The Pragmatics of Apology in Nigerian English: A Cross-cultural Comparative Study

Apology is a face-threatening speech act whose realization strategies vary significantly across languages and cultural contexts, and the pragmatic patterns of apology in Nigerian English reflect the intersection of English pragmatic conventions with diverse Nigerian cultural face management systems. This study examines the pragmatic realization of apology in Nigerian English across three ethnolinguistic groups, Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo, comparing internal strategy selection, apology intensity scaling, and remediation offer patterns against both British English norms and published cross-cultural pragmatics benchmarks. Data were collected using a discourse completion task of thirty scenarios varying by offense severity, social distance, and relative power, administered to three hundred Nigerian English speakers in Abuja, Ibadan, and Enugu, stratified by ethnolinguistic background. A parallel instrument was administered to sixty British English speakers as a comparative reference group. Multi-variate analysis of strategy selection reveals significant effects of both ethnolinguistic background and situational variables on Nigerian English apology realization, with Igbo respondents showing the highest rates of explicit responsibility acknowledgment strategies and Hausa respondents showing the highest rates of remediation offer strategies. Cross-cultural comparison with British English norms reveals that Nigerian English apologies across all three groups use more intensified illocutionary force markers, show lower rates of explanation-giving strategies, and are more sensitive to power differential than the British English comparison group. Theoretical implications for cross-cultural pragmatics and Nigerian English pragmatic description are developed. Keywords: apology, pragmatics, Nigerian English, cross-cultural comparison, speech acts.