Apologies in vietnamese and english=lời xin lỗi trong tiếng việt và tiếng anh

This paper investigates the apology strategies of Vietnamese speakersEnglish major students at Vinh university based on the framework of Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization project Bul

VINH UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

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TRẦN THỊ LONG

APOLOGIES IN VIETNAMESE AND ENGLISH

(LỜI XIN LỖI TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT VÀ TIẾNG ANH)

GRADUATION THESIS

FIELD: LINGUISTICS

VINH, 2010

VINH UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

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APOLOGIES IN VIETNAMESE AND ENGLISH

(LỜI XIN LỖI TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT VÀ TIẾNG ANH)

GRADUATION THESIS

FIELD: LINGUISTICS

Student: TRẦN THỊ LONG Supervisor: NGUYỄN THỊ TƯỜNG, M.A.

VINH, 2010

In addition, I am greatly indebted to my lecturers at the Department of Foreign Languages for their constant support and encouragement

My sincere thanks are due to my friends for their various kinds of helps and encouragement, especially to Thao who helped me find useful books

I also would like to give my warmest thanks to my loving parents who have comforted and taken great care of me to help me finish my study.

Finally, due to the limited time to complete this work, it is unavoidable to have mistakes; therefore I am solely responsible for them and would like to have comments from others who concern to my study.

Vinh, May 10 th 2009 Tran Thi Long

This paper investigates the apology strategies of Vietnamese speakers(English major students at Vinh university) based on the framework of Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization project (Bulum-Kulka, S., House, J &Kasper, G., 1989) It attempts to discover some of the most distinctivefeatures of apology behavior in Vietnamese in terms of strategies and thesocio-pragmatic variables that influence the selection of apology strategies.Based on the findings of the investigation and the research made by the group

of scholars involved in the Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Project, thepaper also compares the apology behavior of Vietnamese native speakers andEnglish native speakers Some similarities also distinctive differences werefound The author tries to account for the differences from the perspective ofsocial norm, culture values and culture context In addition, the author alsotries to give some suggested activities to help students of English improvepragmatic awareness in making English apologies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

ABSTRACT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Justification of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Methods of the study 2

5 Design of the study 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4

1.1 Functions of Language 4

1.2 Conversation 6

1.2.1 Context 6

1.2.2 Adjacency Pairs and Exchanges 6

1.2.3 Turn – taking 7

1.3 Speech Acts 7

1.4 Politeness and Strategies of Politeness 9

1.4.1 Politeness and Face 9

1.4.2 Strategies of Politeness 10

CHAPTER 2: THE SPEECH ACT OF APOLOGIZING 13

2.1 The Speech Act of Apologizing 13

2.1.1 Definitions of Apologies 14

2.1.2 The Speech Act of Apologizing 15

2.1.3 Apology Strategies 16

2.2 Factors Affecting the Choice of Apology Strategies 20

CHAPTER 3: THE SURVEY, RESULTS, FINDINGS, DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS 21

3.1 The Objectives of the study 21

3.2 The Hypothesis of the study 21

3.3 The Data collection instruments 21

3.4 The Participants of the study 22

3.5 The Measurement 23

3.6 The Cross-cultural Speech Act realization Project 24

3.7 Data Analysis, Findings, Discussion and Implications 24

3.7.1 Data Analysis, Findings and discussion 24

3.7.1.1 Apology in Vietnamese 24

3.7.1.2 Comparison of Apology Strategy Preferences of Vietnamese and English speakers 33

3.7.1.2.1 Similarities 34

3.7.1.2.2 Differences 34

3.7.2 General Remarks 38

3.7.3 Implications 41

3.7.3.1 To the English – major Students 41

3.7.3.2 Suggested Pragmatic Awareness – raising Activities 41 PART C: CONCLUSION 45

1 Recapitulation 45

2 Suggestions for Further Research 47

REFERENCES APPENDIXES

CCSARP :Cross – cultural Speech Act Realization Project

intensif : intensification

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Percentage of participants choosing strategies by situations inVietnamese 25Table 2: Percentage of strategy selection from the total number ofpossibilities in Vietnamese 29Table 3: Percentage of the use of IFID in the subgroups of studentrespondents 29Table 4: Socio – pragmatic factors by situations 30Table 5: Percentage of the use of IFID and social distance indicator in eachsituation 31Table 6: Percentage of the use of intensification and the severity indicator

in each situation 31Table 7: Frequency of apology in terms of social relationships 32Table 8: Percentage of strategy selection from total number of possibilities

in Vietnamese and English 33Table 9: The distribution of the strategy of IFID response percentage inVietnamese and English 34Table 10: The distribution of the strategy of responsibility responsepercentage in Vietnamese and English 36Figure 1: The use of IFID in Vietnamese and English 35Figure 2: The use of expression of responsibility in Vietnamese and English 36

