A study examined pragmatic variation across Turkish and American English in the speech act of chastisement, to determine occurrence of pragmatic transfer in the interlanguage of native Turkish speakers learning English as a Second Language (ESL). Data were collected from 80 native speakers of Turkish, 14 native speakers of American English, and 68 advanced Turkish EFL learners in situated role plays, in which individuals responded to wrongdoing of a status-unequal interlocutor in the workplace. Data were analyzed for type and frequency of semantic formulas used by the three groups in the same speech act. Native speaker data were used as a baseline for cross-cultural comparison and for detecting instances of positive and negative transfer. Results indicate both similarities and differences in the groups in choice of strategies for dealing with the same speech act. Similarities in strategy choice were found to be related to positive pragmatic transfer in the target language performance of the ESL students, although negative transfer (interference) occurred in some instances. It is concluded that the advanced ESL learners could diverge significantly from target language norms, indicating lack of sociolinguistic competence in that language and suggesting that sociolinguistic competence is not necessarily acquired alongside grammatical knowledge. Contains 39 references. (MSE)