2:99]) attending three post-secondary institu-
tions in Moscow: Moscow State University, University of Linguistics,
and High School of Economics. The American group is made up of
individuals from 19 to 33 years old (Mean ¼ 22:2; SD ¼ 3:33) with in-
country experience (by the time of the research, participants had com-
pleted their study abroad: a summer, semester or year-long program
through the American Council of Teachers of Russian) and without in-
country experience (students at the Middlebury Russian School in the
summer of 2004). The American group was further subdivided into two
groups depending on the participants’ overall linguistic proficiency: par-
ticipants whose scores on various linguistic tests including OPI ranged
from Novice High to Intermediate Mid comprised the first group and
participants whose scores ranged from Intermediate High to Advanced
Mid comprised the second group. The composition of the body of re-
search participants is summarized in Table 1.
Five groups participated in the study:
I. 23 American learners of Russian without in-country experience and
low L2 proficiency (PreLow)
II. 8 American learners of Russian without in-country experience and
high L2 proficiency (PreHigh)
III. 24 American learners of Russian with in-country experience and
low L2 proficiency (PostLow)
IV. 35 American learners of Russian with in-country experience and
high L2 proficiency (PostHigh)
V. 41 Native speakers of Russian (RussNSs)
Table 1. Composition of the research participants
American Learners of Russian Russian NS

(V)
No in-country experience With in-country experience
Low (I) High (II) Low (III) High (IV)
M F M F M F M F M F
11 12 5 3 8 16 14 21 12 29
Total 23 Total 8 Total 24 Total 35 Total 41

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2.3. Instruments and procedures

A 21-item Dialogue Completion Questionnaire was prepared in Russian
and English. The participants were prompted to supply various speech
acts including 16 apologies. Five additional situations targeting requests,
invitations, and complements were added to the Questionnaire in order to
randomize situations and avoid mechanical answers on the part of the
participants. Situations were paired in terms of severity of o¤ense and
participants’ gender. Situations were selected that represent three typolog-
ical communicative contexts varying in interlocutors’ relative power and
social distance: 1) communication with a stranger; 2) communication
with a friend; 3) communication with a status unequal. Not included
were situations contrasting participants’ gender and age, as these issues
lie beyond the scope of the present paper. Situations were somewhat com-
plicated in order to avoid abbreviated ritual apologies (following Go¤-
man’s [1971] distinction between ritual and substantial apology).3 The
six situations are as follows (see Appendix 1 for detailed example):
1. Interlocutors are friends. The speaker has borrowed her friend’s lec-
ture notes and damaged them. (Friends’ Notes ¼ FrNt)
2. The speaker is a student and her interlocutor is a professor whose
notes she has borrowed and damaged. (Professor’s Notes ¼ PrNt)
3. Interlocutors are friends. The speaker is a half-hour late for her meet-
ing with a friend. (Late for Friend ¼ LFr)
4. The speaker is a student and her interlocutor is a professor. She
is a half-hour late for her meeting with the professor. (Late for
Professor ¼ LPr)
5. The speaker bumps into a young man in a supermarket while grocery
shopping. (Bump)
6. The speaker steps on a young man’s foot during the rush hour in
subway. (Metro)
Participants in all five groups were instructed to complete the question-

naire in a spontaneous manner as they would do in a real-life situation.4
The responses were timed to minimize wa¿ing e¤ect—excessive verbosity
that has been found to characterize written questionnaires (Edmondson
& House 1981). Russian native speakers were administered question-
naires in Russian. For American learners, situational descriptions were
written in English (to avoid misunderstandings about communicative sit-
uations particularly with less proficient L2 groups) with a prompting line
by an imaginary interlocutor in Russian.
In order to examine learners’ concurrent socio-pragmatic development,
an assessment questionnaire was also developed. Participants were asked,

Authenticated
for each situation, to rate on a three-point scale, interlocutors’ relative

power and distance as well as severity of the o¤ense and obligation to
apologize.
Another, indirect measure, of learners’ pragmatic development was an
appropriateness judgment carried out by two monolingual Russian native
speakers who examined the overall appropriateness and transparency of
learners’ apologies. The judges were asked to mark apologies that for
any reason sounded awkward to them. Apologies marked for awkward-
ness were then categorized into two groups: those awkward at the strat-
egy level and those awkward at the execution level.
2.3.1. Coding The Dialogue Completion data were coded using the
apology strategy coding system proposed by Olshtain and Cohen (1983)
and further developed by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) for the
CCSARP (The Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project) project
(Blum-Kulka et al. 1989). In order to better accommodate Russian data,
a number of sub-strategies were added to the responsibility and explana-
tion strategies. The coding categories are as follows:
1. Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID): speaker explicitly ex-

presses her apology using formulaic forms of apology (izvinite; ‘I’m
sorry’).
2. Taking on a degree of responsibility: speaker admits to her commit-
ting an o¤ensive act by resorting to various sub-strategies: a) accept-
ing full responsibility for the o¤ense ( ja vinovat; ‘It’s my fault’); b)
referring to impossibility or necessity ( ja ne mog poimat taxi; ‘I
couldn’t catch a taxi’)5; c) expressing lack of intent ( ja ne specialno;
‘I didn’t do it on purpose’); d) expressing self-deficiency ( ja vas ne
videla; ‘I didn’t see you’); or e) expressing fatalistic sentiments (u
menia ne poluchilos; ‘it turned out that I couldn’t’). Most of these
sub-strategies have been used in other cross-cultural and IL studies;
sub-strategies (b) and (e) have been adapted for this study because of
their high frequency in the NS apologies.
3. Explanation or account: speaker o¤ers her account of the situation
trying to shift the blame to other sources of the o¤ense ( poezda otme-
nili; ‘they canceled the trains’).
4. O¤er of repair: speaker o¤ers to remedy the damage inflicted upon
the hearer (davaite ja perepishu konspekty; ‘let me rewrite your
notes’). Under this rubric, I distinguish two sub-strategies: a) strong
repair ( ja seichas zhe peredelau; ‘I will redo (it) immediately’) and b)
repair with engagement/inclusion of the hearer (davaite ja oplachu
vashi produkty; ‘let’s [do this], I will pay for your groceries’).

