apologizing strategies by american speakers of english and vietnamese speakers of english = chiến lược xin lỗi bằng ngôn ngữ anh của người mĩ và người việt

LIST OF TABLES Table 1 The five general functions of speech act Yule, 1996 Table 2 English apology IFIDs Blum-Kulka Table 3 Felicity conditions of speech acts in a substantive apology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF PROJECT REPORT ……… i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……… ii

ABSTRACT ……… iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS ……… iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ……… vi

LIST OF TABLES ……… vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Problem statement and background ……… 1

2 Aims of the study ……… 2

3 Scope of the study ……… 3

4 Methods of the study ……… 3

5 The organization of the study ……… 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Cross-cultural communication 1.1.1 Cross-cultural communication ……… 5

1.1.2 Potential problems in Vietnamese-American cross-cultural communication ……… 7

1.2 Speech acts theories 1.2.1 Speech acts ……… 9

1.2.2 Three – dimension speech act ……… 10

1.2.3 Classification of speech act ……… 11

1.2.4 Apologizing as a speech act ……… 12

1.3 Politeness 1.3.1 Politeness theories ……… 15

1.3.2 Politeness in apologizing ……… 18

1.4 Situations which elicit apologies in American culture and Vietnamese culture ………

19 1.5 Apologizing strategies ……… 20

1.6 Previous studies on apologizing ……… 26

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research methods ……… 32

2.2 Data collection instruments ……… 33

2.3 The questionnaire ……… 34

2.3.1 Factors manipulated in the DCT ……… 35

2.3.2 The DCT ……… 34

2.4 The subjects ……… 39

2.5 Data collection and analysis procedure ……… 41

Chapter 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 Overview of the apologizing strategies used by two groups of subjects … 43

3.2 Choices of apologizing strategies by situations ……… 50

3.2.1 Choices of strategies by Vietnamese speakers of English ……… 50

3.2.2 Choices of strategies by American speakers of English ……… 52

3.2.3 A comparison of the strategies preferences by two groups of subjects 53

3.3 Preferences of apologizing strategies as seen from communicating partner’s parameters ………

58 3.3.1 Vietnamese’s apologizing strategies as seen from communicating partner’s parameters ………

58 3.3.2 American’s apologizing strategies as seen from communicating partner’s parameters ……… 60

3.3.3 A comparison of Vietnamese and American subjects’ apologizing strategies as seen from communicating partner’s parameters ……… 62

PART C: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 1 Conclusion ……… 67

2 Implications for cross-cultural communication and TEFL in Vietnam …… 69

3 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study ……… 70

BIBLIOGRAPHY 72 APPENDICES Appendix A: Discourse Completion Task (for American subjects) (DCT) ……

Appendix B: Discourse Completion Task (for Vietnamese subjects) (DCT) …

Appendix C: The coding system ………

Appendix D: Sample Coding Scheme of a DCT ………

I

IV VII

IX

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS

ASE: American speakers of English

CP: Communicating partner

D: Social Distance

DCT: Discourse Completion Task

FSA: Face-saving Act

FTA: Face-threatening Act

TEFL: Teaching English as a foreign language

VSE: Vietnamese speakers of English

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 The five general functions of speech act (Yule, 1996)

Table 2 English apology IFIDs (Blum-Kulka)

Table 3 Felicity conditions of speech acts in a substantive apology (Owen, 1983)

Table 4 Explicit apology expressions (Trosborg, 1995)

Table 5 Apologizing strategies employed by VSE and ASE

Table 6 Choices of strategies by Vietnamese speakers of English in four situations

Table 7 Choices of strategies by American speakers of English in four situations

Table 8 Strategies employed by VSE and ASE in situation 1

Table 9 Strategies employed by VSE and ASE in situation 2

Table 10 Strategies employed by VSE and ASE in situation 3

Table 11 Choices of apologizing or not apologizing by VSE and ASE in situation 4

Table 12 Strategies employed by VSE and ASE in situation 4

Table 13 Vietnamese’s apologizing strategies as seen from CP’s parameters

Table 14 American’s apologizing strategies as seen from CP’s parameters

Table 15 Preferences of apologizing strategies by VSE and ASE as seen from CP’s

parameters

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Employment of apologizing strategies by two groups of subjects

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Problem statement and background of the study

“The world is becoming a village” This saying is no longer weird in this modern world when more and more people from different cultures all over the world are getting to communicate with each other more frequently Thanks to the advent of today‟s global economic system and the open policies, Vietnamese are enjoying more chances to come into contact and cooperate with more foreigners many among whom are from English-speaking countries Contacts in reality for the past few years, however, have made an arising problem apparent that while Vietnamese speakers can be very high-linguistic-competent, many of them still fail to maintain successful conversations with people from other cultures Probably it is because

“Communication across cultures is, by definition, problematic, for cultures are systems of symbolic meanings shared by one group yet foreign to another” (Geertz, 1973; Trice & Beyer,

certain extent, has bettered the situation The motto “Communication is culture Culture is communication” (Hall, 1959) has been made familiarized to any language learners in order to

better equip them with a better English skill after finishing schools Many more subjects have been added to the colleges‟ curricula aiming at helping the learners to learn more and understand more about the culture within which the language is used as a native one However, the emphasis on theoretical aspects without sufficient real experiences still leads to lots of confusion the learners have to encounter with when they interact with the foreigners

We know the language, we learn about the culture, but the thing is we do not embed the language in its culture We use the rules of speaking from our native speech community when

interacting with members of other speech community We seem to speak English within Vietnamese culture and automatically express our own thoughts according to our own culture

We may have developed great ability in phonology, syntax, and semantics of the target language, but we find it challenging to determine the situationally-appropriate utterances, including what can be said, where it can be said and how to say it most effectively Recognizing that the differences in sociolinguistic rules across cultures can cause some difficulty for learners of foreign language which may lead to miscommunication, a number of studies concerning cross-cultural communication have been conducted It was then, without any surprises, apparent that quite many differences in the realization and the usage of such different speech acts across cultures as greeting, refusing, requesting, complimenting, promising, encouraging and those alike have been pointed out

The reason for choosing apology as the core of this research is apologizing is universal and has always been considered one of the main communicative acts and among the most

“sensitive” areas of politeness in human interactions As all human beings live in social groups which require the maintenance of a certain amount of harmony, apologies should be found in all societies, and we would expect universals in terms of how apologies are performed However, as apologizing is a social act, and human societies vary greatly in their social organization, we should also expect variation in why, when, and how this social act is carried out Secondly, apologizing, among the most-interested topics all over the world, is still an under-researched one in Vietnam, especially in term of an interlanguage approach within cross-cultural studies Dang Thanh Phuong (2000) and Kieu Thi Hong Van (2000) are the two Vietnamese authors working on this topic up to now, though their studies solely follow the traditional method of contrasting pragmatics between Vietnamese language and English, i.e discuss the differences in the realization of apology in two different languages, Vietnamese and English

2 Aims of the study

The speech act of apologizing aims at maintaining, restoring and enhancing interpersonal relationships The overall purpose of this thesis is to investigate primarily the apologies of

Vietnamese speakers of English and American speakers of English from which the cultural similarities and differences in the choice of apologizing strategies of the two groups will be figured out It is expected, in so doing, to raise awareness of the cultural influence into people‟s verbal behaviors, specifically apologizing especially for Vietnamese who are either working with American or living in the United States For this purpose to be achieved, the three following research questions need addressing

1 How do American speakers of English verbally apologize?

2 How do Vietnamese speakers of English verbally apologize in English?

3 What are the similarities and differences between the apologizing strategies employed by Vietnamese speakers of English and American speakers of English?

