A contrastive analysis of apologizing by english and vietnamese speakers

Figure 3: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 1 .... Figure 4: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speaker

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN TRANG NHUNG

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF APOLOGIZING

BY ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SPEAKERS

PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁCH THỨC XIN LỖI CỦA NGƯỜI

ANH VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT

M.A THESIS

HANOI – 2013

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN TRANG NHUNG

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF APOLOGIZING

BY ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SPEAKERS

PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁCH THỨC XIN LỖI CỦA NGƯỜI

ANH VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied

or reproduced by me from any other‟s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor

Hanoi, October 10, 2013

Candidate Supervisor

Nguyen Trang Nhung Prof Hoang Van Van

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to give sincere thanks to my supervisor Prof Dr Hoang Van Van for his continuous support, encouragement, patience, sympathy and critical feedback

I would like to extend my gratitude and appreciation to a number of people, without whose support this thesis would not have been completed

I am also grateful to my close friends and my colleagues at Hanoi Open University, Hanoi University of Business and Technology and ETC English Training Center for their contribution in helping me distribute my questionnaires and code data for the research

I also wish to thank other friends for their understanding and assistance during the process of this study

Finally, I would like to thank my family, especially my parents for their constant source of love, support and encouragement in times of difficulty and frustration

Nguyen Trang Nhung

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration

Acknowledgements

Table of contents ………

List of abbreviations

List of tables and figures

PART 1 – INTRODUCTION

1- Rationale of the study

2- Aims of the study

3- Research questions

4- Scope of the study

5- Methods of the study

6- Design of the study

PART 2 – DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

1.1 Literature review: Overview of previous studies on apologies

1.2 Theoretical background

1.2.1 Theories of speech acts

1.2.1.1 Austin‘s theory of speech acts

1.2.1.2 Searle‘s theory of speech acts

1.2.2 Politeness

1.2.2.1 Theories of politeness

1.2.2.1.1 Lakoff‘s theory of politeness

1.2.2.1.2 Brown & Levinson‘s theory of politeness

1.2.2.2 Politeness strategies and choices of strategy

1.2.3 Apologizing

1.2.3.1 Definitions of apology

1.2.3.2 Apologizing as a speech act

i

ii iii

iv

v

1

1

3

3

3

4

5

6

6

6

8

9

9

13

16

16

17

19

20

22

22

24

1.2.3.3 Some particular situations in which apologies are recommended

in English and Vietnames

1.2.3.3.1 In English

1.2.3.3.2 In Vietnamese

1.2.3.4 Apologizing strategies

Chapter 2 – Methodology

2.1 Research methods

2.2 Subjects of the study

2.3 Data collection instruments

2.4 Data collection procedures

2.5 Questionnaires

Chapter 3 – Findings and discussions

3.1 Apology data analysis by situation

3.2 Discussions

PART 3 – CONCLUSION

1 Recapitulation

2 Limitations of the study

3 Implications of the study

3.1 Implications for English – Vietnamese cross-cultural communication

3.2 Implications for language learning and teaching

4 Suggestions for a further study

REFERENCES ………

APPENDIX

26

26

27

28

31

31

34

35

35

36

41

41

58

61

61

62

64

64

65

66

72

Concern for the hearer

Discourse Completion Test

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: The relation between ‗words‘ and ‗world‘ Table 2: Patterns of apologizing in Vietnamese daily communication Table 3: Apologizing strategies employed by English and Vietnamese speakers Table 4: Frequency of the use of apologizing categories by English and Vietnamese speakers across the first five situations Table 5: Frequency of the use of apologizing categories by English and Vietnamese speakers across the last five situations Figure 1: First rule of Lakoff‘s theory of politeness Figure 2: Second rule of Lakoff‘s theory of politeness Figure 3: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 1 Figure 4: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 2 Figure 5: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 3 Figure 6: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 4 Figure 7: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 5 Figure 8: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 6 Figure 9: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 7 Figure 10: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 8 Figure 11: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 9

Figure 12: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 10 57

PART I – INTRODUCTION

1- Rationale of the study

Nowadays, English plays an important role in many sectors all over the world

It is considered as an international language and spoken everywhere It helps people from different countries and cultures communicate and become closer

In all aspects of language, speech acts are assessed as the most specific culture In each language and culture, people have different ways to express their behavior It means speakers will have different recognitions of speech acts Up to now, there are many definitions of speech acts, however, according to Austin (1975), the most common and general view of speech acts is of utterances that when issued perform an action In my thesis, I choose the speech act of apologizing to be the researched object Fraser (1981) said that an apology is the speech act when somebody is offended due to the fact that personal expectations are not fulfilled Besides, according to Trosborg (1995), the speech act of apologizing is required either when the social norms

of politeness demand the mending of a behavior or when a linguistic expression has offended another person This speech act always requires the presence of two respondents, one person apologizes and one person expects

an apology

My thesis with the title ―A contrastive analysis of apologizing by English and Vietnamese speakers‖ focuses on analyzing the speech act of apologizing of two countries which represents for two different cultures: Western and Eastern culture As we know, in Western countries, people have been living with the words to express apology in their whole life When they were only small children, they have been taught to say these words Whenever they make a very little mistake, they are always ready to say apology Even some

mistakes weren‘t caused by them; they still say ―sorry‖ For example: when walking on the road, someone bump into each other, the first words they say are sure that ―sorry‖ or ―I‘m sorry‖ instead of finding it to be whose mistake first This communicative culture has existed in Western communities for a long time This help people communicate and work very comfortable and effective