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5. Intensification: speaker increases apology force (radi boga, prostite;

‘for god’s sake, forgive me’).
6. Downgrading responsibility or severity of o¤ense: speaker tries to
present the o¤ense as less severe or to reduce her responsibility for
the o¤ense (eto tolko malenkoe piatno; ‘it is only a little stain’).
7. Concern for the hearer (s vami vse v poriadke?; ‘are you okay?’).
8. Promise of forbearance: speaker promises to refrain from the behav-
ior that might cause similar o¤ense in the future (etogo ne povtoritsa;
‘it won’t happen again’).
Inter-rater reliability was calculated for both the NS and the learner
data and was high in both cases: 0.91 and 0.89, respectively.
3. Results
3.1. The assessment study
3.1.1. Severity of o¤ense and obligation to apologize Severity assess-

ments show striking di¤erences between the NS group and the learner
groups on several counts: a) the overall level of severity detected by the
participants; b) distribution of severity scores across the situations; and
c) hierarchy of the o¤ense types.
Learners’ severity scores were higher than those of native speakers and
fluctuated to a greater degree: NS scores ranged 1.5–2.45 and NNS scores
ranged 1.88–2.73 (Group I); 2.13–2.87 (Group II); 1.59–2.47 (Group
III); and 1.65–2.65 (Group IV) (see Table 2).
In situations involving property damage (FrNt, PrNt), Groups III
(PostLow) and IV (PostHigh) most closely approximated NS scoring—
although learners’ scores were a bit higher than those of native speakers.
The NS group marked as the most severe situations involving communi-
cation with a professor and assigned somewhat similar severity scores to
the situations with strangers and friends, thus establishing a correlation
between power and severity assessments. This is an unusual finding, since
other studies into cross-cultural and IL pragmatics report no association
between context-external and context-internal factors (Bergman & Kas-
per 1993).6 In contrast, all learner groups marked situations involving
strangers as the most severe, then the situations with the professor, and
finally the situations with friends. No learner group connected situation-
external and situation-internal factors. Learners also di¤ered from the na-
tive speakers in that they assessed situations involving property damage
as being more severe than situations involving tardiness. As in other

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Table 2. Assessment of contextual factors by the study participants
Parameter/Situation FrNt PrNt LFr LPr Bump Metro
Severity
Russ NS 1.62 2.2 1.5 2.45 1.6 1.64
PreLow 1.88 2.3 1.88 2.5 2.75 2.73
PreHigh 2.38 2.75 2.13 2.63 2.87 2.87
PostLow 1.76 2.24 1.59 2.00 2.43 2.47
PostHigh 1.65 2.3 2.00 2.39 2.6 2.65
Obligation to apologize
Russ NS 1.62 2.53 1.98 2.83 1.8 1.6
PreLow 1.89 2.3 2.1 2.5 2.8 2.8
PreHigh 2.5 2.87 2.5 2.91 2.98 2.87
PostLow 1.9 2.35 1.3 2.00 2.5 2.5
PostHigh 1.9 2.45 2.2 2.78 2.6 2.7
Social Status
Russ NS 1. 2.51 0.92 2.63 2.0 2.4
PreLow 1.1 2.02 1.2 2.02 1.21 1.21
PreHigh 1.35 2.76 1.35 2.8 2.01 2.00
PostLow 1.02 2.1 1.02 2.3 1.2 0.9
PostHigh 1.02 2.2 1.1 2.45 1.12 0.97
Social Distance
Russ NS 0.9 2.58 0.89 2.6 2.9 2.9
PreLow 2.1 1.93 2. 2.00 2.88 2.91
PreHigh 1.78 2.77 2.1 2.77 2.94 2.94
PostLow 1.78 1.97 1.02 1.99 2.8 2.96
PostHigh 1.4 2.2 1.6 2.23 2.78 2.88
studies (Olshtain 1989; Bergman & Kasper 1993), there is a high correla-
tion between obligation to apologize and severity of o¤ense for both
native speakers and learners (r ¼ :69, p < :000 for Russian and r ¼ :74,
p < :000 for American participants).
3.1.2. Distance and power Native speakers and learners do not agree in
their perception of social relations, particularly regarding social distance.
Learners, on average, perceive relations between friends as more distant
than native speakers do. For learners, friends and professors form the
same category of middle-distance people. For native speakers, however,
friends are much closer than either professors or strangers who form one
category. There is more agreement in perception of relative power be-
tween the participants (see Table 2).
Exposure to the target culture greatly a¤ects learners’ perception of
contextual factors, bringing it closer to that of native speakers. This

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accommodation to cultural norms is evident in Groups III and IV. Expo-

sure to the target culture has the greatest e¤ect on learners’ perception of
distance. Changes in learners’ perception of severity, however, have only
been brought about by the combination of both: exposure and increases
in L2 proficiency. Increases in proficiency alone seem to have no e¤ect
on learners’ socio-pragmatic development, which suggest a potential area
for L2 instruction.
4. The production study
The Dialogue Completion Questionnaire elicited the entire range of strat-

egies identified as integral components of the apology speech act set
(Olshtain & Cohen 1983). Contrary to the researcher’s expectations,
which were based on existent cross-cultural and IL studies (Olshtain
1983; House 1988; Olshtain 1989; Olshtain & Cohen 1989; Bergman
& Kasper 1993), participants made use of both essential (explicit apol-
ogy, responsibility statements) and optional apology strategies (expla-
nations, repair o¤erings, intensification, downgrading, expressions of con-
cern for the hearer, and promise of forbearance). This rich production
might in part be induced by the questionnaire situations. On the other
hand, for strategies such as explanation, this might be a reflection of
learners’ L1 cultural preferences. In order to solve this dilemma, more
studies, which would include a greater situational diversity as well as
comparison with learners’ apologies o¤ered in their first language, are
needed.
Table 3 summarizes overall strategy use by the participants in all situa-
tions combined. The following sections take a closer look at the partici-
pants’ strategy uses.
Table 3. Distribution of apology strategies (%) across the research groups
IFID Rsp Exp Rpr Int Dwn Cnc Frb
PreLow 80.9 21.6 33.2 27.5 12.6 18.6 7.6 0.6

PreHigh 99.4 51.4 63.2 41.98 25.12 6.3 0 1.6
PostLow 83.7 16.3 29.9 24.38 18.7 1.4 0 1.04
PostHigh 95.99 28.4 40.8 32.92 30.4 2.4 0 0
RussNS 79.9 33.9 25.97 27.23 21.78 9 2.6 1.7
IFID ¼ Illocutionary Force Indicating Device; Rsp ¼ Taking on responsibility; Exp ¼

O¤ering an explanation; Rpr ¼ O¤ering Repair; Int ¼ Intensification of apology force;
Dwn ¼ Downgrading of the o¤ense; Cnc ¼ Showing concern for the hearer; Frb ¼
Forbearance.

