A study on making and accepting apology in english and vietnamese = nghiên cứu về lời xin lỗi và cách chấp nhận lời xin lỗi trong tiếng anh và tiếng việt

428 Vinh UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT ___________________ Nguyen thi ngoc mai A study on making and accepting apology in English and vietnamese Nghiªn cøu vÒ lêi xin lçi v

428 Vinh UNIVERSITY

FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

_

Nguyen thi ngoc mai

A study on making and accepting

apology

in English and vietnamese

(Nghiªn cøu vÒ lêi xin lçi vµ c¸ch chÊp nhËn lêi xin

lçi trong tiÕng anh vµ tiÕng viÖt)

GRADUATION THESIS

field: linguistics

Vinh, May 2015

in English and vietnamese

(Nghiªn cøu vÒ lêi xin lçi vµ c¸ch chÊp nhËn lêi xin

lçi trong tiÕng anh vµ tiÕng viÖt)

GRADUATION THESIS

field: linguistics

Supervisor: Tran Thi Ngoc Yen, Ph.D

Student : Nguyen Thi Ngoc Mai

Class : 52B1 - English

Vinh, May 2015

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

During the process of carrying out the study, I have received many invaluable assistances from many people

First of all, I would like to send my deepest thanks to Dean and all the lectures

of Foreign Languages Department of Vinh University who gave me a chance to study the thesis

Secondly, I would like to express my deepest and sincerest appreciation to my supervisor, Ph.D Tran Thi Ngoc Yen, for her enthusiastic guidance, excellent suggestions as well as insightful comments on the thesis

Also, I would like to acknowledge my dear family and my friends who always stand by me, encourage and help me so much in this study

Finally, I am aware that despite all the meaningful advices and assistant helps, shortcomings and mistakes are inevitably avoidable; therefore I would be extremely grateful to receive all your attention as well as comments to make this thesis perfect

Nghe An, May 2015

NGUYEN THI NGOC MAI

ABSTRACT

Communication is an important part of daily life People must talk to each other

to work and satisfy their own communicating need Apology is a popular speech act in daily conversation But how to make and accept apology effectively by people who are speaking these two languages, this study is a solution The thesis presents apology and its forms Data used for analysis in this study were mainly collected from many books, literatures, stories, documents and dialogues in daily conversation to analyze more clearly Finally, some main similarities and differences in making and accepting apology between English and Vietnamese have been identified, implications on learning and teaching were made

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

ABSTRACT iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF TABLE viii

PART I 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 The design of the study 2

PART II DEVELOPMENT 3

CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 3

1.1 SPEECH ACTS 3

1.1.1 Definition of speech act 3

1.1.2 Types of speech acts 3

1.1.3 Direct and indirect speech acts 5

1.1.4 Felicity condition 6

1.1.5 Apology as speech acts 7

1.2 CONVERSATION THEORY 8

1.2.1 The concept of conversation 8

1.2.2 Conversational structure 8

1.3 POLITENESS THEORY 9

1.3.1 Politeness and Face 9

1.3.2 Strategies of Politeness 12

1.4 APOLOGY THEORY 13

1.4.1 Definition of apology 13

1.4.2 Value of apology 15

CHAPTER 2 SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MAKING AND ACCEPTING APOLOGIES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 16

2.1 MAKING APOLOGY IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 16

2.1.1 Making apology in English 16

2.1.2 Making apology in Vietnamese 19

2.1.3 Similarities and differences of making apology in English and Vietnamese 23

2.2 ACCEPTING APOLOGY IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 26

2.2.1 Accepting apology in English 26

2.2.2 Accepting an apology in Vietnamese 27

2.2.3 Similarities and differences between accepting apology in English and Vietnamese 29

CHAPTER 3 CONCLUSION 31

3.1 LIMITATION 31

3.2 IMPLICATION ON LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING 31

3.3 SUGGESTION FOR FURTHER STUDIES 32

PART III CONCLUSION 33

REFERENCES 34

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

etc : Et cetera e.g : Exampli gratia FTAs : Face-threatening acts

LIST OF TABLE

Table 1.1: The five general functions of speech act (Yule, 1996, p55) 5 Table 2.1 Summary the similarities in form of making apology in English and

Vietnamese 23 Table 2.2: Summary the differences in form of making apology in English and