However, contrary to Western countries, Vietnamese people from Eastern culture rarely say something to express their apology such as ―Sorry‖ or ―I‘m sorry‖ … My personal observation shows that the expression of apology is a ceremonious and affected action; sometimes it is even a bit shameful In Vietnam, even for some situations in which we can‘t help expressing the apology, people still spend a lot of time considering the situation first They hesitate so much to say these words They forgot one thing that their ego‘s put too high So we can easily understand why Vietnamese people hardly say

―I‘m sorry‖ or ―Sorry‖ In general, instead of saying these words directly, Vietnamese people often have a tendency to use other ways such as saying something else or using other actions to express apology

The significance of my thesis is expressed through two issues The first issue

is that the speech act of apology is evidently face-threatening and it is considered as one of the most highly sensitive acts in daily social communication The second one is that it is necessary to find out the suitable and effective way of expressing the apology as well as avoid hurting the other

in the act of giving apology to gain success in social communication In conclusion, I hoped that my thesis can provide the readers more important knowledge and essential elements to become more confident in cross-cultural communication It is also useful for foreign language learning and teaching in Vietnam I also expect that my thesis can help people understand and use the

apologizing words clearly and effectively most Actions to express apology are nice characteristics in every culture all over the world Don‘t be afraid or ashamed when saying apology

2- Aims of the study

The aims of this study is to investigate the act of apologizing with subjects from different cultures (English – Western Culture and Vietnamese – Eastern Culture) in order to find out whether there are similarities and differences between their usage of apologies The study also tries to know the way the speech act of apology is recognized by English and Vietnamese people, pointing to any similarities or differences that two groups might display in their responses to the situations calling for apology and explaining the motives that cause those similarities and differences Answers to this question will be of particular importance in that it constitutes a fertile ground upon which the other questions that underlie this thesis can be examined

3- Research questions

The study focused to answer the following research questions:

1- How do English people apologize?

2- How do Vietnamese people apologize?

3- Are there any similarities and differences between their usages of apologizing strategies?

4- Scope of the study

 The thesis focuses on analyzing situations and strategies of expressing

apology in English and Vietnamese culture

 The data were collected by making a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), based on socially different situations in which apology is

recommended

5- Methods of the study

In this study, I would like to use both qualitative and quantitative methods Quantitative data was elicited by means of a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which consists of ten different situations The collected data will be analyzed in comparing and contrasting techniques to find out the similarities and differences in the ways English and Vietnamese perform the act of giving apology as a politeness strategy

10 native speakers of English and 10 Vietnamese people [5 native speakers of English and 10 Vietnamese people are working at ETC English Training Center, 5 other native speakers are foreigner tourists staying at Silver Hotel at

45 Phan Chu Trinh Street, Hanoi] participated in this study These subjects are asked to response a questionnaire with ten situations in which an apology

is expected The results of the study reveal some similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese

Besides, all the comments, considerations and conclusions in this study are based on:

 references to relevant documents

 statistics and analysis of the collected data

 a survey questionnaire

 consultation with supervisor

 discussion with English and Vietnamese colleagues and friends

 personal observation

6- Design of the study

My research is divided into three main parts with many different sections:

Part A – Introduction focuses on six issues: the rationale (showing the

importance of English nowadays and apologizing culture in English and Vietnamese), aims, research questions, scope, methods and design of the study

Part B – Development

Chapter 1 – Literature review and theoretical background discusses theories

of the subject, theories of speech acts based on Austin and Searle‘s theories, theory of politeness and apology It also shows a review of previous studies

on apologizing, some situations in which apologies are recommended in English and Vietnamese and strategies to face with these difficulties

Chapter 2 – Methodology details the methods that have been used, the subject

selections, data collection instruments and procedures and a discourse completion task

Chapter 3 – Findings and discussions presents findings of the study and

discusses more about ways to express apology The similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese in the apologizing strategies will

be presented and discussed deeply

Part C – Conclusion summarizes main points of the study, limitations,

implications and some suggestions for further studies in this field

At the end of this study, there is an Appendix which supplies the reference of the study and a survey questionnaire for English and Vietnamese

PART II – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 –THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In this chapter, the first part will review the previous studies on the speech act

of apology The second part will be a brief review of the speech act model It mainly based on the theories of speech acts of Austin‘s (1962) and Searle‘s (1969, 1979) Besides, I want to go beyond this particular speech act and widen the scope of the study by discussing the main outlines of politeness theories

1.1 Literature review: Overview of previous studies on apologies

Many researchers in the world chose the speech act of apology to be the title

of their studies These researches indicated that the countries with different cultures have different rules in expressing their strategies of apologizing to keep politeness before each situation The result of the studies revealed that pragmatic competence expresses people‘s ability in employing speech acts appropriately The researchers have carried out many studies on apologizing

in different languages such as the politeness strategies employed, the cultural values reflected in the realization of an apology, gender, the factors affecting the use of a particular strategy and the strategies used by native and non-native speakers