Authenticated
4.1. Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID)
As Table 3 shows, participants o¤ered varying amounts of explicit apolo-

gies (IFIDs). More proficient learners had a strong tendency to supply
a greater number of IFIDs. Quantitatively, none of the learner groups
fell short of the NS patterns. This finding contradicts earlier studies that
reported a tendency for less proficient learners to undersupply explicit
apologies (Cohen et al. 1986). If anything, learners in this study exhibited
a tendency to oversupply IFIDs. Their over-production was statistically
significant (F ¼ 2:87, df ¼ 4, p < :05).
For native speakers, the data establishes a large negative correlation
between the use of IFIDs and perceived social distance (rs ¼ :71;
p < :05). The data also shows that native Russian speakers take the rela-
tive power of their interlocutors into account when selecting IFIDs
(rs ¼ 0:29; p < 0:05 level). There is a high negative correlation between
perceived distance and IFID use for two NNS groups: III (PostLow)
and IV (PostHigh) (rs ¼ :67, p < :05 and rs ¼ :62, p < :05). Similar
negative association between perceived social distance and use of IFIDs
was reported by Olshtain for Hebrew native speakers (1989: 166). As for
speakers’ perception of relative power and its e¤ects on IFID use, there is
no consensus among researchers. Although some studies report close neg-
ative association between the use of IFIDs and perceived social power
(Cohen & Olshtain 1989; Vollmer & Olshtain 1989; Maeshiba et al.
1996), others report no relation (House 1988; Bergman & Kasper 1993).
In her study, House argues that it is not social power, but rather ‘‘formal-
ity of the situation,’’ that causes greater use of IFIDs (1988: 311). The
present study neither supports nor refutes this argument, because all its
asymmetrical situations involve one-way communication: from a person
of lower status to one of higher status. Of context-internal factors, the
perceived obligation to apologize causes the greatest increase in IFID
use (rs ¼ :76 and rs ¼ :78, p < :05; cf. similar findings in House 1988;
Vollmer & Olshtain 1989).
As other interlanguage (IL) research (Maeshiba et al. 1996) has shown,
learners’ divergent perceptions of contextual factors result in di¤erences
in production. In this study, learners’ di¤erent perceptions of distance
and obligation resulted in a discrepancy between their patterns of produc-
tion and that of native speakers. Higher perceived distance in relation-
ships with friends caused American learners to use more IFIDs in speak-
ing with those friends (64–69% by NSs vs. 76–100% by NNSs). Similarly,
learners’ di¤erentiation between professors and friends, on the one hand,
and strangers, on the other hand, compelled them to use more IFIDs
with strangers than with professors or friends. This pattern is particularly

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obvious in apologies by group III and group I. For native Russian

speakers, on the other hand, professors and strangers fall into the same
category of distant people, and thus both receive more IFIDs than
friends. Since for Russian native speakers the use of IFIDs is contingent
also on perceived power, they used IFIDs most often in interaction with
professors. Assessment of the o¤enses’ severity and the o¤enders’ per-
ceived obligation to apologize also yields di¤erent results for native
speakers and learners. Whereas all categories of learners assigned the
highest score to situations with strangers, native speakers uniformly gave
the maximum score to situations with asymmetrical power relations, that
is, to interactions with professors. The learner groups, except for group
IV, also regarded situations involving property damage as more severe
and more deserving of an apology than situations involving tardiness.
The distribution of IFID tokens across the learner groups illustrates
both the learners’ overall linguistic progress and e¤ects of their exposure
to the target culture. Table 4 shows how increase in L2 proficiency and/
or exposure to Russian culture helped learners to expand their repertoire
of apologies.
Table 4. Distribution of the IFID tokens (%) across the research groups
IFID token Russ PreLow PreHigh PostLow PostHigh Russ

Young Mature
Izwinite 55 57 37.25 35 35 36
I’m sorry
Prostite 15 6 37.5 34.9 31 11.2
Excuse me
Prostite menq 4.5 — 12.5 23.5 19 11.2
Forgive me
Pro{u pro}eniq 5 — — — — 17
I apologize
Mne nelowko 6 — — 5.9 3.2 —
I feel bad/awkward
Izwinqsx — — — — 1.5 5.6
I’m sorry (non normative)
Povalujsta — 5 — — — —
(erroneous use of
‘‘please’’ for apology
illocution)
Nu, prostite/izwinite — — 2.5 — — —
(with initial emphatic
particle; marked as
colloquial)
None 21.5 21.3 0.6 4.01 8 16
Deemed awkward — 20.2 5.2 5.15 1.03 —

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It appears that exposure has the greatest e¤ect on the acquisition of

new apology tokens; even low proficiency learners benefit from exposure
and expand their repertoires to include four tokens (compared to only two
in Group I): izvinite, ‘I’m sorry’; prostite, ‘excuse me’; izvinite / prostite
menia; ‘forgive me’; and mne nelovko, ‘I feel bad/awkward.’ Exposure
also reduces the incidence of inadequate uses by low proficiency learners.
Indeed, it raises them to a level comparable with that of more proficient
learners (5.15% awkward7 uses in PostLow vs. 5.2% in PreHigh). Increase
in proficiency does not alone warrant good alignment between the IFIDs
and situational parameters, however. Thus, at times, Group II still spoke
awkwardly when o¤ering formal IFIDs to friends and, conversely, some-
times failed to use formal plural with strangers and authority figures
(5.2% awkward uses). The most interesting finding is that learners (partic-
ularly those with exposure and high L2 proficiency) tended to balance
their use of IFIDs, approximating conventions of the older Russian
generations (RussMature column in Table 4). A possible explanation
for this might be that learners model their IL after their language in-
structors or, if they travel overseas, after older members of their host-
families (notoriously, American learners report greater connection with
‘‘babushkas,’’ grandmothers of the host-families). This contention is at
odds with Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford’s (1996) argument that learners
do not perceive instructors’ speech as relevant input because of the status
di¤erences.
4.2. Taking on responsibility