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Justification of the study

Many recent researchs (Takahashi and Beebe, 1993, Blum-Kulka andHouse, 1989, Leech, 1983; Thomas, 1983) pointed out that linguistic andlexical knowledge is not enough to be competent in using a foreign language.Both pragmatic and socio – pragmatic considerations come into play andconstitute the important features of using a language effectively and ofachieving mutual intelligibility According to Gumperz (1982), people indifferent cultures have different ways of communication and the culturaldifferences can build up to the failure in communication

Apology, as other speech acts, reflects the cultural distinctions amongnations Although in all languages the central function of apologies is toprovide a remedy for an offence and restore social equilibrium or harmony,the ways of making apologies are not the same in every language Thus,applying the conventional usage of a language to another language (as thelearners of foreign languages often do) will cause them many difficulties andmisunderstanding in the target language Finding the similarities anddifferences in making apology between Vietnamese and English will helpVietnamese learners more success in communication with English nativespeakers

These are the reasons why the author decided to go into this subject

“Apologies in Vietnamese and English”

2 Aims of the study

The aims of this study are:

- To seek the general pattern of apology verbal behaviour inVietnamese

- To compare apology strategy preferences of Vietnamese speakersand English speakers.

- To provide some recommendations for improving the pragmaticawareness of Vietnamese learners in making apology in English.The research questions of the study are:

1 What apology strategies are often used by Vietnamese speakers inthe given situations?

2 How the socio – pragmatic factors affect the strategy selection ofVietnamese speakers?

3 What are the similarities and differences of strategy selectionbetween Vietnamese and English speakers?

4 What implications can be drawn in order to help Vietnameselearners of English improve their pragmatic awareness in makingEnglish apology?

3 Scope of the study

This study focuses on the selection preference of apology strategy ofVietnamese speakers, the socio – pragmatic factors such as social distance,social power, severity of offence and obligation which affect the choice ofstrategy Moreover, the study puts an emphasis on the comparison of apologystrategy preference in Vietnamese and English

4 Methods of the study

- Revision of the theoretical publications

- Quantitative method

- Analysis and synthesis of collected data

5 Design of the study

The thesis comprises of three main parts:

Part A: Introduction

This part presents the justification, aims, scope, methods anddesign of the study

Part B: Development

This part is divided into three chapters:

Chapter 1: Theoretical background Chapter 2: The speech acts of apologizing Chapter 3: The survey, results, findings, discussion and

implications

Part C: Conclusion

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Functions of Language

To know about the functions of language, we should answer thequestion “what is language” firstly However, it is complicated to define whatlanguage is The question “what is language”, as some would say, is hardlyless profound than “what is life” (John Lyons, 1981: 2) In everyday talk, weuse the word “language” in many different ways with its reference such as

“sign language”, “body language” or “the language of the bees” According toLyons, “what is language” does not coincide with “what is a language” Theconcept of language carries with it many of the ambiguity Let us look atsome definitions of language

Sapir (cited in John Lyons, 1981: 3) stated: “Language is a purelyhuman and non-instinctive method of communication ideas, emotions, anddesires by means of voluntarily produced symbols” In this definition, itseems clear that there is much that is communicated by language which is notcovered by any of “idea”, “emotion” and “desire” Besides, Howard Jacksonand Peter Stockwell (1996: 2) described language as “the human faculty thatenables us to exchange meaningful messages with our fellow human beings

by means of discourse and text, which are structured according to the rulesand conventions of the particular language that we share with them.”Furthermore, Gary Grossgrain (1995) believed that language shapes ourconception of reality It is clearly seen that these definitions of “language”have served to introduce some of the properties which are essential features oflanguages as we know them Most of them take the view that languages are

communication, there are other purposes of language, or we might callfunctions of language.