3 Scope of the study

The thesis focuses on the intralinguistic factors of apology which means the verbal expressions of apology employed by Vietnamese speakers of English and American speakers

of English Paralinguistic and extralinguistic aspects of apology are therefore excluded in spite

of their remarkable contribution to communication At the same time, only the situations where both the hearer (H) and speaker (S) know the offence will be used In addition, the languages will be English, which is used as a foreign language in Vietnam and a native language in the United States

4 Methods of the study

The data will be apology expressions employed by 38 Vietnamese speakers of English and 38 American speakers of English The Vietnamese who are either working with any American-based organizations in Vietnam or living in the United States have frequent contact with Americans and use English for their daily conversation The American are living and working

in the US Both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed in the present study For theoretical considerations, information are collected from different sources including both printed publications and online articles Discussions and consultation with supervisor are also

of great significance Quantitative data will be elicited by means of a discourse completion

task (DCT) which consist of four socially-differentiated situations and will be processed basing on the modified framework of Olshtain and Cohen (1983, 1989) and Trosborg (1995)

5 The organization of the study

In pursuit of the research‟s goal, the research is divided into different sections which are presented as follows

Part A: Introduction describes the study‟s rationale, aims, research questions, scope and

methods

Part B: Development

Chapter 1 – Literature review done in light of cross cultural pragmatics lays the theoretical

foundation for the research by discussing major theories of the subject, namely Cross-cultural communication, Speech act, The speech act of apology, The theory of politeness, and A thorough review of the previous studies in the field

Chapter 2 – Methodology details the methods that have been used and the procedures that

have been followed when the researchers conduct the study Then the research design including data-collection instruments, subject selections, and data-gathering procedures are all

introduced

Chapter 3 –Findings and Discussion presents findings of the study and main features drawn

out from the research with revisit to the literature foundation In this chapter, the result of similarities and differences between the Vietnamese speakers of English and American speakers of English in their employment of apologizing strategies in four situations towards different communicating partners will be presented, interpreted and discussed in length

Part C: Conclusion and Implications ends the study by summarizing its main points Then

implications of the research findings to better English language teaching and cross-cultural communication are suggested before recommendations for further studies of the field are put forward

Besides, the research includes Appendices where the study‟s references, sample questionnaires and sample coding scheme of a DCT are attached for reference

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides a closer look at the function of speech act, particularly a more in-depth discussion of the speech act of apology will be presented Theoretical issues as the basis for the research development such as main issues on cross-cultural communication, speech act, the speech act of apologizing, theory of politeness, as well as a review of the previous research

on the field will be drawn

1.1 Cross cultural communication

1.1.1 Cross-cultural communication

The term “communication” has been used in many ways for various and often inconsistent

purposes In this research, the definition that “Communication is a symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process in which people create shared meaning” is employed since

according to Lustig and Koester (2006), “it is the most useful for the purpose of helping to achieve interpersonal competence when communicating in cultural setting” (p.13) In the process of transferring messages, an understanding of the context is of great importance Donald Klopf (in Lustig & Koester, 2006) poignantly illustrates that knowledge of the physical context often provides important information about the meanings that are intended and the kinds of communication that are possible The social context, in addition, refers to the widely shared expectations people have about the kinds of interactions that normally should occur given different kinds of social events Most importantly, the interpersonal context decides the expectations people have about the behaviors of others as a result of differences in

relationships between them Lustig and Koester hold that “Communication between teachers and students, even outside the classroom, differs from communication between close friends Communication between friends is different from communication among acquaintances, coworkers, or family members.” (p.19)

Culture is a dynamic conceptual abstraction that has been socially constructed by groups of people, and is continually modified and transmitted across generations Broadly defined,

“Culture is the shared values, traditions, arts, history, folklore, and institutions of a group of people that are unified by race, ethnicity, nationality, language, religious beliefs, spirituality,

socioeconomic status, social class, sexual orientation, politics, gender, age, disability, or any other cohesive group variable” (Singh, 1998) Linton, R.(1945), Useem, J (1963), Damen

(1987), Lederach, J.P (1995), and Gorlanes, G.J & Brilhart, J.K (1997) whereas provide a

more thorough and critical concepts of culture which is “a shared background (i.e national, ethnic, religious) resulting from a common language and communication style, customs, beliefs, attitudes and values” From their definitions, culture is then understood to be the

informal and often hidden patterns of human interactions, expressions, and viewpoints that people in one culture share In addition, it is a system of both implicit and explicit meanings, beliefs, values and behaviors shared by members of a community or a group, through which experience is interpreted and carried out As the definition suggests, the shared symbol systems that form the basis of culture represent ideas about beliefs, values, norms and social practices which then provides a “way of life” for the members of a culture

 A belief is an idea that people assume to be true about the world and is therefore a set

of learned interpretations that form the basis for cultural members to decide what is and what is not logical and correct (Lustig & Koester, 2006, p.86)

 Values involve what a culture regards as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, just or unjust, beautiful or ugly, clean or dirty, valuable or worthless, appropriate or inappropriate, and kind or cruel (Rokeach, 1973, cited in Lustig & Koester, 2006) Values are the desired characteristics or goals of a culture, are often offered as the explanation for the way in which people communicate Shalom Schwartz (2005, in Lustig &Koester, 2006) suggests “Values serve as guiding principles in people‟s lives”

 Norms are the socially shared expectations of appropriate behaviors Different from beliefs and values, norms may change over a period of time (Lugstig & Koester, 2006, p.88)

 Social practices are the predictable behavior patterns that members of a culture typically follow and then are the outward manifestations of beliefs, values and norms (Lustig & Koester, 2006, p.89)

Cross-cultural communication is then defined as “Communication between people from different cultures, communication is influenced by cultural values, attitudes, and behavior, the influence of culture on people‟s reactions and responses to each other” (Levine & Adelman,

1993, p.xviii)

1.1.2 Potential problems in Vietnamese-American cross-cultural communication

Vietnam has a cultural heritage which has been developed over 4000 years In the words of Hofstede (1980), the Vietnamese culture can be described as high power distance, high collectivism, moderate uncertainty avoidance, and high context (Smith, Esmond & Pham, 1996; Gorlanes & Brilhart, 1997; Quang, 2006) The characteristics of communication in Vietnam are therefore considered to be indirect, ambiguous, harmony-oriented and reserved (Gudykunst et al., 1996) This trait has been confirmed by Teri and Michael (2004, p.39) when they further emphasize that individuals from Japan, Korea, China and other Asian countries prefer to avoid confrontation, to preserve a sense of harmony, and to make it possible for the individuals with whom they are speaking to save face or maintain self-esteem, the individual

is supposed to know and to react appropriately Vietnamese people place importance on fitting

in harmoniously and avoiding threatening the other‟s face In conflicts, they prefer to come out

with a win-win situation “Vietnamese always try to project an appearance of calm and a benign attitude in social or business situations They never show emotion Vietnamese also tend to be indirect in their way of communication The indirectness is a question of tact, not of sincerity” (Borton, 2000) In addition, the Vietnamese are said to attach more importance to

sentiment than to reason (Mac Giao, 2002) They consequently treat one another basing on affection and gratitude, which leads to their tolerance of people having made mistakes They

seek to avoid conflict in relationship In other words, “Sentimental culture is the discipline of communication art” Furthermore, title, status, and formality are very important in

Vietnamese society The high power distance is present in the daily life, and there is a clear subordinate-superior relationship The Vietnamese common man is expected to show respect

to people who are senior to him in age, status, or position Another traditional Vietnamese value is their allegiance to the family This value is without doubt very important It can be realized in reality when misconduct of an individual is blamed not only on himself, but also on

his parents, siblings, relatives, and ancestors, as the proverb “Con daị cái mang” goes (The parents should be blamed on for their children‟s mistakes)

American culture, on the other hand, belongs to the "low-context" group A low-context culture is the one in which information and meaning are internalized by the individual, not from the context, from the situation or an event (Hall, 1976) The United States tends to be more heterogeneous and individualist and accordingly has evolved a more direct communication style The US is also said to be a moderately low power distance culture when people believe in minimizing status differences between individuals and sharing power (Stella, 1992) Gorlanes and Brilhart (1997) share that a group leader from the US may ask his colleagues to call him by his first name and may encourage them to participate in group

decision-making Also in their works discussing office relationship, they say “Managers do not routinely involve themselves in their subordinate‟s personal lives They may indulge in some friendly chat on personal subjects, but they do not consider themselves responsible for anyone‟s emotional wellbeing This is not pure hardboiled indifference but reflects also the respect for privacy which so often in American life takes primacy over other need.” (p.218)