There are noticeable quantitative and qualitative di¤erences in the use
of this strategy by Russian native speakers and American L2 Russian
learners. For Group II and Group III the quantitative di¤erences reach
statistical significance (F ¼ 3:9, df ¼ 2, p < :05). The overall tendency is
for learners to under-use responsibility, with the exception of Group
II, which well surpasses native speakers. This finding is consonant with
other studies (Cohen & Olshtain 1980; Cohen et al. 1986; Trosborg
1987; Kondo 1997; Jung 1999).
Despite ample evidence of a strong negative correlation between per-
ceived social distance and responsibility (Wolfson et al. 1989; Bergman
& Kasper 1993), this study does not establish any associations between
contextual factors and responsibility for any of the participating groups.
Similar to House (1988), Olshtain (1989), and Vollmer and Olshtain
(1989), I connect responsibility with the specific nature of the situation
and the speaker’s calculation of potential loss of face. As the imaginary
waiter in House’s study who avoids expressions of responsibility because

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Table 5. Distribution of sub-strategies (%) within responsibility strategy across the groups;
linguistic execution of the responsibility strategy, and evaluation of appropriateness
Strategy Level Linguistic Deemed

execution Awkward
Direct Indirect/Mitigated
Modality Intent Self- Fatalism 1 st -person

Deficiency Nominative
PreLow 41.2 41.2 0 5.9 0 76.5 5.8

PreHigh 49.5 62.5 12.5 16.9 0 62.5 3.13
PostLow 24 29.2 0 0 12.5 23.8 0.7
PostHigh 21.3 20 3 4.8 5.7 24.2 0
RussNS 27.3 11.5 3.8 5 11.5 30.8 —
they may cost him his job (1988: 319), American learners of Russian may
consider the threat to their public face too great to accept responsibil-
ity. This may explain why those residing in Russia at the time of the
research avoided this strategy (Table 3). Not surprisingly, high profi-
ciency learners sheltered by the comfortable environment of a classroom
(Group II) made the maximum use of responsibility, outperforming even
native speakers.
Even greater di¤erences between the learners and the native speakers
are found at the sub-strategy level (Table 5).
Exposure to the target culture seems to help learners approximate NS
patterns more than increases in proficiency do. Both unexposed groups
use almost twice as many direct expressions of responsibility as native
speakers (41.2% and 49.5% among learners vs. 27.3% among native
speakers). On the contrary, both exposed groups resemble the native-
speaker group in their frequency of usage (24% and 21.3%, respectively).
Learners’ preference for expressions of direct responsibility is predicated
on their preference for syntactic constructions including the first-person
singular pronoun and a corresponding verbal phrase; the correlation be-
tween the two is rather high (r ¼ :87, p < :000). This syntactic preference
is partially derived from the learners’ first language and is reinforced by
their instruction, which often revolves around the speaker and her ac-
tions. As Table 5 shows, exposure to the culture, and thus to input not
dominated by first-person þ verb constructions, helps learners to adjust
their syntax. Indeed, the exposed groups used first-person þ verb con-
structions even less then native speakers did (23.8–24.2% of learners’
speech vs. 30.8% of native speakers’). Increases in proficiency do not
help learners’ transition to less ‘‘self-centered’’ discourse, however, nor do
they warrant overall compliance with the norms of native speech. Thus,

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apologies o¤ered by Group II received the highest scores for inappropri-

ateness (see Table 5).
4.3. Explanation
In this study, native speakers and learners used explanation di¤erently
(Table 3). Learners tended to oversupply this strategy in all situations,
resulting in a statistically significant divergence from the native-speaker
norm (F ¼ 2:94, df ¼ 4; p < :05). This finding contradicts Trosborg’s
(1987) report that nonnative speakers provide significantly fewer explana-
tions than native speakers. Her contention was statistically supported.
Comparison with other studies reporting similar under-performance of
L2 English learners vis-à-vis native speakers in America and England
(Kondo 1977; Cohen & Olshtain 1981; Cohen et al. 1986) suggests that
ample use of explanation might be a characteristic of Anglo-Saxon com-
municative norms (see similar argument advanced by Kondo 1997: 282–
283). While in Anglo-Saxon culture explanation might be integral to a
substantial apology, in Russian culture interlocutors often substitute ex-
planation for an o¤er of repair. The negative correlation between these
two strategies for native Russian speakers is rather high (r ¼ 3:35,
p < :05).
Previous studies associated the use of explanation strategies with
the perception of social distance. In her ethnographic observations of
middle-class Americans’ speech behavior, Wolfson (1986) noticed that
most verbal negotiations occur between status-equal friends, co-workers,
and acquaintances, with the fewest negotiations taking place between the
two ends of the social-distance continuum—that is, between strangers
and those of unequal status. Data obtained from the native-speaker
group partially supports this hypothesis: in cases of severe o¤ense, native
speakers o¤ered explanations most often to friends, less often to the pro-
fessor, and least often to strangers (82%, 38.1%, and 0.95%, respectively).
This association does not obtain for less severe o¤enses, however, for in
such instances native speakers used explanations with friends almost as
often as they did with the professor (14.85% and 19.95%, respectively).
(No explanations were o¤ered to strangers.)
There does not seem to be any correlation between the learners’ expla-
nations and their perceptions of the situations’ contexts, as there was in
the case of native speakers. On the contrary, the learners supplied high
numbers of explanations indiscriminately, to friends and the professor
alike, in both moderate- and high-severity situations. Group II o¤ered a
high number of explanations even to strangers (42–62% vs. 0–0.95%
among native Russians). Learners’ use of the explanation strategy is