Richards (1992:150) divided language into three main functions Thefirst is “desciptive” function which conveys factual information The second

is “expressive” function which shows the speaker’s feeling, preferences,prejudices and past experience The last is “social” function which serves toestablish and maintain social relationship between people

Halliday (1970:151) also divided language into three main functionsbut different terms The first is “ideational” function which refers to thespeaker’s experience of the real world The second is “interpersonal” functionwhich indicates, establishes or maintains social relationship between people.The third is “textual” function which creates written or spoken texts which fitthe particular situation

Perhaps, the most popular divisions of language function come fromBrown and Yule These are the transactional function, which is primarlyconcerned with the transfer of information, and the interactional function, inwhich the primary purpose of speech is the maintenance of socialrelationships Brown and Yule also noted that when spoken language is usedfor a primarily transactional function, the purpose of the speaker in speaking

is primarily to communicate his message rather than to be nice to the listener.They observe: “We could say that primarily interactional language isprimarily listener-oriented, whereas primarily transactional language isprimarily message-oriented” (Brown & Yule, 1983: 13).

In short, language is used to convey meaning, communicate, establishand maintain social relations between people in everyday life In terms ofspoken language, conversation plays a very important role because it is theplace where language is used and expressed

1.2 Conversation

1.2.1 Context

To understand a conversation, context plays a very important role.According to David Nunan (cited in Nguyen Thi Van Lam & Ngo Dinh

Phuong, 2009), there are two types of context: linguistic and non – linguistic.

The linguistic context is the language that surrounds or accompanies

the piece of discourse under analysis

The non – linguistic context or experiential context is which the

discourse takes place within includes the type of communicative event (forexample, joke, story, lecture, greeting, conversation); the topic; the purpose ofthe event; the setting, including location, time of day, season of year andphysical aspects of the situation (for example, size of room, arrangement offurniture); the participants and the relationships between them; and thebackground knowledge and assumptions underlying the communicativeevent

1.2.2 Adjacency Pairs and Exchanges

A conversation involves at least two persons, thus there are manyalmost automatic patterns in the structure of conversation as following:

Failure to produce the second part in response will be treated as a significantabsence and hence meaningful

Obviously, an adjacency pair is a unit of conversation that contains anexchange of one turn each by two speakers The turns are functionally related

to each other in such a fashion that the first turn requires a certain type orrange of types of second turn like the patterns above

1.2.3 Turn – taking

People take turns when they are selected or nominated by the currentspeaker, or if no one is selected, they may speak of their own accord (self –selection) If neither of these conditions applies, the speaker who is currentlytalking may continue

Another feature of turn – taking is the way speakers predict oneanother’s utterances and often complete them for them, or overlap with them

as they complete

The example below is a conversation between two persons and includesthree turns

Maria: What did you do at the weekend?

Fumiko: I went to Wales.

Maria: Oh, really? Where did you go?

(cited in Nguyen Thi Van Lam & Ngo Dinh Phuong, 2009: 63)

1.3 Speech Acts

When we speak, it also means we are taking an action which isdifferent from others because we use language to produce it According toAustin (1962) and Searle (1969), many utterances are not just used to inform

or describe something but they are used to do something, to perform action

“Actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts” (GeorgeYule, 1996: 47) They are commonly given more specific label such as

apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request Actually,speech acts are the function aim of an utterance.

Austin (1962) pointed out that an utterance is perceived as having threebasic senses and that in performing a certain act; the speaker is performingsimultaneously three kinds of acts:

a. Locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence with determinatesense and reference

b. Illocutionary act: the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc

in uttering a sentence, by virtue of a conventional forceassociated with it

c. Perlocutionary act: the effect of an utterance used to perform aspeech act

(Austin, 1962, cited from Levinson, 1983: 236) According to Austin (1962), the illocutionary force is made explicitwhen an utterance contains a performative verb such as apologize, invite,order, declare, promise, etc and such utterance is called performativeutterance However, it might be impossible to list out all of the performativeverbs as well as all of the illocutionary acts Searle (1969) classifiedillocutionary acts or speech acts into 5 categories as following:

1.4 Politeness and Strategies of Politeness

1.4.1 Politeness and Face

In conversation, besides cooperation, most interactions are governed bypoliteness, which is considered a “polite social behaviour” within a certainculture Perhaps the most thorough treatment of the concept of politeness isthat of Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, which was first published in