The American culture is, additionally, regarded as a rational one In his works, Wanning (1999, p.116) cited that the practice of dragging one‟s neighbor, doctor, spouse, host and

employer into court caused shock among newcomers to the US He holds “We are a most litigious people, and we prefer to believe that there is always a responsible party for every event in life” (in Lustig & Koester, 2006) Apparently, this is a law-governed culture within

which social behaviors are mostly practiced through legal ethics (Quang, 2006)

The differences between Vietnamese culture and American culture can also be reflected through the collectivistic traits and individualistic traits as suggested by Ting-Toomey( 1988, cited in Kim (2000) These two authors both suggest that cultural differences in individualism – collectivism affect the facework behaviors that people are likely to use The American culture is said to be highly individualistic (Hosftede, 1980) where each individual concerns more about message clarity and preserving one‟s own face rather than maintaining the face of others Since tasks are more important than relationships, and individual autonomy must be preserved, direct, dominating, and controlling face-negotiation strategies are common, and

there is a low degree of sensitivity to the face-threatening capabilities of particular messages (Ting-Toomey & Kim, 1988, cited in Lustig and Koester, 2006, p.261) Conversely, in collectivist cultures, the mutual preservation of face is extremely important, because it is vital that people be approved and admired by others Vietnamese belongs to a highly-collectivistic culture, hence indirect, obliging, and smoothing face-negotiation strategies are common Herein direct confrontations between people are avoided, concern for the feelings of others is heightened, and ordinary communication messages are seen as having a great face-threatening potential

In conclusion, Vietnamese and American fall into two main culture groups which carry more differences than similarities This, accordingly, could lead to different patterns of behavior practiced by two groups in their daily communication

1.2 Speech act theories

1.2.1 Speech acts

Since its initiation by Austin a few decades ago, speech acts has become one of the most compelling notions in the study of language use After Austin, there are many other pragmaticists who have inherited, refined and advanced his speech act theory such as Searle (1969), Grice (1975), Leech (1983), Levinson (1983) and Yule et al (1996)

Speech acts have been claimed by some to operate the universal pragmatic principles, and claimed by others to vary in conceptualization and verbalization across cultures and languages (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969, 1975; Grice, 1975) According to Yule (1996, p.47), speech act are, generally, the actions produced via utterances to communicate These speech acts, considered the basic or minimal units of linguistic communication, are performed in authentic situations of language use (Searle 1969, p.16) Their modes of performance carry heavy social implications (Ervin-Tripp, 1976) and seem to be ruled by universal principles of cooperation and politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1978; Leech, 1983) Although the existence of speech acts

is universal, the frequency and contents are culture-specific Speech acts reflect the fundamental cultural values and social norms of a target language and demonstrate the rules of language use in a speech community

The basic insights offered by the work of philosophers such as Austin (1962), Searle (1969,

1975, 1976) are that in saying something a speaker also does something In English, speech acts are specifically labeled as compliment, apology, request, disagreeing or promise These terms for speech acts are used to name the S‟s communicative intentions and the H is expected

to correctly interpret the S‟s intention via the process of inferences

1.2.2 Three-dimension speech acts

In analyzing a speech act we study how an utterance affects the behavior of the S and the H

According to Austin (1962) a speech act consists of three related acts, namely (i) Locutionary act - The action performed by uttering a well-formed, meaningful sentence, (ii) Illocutionary act - The communication force which accompanies the utterance, for example promising, warning, conceding, denying, and so on; and (iii) Perlocutionary act - The effect of the

utterance on the H who may feel amused, persuaded, warned

Of the three dimensions of an utterance, it is the illocutionary act that puts the communicative force into the utterance, which makes the illocutionary act carrying the illocutionary force the most important Discussions on illocutionary force, however, have figured out a problem that a same locution can potentially have different illocutionary forces, and therefore the Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs) and felicity conditions of speech acts need to

be taken into consideration Searle (1974, p.44), Yule (1996, p.56) argue that each type of illocutionary acts requires certain expected or appropriate conditions called felicity conditions These conditions relate to the beliefs and attitudes of the S and the H and to their mutual understanding of the use of linguistic devices for information Searle (1979) provides four

kinds of felicity conditions namely (i) Preparatory conditions, (ii) Sincerity conditions, (iii) Propositional content conditions, and (iv) Essential conditions (cited by Tam, 1998, p.10)

An action, in summary, created via an utterance is made of three acts or dimensions: locution, illocution, and perlocution The speech act theory, in fact, has focused on illocutionary acts to such an extent that the terms speech act has predominantly come to mean illocutionary act

1.2.3 Classification of speech acts

The original classification initiated by Austin including five basic categories of verdictive, expositive, exercitive, behavitive and comissive was developed into an alternative taxonomy

of the fundamental classes of illocutionary act by Searl (1976) The taxonomy consists of five

types of general functions performed by speech act (i) Declaration - declaring, christening, (ii) Representatives - asserting, disagreeing, (iii) Expressive - thanking, apologizing, (iv) Directives - ordering, requesting and (v) Comissives - promising, offering

Follow Searle, Yule (1996, p.55) summarizes the five general functions of speech acts with their key features in a table:

Speech act type Direction of fit S = Speaker, X = Situation

Declarations Words change the world S causes X

Representatives Make words fit the world S believe X

Expressives Make words fit the world S feels X

Directives Make the world fit words S wants X

Comissives Make the world fit words S intends X

Table 1: The five general functions of speech act (Yule, 1996, p.55)

These two above classification have shown that apologizing falls into the category of

Expressive when the speaker expresses feeling and attitude about something In speech act

theory, direct speech acts and indirect speech acts are distinguished from each other The theory of directness and indirectness concerns with the relationship between the linguistic

form and the communicative functions of an utterance Indirectness is defined as “those cases

in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another” (Searle,

1975, p.60) Thus, in direct speech acts S says what he or she means, while in indirect speech

acts the speaker means more than he or she says (Searle, 1980, p.viii), that is S perform one illocutionary act implicitly by way of performing another illocutionary act explicitly

For instance, the sentence “Oops, it‟s hot here” is not simply a description of the current weather In this case, the direct act is evaluating the current situation, but the indirect act is that of requesting the H to either turn on the fan or open the doors

1.2.4 Apologizing as a speech act:

Among the potential speech act objects of sociolinguistic study, the choice of apologies is particularly a good one in that it has already attracted considerable attention, perhaps because

of the insights it can provide into social values and relationships Apologizing act has been examined as means of maintaining the social order and as indicators of distance and dominance in relationships Apologies have also been used to reveal the role that pragmatic competence plays in speaking a language Frazer‟s in his paper “On apologizing” (Coulmas,

1981, p.15) defines that “Apologies mean all sorts of different things, often in quite subtle ways Learning how to apologize without being too humble is quite an art.”

Apologizing is universal in all societies and languages and it is easily accepted as one of the main communicative acts, one of the most sensitive areas of politeness in human interactions

An apology is basically a speech act which is intended to provide support for the H who was actually or potentially malaffected by a violation X In the decision to carry out the verbal apology, the S is willing to humiliate him/herself to some extent and to admit to fault and responsibility for X Hence, the act of apologizing is face-saving act (henceforth FSA) for H and face-threatening act (henceforth FTA) for the S (Brown &Levinson, 1978) Similarly, Kasper and Bergman (1993, in Martinez-Flor & Eso-Juan, 2010) identify apologies as a compensatory action to an offense in the doing of which the S was causally involved and which is costly to the H This conceptualization is supported by Goffman‟s (1971, in Kasper, 1993) views of apologies as remedial interchanges serving to re-establish social harmony after

a real or virtual offense

According to Leech‟s (1983, p.104) “tactmaxim”, apology is a convivial speech act whose goal coincides with the social goal of maintaining harmony between S and H Generally,

apologies are post-event acts and the realization of an apology provides benefit for the H and

is to some degree at cost to the S, sometimes even high cost to S‟s face due to the heavy degree of violation or the seriousness of the offence (Leech, 1983)