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related to their proficiency level; the two rise in tandem. Similar tenden-
cies have been reported in other IL studies (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1986;
Trosborg 1987; Kondo 1997; Jung 1999). Exposure to the culture helps
learners of both proficiency levels use fewer explanations, thus bringing
their speech closer to the native-speaker norm.
Learners’ explanations di¤er from native speakers’ not only in quan-
tity, but also in quality. As IL studies have pointed out, learners’ explan-
ations tend to be lengthy (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1986; Trosborg 1987;
House 1988; Jung 1999; Bergman & Kasper 1993). Blum-Kulka and Ols-
thain (1986) connected this excessive verbosity to two factors: learners’
advancement in L2 proficiency, and their uncertainty as to how e¤ectively
they can communicate. Later studies attributed this verbosity to an in-
strument e¤ect. It has been noticed that subjects produce longer explana-
tions when they are asked to respond in writing than when they are asked
to respond orally, as in role-playing (Edmondson & House 1981; Berg-
man & Kasper 1993). This study established no causal relationship be-
tween the elicitation technique and learners’ production: learners exhib-
ited similar speech behavior—including excessive verbosity and focus on
details—in both written and oral experiments.8 The di¤erence between
the number of words used by the learner groups and the number used
by the native-speaker group is statistically significant (F ¼ 4:503, df ¼ 1,
p < :05).
Analysis of the learners’ explanations also revealed a lack of conven-
tional expressions in their repertoire. For instance, when explaining why
they were late, learners often described what happened to them in detail:
Izvinite. Potomu chto upal tak mnogo sneg est’ probka na ulitse i avtobusy
ne rabotaiut. Ja ne mog lovit’ taxi ili ekhat na avtobuse mne prishlo khodit’
peshkom9 (‘Sorry. Because so much snow fell there is congestion on the
road and the buses are not running. I could not catch a taxi or ride a
bus and I had to walk’). The native speakers, on the other hand, uni-
formly opted for nonspecific explanations, referring to their problems
with transportation in only general terms: Izvinite. Voznikli nepredviden-
nye obstoiatelstva, i ja zaderzhalsa. (‘Sorry. Unforeseen circumstances
arose and I was delayed.’) Examples like these suggest that learners’
verbosity compensates for their ignorance of routine expressions. Other
studies have o¤ered similar explanations (Coulmas 1981; Edmondson &
House 1981; Kasper & Blum-Kulka 1993, Introduction). Table 6 summa-
rizes the major di¤erences between the groups’ linguistic choices.
Interestingly, neither increase in L2 proficiency nor exposure to the
target culture warrants learners’ acquisition of formulaic expressions: the
percentage of generic expressions in the learners’ speech remains very low
in comparison to the native speakers’ (2.05–6.9% vs. 27.7%), which

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Table 6. Linguistic execution of the explanation strategy by the various groups; assessment
of their responses’ appropriateness
Linguistic execution Deemed awkward
Formulaic Impersonal
PreLow 2.05 10.3 12.2

PreHigh 1.6 12.5 1.6
PostLow 6.2 48 2.8
PostHigh 6.9 46.2 1.00
RussNS 27.7 69 —
immediately suggests an area for instructional intervention. Another sa-

lient feature of the native speakers’ explanations is their frequent use of
impersonal constructions and constructions with generic subjects. For
instance, in the example above, the learner used the phrase avtobusy ne
rabotaiut ‘the buses do not work,’ which contains the subject in the nom-
inative case ‘buses’ and the predicate ‘do not work.’ To express a similar
idea, native speakers use generic transitive third person plural/past plural
verbs with no subject, e.g., avtobusy otmenili ‘(they) cancelled the buses.’
As Table 6 shows, exposure to the target culture increases learners’ use of
these constructions from 10.3–12.5% to 48–46.2%.
4.4. O¤er of repair

Judging by the overall percentage of the strategy occurrence, the learners
closely approximated the native speakers’ pattern of strategy selection,
with the exception of Group II, which surpassed all other groups, includ-
ing the native speakers. This finding contradicts other IL studies that
reported consistent under-use of the repair strategy by L2 learners (Tros-
borg 1987; House 1988; Jung 1999). No association has been found be-
tween repair and either context-external or context-internal factors for
the NS group. However, three learner groups—Group II, Group III,
and Group IV—based their choice of repair o¤erings on perceived social
distance (rs ¼ 3:01, p < :05). While all groups demonstrated a similar
pattern of strategy selection, the learners deviated from the native
speakers in their choice of repair sub-strategies and in their linguistic exe-
cution. Di¤erences were particularly pronounced in their use of two sub-
strategies: interlocutor-engagement and strong-repair. As Table 7 shows,
none of the learner groups used these sub-strategies nearly as often as the
native speakers. Surprisingly, proficiency and exposure had little e¤ect
on the learners’ inclusion of these sub-strategies into their repertoire of
apologies.

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Table 7. Distribution of repair sub-strategies (%) among the groups; linguistic execution of
the repair strategy; assessment of appropriateness
Substrategy Linguistic execution Deemed

awkward
Repair þ Strong ‘I will/ Engagement tokens Other
Engage- repair can’
ment phrase Interrog- ‘If ’— ‘Let’s’—
atives phrase phrase
PreLow 6.3 0 69 7 23 0 1 7.8