1978 and then reissued, with a long introduction, in 1987 In their model,politeness is defined as redressive action taken to counter-balance thedisruptive effect of face-threatening acts

In their theory, communication is seen as potentially dangerous andantagonistic The basic notion of their model is “face” This is defined as “thepublic self-image that every member of society wants to claim for himself”

(1978: 66) In their framework, face consists of two related aspects: positive face and negative face

- Positive face is the positive consistent self-image that people have or

the need to be connected, to belong to a group

- Negative face is the need to be independent, not imposed on by

others

The rational actions people take to preserve both kinds of face, forthemselves and the people they interact with, add up to politeness Thus,showing solidarity with another is positive politeness and the awareness ofanother’s right not to be imposed on is negative politeness Brown andLevinson also argued that in human communication, either spoken or written,people tend to maintain one another's face continuously When an act ofverbal or non – verbal communication “run(s) contrary to the face wants ofthe addressee and/or the speaker” (Brown & Levinson, 1978: 70), this iscalled a “face – threatening act” (FTA)

1.4.2 Strategies of Politeness

Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpose of dealing withthese FTAs Brown and Levinson sum up human politeness behaviour in fivestrategies which are given in the chart below (the higher the number of thestrategy, the more polite it is)

1 without redressive action, baldly

on record 2 positive politeness

with redressive action

Do the FTA

3 negative politeness

4 off record

5 Don’t do the FTA

The first distinction that should be made here is doing an FTA onrecord (strategy 1, 2, 3) and doing it off record (strategy 4) The term “onrecord” is used when an expression has “one unambiguously attributableintention with which witnesses would occur”; on the other hand, the term “offrecord” is used when an expression can have “more than one unambiguouslyattributable intention” (Brown & Levinson, 1978: 73 – 74) For example, if

person A wanted to borrow person B’s car and said, “May I borrow your car, tomorrow?” she would be going on record because the request to borrow B’ car is unambiguous; however if she said, “I need to pick up my friend at the airport tomorrow, but I don’t have a car”, she would be going off record

because there is no explicit request

Strategy 1 – doing an act baldly, without redressive action or bald onrecord “involves doing it in the most direct, clear, unambiguous and conciseway possible” (Brown & Levinson, 1978: 74) For example, person A in the

above example might say, “Lend me your car, tomorrow” to do the FTA

baldly

Strategies 2 and 3 – doing an act with redressive action means “‘givingface’ to the addressee” (Brown & Levinson, 1978: 74) This can mean doingthe act using positive politeness (strategy 2) – “oriented towards the positiveface of the hearer” or using negative politeness (strategy 3) – “orientedmainly toward partially satisfying (redressing) hearer’s negative face” (Brown

& Levinson, 1978: 75) For example:

- Positive politeness strategy: “Hey, that’s a great suit you have on! Is

it new? (…) By the way, may I borrow your car, tomorrow?” (adapted from

Brown & Levinson, 1978: 108)

By asking about the hearer’s suit, the speaker would show that she isinterested in something that the hearer presumably finds desirable, forexample, the suit

- Negative politeness strategy: “You couldn’t by any chance lend your

car, tomorrow, could you?” (adapted from Brown & Levinson, 1978: 141)

In this case, the speaker is trying to partially satisfy the hearer’s desirenot to be imposed upon by implying that she does not think he can lend herthe car

It is not justifiable, however, to always choose the most polite strategy,because “that will imply that the act is more face threatening than it actuallyis” (Fasold, 1990: 162); therefore, the speaker must decide which strategy touse This decision is based on the following three factors (Brown & Levinson1987: 79):

1 The “social distance” of the speaker and the hearer (a symmetricrelation) (For example, with a friend there is not a great socialdistance; however there is with a stranger.)