Similar to other speech acts, apologies constitute a broad spectrum of behaviors used to satisfy

a variety of communicative purposes According to Goffman (1971, cited in Kasper, 1993),

apologies can be divided into two types, namely (i) Ritual apologies - Those redressing virtual

offenses, which are remedial by the sole offering of an apologetic formula This type, in

Trosborg‟s (1995) term, is strategic disarmers, and (ii) Substantive apologies - Those

redressing actual damage inflicted on the addressee, sometimes including an offer of material compensation

Ritualistic apologies, specifically, serve as preparatory for other FTAs typically as softeners preparing for requests, complaints, and refusals If an interaction is initiated in a way or under conditions that the S knows or assumes to be undesired by his addressee, which threatens the addressee‟s face, the S will often start with an apology

(i) Excuse me, could I just get pass, please? (Before “Territory invasion”)

(ii) Sorry to trouble you, but isn‟t that your car parked right in front of the garage? (Before a request)

(iii) I‟m terribly sorry but you seem to have taken my suitcase by mistake (Before a complaint) (iv) I‟m sorry, but I‟m afraid there are no more seats left for the late show (Before a refusal)

(Trosborg, 1995, p.384) Distinguished from ritualistic apologies by the fact that there are real offenses committed, which cause actual damage inflicted on the addressee, substantive apologies have attracted attentions of many authors in the field

With respect to the linguistic realization of the speech act of apologizing, Blum-Kulka observes that each language has a scale of conventionality of IFID realizations She holds that explicit IFID which is in the form of a formulaic expression contains performative verbs such

as (be) sorry, apologize, regret, excuse, and so on, and suggests a table presenting coding

categories for English apology IFIDs

Table 2: English apology IFIDs (Blum-Kulka)

Apologize I apologize for coming late to the meeting

Likewise, Owen (1983, pp.117-122) constructs the set of rules based on the felicity conditions

of speech acts for the use of the appropriate IFID in a substantive apology

Table 3: Felicity conditions of speech acts in a substantive apology (Owen, 1983)

Preparatory rule

(1)

The act A specified in the prepositional content is an offense against the addressee H

Rule (2) H would have preferred S‟s not doing A and S believes H would have

preferred S‟s not doing A to his doing A Rule (3) A does not benefit H and S believes A does not benefit H

Sincerity rule S regrets (is sorry for) having done A

Essential rule Counts as an expression of regret by S for having done A

With reference to this category, Trosborg (1995, p.381) presents a set of explicit apology expressions under her category of direct apologies, which are categorized into three subgroups with regards to level of formality and restrictions on occurrence They are (i) Expression of regret, (ii) Offer of apology, and (iii) Request for forgiveness In an apology, IFIDs can range from truly sincere expressions of regret on the apologizer‟s part, which would make a “strong apology”, to a mere expression of sympathy for the apologized, which aims to placate the H acknowledging the fact that some breach of social norms has malaffected the H

Table 4: Explicit apology expressions (Trosborg, 1995)

Regret (Be) afraid

My apology for … Extend my apology to you for …

Please, forgive me Pardon me

1.3 Politeness

1.3.1 Politeness theories

To maintain the other„s face is to recognize and respect the claims made by members of society in interaction The act of communicating such an acknowledgment is politeness Lakoff holds that “Politeness is a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange.” John J Gurnperz (cited in Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.xiii) in other words considers politeness the basic to the production of social order and a precondition of human cooperation Blum-Kulka (1987, p.131) whereas defines politeness as the interactional balance achieved between two needs: The need for pragmatic clarity and the need to avoid coerciveness

Politeness can be manifested through general social behavior as well as linguistic means This assumption, however, emphasizes once again on the fact that politeness cannot and should not

be assessed out of context, since from a pragmatic point of view, all utterances in conversation are interpreted firstly contextually and only secondly literally (Coulmas, 1981)

The issues of politeness are so crucial and thrilling that much effort has been made by pragmaticists to establish universal research framework for investigating its key problems Basically there are two conspicuously different approaches: normative and strategic

Considering politeness a manifestation of etiquette and the socially defined norms, this approach is called the social norm view (Fraser, 1990), the first order approach (Watts et al., 1992) and the traditional view (Werkhofer, 1992) However, the normative perspective is soon rejected because of the fact that a viable theory of politeness can‟t rest upon solely a set of rules based on social, normative behavior What we view as polite or impolite in normal interactions is subject to immediate and unique contextually-negotiated factors Its limitation

of explanatory power as regards interpersonal verbal behavior is dues to its being culture or group specific

As opposed to the normative perspective is strategic one including the Conversational maxim view (Grice, 1971; Lakoff, 1973), Cooperative principle (Leech, 1983) and the Face-saving view (Brown & Levinson, 1978) Grice‟s (1971) maxim consists of four maxims (1) The maxim of quality (2) The maxim of quantity (3) The maxim of relevance, and (4) The maxim

of manner This view is claimed to govern most human conversational interactions and rational participants abide by the maxims in so far as they are able in the process of the reasonable and efficient conveying of messages (Huong, 2006, p.54) However, this basis of the volitional approach toward key problems in politeness is also criticized to fail to give a reason why people are frequently indirect in expressing what they mean, so that they use conversional implication

Leech (1983) added and enriched Grice‟s Cooperative Principle, proposed Politeness Principle which makes up for the lack of Cooperative Principle and increases the expression of politeness He sees cultural rules at work in expression of politeness and attempts to categorize

in more details some the underlying intent behind these forms by articulating a set of rules or Politeness Maxims at work in polite dialogue including (1) Tact maxim: Minimize cost and maximize benefit to other, (2) Generosity maxim: Minimize benefit and maximize cost to self (3) Approbation maxim: Minimize dispraise and maximize praise of other (4) Modesty maxim: Minimize praise and maximize dispraise of self (5) Agreement maxim: Minimize disagreement and maximize agreement between self and other and (6) Sympathy maxim: Minimize antipathy and maximize sympathy between self and other Nonetheless, Lakoff‟s rules and Leech‟s maxims have been criticized to be central limitedly to Western notions of

politeness, which emphasizes non-imposition and freedom of actions As suggested by Huong (2006, p.57), they are difficult to be considered universal rules of politeness In nonwestern cultures including Vietnamese culture where community and group solidarity is highly appreciated, impersonalization is not always perceived as a polite strategy Leech‟s maxims allow us to make specific cross cultural comparison and to explain cross cultural differences in understanding politeness and the use of politeness strategies, they fail to account for contextual factors like roles of participants, their gender and the setting of talk The model seems to be best applied to only Anglo American cultures where social distance is valued Among the variety of politeness concepts that have been proposed in the pragmatic literature, the 'face-saving view' of politeness, proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), has been the most influential and abundant of politeness to date These scholars have suggested a conceptual framework based on the notion of 'face', which comes from Goffman‟s (1967) concept of “face” to explain the use of politeness phenomena Face Theory contains three basic notions: face, face threatening acts (FTA) and politeness strategies Face refers to the

“public self-image that every member of a society wants to claim for himself” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.66) A person‟s negative face is the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed on by others A person‟s positive face is the need to

be accepted, even liked, by others, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by others In simple terms, negative face is the need to be independent and positive face is the need to be connected Thus, the S should adopt certain strategies, in order to maintain his or her own face undamaged and at the same time to minimize the possibility of affecting the positive or negative face of the H (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.66) Notwithstanding extraordinary influential work, Brown & Levinson‟s model of politeness still get criticism from other researchers who study languages in non-western societies These researchers claim that Brown and Levinson‟s so-called universalistic concepts of face focusing on interactant‟s desires (wants) to be unimpeded (negative) or to be approved of (positive) are entirely based on the feature of individualism-appreciated of Anglocentric cultures These notions do not reflect the concept of politeness in Eastern societies like Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese where people take interest in preserving

collective spirit, obligation rather than in protecting privateness (Matsumoto, 1995; Yule,

1996, cited by Huong, 2006) Huong (2006) in formulating a model of politeness in Vietnamese, states that in interaction, the Vietnamese primarily give prominence to linguistic behavior in accordance with social norms to show the respect to the interactants by virtue of their status, age It is considered as the first manifestation of one‟s good educational background (mainly one‟s morality and personality)