In 1989, Olshtain carried out her study on comparing the employment of strategies of apologies by speakers of English, French, German, and Hebrew The findings revealed that there were some considerable similarities in selecting expressions of responsibility She concluded that different languages will realize apologies in very similar ways In 1997, Sugimoto also researched about the speech act of apology The subjects, who participated to answer an

open-ended questionnaire, consisted of 181 Japanese college students (82 males and 99 females) and 200 American college students (79 males and 121females) The results of the research indicated that the respondents focus

on employing these strategies: explanation of the situation, regret and reparation The Japanese subjects may be interested in using these strategies than American ones A promise of forbearance and compensation were used mainly in Japanese strategies of apology

The study of Garcia (1989) compares the expression of apologies which performed between non-native speakers of English from Venezuela and native speakers of English in open-ended role-plays The findings of this study indicated that when the respondents want to express apologies to the host because of their absence at the party, Venezuela respondents employed the positive politeness strategy which combined explanations of the reason why they didn‘t attend, avoidance of disagreement with the host and repetition of the host‘s words and in-group identity markers; otherwise, native speakers of English mainly used the negative politeness approach These apologies included paying deference to the host, self-effacing behavior and devices to maintain social distance

Edmundson (1992) carried out an investigation into the perception of apologies by 161 American native speakers of English They took part in assessing whether apologies in an appropriate, sincere, and acceptable number

of television programs The findings of this research showed interesting information that not only the sincerity but also the length of the apology regarded as a standard to decide whether an apology was appropriate Most of the respondents said that the apologizer should employ longer apologies instead of appearance of many too short ones Almost previous studies I reviewed in my thesis gave the common conclusion that non-native speakers

expressed their apologies with the greater length than native speakers did However, up to now, none of researches can quantify the exact length of the apologies which to be regarded as a criterion for an appropriate apology According to Hussein (1995), he argued that the individual information of respondents in the study such as their age, status, level of education, situation

or social distance is one of the main elements affecting to determine the formulas of any speech acts A research of apology strategies has carried out

by Hussein and Hammouri in 1998 The respondents of this research are speakers of English coming from Jordani and America Looking at the statistical data, it indicated that only Jordani used the strategy of minimizing the degree of offense or interjecting; in general, all of respondents employ some main strategies like the expression of apology, acknowledgement of responsibility, offer of repair or promise of forbearance

In Vietnam, most of the limited pragmatics researches are in the tradition of contrastive pragmatics, which contrast the realization patterns of speech acts such as greeting (Suu 1990), compliment and compliment response (Quang 1998), request and request response (Thanh 2000; Quyen 2001), disagreeing (Huong 2001, 2006) Vietnamese with those of other languages, particularly English The studies on the speech act of apology also follow the tradition of descriptive and contrastive pragmatics Some remarkable studies on this speech act were carried out by Dang Thanh Phuong (2000), Kieu Thi Hong Van (2000) and Nguyen Thuy Trang (2010)

1.2 Theoretical background

1.2.1 Theories of speech acts

Speech acts can be undertood as the acts people use to communicate So that a speech act is the basic unit of communication In the progress of

communicating, people express a certain attitude According to Joanna Jaworowska, a speech act can be defined as a minimal functional unit in human communication In language, a morpheme is the smallest unit containing information about meaning and a word is the smallest free form Speech acts can be described as the things we do when we speak Austin (1962) recognized the existence of thousands of verbs in English like

‗promise, invite, refuse, request, require, claim, apologize, comment, suggest

…‘ which mark speech acts In his opinion, he considered these verbs as performatives because by using one of them in the first person, a speaker can perform an act

For example: „I promise to come to your house at 7 o‟clock.‟

1.2.1.1 Austin’s theory of speech acts

John Langshaw Austin was a British philosopher of language We remember him as the developer of the theory of speech acts He pointed out that ―we use language to do things as well as to assert things, and that the utterance of a statement like ‗I promise to do so-and-so‘ is best understood as doing something — making a promise — rather than making an assertion about anything‖ The name of one of his best-known works: ‗How to Do Things with Words‘ – The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University

in 1955, in which he examined how acts of speech can constitute a change in the world in virtue of having been uttered; the second paragraph reads:

It was for too long the assumption of philosophers that the business of a ‗statement‘ can only be to ‗describe‘ some state of affairs, or to ‗state some fact‘, which it must do either truly or falsely (1962: 1)

So I found it simply astonishing that language could be used as an instrument

of performance rather than just a tool to describe reality Therefore, for example: when someone says ―It‘s cold‖, it doesn‘t simply mean to describe the fact of cold weather, in some contexts it is a request to close the door or open the air-conditioner to warm up In order to gain any understanding on the subject one has to take into account ideas and concepts from various scholars whose fields include philosophy, semantics, pragmatics, and linguistics The usual forms of speech acts we meet in language use are complaining, promising, disparaging, greeting, warning, inviting, congratulating, and apologizing and so on

Austin (1962) said that the utterance has many types They fall essentially into the category ‗statement‘

Early in the development of speech act theory, Austin proposed that there were only two types of utterances possible: performative and constative utterances He defined performative utterances that ―they do not ‗describe‘ or