2 The relative power of the speaker and the hearer (an asymmetricrelation) (For example, a friend does not hold the same position ofpower as does the President)

3 The absolute ranking of impositions in the particular culture (Forexample, asking someone to borrow a quarter would be as great animposition as asking that person to borrow one hundred dollars)Another politeness principle is proposed by Geoffrey Leech (1983),which explains how politeness operates in conversational exchanges Leech’sprinciple, also called Leech’s maxims, includes six maxims

- Tact maxim (in directives [or impositives] and commissives):minimize cost to other; [maximize benefit to other]

- Generosity maxim (in directives and commissives): minimize benefit

to self; [maximize cost to self]

- Approbation maxim (in expressives and representatives [assertives]):minimize dispraise of other; [maximize praise of other]

- Modesty maxim (in expressives and representatives): minimize praise

of self; [maximize dispraise of self]

- Agreement maxim (in representatives): minimize disagreementbetween self and other; [maximize agreement between self and other]

- Sympathy maxim (in representatives): minimize antipathy betweenself and other; [maximize sympathy between self and other]

CHAPTER 2: THE SPEECH ACT OF APOLOGIZING

2.1 The Speech Act of Apologizing

2.1.1 Definitions of Apologies

Apologies are one of the many speech acts frequently used in humaninteraction There are numerous studies providing definitions of an apology aswell as examining its functions

“Apologies are defined as primarily social acts, carrying effectivemeaning” (Holmes, 1990: 1550) According to Brown and Levinson,apologies are politeness strategies An apology is primarily and essentially asocial act It is aimed at maintaining good relation between participants Toapologize is to act politely, both in vernacular sense and in more technicalsense of paying attention to the addressee’s face needs (Brown & Levinson,1987) An apology is a fundamental speech act which is a part of humancommunication occurs in every culture to maintain good relations betweeninterlocutors

Goffman (1967: 14) referred to an apology as a remedy, the oneessential element in a remedial interchange This term nicely highlights thecentral function of apologies to provide a remedy for an offense and restoresocial equilibrium or harmony (Edmondson 1981: 280, Leech, 1983: 25)(cited in Holmes, 1990: 159) Apologies, like compliments, are primarilyaimed at maintaining on supporting the addressee’s and in some cases theapologizer’s “face” (Goffman, 1967)

According to Olshtain and Cohen (1983: 20), “an apology is called forwhen social norms have been violated, whether the offence is real orpotential” In addition, Aijmer (1996: 81) argued that what seems to benecessary is that the “apologizer” has done something which is annoying or

damaging to the person to whom the apology is addressed The apologizernow regrets having done the act and takes responsibility for it by uttering anapology

As Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989: 12) described, an apology

is the acknowledgement by the speaker that a violation has been committedand an admission that he or she is at least partially involved in its cause Anapology may be considered a “post-event,” for it signals that the event hasalready taken place

These definitions indicate that the intention of the apologizer is toproduce an utterance in order to redress the offence The functions of anapology have also been examined in studies to gain understanding of furtherfunctional aspects of the speech acts

The social functions of apologies have been described as follows byNorrick (1978: 280):

- Admitting responsibility for a state which affected someone in anadverse way (thereby implicating contrition)

- Asking to be forgiven

- Showing good manners

- Assuaging addressee’s wrath

- Getting off the hook

Normally, apologies relate to past acts, since we can not apologize forsomething we have not yet done However, just as it is possible to thanksomebody in advance, it is also possible to apologize for future offence

“Apologies, which occur prior to the offence can be justified on the groundsthat it is possible for the speaker to apologize for something he or she is in thecourse of doing, or has not yet done, provided that both speaker and hearerhave good grounds to believe that it will be done” (Owen, 1983: 117) In this

study, we concentrate on apologies as remedial responses to offending acts,and the occurrence of apologies as described above is not subjected toinvestigation.

2.1.2 The Speech Act of Apologizing

Olshtain (1989: 156) defined apology as “a speech act which isintended to provide support for the H (hearer) who was actually or potentiallymalaffected by violation X In the decision to carry out the verbal apology,the S (speaker) is willing to humiliate himself or herself to some extent and toadmit to fault and responsibility for X Hence the act of apologizing is face-saving for the H and face-threatening for the S, in Brown and Levinson’s(1978) terms” According to Leech’s (1983: 104) “tact maxim”, apology is aconvivial speech act whose goal coincides with the social goal of maintainingharmony between the speaker and the hearer In Leech’s term, therefore, therealization of an apology provides benefit for the hearer and is to some degree

at cost to the hearer

Apologies fall under expressive speech acts in which speakers attempt

to indicate their state or attitude In order for an apology to have an effect, itshould reflect true feelings “One cannot effectively apologize to another andtruly reach him or her unless one portrays honest feelings of sorrow and regretfor whatever one has done” (Fahmi, Ruba & Fahmi, Rula, 2006: 1903)

Apologies are like other speech acts in that they are often performedthrough conventionalized or ritualized utterances According to Hudson(1980: 52) conventionalizing any linguistic pattern is a matter of historicalaccident Once expressions are selected in preference to others to be used toperform certain acts, it becomes a necessity that they are used and interpreted

as such certain forms which are more conventional used more often than

others, such as (I am sorry) means “forgiveness” (Blum Kulka and Olshtain,1984).