1.3.2 Politeness in apologizing

Communicative and social behaviors have been suggested to be governed by politeness The norms of politeness are said to be culturally specific, in other words, languages differ in how they express politeness On the basis of cultural viewpoint, Yule (1996) states: “It is possible

to treat politeness as a fixed concept, as in the idea of “polite social behavior”, or etiquette,

within a culture (p.60)

The major patterns or strategies that make up the apology speech act are available to speakers across languages, yet preference for any one of them or for a combination of them will depend

on the specific situation within the given language and culture group

An important factor conditioning the decision to an appropriate response is the effect of status

or relative dominance between interlocutors Generally, role relationships, along with their attendants‟ sets of obligations, differ across societies Woflson et al (1989) find that:

[… Relationships between status unequals such as students and teachers, between status equals such as co-workers or classmates, between people as socially distant as total strangers or as familiar as family members, are all based upon a largely uncodified set of obligations Whether the obligation is to act or refrain from acting, or merely to carry out an act in an appropriate way, membership in a culture implies knowledge of what may be expected within a particular social relationship…]

When observing politeness norms, the researchers should always take account of the relationship between the S and the H and the nature of interaction in which they are involved (Leech, 1983) A politeness strategy is employed by the “weightiness” The weightiness is calculated by Ss from the social distance between S and H (D), and ranking of imposition (R)

R differs from culture to culture because they are how threatening and dangerous in a specific

culture P, D, and R do not have any absolute value Mainly a speaker values them according

to the situation and culture subjectively Thus weightiness is calculated as follows: Wx = D (S, H) + P (S, H) + Rx

Competent facework, which lessens the potential for specific actions to be regarded as threatening, encompasses a wide variety of communication behaviors These behaviors may include apologies, excessive politeness, the narration of justification or excuses, displays of deference and submission, the use of intermediaries or other avoidance strategies

face-1.4 Situations which elicit apologies in American culture and Vietnamese culture

Apologizing is one of the most sensitive areas of daily communication in terms of politeness

It plays a crucial role in keeping people happy As a norm of politeness and social habit, people would definitely get annoyed when apologizing is not given at the appropriate time or place as it is predicted and expected Situations which elicit apologies in one language could easily fail to do so in another Just as different cultures divide the color spectrum into non-corresponding or overlapping terms, so the repertoire of speech acts for each culture is differently organized The study “Problems in the comparison of speech acts across cultures”

by Woflson, Marmor and Jones (1989, pp.175-195) examined the actual conditions which elicited apologies in everyday interactions in American English The investigation revealed that apologies were made as recognition of a speaker‟s own failure to meet an implicit or explicit obligation to another These failures, intentional or not, ranged from the breaking of a piece of property to the breaking of a social contract

The study shows that many of the important obligations presented in the CCSARP questionnaire did indeed operate in American society They are (1) The obligation to keep a social or work-related commitment or agreement (2) The obligation to respect the property of others (3) The obligation not to cause damage or discomfort to others In addition, there were a number of others more subtle and difficult to describe including (4) The obligation not to make others responsible for one‟s welfare (5) The obligation not to appear to expect another person to be available at all time (6) The obligation not only to remember people we‟ve met, but not to confuse strangers with acquaintances (7) More subtle obligation develop between

peers to protect one another from sanctions from those in authority over them Americans typically apologize for wrongdoing of only themselves and a few others such as spouse, young children, and pets (Sugimoto, 1998) Two other studies on apologies in Vietnamese languages done by Kieu Thi Hong Van (2000) and Dang Thanh Phuong (2000) also examined the actual conditions which elicited apologies in everyday interactions in Vietnamese culture In their studies, such situations which were rated as highly offending to mention are (1) A students plagiarized from a published book and is found out by the professor (2) A shop worker hasn‟t finished repairing an antique watch for a familiar customer (3) A department head borrowed a portable computer from a coworker and accidentally erased some important information (4) A waiter in an expensive restaurant spilled food on a customer‟s clothes (5) A taxi driver in a parking lot backs up into another car (6) A staff manager has kept an applicant waiting half an hour for a job interview (7) A person has just taken another person‟s raincoat by mistake in the cloakroom (8) A person has lots a rather expensive book lent from another one (9) A person has come 15 minutes late for an important appointment

Overall, it can be found that offending situations calling for an apology in the previous studies

in Vietnamese culture are quite similar to those in the US However, most of those situations focused on the mistakes directly caused by one of the two interlocutors The case when none

of the conversation participants made the mistakes was not yet investigated This study, hence, will attempt to include such a situation to see how the two groups of informants reacted, especially to discover more about whether the differences in the nature of situation could lead

to different patterns of verbal apologizing behaviors

1.5 Apologizing strategies

In analyzing the various strategies used in apologizing, Fraser (1981, in Wolfson, 1989, p.88)

found that “in cases where social norms were broken, people often followed their formulaic apologies with some account which sought to provide an explanation or excuse for why the infraction happened in the first place” Where the apology was for an act which resulted in

injury or some sort of serious inconvenience, people tended to offer some form of redress instead of simply accounting for their action

A common reaction to the need to apologize is a search for self-justification by explaining the source of the offence caused by external factors over which the speaker has no control Depending on the situation, such an explanation can act as an apology Explanations vary by specificity and relevance: being late can be explained by reference to the specific event that caused it “The bus was late”, or by a general statement which is implicitly brought forth as relevant to the situation “Traffic is always so heavy in the morning” (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989)

According to Olshtain and Cohen (1983), the five strategies which make up the speech act set

of apology (Olshtain& Cohen, 1983) consist of two which are general and three which are

situation specific The two general strategies are: (1) Expression of apology - The IFID which

contains the formulaic, routinized forms of apology, the explicit, performative verbs which

express an apology with the intensifiers within, and (2) Acknowledgment of responsibility -

The expression of S‟s responsibility which relates to the S‟s willingness to admit to fault, or in Goffman‟s terms, as cited by Owen (1983, p.94), contains substrategies which relate to “pleas for excusable lack of foresight, pleas for reduced competence and admission of carelessness” Either one of them, or both in conjunctions with one another, are likely to occur in almost any

kind of apology situation, with some degree of probability In the Expression of apology, the S

uses a word, expression, or sentence containing a verb such as "sorry," "excuse," "forgive," or

"apologize." This expression of an apology can be intensified whenever the apologizer feels the need to do so Such intensification is usually accomplished by adding intensifiers such as

"really" or "very", for example, "I'm really sorry." In addition to the aforementioned strategies, studies on apologies have also shown that the use of multiple strategies and using adverbials within the IFID when apologizing was popular in order to intensify the apology (Blum-Kulka

& Olshtain, 1985; Cohen, Olshtain & Rosentstein, 1986; Olshtain & Cohen, 1987; Volmer & Olshtain, 1989, in Blum-Kulka et al., 1989)

When studying a relatively severe offence that the S accidentally bumps into a friend who is holding a cup of hot coffee, which makes the coffee spill over the friend and scald his/ her arm and soak his/ her clothing, Cohen, Olshtain and Rosentstein (1986, p.67) pointed out that there actually is a difference in American English between "very" and "really," with "really"

implying more regret and "very" more etiquette Thus, this apology that a friend may expect in this case could be "I'm really sorry Are you O.K.?"