‗report‘ or constate anything at all, are not ‗true or false‘; and the uttering of sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action, which again would not

normally be describe as saying something.‖(1962: 5)

For examples:

(E a) ‗I do (sc take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)‘ – as uttered

in the course of the marriage ceremony

(E b) ‗I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth‘ – as uttered when smashing the

bottle against the stem

(E c) ‗I give and bequeath my watch to my brother‘ – as occurring in a will (E d) ‗I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.‘

(1962: 5)

The second type is ‗constative utterances‘ According to Austin (2000), uttering a constative is ‗saying something‘ that has the property of being either true or false So the constative includes all descriptive utterances, statements of fact, definitions and so forth: utterances which report, inform and state (Searle 1971)

According to Austin (1962), a speech act consists of three facets: a locutionary act – the speech act is performed by meaningful utterance, illocutionary act – the speech act is performed by meaningful utterance with a certain performative force and perlocutionary act – the act produces certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts or actions of the speaker or

of the other people

A locutionary act ―which is roughly equivalent to uttering a certain sentence with a certain sense and reference, which again is roughly equivalent to

‗meaning‘ in the traditional sense‖, Austin said (1962: 108) He divides it into

three aspects: phonetic act, phatic act and rhetic act As Austin argued in How

to Do Things with Words (1962: 92- 93), the phonetic act is ―always to

perform the act of uttering certain noises‖ The phatic act is that ―always to perform the act of uttering certain vocables or words, i.e noises of certain types belonging to and as belonging to a certain vocabulary, in a certain grammar, with certain intonation‖ The rhetic act generally performs ―the act

of using those vocables with certain more or less definite sense and reference‖

The illocutionary act puts the communicative force into the utterance, which makes the illocutionary act carrying the illocutionary force the most important However, discussions on illocutionary force have figured out a problem that a same locution can potentially forces, and therefore

Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs) and felicity conditions of speech acts need to be taken into consideration

The act was an illocutionary act of promising and a perlocutionary act of pleasing However, Austin warns that ―we must avoid the idea, suggested above though not stated, that the illocutionary act is a consequence of the locutionary act‖ (1962: 113)

What we do import by the use of the nomenclature of illocution

is a reference, not to the consequences (at least in any ordinary sense) of the locution, but to the conventions of illocutionary force as bearing on the special circumstances of the occasion of the issuing of the utterance (1962: 114)

According to Austin (1962: 150-163), he classifies illocutionary acts into five types: verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives Although there‘re some arguments that Austin‘s classification is not complete but his classification is the best one in making an effort to create a general picture of illocutionary act Below is a rough idea of these five types

Verdictives: These ‗are typified by the giving of a verdict, as the name

implies, by a jury, arbitrator, or umpire‘ (Austin 1962: 150) Verbs that

belong to this class include: acquit, hold, calculate, describe, analyze,

estimate, date, rank, assess and characterize

Exercitives: Exercitives ―are the exercising of powers, rights, or influence‖

(Austin 1962: 150) It is a very wide class Examples of this class are: order,

command, direct, beg, recommend, entreat, and advise

Commissives: The whole point of a commissive is to commit the speaker to a

certain course of action They involve declarations or announcements of

intention Verbs belonging to this class include: promise, pledge, contract,

guarantee, embrace, and swear

Behabitives: These involve the idea of reaction to other people‘s behavior or

attitudes, and expressions of attitudes to others‘ past conduct Examples are:

apologize, thank, congratulate, felicitate, welcome, bless, curse, and toast

Expositives: These involve verbs that make utterances fit into the course of

argument or conversation For example: affirm, deny, illustrate, answer,

report, accept, class, identify and call

In short, Austin summarized that ―the verdictive is an exercise of judgment, the exercitive is an assertion of influence or exercising of power, the commissive is an assuming of an obligation or declaring of an intention, the behabitive is the adopting of an attitude, and the expositive is the clarifying of reasons, arguments, and communications‖ (1962: 162)

The perlocutionary act displays the result of the speaker‘s utterance Austin expressed his opinion of a perlocutionary act: ―Saying something will often,

or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feeling, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons: and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of producing them

We shall call the performance of an act of this kind the performance of a perlocutionary act (1962: 101)

1.2.1.2 Searle’s theory of speech acts

The American philosopher, John Searle is considered as the person who had the second great contribution to the development of speech act theory Besides inheriting ideas from Austin and elaborating on some of them, he developed the theory in his own fashion: the essence of it being that to perform an illocutionary act is to express an illocutionary intention (Searle, 1979) The researches of Searle (1983) and Searle and Vanderveken (1985)

focus on explaining the illocutionary act in a formal model which is compatible with the formal analysis of propositional contents

In Searle‘s theory of speech act, he developed one more act: propositional act Then, he continued to subdivide it into two groups: a reference act and an act

of predication This is the major difference between Austin‘s and Searle‘s theories of speech act Below I will show a brief of two ways of classification

of the speech act by Austin and Searle to help the readers have a general view about the similarities and differences between them

to Austin‘s phone The utterance act does not correspond to Austin‘s phonetic act It doesn‘t mean that Searle rejects the idea of a phonetic act; he realizes it but doesn‘t include it