Blum-Kulka and Kasper (1993: 59) stated that speech acts differ in theextent to which conventionalized linguistic form are used; some speech acts,such as apologizing and thanking, exhibit more conventional usage thanothers do

2.1.3 Apology Strategies

An apology is offered to express regrets for an offence in order torestore the social and relational harmony between the two participants Assuch, in order to have the hearer accept the apology, the apologizer has toapply different strategies to cover the offence, depending on the severity ofthe damage to the perception of self

The apology strategies used to analyze the data of this study which areconducted by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain 1984; Trosborg, 1987; and Holmes,

1989 (cited in Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper, 1989) can be categorized asfollows: an illocutionary force indicating device, an explanation or account ofthe cause which brought about the violation, an expression of the speaker’sresponsibility for the offence, an offer of repair and a promise of forbearance.Apologies can be performed by any one of the above strategies, or anycombination or sequence of them

Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID): The use of IFID is the

most explicit realization of an apology, which selects a routinized, formulaicexpression of regret such as: (be) sorry, apologize, excuse, etc Searle (cited

in Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper, 1989: 20) stated that the IFID fulfills thefunction of signaling regret; the speaker asks forgiveness for the violation thatmotivated the need to apologize, thereby serving to placate the hearer.Olshtain and Cohen (cited in Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper, 1989: 20)

seemed to indicate that there are language specific scales of conventionalitywhich determine preferences for IFID realizations In English, for example,the most common form is “(be) sorry” while in Hebrew it is the word “slixa”which means literally “forgiveness”.

Taking on responsibility: In the attempt to placate the hearer, the

speaker often chooses to express responsibility for the offence which createdthe need to apologize Such recognition of one’s fault is face-threatening tothe speaker and intended to appease the hearer The subcategories for thisstrategy maybe placed on a continuum from strong self-humbling on thespeaker’s part to a complete and blunt denial of responsibility Theacceptance of responsibility would be viewed by the hearer as an apology,while denial of responsibility would testify to the speaker’s rejection of theneed to apologize Examples of the self-humbling end of the scale are

expressions of the self-deficiency (“I’m so forgetful”), and explicit self-blame (“It’s my fault”), while the rejecting end of the scale would be represented by

a complete denial of fault

Explanation or account: A common reaction to the need to apologize

is a search for self-justification by explaining the source of the offence ascaused 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

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”).

Offer of repair: In situation where the damage or inconvenience which

affected the hearer can be compensated for, the speaker can choose to offerrepair in a specified or general manner, intending this as an apology; for

example, “I’ll pay for the damage” in the case of accident caused by the

speaker is specific enough to count as an apology

Promise of forbearance: In some situations, the feeling of

responsibility is so strong that the speaker feels the need to promiseforbearance Promise of forbearance is usually expressed by a promise that Xwill never happen again The distribution of apology strategy types acrossdifferent social situations reveals which strategies are situation specific, andwhich can be used in any kind of situation

The five strategies which make up the speech act set of apology consist

of two which are general and three which are situation specific The twogeneral strategies are: the IFID, which contains the formulaic, routinizedforms of apology (various verbs); and the expression of speaker’sresponsibility, which relates to the speaker’s willingness to admit to fault.Potentially, the IFID and/or the expression of speaker’s responsibility couldrealize an apology in any situation The IFID contains the explicit,performative verbs which express an apology An expression of responsibility

in Goffman’s terms, as cited by Owen (1983: 94), contains sub-strategieswhich relate to “pleas for excusable lack of foresight, pleas for reducedcompetence and admissions of carelessness.” These two strategies which can

be used across all situations require the act of apology The other threestrategies, the explanation, the offer of repair, and the promise of forbearance,are situation-specific and will semantically reflect the content of the situation

In addition to the main strategies which make up the speech act set,Olshtain and Cohen also claimed that there are ways in which the speaker canmodify the apology by either intensifying it or by downgrading it