Not only could an intensifier play an important role, but even an interjection like "Oh!" could have an important role In fact, there could be times when a well-placed "Oh!" and an offer of repair could take the place of an expression of apology in American English: e.g., "Oh! Here, let me help get something on that burn and clean up the mess," as opposed to, "I'm very sorry that I bumped into you." In their most recent work, Olshtain and Cohen (1987) have reported

on an experiment in which they set out to test the degree to which the speech act of apologizing in English could be taught to a group of advanced adult speakers of Hebrew The findings show that the NNs tended to intensify their apology expressions considerably more than did the Ns, and that the distribution of these intensifiers differed significantly from that manifested in the use of Ns Emotional interjections, on the other hand, were found to be typical in the usage of Ns, while the NNs tended to avoid them, with the result that their apologies sounded more formulaic and less sincere Specifically, one aspect of this difference had to do with utterance length, an aspect of leaner behavior earlier studied by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1985), who suggest that when learners are uncertain about how to say what they mean in the target language, they tend to say much more than is appropriate, thus unintentionally failing to express their intended meanings Moreover, when the offender

recognizes his/her fault in causing the infraction, he or she uses the Acknowledgment of responsibility The degree of such recognition on the part of the apologizer can be placed on a

scale The highest level of intensity is an acceptance of the blame "It's my fault." At a somewhat lower level would be an expression of self-deficiency "I was confused”, or “I didn't see” At a still lower level would be the expression of lack of intent "I didn't mean to." Lower still would be an implicit expression of responsibility "I was sure I had given you the right directions."

In addition to these two strategies inherently related to the S‟s willingness to express an apology for a violation which can be used across all situations requiring the act of apology,

three other strategies, (3) Explanation or account of the violation, (4) Offer of the repair, and (5) Promise of forbearance, are much more situation-dependent When giving Explanation for

the violation, the S describes the situation which caused him/her to commit the offense and

which is used by this S as an indirect way of apologizing The explanation is intended to set things right In some cultures this may be a more acceptable way of apologizing than in others Thus, in cultures where public transportation is unreliable, coming late to a meeting and giving

an explanation like, "The bus was late," might be perfectly acceptable The Offer of repair is

employed when the apologizer makes a bid to carry out an action or provide payment for some kind of damage resulting from his/her infraction If someone is late for an appointment with a friend s/he might say something like "How can I make it up to you? Why don‟t I buy you lunch on Friday?”, or someone who fails to make it to an appointment might say "Would you

be willing to reschedule the meeting?" The last strategy which is regarded as less frequent

than other strategies is Promise for forbearance used if the apologizer wants to commit

him/herself to not having the offense happen again

The framework of Cohen and Olshtain (1983) has been used in many studies up to now, among which the CCRASP is the best-known Quite similar to the strategies proposed by Cohen and Olshtain, Trosborg (1995) with her study on request and apologies across cultures set up a list of apologizing strategies with quite the same basic strategies but some

substrategies have been added basing on data collected from her research

Strategy 0: Opt-out: Complainee does not take on responsibility

 Explicit denial of responsibility: The complainee Emphasize his/her “innocence” with argument of the “I know nothing about it, I can assure you”

 Implicit denial of responsibility: The complainee evades responsibility, for example by ignoring a complaint, by talking about something else

 Justification: The complainee provides arguments in which he/she seeks to persuade the complainer that no blame can be attached to him/her

 Blame someone else: The complainee seeks to evade responsibility by blaming someone else

 Attack the complainer: If the complainer lacks an adequate defense for his/her own behavior, he/she may choose to attack the complainer instead

 Querying preconditions: Well, everybody does that

 Blame someone else: The offence committed by the complainee can be partly excused by

an offence committed by a third party

Strategy 2: Acknowledgment of responsibility

When a complainee chooses to take on responsibility, he/she can do so implicitly or explicitly and with varying degrees of self-blame With an effort to placate the offended party, the S often chooses to express the responsibility for the offence which created the need to apologize

An expression of responsibility relates to the S‟s willingness to admit to fault It is, therefore, FTA to the S and intended to appease the H An apologizer can take on responsibility by blaming him/herself, expressing lack of intent or admitting the fact

 Implicit acknowledgment: Perhaps I shouldn‟t have done it

 Explicit acknowledgment: The S does not deny his/her involvement in the offence but

attempts to avoid openly accepting his/her responsibility I‟ll admit I forgot to do it

 Expression of lack of intent: The S explicitly states that he/she hasn‟t intended to hurt the

H through his/her offence: I didn‟t mean to I didn‟t mean to upset you (Blum-Kulka et

al., 1989)

 Expression of embarrassment: I feel so bad about it

 Expression of self-deficiency: I was confused You know I am bad at …

 Explicit acceptance of the blame: It was entirely my fault You‟re right to blame me

Strategy 3: Explanation or Account

A complainee may try to mitigate his/her guilt by giving an explanation or account of the situation Various kinds of mitigating circumstances serve as indirect apologies and may be put forward on their own or in addition to a direct expression of apology The S may mitigate his/her responsibility for an offence by offering any external mitigating circumstances, i.e

“objective” reasons for the violation over which he/she has no control

 Implicit explanation: Such things are bound to happen, you know

 Explicit explanation: Sorry I‟m late, but my car broke down

Strategy 4: Apologize

 Expression of regret: I‟m sorry

 Offer of apology: I apologize for

 Request for forgiveness: Please, forgive me

Apologies occur frequently as social routines which may not meet the demands expressed in the sincerity conditions (Owen, 1983) In apology situations, in particular if the gravity of the offence is a severe one, a verbal expression of apology is hardly enough to placate the offended person Explanation and justification may be needed Accordingly, additional support may be offered either in the form of an offer of repair, promise of forbearance, or expression of concern

Strategy 5: Offer of repair

The S may also offer to repair or compensate for the damage or inconvenience which has resulted from his or her infraction This offer must be directly related to the committed action Repair may be offered in its literal sense or as an offer to pay for the damage

 Repair: I‟ll pay for the cleaning

 Compensation: You can borrow my suit instead

Strategy 6: Promise of forbearance

When making apologies the S takes responsibility by expressing regret In some situations, the feeling of responsibility is so strong that the S feels the need to promise never to perform the committed offence again In this respect, apologies seem to relate not only to past but to future acts as well The S often expresses a promise of forbearance by the performative verb

“promise”: It won‟t happen again I promise

Strategy 7: Express the concern for the H

In order to pacify the H, the S may take explicit cognizance of the H‟s well-being, feelings and

conditions: I hope I didn‟t upset you (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989)

1.6 Previous studies on apologizing

Apologizing is universal and has always been considered one of the main communicative acts and among the most “sensitive” areas of politeness in human interactions To date, there have been quite many investigations into the realization patterns of apologies, classifications and factors influencing the choice of strategies Though there is no unification in how many types and what names should be given to each apologizing strategy, much consensus has been set forth among the factors leading to the apologizers‟ selections of certain realization patterns

In the past decade, there have been a number of empirical studies on interlanguage communication in order to examine the production of apology speech act by learners, mostly

of English as a foreign language (EFL), at different proficiency levels from various language backgrounds (Cohen et al, 1986; Trosborg, 1986, 1995; Bergman & Kasper, 1993, Maeshiba

et al, 1996; Rose, 2000) In 1980, Owen examined the various frameworks of analysis put forth by Goffman (1971), by Austin (1962), by Searle (1969), by ethnomethodologists Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks (1977), and finally argues for a model inspired by the work of Brown and Levison (1978)

On the apology strategy preference, Fraser was among the very first authors doing his research in 1981 along with two of his graduate students at Boston University to collect

“several hundred examples of apologizing through personal experience, participant

observation, responses of role playing, and from reports provided by friends and colleagues”