It seems that the utterance act corresponds roughly to Austin‘s phatic act The utterance act is a speech act that consists of the verbal employment of units of expression such as morphemes, words and sentences and the phatic act is the act of uttering the vocables, words and grammatical units in a specific language In short, two kinds of these acts are the same

According to Searle (1976), there are five illocutionary points: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declaratives

Assertives are such utterances which commit the hearer to the truth of the

expressed proposition (e.g asserting, concluding) For example: ―The black

cat is stupid” - is an assertive illocutionary act (it intends to communicate),

“The name of the British queen is Elizabeth”

Commissives are statements which commit the speaker to a course of action

as described by the propositional content They are promises, threats, refusals

For example: “I‟ll be back in ten minutes”, “I promise to come at 6 o‟clock

and make some cakes for you”…

Declaratives are statements that attempt to change the world by ―representing

it as having been changed‖ For example: “You are victory”, “You are out.”

Directives are statements that attempt to make the auditor´s actions fit the

propositional content like suggestions, requests, orders For example:

“Could you give me some money?”, “Turn off the radio.”

Expressives express a psychological state like apologies, thanking, greetings,

compliments For example: “I‟m sorry I‟m late”, “Great!”

As defined, the illocutionary point of the act is the pupose of the act It means the illocutionary point of directives is to get the hearer to do something Taking advantage of this one, Searle made an effort of establishing the aforementioned speech acts

The relationship between language and the world concerned directly with the

‗fit‘ of the illocutionary point Therefore, the world gets to fit their words when the speakers employ the illocutionary point of directives; and contrary

to it, their words get to fit the world when the speakers employ the illocutionary point of assertives To find out clearly Searle‘s speech act theory, I show a table below:

Speech-act

category

Relation between

‘words’ and ‘world’

Object is responsible for the

relation:

Speaker (S) - Hearer (H)

Assertives Words fit world S

Commissives World fits words S

Declaratives Words change world S

Directives World fits words H

Expressives Words fit world S

Table 1: The relation between ‘words’ and ‘world’

1.2.2 Politeness

1.2.2.1 Theories of politeness

There are many definitions of politeness According to Wehmeier, politeness means having or showing good manners and respect for the feelings of others (2000: 976) Politeness is the expression of the speakers‘ intention to mitigate face threats carried by certain face threatening acts towards another (Mill 1003: 6) Or according to William Foley, politeness is a battery of social skills whose goal is to ensure everyone feels affirmed in a social interaction Theory

of politeness is the theory that accounts for the redressing of the affronts to face posed by face-threatening acts to addressees (1997) Through a process

of researching related documents, I found that Lakoff and Brown and Levinson were some of the earliest linguists to study politeness Since then, many other theorists have either built on their ideas and principles or disprove them

1.2.2.1.1 Lakoff’s theory of politeness

Robin Tolmach Lakoff, one of the first linguists studying about politeness, is the first person who gave the opinion that politeness is an important aspect of interaction and it needs to be studied After Lakoff, many theorists have focused on either expanding on her maxims or contesting them According to Johnstone (2008), Lakoff‘s theory of politeness indicates that when people communicate with each other, they will follow a certain set of rules which forbid communication from breaking down Lakoff proposes that there are three rules of politeness:

Rule 1: Be clear This rule is based on Grice‘s Cooperative Principle Maxims

which lays down a set of principles of conversation and proposes a framework for language use The Cooperative Principle is summarized as the specifications of ―what participants have to do in order to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, co-operative way: they should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while providing sufficient information‖ (Levinson 1983: 102) With the hope to create a detail description about the working process of Cooperative Principle, Grice made an effort of formulating guidelines for the use of language efficiently and effectively in conversation Based on Grice‘s guidelines (1975: 45), this rule is subdivided into a set of conversational maxims as maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of relations and maxim of manners

Figure 1: First rule of Lakoff’s theory of politeness

For example:

Tom:

Cashier:

Good afternoon!

I want to buy a ceiling fan

How much is it?

To sum up, through this set of conversational maxims, people realize that to ensure a maximally efficient conversation, people need to be sure that the information they speak must be clear, relevant and sincere

Rule 2: Be polite This rule consists of a sub set of three rules: don‘t impose,

give options and make others feel good

Be Clear

Manners Relations Quality Quantity

Speak briefly and orderly without obscurity and ambiguity

Be relevant

Expect the speakers to be sincere and tell the truth

Contribute enough information

in the conversation but not more

or less

Figure 2: Second rule of Lakoff’s theory of politeness

Rule 3: Make a good-be friendly This rule is most variable in terms of

cultural meanings

A number of scholars have contested Lakoff‘s theory of politeness They gave many different comments Tanne (1986) said that her theory is not only the rules but also the senses which the speakers use to express their opinions naturally Brown (1976) showed the main problem of her theory of politeness

to be that she put the rules of politeness in a passive framework without decision and integration; it means the social relationships and expectations about humans as interactants

1.2.2.1.2 Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness

The theory of politeness‘s also formulated in 1978 by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson Brown and Levinson‘s theory of linguistic politeness combine the formulation of an individual‘s face as a public self-image