Vietnamese 24 Table 2.3 Summary the similarities in form of accepting apology in English and

Vietnamese 29 Table 2.4 Summary the differences in form of accepting apology in English and

Vietnamese 30

PART I INTRODUCTION

It is included in five parts: (1) justification of the study, (2) aims of the study, (3) scope of the study, (4) methods of the study, (5) design of the study

1 Justification of the study

In daily day, we always need to communicate Communication can be done in variety of different forms and media However, it’s undeniable that speech act is basic and most important form of human being In which, the speech act of apology is often used in communication of community in the world including Vietnamese and English

It can be said that the appearance of apology occupies a large frequency in our daily language Obviously, apology is offered when we feel really faulty Apology here always goes with a regretful feeling and expecting to be forgiven more than an usual action in civilization

However, different language has different ways to form its apology Especially, when English and Vietnamese do not share the same language type, these differences become more obvious

Although in all languages the central function of apologies is to provide for an offence and restore harmony, the way of making and accepting apologies are not the same in every language

Researching apology in English and Vietnamese have been carried out by numerous researchers However, there is no in-depth study on making and accepting apology in English and Vietnamese, specifically is the forms of making and accepting apology in English and Vietnamese

That caused leaners of foreign languages many difficulties and misunderstanding in the target language The study about apology will contribute to help Vietnamese learners more success in communication with English native speakers through finding the similarities and differences in making and accepting apology between Vietnamese and English

For the above reasons, I decided to choose the topic “A study on making and

accepting apology in English and Vietnamese”

2 Aims of the study

The study aims to point out the similarities and differences in the form English and Vietnamese native speakers making and accepting apology Besides, it is intended

to provide some implications for teaching and learning apology – making and accepting to English majors in Vinh University

3 Scope of the study

The research is towards a study on making and accepting apology in English and Vietnamese Within the scope of study, we mainly focus on the forms and structures which English and Vietnamese speakers use to making and accepting apology in order to achieve effectiveness in communication

4 Methods of the study

Because of limited time, the author mainly collected records of apology in daily communication, from books such as New Headway, English 8, and stories, internet, etc They are then analyzed to find out the similarities and differences in making and accepting apology for the process of comparative and contrastive analysis in the thesis Moreover, she also uses some quotes from literature to analyze Although this dialogues were castigated in accordance with the writer’s intentions, it still remains characteristic (emotional property, specific property) and the function (rational communication, emotion) of daily life style in view of the functional style Hence, the dialogues in natural language and literatures which used to analyze are reliable scientifically

5 The design of the study

The thesis is organized into three parts as follow:

PART I: INTRODUCTION

The introduction deals with the justification, aims, scope, methods and design

of the study

PART II DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1 Theoretical Background

Chapter 2 The similarities and differences between making and accepting apology in English and Vietnamese

Chapter 3 Implications and suggestions

PART III CONCLUSION

PART II DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 SPEECH ACTS

1.1.1 Definition of speech act

In our daily lives, humans use speech to transmit information and feelings Humans cannot live without speech However speaking is complex behavior which requires both linguistic and pragmatic competence, it is also influenced by sociocultural norms and constraints There are different types of behaviors seen in speech acts, such as requests, complaints, invitations and apologies

Making a statement may be the paradigmatic use of language, but there are all kinds of other things we can do with words We can make request, ask questions, give orders, makes promises, give thanks, offer apologies and so on Moreover, we perform speech acts when we want to express opinions, viewpoints, wishes and wants We thus intend to have some effect on the listener and wants the listener to recognize this intention

A speech act might contain just one word, as in “Sorry!” to perform an apology,

or several words or sentences such as: “I’m sorry I’m late”

The following definitions will define more clearly the concept of speech acts: According to Austin (1962): “Speech acts is a functional unit in communication” Yule agrees on Austin’s theory of speech act: “In attempting to express themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances” According to him, actions performed via utterances are speech acts For example: I suggest… to make a suggestion, I apologize… to make apology or I assert…to make assertion

According to Schmidt and Richards (1980) define speech acts are all the acts that speakers perform through speaking, and all things that speakers do and the interpretation and negotiation of speech acts depend on discourse of context