He found that in cases where social norms were broken, people provided an explanation or excuse for why the infraction happened in the first place “Where the apology was for an act which resulted in injury or some sort of serious inconvenience, people tended to offer some form of redress instead of simply accounting for their action.” This research done in a very large scale with different instruments of data collection is valuable for the fact that it laid the foundation for many authors later on develop the theory for apologizing speech act to date Later on, Cohen and Olshtain (1981), Olshtain (1983), and Olshtain and Cohen (1983) basing their studies of apologies on the need to know native speaker norms in order to enhance efforts

at second language proficiency have carried out several studies in which they examine the use

of apologies by first - and second - language learners, working principally within the framework of speech act theory set forth by Searle (1969) Their studies show, among other things, that the rules of speaking of a person‟s first language come into play in their use of a second language Olshtain and Cohen (1983)‟s classification of five apologizing strategies, has especially appeared to be the most effective and has been used or modified by many other researchers in the following years, including House and Kasper (1983), Holmes (1989), Trosborg (1986, 1995); and Bergman and Kasper (1993) More importantly, their research into the speech act of apologizing has additionally formed the base of the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) which analyzed the structure and linguistic devices of apologies The CCSARP concerns politeness in speech act “Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and Apologies” and projects a cross-cultural speech act realization in seven different territories Its framework and coding scheme have informed most studies on apology and request in both cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatic research (Clyne et al, 2003) Though it is a bit dated and its use of Discourse Completion Task (DCT) as a primary data collection method is a bit problematic, the CCSARP still remains an important research project thanks to the project‟s large-scale with respect to the realization patterns of two speech acts - apologies and requests compared in eight languages and language varieties, namely Australian English, American English, British English, Canadian French, Danish, German, Hebrew and Argentinean Spanish (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989)

and with its threefold goals to investigate the cross-cultural variations, sociopragmatic variations and interlanguage variations in the realization patterns of two speech acts (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984, p.197) And the same conclusion drawn out from the aforementioned studies confirms that among the listed strategies, IFID, Acknowledgment of responsibility, and Offer of repair are the most commonly used by interlocutors in many languages (Olshtain, 1989) Also in the case of English apology, the expressions with “Sorry” are used as part of a social interactional routinized formula (Olshtain &Cohen 1983; Owen, 1983; Rintell & Mitchell, 1989; Trosborg, 1995)

Previous research on the influential factors of the apologizing strategy preferences conducted

by Cohen and Olshtain (1983), Olshtain (1989), Holmes, (1989), Bergman and Kasper (1993), and Maeshiba et al (1996) share the same view of deciding context-internal and context-external to be the determining ones In relation to the context-internal factors, the nature of the offence (that is the severity of the offence) is believed to have the strongest influence on apology realization The first idea was initiated by Fraser (1981) when he looked at the effect

of situation on choice of apology form and found that “The more formal the situation, the longer and more elaborate the apology” It is interesting that situations which he defined as formal, Fraser collected examples of speakers saying “I apologize” or even “Please accept my apologies for …” which help to enhance the analysis to the basic formulas which nonnative speakers are most in need of learning This idea has again been cemented by the recent cross-cultural investigation on requests and apologies within the speech communities of Montevideo, Uruguay and London, England by Marquez Reiter (2000) When the participants have equal social power, Reiter (2000, p.179) found that the “severity of offence” variable gains importance and ultimately determines the performance and shape of an apology

The study of García (1989) compares apologies performed by non-native speakers of English from Venezuela with those of native speakers of English in open-ended role-plays Findings from the analysis of these role-plays showed that when informants apologized to their host for not having attended his party, the Venezuelan informants used a positive-politeness approach, while the native English-speaking informants preferred a negative-politeness approach The apologies offered by the Venezuelans included explanations for not attending, avoiding

disagreement with the host, repetition of the host‟s words and in-group identity markers, while the apologies offered by the native American English speakers included paying deference to the host, self-effacing behavior, and devices to maintain social distance With respect to the context-external factors, according to most studies, apology performance is affected mostly by such factors as social power and social distance (Blum-Kulka, 1989, Maehiba et al, 1996) In his study, Fraser found that there is a negative correlation between intimacy and elaborate apologies Thus, he mentioned husbands and wives reporting “apologies frequently taking the form of “Oops”, “No good”, “I‟m an idiot” and the like, where the utterance does not even specifically refer to the act in question…” Recently, a contrastive study into apology strategies among three main groups Native British, Chinese graduate student and Chinese learners of English in conjunction with an examination of the politeness framework of Brown and Levinson (1987) was done by Hua Xiang (2007) The research has shown the evidence for its validity thanks to the triangulation of research methods combining the DCTs for revealing the apology realization, and a follow up questionnaire based on Likert-scale type for exploring the subjects‟ evaluation of the appropriateness of the given strategies in each particular situation The study shows that new categories of apology strategies were identified based on the CCSARP coding manual, and the Chinese groups show they still seem to commit deep-structured sociolinguistic transfer in their speech In addition to the three variables suggested

by Brown and Levinson P, D and R which were partly confirmed to be influential in deciding politeness strategies, Hua Xiang concluded that the influences of the features of collectivist and individualist cultures (Brown et al 1987; Hofstede, 1980) were found helpful in explaining the differences in the subjects‟ production and evaluation of apology strategies Interesting findings together with its thorough analysis on the influential cultural factors in the production of apology strategies has to a certain extent proved that this study is a really worth-reading and should be a helpful reference for this thesis

It can be concluded that the results from interlanguage studies of apologies show that learners have access to the same range of speech act realization strategies as native speakers, irrespective of proficiency levels; however, they differ from native speakers in the way they implement strategies linguistically

Compared to other Asian languages like Japanese or Chinese, Vietnamese is an researched language Most of the limited pragmatics research in Vietnamese is in the tradition

under-of contrastive pragmatics, which contrast the realization patterns under-of speech acts such as greeting (Suu, 1990), compliment and compliment response (Quang, 1998), request and request response (Thanh, 2000; Quyen, 2001), and disagreeing (Huong, 2001, 2006) Vietnamese with those of other languages, particularly English Like studies on other speech acts, apology studies in Vietnamese also follow descriptive and contrastive pragmatics tradition To date there are two studies on this speech act by Dang Thanh Phuong (2000) and Kieu Thi Hong Van (2000)

In Vietnam, Dang Thanh Phuong (2000) has a cross-cultural pragmatic focus In this study he compared the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese apologizing and responding to apology in two dimensions namely the strategy of apologizing and responding together with the manipulation of lexico-modal markers in apologies and their responses The results were elicited by means of survey questionnaire including three socially-differentiated situations and the data were coded in line with five main units of the apology speech act proposed by Olshtain (1989) In his study, the strategies were grouped into two main categories, i.e direct strategies via an IFID and indirect strategies The study shows that English and Vietnamese differ in terms of directness and indirectness levels in both formal and informal contexts In addition, English participants used more lexico-modal marker than do Vietnamese, especially such modal markers as intensifier, subjectivizers, downtoners and hedges Meanwhile the Vietnamese appeared to employ more politeness markers in their apologies and responses than that of the English group Phuong‟s research is the first cross-cultural study of apologies in English and Vietnamese, however, despite this fact, due to the over-simplification of grouping apology strategies into two categories of indirect and direct strategies, the manipulation of each of the strategies constituting the speech act of apologizing seems to have been obscured Thus, the actual wordings of apology strategies, especially the IFID have not been carefully analyzed

Another cross-cultural study on apology in English and Vietnamese is that of Kieu Thi Hong Van (2000) In this study Van examines the realization patterns of apology in English and

Vietnamese with respect to strategies, remedial support and internal modification in relation to the variation of context-external factors and context-internal factor The study was quite successful in explaining the influential factors of the apologizing strategies as well as showed its great value in terms of distinguishing different notions of those affecting strategies factors

of different authors Similarly, the study‟s values lie at the effort in firstly designing the metapragmatic questionnaire aiming at finding the most appropriate situations for later DCT,

it consists of twenty different situations where participants were asked to evaluate the P, D and

R of the situations The core of the situations is that the R was kept constantly high so that apologies were found in all chosen six situations in the DCT Then the DCT‟s items were mostly to find out the strategies in the selected situations with respect to P and D The results from the DCT show that the context-external factor – age of the H with respect to the S has significant effect on Vietnamese realization patterns of apologies whereas it cannot be found

in the English group With respect to other two context-external factors namely P and D, Vietnamese speakers took these factors into consideration more than English speakers in the acts of apologizing Though this study solely dealt with one type called substantive apologies,

it contributed to a certain extent to a better understanding of this type of speech act as a generic type and laid the foundation for many other further studies Nonetheless, the effect of culture values of two participating groups was not really in-depth investigated for the discussion of the findings

Though a number of preceding volumes have been successful to some extent, most of the studies in apology manipulations in Vietnam just follow the traditional method of contrasting pragmatics between Vietnamese language and English Thus, gaps are still there to fill in

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

As stated in the previous part of the study, the speech act of apologizing aims at maintaining, restoring and enhancing interpersonal relationships In this research, the three research questions are:

1 How do American speakers of English verbally apologize?

2 How do Vietnamese speakers of English verbally apologize in English?

3 What are the similarities and differences between the apologizing strategies employed by Vietnamese speakers of English and American speakers of English?