The concept of ‗face‘ was introduced by Brown and Levinson with the purpose of illustrating ‗politeness‘ in the broad sense During interactions, the interactants are interested in maintaining two states of ‗face‘: positive face

and negative face Positive face founds the status of one person as an autonomous, independent and free agent Therefore, a complaint about the quality of somebody‘s work threatens their positive face; whereas negative face founds the immunity of one person from outside interference and excessive external pressure Thus, telling somebody who cannot see the doctor at the time they expected to is a threat to their negative face In fact, any normal interaction can lead to the risk of losing face so that in communication, people should make attempt to establish positive faces and minimize threats to negative faces

Politeness serves to enhance, maintain or protect face Thus, the addressed positive face results in positive politeness Positive politeness is approach based On the other hand, negative face makes a rise of negative politeness Negative politeness is avoidance based This concern is not only to maintain distance but also to affect or limit other freedom The positive politeness is usually seen in groups of friends, or where people of given social situation know each other fairly well Brown and Levinson also indicated that the important key of respective behavior is negative politeness and the key of

‗familiar‘ and ‗joking‘ behavior is positive politeness

1.2.2.2 Politeness strategies and choices of strategy

In social communication, each person expresses private characteristics Maybe it is suitable or unsuitable with the thought of other people Therefore,

to maintain the peaceful relations with other people, avoid contradictory situations and always respect others‘ freedom of thought and action, people should employ politeness strategies which help to save the hearer‘s face Usually you try to avoid embarrassing the other person, or making them feel uncomfortable

According to Brown and Levinson, Face Threatening Act (FTA‘s) is an act that presents a threat to another individual‘s expectations and desires regarding self-image Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpose

of dealing with these FTA‘s What would the speaker do if he saw a cup of pencils on the teacher's desk, and he wanted to use one, would the speaker say?

 “Oh, I want to use one of those!”(1)

 “Is it OK if I use one of those pencils?”(2)

 “I‟m sorry to bother you but, I just wanted to ask if I could

use one of those pencils?”(3)

 “Hmm, I sure could use a pencil right now.”(4)

As we know, politeness strategies are developed and assisted the speakers to save the hearer‘s face when face-threatening acts are inevitable or desired Brown and Levinson summarized their politeness strategies into four main types: bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness and off-record According to Brown and Levinson (1978: 74), bald on record strategy is a direct way of saying things, without any minimization to the imposition, in a direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way, for example if the speaker

says (1), the politeness strategy which used here is called the bald

on-record strategy In this situation, the speaker made no attempt to minimize threats to their teacher‘s ‗face‘

Positive politeness strategy focuses on the positive face of the hearer The speaker considers the hearer at the equal position, rights and duties This strategy is regarded as a solidarity strategy and it tends to emphasize the closeness between people in conversation In the above example, if the

speaker says (2), it means the speaker used the positive politeness strategy In

this situation, we can realize that the teacher has a desire to be respected It also confirms that the relationship is friendly and expresses group interaction Negative politeness strategy tends to emphasize the right of freedom of the hearer and it is considered as a deference strategy The language associated with a deference strategy emphasizes the independence of the speaker and the

hearer If in the above example, the speaker says (3), it means he employed

the negative politeness strategy, which similar to the positive politeness in that you realize that they want to be respected however; the speaker also remembers that his current position now is imposing on other people For this situation, the speaker can own some different suggestions such as ―I was wondering if‖ or ―I don‘t want to bother you but‖

In short, ―both positive and negative politeness strategies are redressive actions, used to mitigate the face threat which a linguistic act might pose for the interlocutor (Kasper, in Coulmas 1997: 378)

Off-record strategy is defined as a communicative act in which the speaker cannot express a clear intention of communication Returning to the above

example, if the speaker says (4), he used off-record indirect strategy The

main purpose is to take some of the presence off of him He really wants to borrow a pencil but he makes effort of avoiding imposing the teacher directly

He hopes that the teacher recognizes what he needs and he is looking to find

1.2.3 Apologizing

1.2.3.1 Definitions of apology

Apology is a speech act that has received attention from a number of researchers from various disciplines Garcia is one frequently cited expert who writes that ―an apology is an explanation offered to a person affected by one’s action that no offense was intended, coupled with the expression of

regret for any that may have been given; or, a frank acknowledgment of the offense with expression of regret for it, by way of reparation‖ (Garcia, 1989: 44)

The words ‗I'm sorry‘ is the typical expression of an apology However, these words can have many possible interpretations for a hearer as well as a speaker According to Cohen (1999), the difference of meaning results in three elements in an apology The first one is admittance of one‘s fault The second one is the expression of regret for the injurious action and the third one is the expression of sympathy for the other’s injury

Holmes defined an apology as a primarily social act which carries an effective meaning (1990: 170) Otherwise, Olshtain and Cohen (1993) defined it as a convivial speech act happening as the same time to maintain the peace between the apologizer and the recipient when there‘s the violation of social standards even when the offense is only potential According to Searle (1969), apologies have the effect of paying a debt The person who expresses the apology, need to remedy for the victim because of the consequence of their occured offense

