Exploring pragmatic competence of preschool children with a specific reference to the speech act of apology in Turkish

Apologies are regarded as one of the most important speech acts since they have the function of redressing damaged relationship and restoring social harmony between the interactants following a violation of a social norm. Existing research in the relevant literature points at the existence of variations as well as universals across languages in the conceptualization and realization of this act. Thanks to these studies, conducted mostly in the field of interlanguage or cross-cultural pragmatics, adult-usage has grown into a well-defined area in various languages including Turkish. However, the same does not hold true for children's perceptions and productions of apologies with a relatively narrow range of studies in a small number of languages. Hence, the aim of this descriptive study was to explore Turkish preschool children's pragmatic competence with regard to their apology realization patterns. Firstly, children's meta-pragmatic knowledge of apologies was tested and then two different age groups (4;0-4;11 and 5;0-6;0) were compared to trace possible developmental trends with increasing age in terms of complexity of patterns, variety and types of strategies. Additionally, all the participant children were grouped according to such sociolinguistic variables as gender, parent's level of educationi, and preschool experience in order to detect the potential effect of such factors on children's apologizing behaviors. Finally, the range of children's socio-pragmatic skills was tested, which was evidenced by sensitivity to a number of contextual variables regarded by scholars (e.g. Fraser, 1981; Brown & Levinson, 1987) as influential on speakers' manner of apologizing. These parameters were severity and type of the offence and the social status relationship between the interactants. In order to fulfill these aims, eight offence scenarios were designed by manipulating the abovementioned contextual parameters and implemented in the form of Oral Discourse Completion Task (ODCT). Thus, the data obtained for the study consisted of 100 preschool children's (aged between 4;0 and 6;0) responses to these scenarios presented to them orally. The responses were then transcribed, classified into categories relying on the taxonomy chosen for the study, and analyzed statistically. Results pointed at children's meta-pragmatic knowledge of apologies traced in their provision of appropriate responses in terms of the need to use apologies when an offence was involved distinguishing among other speech acts. Regarding the developmental patterns, younger children were observed to have a marked tendency to rely on single strategies with a significantly higher usage rate. In parallel, children's productions were found to become more elaborate with increasing age. When it comes to sociolinguistic variables, no significant gender effect was observed in terms of the complexity of patterns. There were only slight differences in female and male choices of strategies and strategy-combination categories. Similarly, parents' level of education and preschool experience did not emerge as decisive factors on the complexity of patterns although the results pointed at significant differences in certain strategy preferences. However, the children were found to display socio-pragmatic skills to a certain extent as they could distinguish between minor and serious offences and adjusted their patterns accordingly. The same was the case for the effect of interlocutor's social status as they were found to utilize more complex patterns for the offences committed against friends rather than their teacher. Finally, the results indicated children's sensitivity to the type of offence as well, which was reflected in their employment of more complex patterns and diverse strategies for right violations. All in all, the findings of the study have some important implications for foreign language teaching in addition to the first language acquisition in many respects.