APOLOGY AND GRATITUDE IN SPANISH AND CHINESE. A PRAGMALINGUISTIC AND INTERCULTURAL STUDY

This work studies the pragmatic acquisition of interlanguage. Its main objective is to compare and analyze speech acts for apologizing and expressing gratitude performed by Chinese learners of Spanish at different levels: intermediate (A2-B1) and advanced (B2-C1). The ultimate goal is to observe how the acquisition of pragmatic competence develops, as well as to investigate the relationship between pragmatic and grammatical competence. To this end, numerous contextual factors are taken into account, such as the relative power and social distance between the interlocutors, the severity of the offense, and the degree of gratitude in the performance of both speech acts. The analysis method used is the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), which includes twelve different situations requiring responses to the two speech acts examined. The results of the analysis indicate that the higher the level of proficiency in the target language, the more competent the learners are from both a pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic perspective. That is, grammatical competence is a fundamental element for the development of pragmatic competence.