Based on definition of Lakoff (2001), an apology can be regarded as a work

of compensating It divides the apoligizer‘s self into two parts The first part

is the shame for offence causing to the recipient and the second one is to be lining up themselves with the recipient and the violately social norms In short, Reiter (2000) leads us to understand an apology as a ―compensatory action for an offense committed by the speaker which has affected the hearer‖

According to Olshtain and Weinbach (1993), when a social norm is violated,

it is necessary for apologizer to realize their fault and responsibility with the conversational partner When lacking of an action or an utterance, the violator

has to apologize There will be an appearance of apologizer and recipient of apology This act bases on the violators who caused the offence accepts themselves as an apologizer The speech act of apologizing requires an action

or an utterance which is intended to set things right

Brown and Levinson (1987) defined an apology as a negative politeness strategy, in which, they focused on respect, deference, and distance rather than friendliness and involvement This is a face threatening act for the speaker and a face-saving act for the addressee

In conclusion, when discussing apologies, there are four assumptions which must be made First, the speakers trust an act has already been preformed Second, the speakers rely on this act offended the hearer Third, the speakers believe that they take some responsibility in the act offending the hearer Last, the speakers express their regret to their offences

1.2.3.2 Apologizing as a speech act

Austin (1962) defines speech acts as acts performed by utterances such as giving orders or making promises That utterance may be direct or indirect It can be a word, a phrase, a sentence, a gesture or a movement of body which functions in social communication such as invitation, hedging, disparaging, thanking or apologizing (Hatch 1992)

An apology is a speech act which is used in the situation when there is a violation of social norms When the results of the action or utterance indicated that the offenders recognized their mistakes, they have to apologize faithfully The aims of the speech acts are to maintain, protect and reinforce the relationship of human beings When the behavioral norm violated, the polite speech act of apologizing is employed to restore social relations The fundamental motivation for apologies can be seen in terms of Brown and

Levinson‘s (1978) politeness theory In these terms, the act of apologizing is face-saving for the hearer and face-threatening for the speaker‘s positive face Holmes (1995) affirmed that the speech act of apologizing is a direct performance to the face of the recipient and it intended to resolve an offence for which the speaker takes responsibility and restore balance between speaker and recipient When people do something wrong, they will express their apologies with a regret for what they did As stated in the above section, the speech act of apologizing only happens when the speakers rely that the wrong act has been preformed before the time of speaking and made other people offended Therefore, apology as well as other speech acts such as complimenting, thanking happen post-even and contrary to the speech acts of ordering, requesting which happen pre-event

According to the classification of the speech acts of Searl (1976), apology is considered as an expressive act However, Olshtain and Cohen (1983) indicated that this classification is very useful but it still doesn‘t give us an operational definition of what a speech act actually is

Formulas or strategies play an important role in set of the speech act of apologizing As discussed by Olshtain and Cohen (1983), they are description

of the major semantic strategies of the speech act sets The differences of the situations in which the speaker has a tendency to express an apology as reacted to the situation where offender doesn‘t accept their responsibility According to Goffman (1971), a successful apology has to ensure the most important condition to be that the offender has to recognize the offence, acknowledge of responsibility and keeps an attitude of offering a repair or compensation for the offence

The main point in the definition of Olshtain (1989) about an apology is that he considered it as a speech act which is intended to provide support for the

person who offended in the violation of behavioral norms When the offended want to offer an apology, it means they express their goal of humiliating the partner In this situation, an apology is regarded as a face-threatening act for the speaker and a face-saving act for the hearer

1.2.3.3 Some particular situations in which apologies are recommended in English and Vietnamese

1.2.3.3.1 In English

For English people, when they do something wrong, immediately they will express the apology to their actions

For example: In a crowded elevator, I step on an old woman‘ foot on accident

and that makes her angry I automatically say „I‟m sorry!‟

When they want to ask somebody to repeat something, they also say ‗I‘m sorry‘

For example: In an oral test to my student, he says rather fast so I can‘t hear

his answer to my question so I say „I‟m sorry, can you say that again?‟

In conversations, when you want to interrupt someone else to be about to start

an argument but still keep politeness, you have to remember some basic points:

 Shouldn‘t interrupt somebody in the middle of a sentence

 The best time to interrupt somebody is between sentences

 Move closer to the person, make eye-contact, and open your mouth a little bit

 Quickly say „I don‟t like to interrupt, but …‟, „Excuse me‟, „Pardon‟,

„I‟m sorry‟ …

For example: In the meeting room, Mr John and Mr Jack are engrossed in discussing a new plan Ms Jessica wants to interrupt them to announce that

their guess has just come She says „I‟m sorry but your guess has just come

Now he is waiting for you in front office.‟

English people also express apologies if they want to show their feelings when they know bad something happens to somebody

For example: One of my classmates met an accident and broke her leg When

I visited her, I said „I‟m really sorry to hear you had an accident Are you

better now?‟

When you want to give some reasons to explain something, firstly you will say ‗I‘m sorry‘ and give some reasons for your wrong something which made other people feel unsatisfactory or angry and ask their forgiveness It not only shows how sincere your apology is and you didn‘t mean to hurt them but also how much you will try to do better in the future