PreHigh 18.8 0 67 0 31.3 0 1.7 7.03
PostLow 23.4 0 50.9 2.5 45.7 0 0.9 1.4
PostHigh 12.2 0 0.05 0 26.2 68.4 4.95 0
RussNS 32 16.5 28.3 7.9 16.6 40.12 7.08 0
As for linguistic execution, the learners favored first-person construc-

tions with a finite or modal verb (e.g., ja pomogau tebia, ‘I will help you’
or ja mogu pomogat, ‘I can help’), as they had done when expressing re-
sponsibility. Once again, this linguistic preference shows statistical signif-
icance (F ¼ 3:02, df ¼ 4, p < :05). This enduring linguistic ‘‘egocentrism’’
a¤ects learners’ choice of strategies. In fact, what House (1988) termed
‘‘self-directed’’ or ‘‘egocentric’’ strategies of apology may reflect learners’
linguistic rather than solely pragmatic preferences.
The learners’ use of engagement tokens is also noteworthy. In order to
engage the interlocutor, native speakers employed various devices: inter-
rogative phrases (Pomosch nuzhna?; ‘Is help needed?’); conditional clauses
with if-conjunctions (esli khotite, ja mogu pomoch; ‘if you want, I can help
you’); second-person imperative phrases ( pozvolte/razreshite vam po-
moch; ‘allow/let me help you’); and first-person inclusive imperative
phrases (davaite ja pomogu vam, an expression for which there is no real
English equivalent, which one might translate as ‘let me help you’). As
Table 7 shows, native speakers preferred the first-person imperative
constructions and used them in 40.12% of their repair o¤erings. Learners,
on the other hand, preferred conditional clauses and used them in 23–
45% of their repair o¤erings. While performing the target function—
engagement/inclusion of the hearer—learners deviated from the target
syntax and rhetoric. (Russians avoid complex syntax and subordination
in their colloquial speech.) The learners’ approximation of target func-
tions and forms was related to their level of proficiency and their experi-
ence in Russia: both in-country experience and increases in proficiency
stimulated them to incorporate engagement sub-strategies in their repair
o¤erings, but only a combination of the two warranted native-like map-
pings between the function and form. Table 8 summarizes the participants’

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Table 8. Acquisition of the engagement/inclusion sub-strategy
RussNS Dawajte q perepe~ata ªtu stranicu. Dawajte q pomogu wam

sobratx produkty. Let me retype this page. Let me will help you to
collect your groceries.
PreLow Q dela kopy. Q mogu e}e raz napisatx ªtu stranicu. Pustx menq
wam pomo~x. I will make copies. I can rewrite this page one more
time. Let me help you.
PostLow Povalujsta, q pomogu wam. ^to q mogu delatx sej~as? Movno
PreHigh pomo~x? Esli wam nuven, q mogu perepisatx. Please, I will help
you. What can I do now? May I help? If you want, I can rewrite it.
PostHigh Esli hotite, q mogu sdelatx kseroks. Dawajte q perepe~ata prqmo
sej~as. If you want, I can make a Xerox copy. Let me retype it right
away.
acquisition of engagement tokens. As it shows, learners at the first stage

of acquisition almost exclusively used first-person singular verbal forms
or modal verbs.
At the second stage, they began using complex syntax or resorted to in-
terrogatives. At the final stage, while they continued to use conditional
clauses, the learners began using first-person imperatives, as their Russian
counterparts did.
4.5. Intensification
Usage of the intensification strategy was only slightly di¤erent among the
various groups (see Table 3). The major di¤erences were in the partici-
pants’ preferences for various intensification devices and their percep-
tions of contextual factors. For the three learner groups—I, II, and III—
intensification of apology was associated with obligation to apologize
(rs ¼ :67, p < :000). For Group IV, the upgrading of apology was nega-
tively correlated with perceived social distance (rs ¼ :71, p < :05).
There was a split among Russian participants: male native speakers con-
nected intensification with power (rs ¼ 0:45, p < :05), whereas female
native speakers connected it with distance (rs ¼ :34, p < :05) and per-
ceived obligation to apologize (rs ¼ 0:32, p < :05). It is worthy noting
that male Russian participants and learners in Group IV took context-
external factors into account, while female Russian speakers and other
groups of learners were more sensitive to context-internal factors.
Comparison of intensification devices used by native speakers and
those used by learners shows that increased proficiency helps learners to
diversify their repertoire and extend it beyond simple repetition of IFIDs
or frequent use of quantifiers (e.g., ochen; ‘very’) (Table 9).

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Table 9. Distribution of apology intensification devices (%) among the groups; assessment of
appropriateness
Please Quan- Qualifiers Excla- Repetition Register Other Deemed

tifiers mations of IFID marked awkward
PreLow 4.2 39.9 2.8 1.2 51.18 0 0.72 0.8

PreHigh 37.97 23.89 14 11.6 12.54 0 0 1.2
PostLow 21.4 21.4 14.97 2.13 40.1 0 0 0
PostHigh 12.17 31.9 19.73 17.44 17.1 0 1.66 0.5
RussNS 16.5 25 24.5 13.3 8 9.7 3 0
More proficient learners incorporated more exclamations (oj; ‘oh’),

more qualifiers (uzhasno; ‘terribly’), and more ‘‘pleases.’’ Exposure to the
culture seems to be equally beneficial: low-proficiency learners who trav-
eled to Russia exhibited patterns similar to those of high-proficiency
learners. Interestingly, both female and male learners made equal use of
intensifiers. Native speakers, on the other hand, used intensifiers in ac-
cordance with the culture’s gender expectations: female speakers used
intensifiers more often than men (66% vs. 34%), and their repertoire was
richer. Consequently, most of those intensifiers deemed inappropriate
were o¤ered by male learners, in breach of verbal gender conventions.
4.6. Downgrading, concern, and forbearance

Study participants used downgrading, expressions of concern for the
hearer, and promises of forbearance only infrequently. The low frequency
of these strategies (see Table 3) does not allow statistically sound conclu-
sions about their distribution. Nonetheless, they seem to follow certain
patterns: in the NS group, expressions of concern for the hearer and
promises of forbearance appeared only in situations marked for severity,
whereas in the learner groups, they appeared only in interactions with
professors. The distribution is close to that of the intensification strategy,
which was also associated with severity for the NS group and distance for
the learner groups. The only di¤erence is that concern and forbearance
were associated with learners’ perceptions of power rather than social dis-
tance. As for downgrading, native speakers used it in all situations, re-
gardless of context, while learners used it only with friends, with the ex-
ception of Group I, which used downgrading with strangers, too. The
potential of downgrading to give o¤ense probably caused learners with
higher proficiency and/or exposure to avoid this strategy when interact-
ing with strangers and persons of higher social status. Increases in profi-
ciency and exposure to the target culture gradually compelled learners to

