An Interlanguage Pragmatics Study of Expressionof Gratitude by EFL Learners in English Department of Jember University Years 2010/2011

Abstract

Gratitude expression is one of the expressions used by people in daily life. Every language has its own gratitude expression. This condition is caused by the difference in language, culture, and society. This research aims not only to investigate how EFL learners use thanking strategy in L1 and L2 but also to know the effect of L1 in the way of expressing gratitude. The subject of this research is the student of English department years 2010/2011 and takes 27 participants. They are divided into three groups—Javanese, Madurese, and Using. This study is conducted using qualitative research in order to know the strategy of gratitude expression of EFL learners using Interlanguage pragmatics. This study is conducted using mix method; quantitative and qualitative research. The quantitative approach related to the quantification of data and numerical analysis that used to count and found the thanking strategies that is used by EFL learners of English language based on 8 strategies by Cheng (2005), meanwhile qualitative analyses is used then to describe the thanking strategy that is used by EFL learners based on pragmatics study and how their L1 effect the strategy. By combining these, more detailed information is presented. The result of the study shows that the most used strategy in Javanese, Madurese, and Using EFL learners is thanking. Thanking strategy appears almost in every given situation both in their L1 and target language versions. This investigation also found the interesting phenomena. First, appreciation strategy is never used by the participants to answer the Discourse Completion Task (DCT) questionnaire. Second, the researcher discovers new strategy from this research, which is generated from the combination of the eight strategies mentioned by Cheng. The combination of apology and thanking strategies becomes the second most used strategy for Javanese EFL learners, followed by positive feeling and repayment strategies. For Madurese EFL learners, the combination of apology and thanking strategies occupies the third position after attention getter strategy. The result also found that L1 still affects the way of producing target language. Most of the EFL learners use similar strategy of gratitude expression in their L1 and L2 versions of DCT questionnaire.