Answers to these aforementioned questions will help to find out how American native speakers of English and Vietnamese speakers of English perform their apologies in relation to the social factors assigned in the contexts studied and ascertain the similarities and differences

in their apologizing strategies in the contexts studied Finally the socio-cultural factors causing the choice of apologizing strategies of the two groups will be investigated

2.1 Research methods

Qualitative and quantitative methods are both employed in this paper

The same set of survey questionnaires were given to two groups The collected data were analyzed using statistical and interpretive methods and classified to describe, analyze, compare and contrast based on the foci of the research All the conclusions and considerations were based on the analysis of data got from the questionnaire through a system of detailed coding and presentations in tables and graphs

The approach to be applied was comparative data analysis since the research laid the main focus on the differences and similarities in Vietnamese and American verbal expression of apology towards different addressees This research design, as stated by Vijver & Leung (1997), was suitable when there were two or more situations studied and especially did a great help in exploring the meaning and causes of cultural differences with the aid of context variables It is therefore hoped that the secret of apologizing strategies of American and Vietnamese would be discovered

2.2 Data collection instrument

The study utilizes data from a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) with open-ended items because this kind of data collection instrument has been widely used in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics after significant cross-cultural variation has been found Adapted in 1982

by Blum-Kulka for the purpose of investigating speech acts, the DCT is a questionnaire containing a set of very briefly described situations designed to elicit a particular speech act and requires its subjects to read each situation and to respond to a prompt in writing

Though some researchers have claimed that the most authentic data in sociolinguistic research

is spontaneous speech gathered by ethnographic observation, difficulties in relying solely on this method are well documented (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989, Manes & Wolfson,

1981, cited in Varghese & Billmyer, 1996) In addition, in spite of the fact that for some, DCT

is labeled as an instrument that limits the capturing of authentic communication, there are to date no other sociolinguistic data collection instruments that have as many administrative advantages as the DCT, making it, “practically speaking, a resource pragmatics testing and teaching will continue to rely on” (Billmyer &Varghese, 2000)

Without question the DCT surpasses all others in ease of use, and, as Beebe and Cummings (1985) conclude, result in researcher‟s ability to collect a very large corpus of data about a community‟s perceptions regarding correct speech behavior, on a wide range of difficult-to-observe speech behaviors, in a short period of time More importantly, different researchers noted that data elicited with this instrument are consistent with naturally occurring data, at least in the main patterns and formulas, in other words, using written elicitation techniques enables us to obtain more stereotyped responses; that is “the prototype of the variants occurring in the individual‟s actual speech and this more stereotyped aspect of speech behavior that we need for cross-cultural comparability, says Hill et al (1986, p.353, cited in Blum Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989) The value of such data is generally recognized, particularly for the purpose of developing “an initial classification of semantic formulas and strategies that will occur in natural speech” (Beebe, 1985, p.10, cited in Wolfson et al., 1989)

The utilization of DCT in a numerous speech act studies has proved that large scale data collection of this type produces good information on the set of formulas considered appropriate to a given situation Some notable studies worth mentioning include the ones on apologies (Olshtain and Cohen 1983, Kasper 1989, House 1989a, Linnel et al., 1992, Bergman and Kasper, 1993), expressions of gratitude (Olshtain & Cohen 1983, Kasper 1989, House

1989, Linnel et al., 1992, Bergman & Kasper, 1993), expressions of gratitude (Eisenstein & Bodman, 1986, 1993), refusals (Beebe et al., 1990, Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1991), advice (Hinkel 1997), and requests (House & Kasper 1987, Blum-Kulka & House 1989, Faerch & Kasper 1989) among which, the CCSARP which investigated requests and apologies across

13 languages is the most ambitious project on speech acts to date (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989) While it is necessary to recognize that the data collected from the DCT only cannot be expected to provide the researchers with all the information needed about the ways in which a speech act is performed in spontaneous interactions, the advantages of the DCT in relation to its relative speed and facility in administration still proves to be a useful tool for providing a preliminary look at cultural preferences in the performance of apologies and making the statistical analysis more feasible It is therefore believed that the DCT can be an excellent means of corroborating over a wider population results that have been obtained by ethnographic studies while clearly further work with higher quality ethnographic data will be required to obtain a fuller picture It is the most feasible in providing researchers with the conceptions of what subjects consider to be the socially and culturally appropriate responses in any given context (Lyuh, 1992)

2.3 The questionnaire

2.3.1 Factors manipulated in the DCT

In studying apologies, a major research question relates to the factors which affect S‟s decision to choose any realization of the act over the others in the potential set of such realizations Power and distance have been identified as two significant social variables affecting speech act performance (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989) The concept of power is related to vertical and that of distance (or solidarity) to

horizontal realm While the former is associated with such notions as nonreciprocal control and submission, the latter is linked to such notions as mutual bonding and unfamiliarity

Olshtain and Weinbach (1987) suggest a notion of socio-pragmatic set in order to encompass the social and the contextual factors which might affect the S‟s choice Therein, the social factors include parameters such as social power, social distance, sex and age, and the contextual factors include situational features which carry pragmatic significance since they affect realization choice The contextual factors are speech-act-specific and relate to the situational preconditions for the occurrence of the particular speech act In the case of apology these contextual factors relate to the severity of the violation and to the culturally perceived obligation of the S to carry out an explicit act of apologizing Sharing the same view, Woflson

et al hold that both directives and apologies, as speech acts, have been examined as means of maintaining the social order and as indicators of distance and dominance in relationships (cited in Blum-Kulka et al, 1989) Given the findings in the sociolinguistic literature (Wolfson,

1978, Bell, 1984, cited in Woflson et al., p.191), it is not surprising that such factors as sex of participants, age, degree of intimacy, frequency of interaction, and optionality of the relationship might be important and separable components of what is subsumed under social distance and social dominance

In addition, Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) theory of politeness also claims that status, social distance, and severity of offense are the three factors influencing the use of polite behavior, and much of the CCSARP literature has demonstrated the validity of this claim, with respect

to a number of different speech acts These two researchers (1987) have subsumed all the complex factors into a very simple formula They propose three independent variables that have a systematic effect on the choice of appropriate polite expression in performing an FTA

in a given context They are (i) The relative power P of S and H (a symmetric relation), (ii) The social distance D of S and H (an asymmetric relation) and (iii) The absolute ranking of impositions in the particular culture (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.74)

The relative power P is an asymmetric social dimension of relative power or more simply it is the power of S with respect to H In effect, this is the degree to which S can impose his or her

own plans and self evaluation face at the expense of H‟s plan and evaluation Brown and Levinson distinguish two sources of P, either of which may be authorized or unauthorized: material control (over economic distribution or physical force) and metaphysical control (over the actions of others, by virtue of metaphysical forces subscribed by those others) (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.77) The social distance D is a symmetric social dimension of similarity/ difference within which S and H stand for the purpose of this act In effect, it is the degree of familiarity and solidarity S and H share as represented through in-group or out-group membership The absolute ranking of imposition (R) is situational and cultural defined It is the imposition in the culture, in terms of the expenditure of goods and/ or services by H, or the obligation of S to perform the act This will vary depending on whether which speech act is used

The descriptions of variation of the three variables used in this study are as follows:

The P is the relative power of the H to the H and has the following values

+ P: S has higher rank, title or social status, herein S and his/her subordinate

=P: S and H are equal in rank, title or social status, herein S and his/her colleague

-P: S has a lower/less rank, title or social status, herein S and his/her boss

The D refers to the degree of solidarity and familiarity between interlocutors and has has the following values

+D: S and H do not know or identify with each other They are strangers interacting due to social/ life circumstances, herein S and a stranger

-D: S and H are intimate with each other; herein S and his/her close friends

=D: S and H know or identify with each other They are familiar but not really intimate with each others They are acquaintances, namely boss, colleague, and subordinate

The R is the degree of severity of offence and has the following values