The intensification would make the apology stronger, creating evenmore support for the hearer and more humiliation for the speaker The

routinized intensification is the one which occurs internally to the IFID

(internal modification in the form of a conventional intensifier such as “very”

or “really”) Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) treated intensifications as an

element within an apology strategy and not a separate strategy However, theforce of apology depends not only on the choice of an apology strategy butalso on the number and type of strategies used in an apology that consists of

an IFID Only “I’m sorry” does not have the apologetic power of another thatcontains an IFID and an intensification marker (I’m deeply sorry); therefore,

in this study intensification is treated as a separate apology strategy

Kulka and Olshtain (1984) classified the use of “concern for thehearer” and more than one strategy as intensification using multiple strategies,since an intention of intensification is dependent on the type of strategiesused In this study intensification refers only to the use of adverbial (e.g

terrible, very, extremely etc) and repetition of IFID (e.g I’m sorry, please forgive me), because these examples clearly indicate the speaker’s explicit

External modification can take the form of added concern for the hearerwhich intensifies the apology or a statement, minimizing either the offence orthe harm it may have caused, thus downgrading the apology If, for instance,

after insulting someone, we say something like: “I’m sorry, but you really

shouldn’t get insulted by such remarks”, we have downgraded the apology

and raised the question whether an apology was even necessary

2.2 Factors Affecting the Choice of Apology Strategies

In studying apologies, a major research question relates to the factorswhich affect the speaker’s decision to choose any one realization over theothers in the potential set of such realizations Olshtain and Weinbach (1987)suggested the notion socio-pragmatic set in order to encompass the social andcontextual factors which might affect the speaker’s choice The social factorsinclude parameters such as social power (status), social distance, sex, and age.The contextual factors include situational features which carry pragmaticsignificance since they affect realization choices Olshtain (cited in Blum-Kulka, House and kasper, 1989: 158) believes that the social factors work in asimilar way across speech acts in any particular culture or subculture

In addition, Olshtain claimed that the contextual factors included in thesocio-pragmatic set are speech-act-specific and relate the situationalpreconditions for the occurrence of the particular speech act In the case ofapology these contextual factors relate to the severity of the violation and tothe culturally perceived obligation of the speaker to carry out an explicit act

of apologizing

CHAPTER 3: THE SURVEY, RESULTS, FINDINGS,

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

3.1 The Objectives of the study

- To find out the use of apology strategies in Vietnamese

- To identify the socio-pragmatic variables that influence the speech act

of apology in Vietnamese

- To figure out the similarities and differences of apology strategypreferences in Vietnamese and English

3.2 The Hypothesis of the study

- As in other language, in Vietnamese apology strategy selectiondepends on specific situation

- Frequency of apology is lower in Vietnamese

- Socio-pragmatic factors like social power, social distance, severity ofoffence, obligation and gender affect the speech act of apology inVietnamese

- Speakers of Vietnamese and English use different sets of apologieseven in the same situation

3.3 The Data Collection Instruments

The survey makes use of one discourse completion test (DCT) and twoquestionnaires The DCT (see Appendix 1) is designed according to the sevensituations used by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain who were the members of theCross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns project Thus, these situationswere tested and are reliable enough In fact, they are common situations notonly in English but also in many other languages The relationship betweenthe participants in these situations is also the most common ones Or at least

it is the relationship which the learner and the user of English often have in

school and work place In addition, these situations also occur quite often inVietnamese Moreover, because of the study being conducted in Vietnam, it isdifficult to collect the data from English native speakers Hence, it is suitableand convenient to use the situations in Blum-Kulka and Olshtain’s study.

The DCT is chosen to collect the data not only because it was used inBlum-Kulka and Olshtain’s investigation but also because it is effectivemeans of:

(1) gathering a large amount of data quickly

(2) creating an initial classification of semantic formulas and strategiesthat will occur in natural speech;

(3) studying the stereotypical perceived requirements for a sociallyappropriate (though not always polite) response;

(4) gaining insight into social and psychological factors that are likely

to affect speech and performance; and

(5) ascertaining the canonical shape of refusals, apologies, partings, etc

in the minds of the speakers of that language However, they are notnatural speech and they do not accurately reflect natural speech