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discard these strategies; high proficiency learners with in-country experi-

ence used them hardly at all (Table 3 illustrates this gradient).
5. Conclusion and suggestions for pedagogical intervention
This study again demonstrates the universal nature of the apology speech
act set. Native Russian speakers and American learners have access to the
same range of apology strategies. The di¤erences between them lie in: a)
quantity of production; b) use of sub-strategies; c) linguistic realization of
the strategies; and d) coordination of strategy use with contextual factors.
Both tested factors—L2 proficiency and exposure to the target culture—
proved crucial in the learners’ acquisition of pragmatic competence in
Russian. Of these factors, exposure seemed to a¤ect learners’ apologies
the most: even less-proficient learners benefited from it by substantially
expanding their repertoires, thereby surpassing their counterparts without
exposure.10 The combination of exposure and increased proficiency had
the most visible results: by helping learners both diversify their apologetic
vocabularies and adjust their apologies to contextual factors, it brought
them closest to the NS norms.11 Increases in proficiency alone were e¤ec-
tive insofar as they expanded the learners’ repertoire of apologies, but
they proved insu‰cient for the learners to approximate the NS patterns,
particularly at the sub-strategic level (where the learners failed to o¤er in-
direct admissions of responsibility and repair with engagement), in the or-
ganization of discourse (where the learners produced complex syntax with
subordination and lacked generic phrases of explanation), in the forma-
tion of sentences (where the learners demonstrated a strong preference
for first-person pronoun þ VP constructions in responsibility and repair
strategies), and in the overall over-production (the notorious ‘‘wa¿ing’’).
Comparison of the learners’ production and contextual assessments
reveals that the learners’ pragmalinguistic acquisition preceded their
socio-pragmatic development. Thus, learners from Group III approxi-
mated native speakers’ production without having adopted native percep-
tions of contextual factors. Increases in proficiency did not bring about
changes in contextual perception—only exposure to the target culture en-
abled learners to see things from the point of view of a Russian. In turn,
the change in perception stimulated high-proficiency learners (Group IV)
to broaden their strategic and linguistic repertoire and simultaneously
to fine-tune their production to meet situational demands. These trends
in the learners’ development have been well illustrated by the appropri-
ateness assessments (Table 10). As Table 10 shows, learners who went
abroad used fewer strategies marked for pragmatic awkwardness than

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Table 10. Distribution of pragmatic and grammatical features marked for awkwardness
across the learner groups (%)
Strategy & Register level Grammar level Total
PreLow 24 37.19 61.19

PreHigh 11.1 12.17 23.27
PostLow 5.1 7.13 12.23
PostHigh 0.2 3.1 3.3
learners without experience in the country. Whereas most of the former’s

inappropriate uses were grammatical, most of the latter’s were pragmatic.
While going abroad o¤ers a good solution, instructional intervention is
(and should be) another e‰cient way to encourage learners’ pragmatic
development (Kasper & Ross 2002). Instead of leaving learners to figure
out on their own Russian socio-cultural conventions and their e¤ects on
communication, L2 instruction can acquaint them with how Russians
perceive social distance, power, gender, and other interpersonal relations.
This study has identified the best candidates for such cultural discussion:
perceptions of severity and social distance. Those are the perceptions in
which the participants di¤ered most, and the perceptions that most af-
fected their choices of IFID, intensification, explanation, and repair. In
the case of apology, it is also important to explain how severely Russians
regard various types of o¤enses.
Instruction in pragmatics can focus on a specific input and/or interpre-
tation of language use, and language classrooms are especially well suited
for both. To increase input, the instructor can record or videotape short
authentic dialogues featuring apologies (or other target speech acts) per-
formed by native speakers. These dialogues should be representative of
potential situations in which learners may find themselves and should
vary along such social lines as interlocutors’ distance, power, and gender
vis-à-vis their interrelationship. It is also important that these dialogues
include di¤erent types of o¤ense with di¤erent level of severity. After
presenting these dialogues the instructor moves forward to interpretation
and production activities. During the interpretation phase, the instructor
draws learners’ attention to both social setting of the exchange and its
linguistic execution, emphasizing potentially problematic areas. Once
learners have been introduced to various authentic apologies and have
discussed them, they are assigned to practice and role-play their own
apologies in pairs.
This study has established areas of particular di‰culty for American
learners that need to be addressed by pedagogical instruction. Among
these areas, at the strategic level, the first is learners’ tendency for excessive

Authenticated
explanations that could be e¤ectively replaced with repair o¤erings,

which would bring learners’ speech closer to that of native speakers. At
the same time, learners’ inventory of conventional generic explanations,
instead of detailed situation-specific ones, needs to be extended. At the
sub-strategy level, the instructor should encourage learners’ more exten-
sive use of indirect expressions of responsibility (e.g., tak poluchilos; ‘it
happened this way’) and inclusion of the hearer in repair o¤erings (e.g.,
davaite ja pomogu; ‘let me help you’). At the syntactic level, the instructor
needs to help learners diversify their linguistic repertoire by emphasizing
constructions other than first-person pronoun þ VP/Modal ones and in-
cluding various IFID tokens and exclamations consistent with learners’
identities (e.g., bozhe moi, ‘my god,’ uttered by a woman; chert, ‘damn
it,’ uttered by a man).
Notes
1. Pragmalinguistics refers to the linguistic resources for conveying communicative acts

and relational or interpersonal meanings. Such resources may include pragmatic strat-
egies, conversational routines, politeness markers, etc. Socio-pragmatics refers to social
perceptions underlying interlocutors’ interpretation and performance of communicative
acts. The distinction between these two categories was first advanced by Leech (1983)
and Thomas (1983), and later introduced into cross-cultural and interlanguage prag-
matics by Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989). Kasper has remained a particularly
strong advocate of this distinction in IL pragmatics studies, and her work has extended
the notion of pragmalinguistics to include relational and interpersonal meanings (Kas-
per 1992, 1997).
2. Tanako’s participants were high school students who went on an exchange program
to the U.S. for one year and attended regular American high school. They did not par-
ticipate in any additional programs with the goal of learning the language.
3. Go¤man (1971) coordinated apology speech acts with two types of o¤ense: 1) virtual
o¤enses that can be remedied by the sole o¤ering of a ritual apologetic formula; and
2) serious o¤enses that require substantial compensatory work, including o¤ers of
material compensation (see more in Bergman & Kasper 1993: 82–83).
4. A question may be raised as to whether data collected via a written discourse comple-
tion questionnaire are representative of actual oral exchanges. A number of studies
comparing speech production obtained through various elicitation techniques showed
that despite observed quantitative and qualitative di¤erences, experimentally collected
data, both written and oral, allow inferences about naturally occurring speech. Thus,
in their study of expressions of gratitude in English by both native and nonnative
speakers, Eisenstein and Bodman (1993) concluded that the written questionnaire data
were ‘‘representative of certain aspects of natural language use’’ (p. 71). As to the type
and extent of di¤erences between written questionnaires and natural speech, most of
these di¤erences lie in the amount and complexity of speech. Turnbull (2001) assessed
four data-elicitation techniques for refusals—scripted phone-conversations, written
and oral questionnaires, and oral role-plays—and found that both written and oral

