Abstract
The current study investigates the impact of social power on the performance and
perception of Pakistani English Speakers’ use of apology responses. Two
instruments, a discourse completion test (DCT, translated version for Pakistani Urdu
speakers) and a scale response questionnaire (SRQ, both in Urdu and English), are
used for data collection. The findings illustrate that Pakistani English speakers
(PakE) pragmatic choices are clearly influenced by their perceptions of various
sociocultural, socio-religious and contextual variables. The PakE and Pakistani Urdu
speakers (PakU) are found being influenced by the social power of their
interlocutors. The participants of both PakE and PakU groups used Acceptance
strategies (Adrefiza & Jones, 2013) when they responded to the apologies of higher
status speakers, and preferred to acknowledge the apologies of equal and lower
level interlocutors. They are also found using more Rejection strategies than British
English speakers (BritE) while responding to lower level interlocutors, indicating
that Pakistani society abides by non-egalitarian status. In contrast, British English
speakers preferred to use Acceptance and Evasion strategies more often while
interacting with the people of higher, equal and lower level interlocutors. The
findings further highlight the influence of socio-religious aspects on the PakE and
PakU groups, as they more often used positive politeness (Holmes, 1995), in
contrast, British English speakers prefer to use both (Holmes 1995; Adrefiza &
Jones, 2013) positive and negative politeness