For example: „I‟m sorry I‟m late but I got a stuck on the way to school.‟

1.2.3.3.2 In Vietnamese

In contrary to English people who say ‗Sorry‘ or ‗I‘m sorry‘ frequently, Vietnamese people rarely act like that Only they realize the seriousness of their mistakes, they express an apology ―Xin lỗi‖ in Vietnamese

From some documents and previous studies on apologizing, I give a table of list of patterns which Vietnamese people often use to apologize in daily communication

Patterns Examples

Excuse + reason + expectation Xin lỗi cậu, không phải mình không

muốn tới đâu, tại dạo này công việc bận quá Thông cảm cho mình nhé

Xin lỗi + reason Xin lỗi mày, tao lại quên không mang

sách trả mày rồi

(NP) + xin lỗi + NP + reason Chị xin lỗi em nhé, chị không cố tình

làm như vậy đâu

Xin lỗi + NP object + reason +

(question)

Xin lỗi bạn, mình hậu đậu quá Bạn

có sao không?

NP + reason + xin lỗi + NP + particle Giời ơi, trên đường đi tao làm rơi

mất tiêu cái kính của mày rồi Xin lỗi mày nhé

Table 2: Patterns of apologizing in Vietnamese daily communication

1.2.3.4 Apologizing strategies

There are many ways to classify apology but it is said that Goffman‘s classification is the most effective view He distinguishes it into two types of compensations: ritual and substantive After that, based on the distinction of Goffman, Fraser (1981) used two motivations to combine two types While the ritual apology may be created as a kind of habit when the respondent is not responsible for the offense; in substantive apology, the speaker wants to compensate the damage or harm caused by the offense

Through an illocutionary force indicating device (IFID), we can recognize the appearance of an apology directly when the speaker uses a word, expression,

or sentence which contains a relevant performative verb such as ‗apologize‘,

‗be sorry‘, ‗excuse‘, or ‗forgive‘ Based on the classification of Olshtain and

Cohen (1983), a set of apologies strategies with five semantic principles include an expression of an apology, acknowledgement of responsibility, an offer to repair, an explanation or account of the situation and a promise of forbearance After that, Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) rearranged the five semantic principles of Olshtain and Cohen (1983) to set a new classification

of apology strategies In this study, I applied the apology strategies which are conducted by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain 1984; Trosberg 1987; and Holmes

1989 to analyze the data collection It can be categorized as follows:

Strategy 1: An expression of apology (Illocutionary Force Indicating Device

IFID) According to Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), IFID is a category covering the explicit use of apology expressions that mean sorry, forgive me etc… In this study, it is the most commonly used strategy

Strategy 2: An explanation or account: It means the speakers will express an

account of the cause of the offense or explain the reasons of violation or damage happened

Strategy 3: An acknowledgement of responsibility: The speakers admit their

mistakes and express responsible for the offense such as accepting the blame, being lack of intent or expressing self-deficiency This is the most explicit, most direct and strongest apology strategy Through the collected data of this thesis, we can see that the participants explicitly show their responsibility

Strategy 4: An offer of repair: For this strategy, the speakers usually express

clearly their faults and they make an effort to repair the damage caused by the offense

Strategy 5: Promise for forbearance: In this strategy, the speakers promise

not to repeat that mistake in the future by using the performative verb

‗promise‘ For example: I promise it won‟t happen again According to

Bergman and Kasper (1993), they indicated that it is classified alongside the

strategy 6 below ‗concern for the hearer‘ as verbal redress Whereas the strategy 6 implies unnecessary of acknowledgement of responsibility or the damage caused by the offense not to be dangerous with the speaker, this strategy is the clearest way to express the speaker‘s responsibility

Strategy 6: Concern for the hearer: In order to pacify the H, the S has to take

explicit cognizance of the H‘s feelings and conditions: I hope that I didn‟t

upset you (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989) The informants in this study applied a

few occurrence of this strategy

Strategy 7: Intensification: According to Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984),

intensification is not a separate strategy It is treated as an element within an apology strategy In this strategy, the complainees expresses their failure in taking on responsibility This strategy brings the high effect based on the choice of apologizing strategy as well as the number of the apologizing strategy you used

CHAPTER 2 – METHODOLOGY

In this study, I present empirical research aimed at analyzing the expressions

of apology and forms of participation in two different languages: English and Vietnamese, as an attempt to establish the similarities and differences in the way of expressing apology between English and Vietnamese speakers The rationale behind the choice of the speech act of apology as a tool to explore the politeness phenomena in the two cultures resides in its reliability in evaluating how politeness works in cultures Subjects of this study were 10 native speakers of English and 10 Vietnamese people The data gathered from these subjects were used to find the similarities and differences between them The data were collected by using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which consists of 10 socially different apology situations

2.1 Research methods

Although the study can be conducted by many different ways, I decided to use qualitative and quantitative methods The collected data from the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) were analyzed using interpretive and statistical methods and classified to compare and contrast based on the focal request of this study In this study, I decided to apply the DCT as a researching instrument to have the respondents of two groups written the utterance they will express when facing with the situations given on this test Following the work of Levenston (1975), Shoshana Blum-Kulka developed this instrument

to carry out the study on the comparison of speech act between native and non-native Hebrew speakers DCT is often used as a tool to elicit particular speech acts in linguistics and pragmatics fields The respondents will read the situational prompts in the DCT and elicit the responses of