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questionnaires yielded responses that were shorter and contained a smaller ranger of
acts compared to naturally occurring speech. Turnbull’s findings supported those by
Beebe and Cummings (1996) who also contended that the written questionnaire data
di¤ered from natural refusals in the amount of talk, wording, and range of semantic
formulas used.
5. Some studies (Trosborg 1987; CCSARP project 1989) separate modality as a modi-
fication to a strategy. I opted against such a separation in order to avoid too layered
design and to acknowledge illocutionary force coded by various modality verbs and
expressions.
6. In order to make a firm contention about Russian NS tendency to connect context-
external and context-internal factors, more research is needed, since the situations used
in the present study do not provide much variation in severity of o¤enses or social rela-
tions between interlocutors.
7. Most of these IFIDs were deemed awkward because of their inadequate and non-
standard forms, e.g., q izwinqsx (‘I’m sorry’). However, lingustic forms often compo-
mised pragmatic intent, as when speakers ommitted plural inflections, thereby failing to
express politeness and formality. Particularly aggravating was the use of the word
‘‘please’’ to express apology illocution.
8. Due to space constraints, this article does not include findings from the oral portion of
this study. This aspect of the investigation is reported in Shardakova 2005: chaps. 3, 4.
9. I have preserved the participants’ spelling, punctuation, grammar, lexicon, and syntax.
10. At the strategic level, learners in Group III used more IFIDs and more expressions of
responsibility, intensification, and forbearance. They also made less excessive use of
explanation and downgrading. At the sub-strategic level, they incorporated indirect
admission of responsibility and repair with engagement. At the token level, they dem-
onstrated a larger variety of IFIDs and generic explanations. At the linguistic level,
their speech was less egocentric than that of Group I.
11. Group IV’s almost perfect score on the assessments of appropriateness testifies best to
their advancement in Russian pragmatics.
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Appendix 1
Sample item from combined Discourse Completion and Assessment

Questionnaire.
Late for professor
Situation 2.
It is winter and you are in Moscow. You have a meeting with your advi-
sor at the university at noon and you are a half-hour late because of the
tra‰c delays caused by the snowstorm. Your bus that was taking you to

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the metro station was cancelled. Since you couldn’t get a taxi, you had
to walk and it took you thirty minutes longer to get to the metro sta-
tion. When you arrived to the o‰ce your professor greeted you with the
phrase: ‘‘Wy opazdali na 30 minut.’’ [‘‘You are 30 minutes late.]
You:
1. How close are you and your professor in this situation?

1 2 3
very close somewhat close distant
2. What is the status relationship between you and your professor in
this situation?
1 2 3
you higher than professor you ¼ professor professor higher
than you
3. How serious is the o¤ense?
1 2 3
not serious at all somewhat serious very serious
4. Do you really need to apologize?
1 2 3
not really yes absolutely

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Intercultural pragmatics in the speech of

American L2 learners of Russian: Apologies

The study expands the current research on second language acquisition

Intercultural Pragmatics 2-4 (2005), 423–451 1612-295X/05/0002–0423

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1989). This consistency testiﬁes to the universality of pragmatic knowl-

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and are equally sensitive to contextual constraints (Blum-Kulka 1982;

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studies involving various target languages that would reveal gradual

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transfer of verbal redress—a characteristic of Japanese apology. This

2.1. Design and research questions

This is an exploratory cross-sectional developmental study that seeks an-

– Do American L2 learners of Russian di¤er from the native speaker

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Table 1. Composition of the research participants

American Learners of Russian Russian NS

Low (I) High (II) Low (III) High (IV)

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2.3. Instruments and procedures

Participants in all ﬁve groups were instructed to complete the question-

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for each situation, to rate on a three-point scale, interlocutors’ relative

1. Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID): speaker explicitly ex-

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5. Intensiﬁcation: speaker increases apology force (radi boga, prostite;

3.1. The assessment study

3.1.1. Severity of o¤ense and obligation to apologize Severity assess-

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Table 2. Assessment of contextual factors by the study participants

Parameter/Situation FrNt PrNt LFr LPr Bump Metro

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accommodation to cultural norms is evident in Groups III and IV. Expo-

4. The production study

The Dialogue Completion Questionnaire elicited the entire range of strat-

Table 3. Distribution of apology strategies (%) across the research groups

IFID Rsp Exp Rpr Int Dwn Cnc Frb

PreLow 80.9 21.6 33.2 27.5 12.6 18.6 7.6 0.6

IFID ¼ Illocutionary Force Indicating Device; Rsp ¼ Taking on responsibility; Exp ¼

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4.1. Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID)

As Table 3 shows, participants o¤ered varying amounts of explicit apolo-

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obvious in apologies by group III and group I. For native Russian

IFID token Russ PreLow PreHigh PostLow PostHigh Russ

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It appears that exposure has the greatest e¤ect on the acquisition of

4.2. Taking on responsibility

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Strategy Level Linguistic Deemed

Modality Intent Self- Fatalism 1 st -person

PreLow 41.2 41.2 0 5.9 0 76.5 5.8

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apologies o¤ered by Group II received the highest scores for inappropri-

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Linguistic execution Deemed awkward

PreLow 2.05 10.3 12.2

immediately suggests an area for instructional intervention. Another sa-

4.4. O¤er of repair

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Substrategy Linguistic execution Deemed