(cited in Beebe, 1985)The two questionnaires are used to elicit information on: 1) Vietnamesespeakers’ evaluation of the scales of social distance, social power, severity ofoffence and obligation for apology (Questionnaire A, see Appendix 3); 2)frequency of apology by Vietnamese speakers in status- unequal relationshipsand with people of different genders (Questionnaire B, see Appendix 4)

The DCT and two questionnaires were all written in Vietnamese andthe responses were made in Vietnamese as well

3.4 The Participants of the study

The participants of the study consist of 129 students from Department

of Foreign Languages in Vinh University, 27 of them are freshmen, 30sophomores, 30 juniors and 42 seniors All of them are English majors in theirearly twenties

They are chosen for two purposes: one is to elicit data comparable withthat of the CCSARP group since their data were mainly collected fromuniversity students; another purpose is to see whether the level of Englishaffects Vietnamese speakers in their apology behavior

3.5 The Measurement

In order to make valid comparisons with the English data, we measuredthe responses of the DCT in Vietnamese by referring to the CCSARP CodingManual for Apologies (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989: 289-294) The frameworkand data of English speakers are based on their report in the same book Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies

Apology Strategy and Sub-Strategy Coding

Strategy/Substrategy Example

1 Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID)

a direct IFIDs: Performatives I apologize

b Indirect IFIDs: Formulaic Expressions I am sorry/ Please forgive me

2 Taking Responsibility (+agency)

a Explicit Self-Blame It was my fault

b Lack of intent It wasn’t my intention

c Hearer justification You have a right to be angry

d Expression of Embarrassment I’m so embarrassed.

3 Explanation or account There was a lot of traffic

4 Offer of Repair I’ll pay for it

5 Promise of Forbearance It won’t happen again

3.6 The Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Project

The Cross-cultural Speech Act realization Project is a project initiated

to investigate cross-cultural and intralingual variation in verbal behavior withthe focus on two face-threatening speech acts: requests and apologies Thesame framework is used to study these two speech acts in German, CanadianFrench, Hebrew and Australian English The study was designed to allow forreliable comparability both along the situational (socio-pragmatic), culturaland native/non-native axes

3.7 Data Analysis, Findings, Discussion and Implications

3.7.1 Data Analysis, Findings and Discussion

This part will firstly present the results of the investigation intoVietnamese native speakers As stated earlier, it is difficult to collect the datafrom English native speakers because of the study being conducted inVietnam Hence, the results of English in CCSARP were used to comparewith that of Vietnamese

3.7.1.1 Apologies in Vietnamese

 Apology strategy is situation specific

Adopting the method and categorization used by the CCSARP group,the data was calculated concerning the use of five strategies: explicitexpression of apology (IFID), taking on responsibility, explanation, offer ofrepair, and promise of forbearance The information of frequency and socio-pragmatic factors concerning apology behavior in Vietnamese was alsogathered

The data from the investigation shows that different situations call fordifferent strategies of apology In other words, Vietnamese prefer to adoptdifferent kinds of strategies to realize the speech act of apology Table 1presents the percentages of strategy selection of participants in each situation

Situation IFID Resp Explan Repair Forb Intensif Minim. Concern

Table 1: Percentage of participants choosing strategies by situations in Vietnamese

From the table 1, we can see that IFID appears in all situations There

is, however, considerable variation in the level of preference according to

situations, confirming hypothesis 1 For situation 4 (a waiter who brings the

wrong dish for the customer), major participants found IFID a suitablestrategy with the highest percentage 80% Similarly, there is a high level of

the use of IFID in situation 7 (a speaker who offended a fellow worker during

a discussion at work), situation 6 (a driver who backs up into the hearer’s car) and situation 3 (the personnel director who is late for an appointment with an

applicant) with 59%, 76% and 71% respectively In contrast, only 28% chose

to use an IFID in situation 1 (a university professor who has not corrected a

student’s paper)

The expression of IFID stipulates the speaker’s recognition that somenorms have been violated and that the hearer deserves to be placated Thedriver chooses to use an IFID since, under the special circumstancesdescribed in the situation, it is clear that the driver was not careful enough sothat he backed up into the other’s car, in terms of social – behavioral norms,

an apology is expected Likewise, in situation 7, the fellow worker wasoffended, in situation 4, the customer was so astonished because of the wrongdish and the applicant waited beyond the time of appointment, an explicitapology is necessary On the other hand, in the case of the professor nothaving finished the correction of the paper, no violation is necessarily