In general, speech acts are acts of communication Communication is to express

a certain attitude, and the kinds of speech act being performed corresponds to the kinds

of attitude expressed Therefore, a speech act succeeds if the audience identifies, following in the speaker’s intention, and the attitude expressed

1.1.2 Types of speech acts

According to Austin (1962), a speech act consists of three related acts: locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act

- Locutionary act: the act of saying and writing something in a language

- Illocutionary act: the act describes what a speaker does by uttering a sentence

- Perlocutionary act: the effects of the utterance on the listener It reveals the effect the speaker want to perform over the hearer

In other words, the locutionary act is basic act of utterance and it only produces

a meaningful linguistic expression with no purpose; the literal meaning of what is said For example,

(1) “It’s hot in here”

Someone made this meaningful linguistic expression However, in real life, people do not just make the utterances with no purpose They usually make them with some special intentions which are involved in the illocutionary act It is performed through utterance as is illustrated in example (1) It can be a simple statement, and it also can be a request to open the door, or an explanation for something or used for some other purposes

Sometime, it is difficult to distinguish between the illocutionary and perlocutionary act In fact, the speaker do not only make the meaningful utterances with some functions, but also he/she wants to get an effect which is involved in the perlocutionary act After hearing the utterance of example (1), the hearer will recognize the effect the speaker wants, for example, for the hearer to open the door, and then he/she will either do it for the speaker or not

Besides, Searle (1969) classified illocutionary acts or speech acts into 5 categories as following:

- Assertive: used to state some facts that maybe occur or not, it consists of: statements, assertions, conclusions and descriptions

(2) It was a rainy day

(3) The earth is round

- Directive: used to get somebody to do something, its performance is order, request, command and suggest According to Hurford et.al (2007: 294) state that: “A directive act is any illocutionary act which essentially involves the speaker trying to get the hearer to behave in some required way”

(4) Don’t touch that

(5) Could you open the door, please?

- Commissive: used to commit to doing something in the future such as: promises, threats, and plans

(6) I’ll come on time tomorrow

(7) I’m going to London next week

- Declaration: used to change or state a given reality through utterances In this respect, Pratt (1977: 81) also states that declarative speech acts are: “Illocutionary acts that bring about the state of affairs they refer to” They are performed via these acts such as: declaring, notice…

(8) I now pronounce you husband and wife

(9) I inform you that the fight will be canceled

- Expressive: Pratt (1977: 81) claims that expressive speech acts have to deal with psychological states of speakers Hence, they are used to express feelings and emotions such as: apology, compliment

(10) I’m so sorry!

(11) What a beautiful shirt!

Yule (1996, p55) summarizes the five general functions of speech acts with their key features

Table 1.1: The five general functions of speech act (Yule, 1996, p55)

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

Declaration Words change the world S causes X

Representative Make words fit the world S believe X

Expressive Make words fit the world S feels X

Directive Make the world fit words S wants X

Commissive Make the word fit words S intends X

The apologies are included in the expressive speech acts They are usually involved in speakers’ and hearers’ psychological states and the face states

1.1.3 Direct and indirect speech acts

According to Yule (1996: 54-55), “Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct speech acts” He means that the classification of speech acts is based on “structural forms” such as declarative, interrogative or imperative and “communicative function” such as requests, demands and promises For example:

(1) I apologize for forgetting it (Direct apology)

(2) I order you to clean the table (Direct order)

On the other hand, Searle (1975: 61) points out: “In indirect speech acts, the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer” That means when a speech act is performed indirectly, it is performed by way of

performing something indirectly In this case, the speaker do not mean what his/her words mean but something else instead We can consider following illustrate:

(3) “Can you close the window?”

That example is an indirect speech act of requesting, because it expresses a communicative function (request) by means of another structure (question) These are more some examples of indirect speech acts:

(4) It’s very hot in here ( indirect request to open the door)

(5) A says: Do you want to play soccer?

B replies: I feel tired (indirect answer by saying no)

1.1.4 Felicity condition

When performing activities, performer need to have some certain conditions These conditions are necessary to the success of speech act For example, a judge can sentence a criminal in court, but not on other places

Searle (1969: 36) suggests felicity conditions into four types: propositional content conditions, preparatory conditions, sincerity conditions, and essential conditions Moreover, he also claims that speaking a language is performing actions according to specific rules That means perlocutionary act needs appropriate conditions to be performed successfully On the other words, those are appropriate circumstances for the implication of perlocutionary act recognized as true to the intention The four felicity conditions are:

- Propositional content condition: Propositional content often indicate the content nature of speech acts As Searle’s statement, the propositional content involves that the performative utterance components should fulfill the performed act We thus cannot make a request by using an utterance of performing a promise The content of proposition may be speaker’s act such as: swear, promise, commit or listener’s act such as: order, request The proposition is consider as the main factor of speech acts For example:

(1) You came

(2) Do you come?

(3) Let’s come

(4) Oh! You came

Four sentences in the above example share the same content: You-come However, perlocutionary acts of these are different:

- Report

- Ask

- Express emotion

Four these acts are performed based on the main proposition: You come

- Preparatory condition: Searle (1980: 322-323) declares that the preparatory condition of performative utterance have clear purpose behind uttering them In the other ways, the preparatory condition is background circumstance and knowledge that both the speaker and the hearer have to hold before performing the act For example, the preparatory condition for order, should include that the hearer is able to do the act

Or when the speaker utters a promise, it should be sure that the speaker want to perform this act and the hearer also hope that the promise is performed

- Sincerity condition: this condition requires the speaker have sincerity in uttering the speech acts For example, if the speaker promises to do something, he/she then sincerely intend to do so Searle (1980: 323) claims that “the most important distinction between sincere and insincere promise is that in the case of the sincere promise the speaker intends to do the act promised, in the case of insincere promise he does not intend to do the the act”

Besides, the sincerity condition also regulates psychological features of participants such as: feelings, intentions, and thoughts

- Essential condition: It requires the commitment of speakers and hearers to do the acts which are expressed by their utterances The essential condition of a promising

is the commitment of the speaker to perform a certain promise

According to Yule (1996: 51), “the essential condition in performing speech acts is a combination of what should be in the utterance content, the nature of contexts and the speaker’s intentions to do these actions” In the same opinion, Lyons (1977: 734) claims that “the essential condition in performing speech acts means that the speaker is committed by the illocutionary force of his utterance to certain beliefs or intention”

1.1.5 Apology as speech acts

An apology is a speech act used when the behavioral norm is broken When an action or utterances has resulted that one or more persons perceives themselves as offended, the guilty person(s) needs to apologize The speech act of apologizing aims

at maintaining, restoring, and enhancing interpersonal relationship According to Olshtain (1983) when an action or utterance result in the fact that one or more persons perceive themselves as offended, the culpable partly(s) needs to apologize Apologizing is polite speech act used to restore social relations following an offence

Leech (1983: 104) cited in Trosborg (1995: 373) defined the act of apologizing

is a convivial speech act, the goal of which coincides with the social goal of

maintaining harmony between speaker and hearer Holmes (1995) asserts apology as a speech act directed to the addressee’s face needs and intended to resolve an offence for which speaker takes responsibility, and to restore balance between speaker and addressee In addition, Marquez-reiter (2000: 44) declares an apology as a compensatory action for an offense committed by the speaker which has affected the hearer

1.2 CONVERSATION THEORY

1.2.1 The concept of conversation

Conversation is the fundamental activity of the language In communication, conversation always exists the response between the speaker and the listener, they are not only interact each other but their speech also interact one another A conversation

is took place at any time, somewhere, and in some situations Context plays an important role in creating and perceiving the speech

Conversation is the most popular act of communication of the human being That is a talk between two or more people in which thoughts, feelings and ideas are displayed, questions are asked and answered, or information is exchanged

First of all, we must mention the concept of conversation (talk) It is the exchange, and conversation between individuals in certain social situations

Each conversation always has the beginning and the end, they make the boundary of a conversation can contain a variety of topics, and each topic has multiple issues The set of turn exchange of an issue creating a sequence

1.2.2 Conversational structure

There are many metaphors used to describe conversation structure For some, conversation is like a dance, the participant must coordinate their actions rhythmically Another say that conversation is like traffic crossing an intersection, involving lot of movements without any crashes

Basically, the structure of conversation follows the pattern: I speaker- you speaker- I speaker- you speaker

1.2.2.1 Turn-taking

Turn is a form of social activity, which is governed by a set of rules for taking turn, giving turn and keeping it Because participants could not control as they wants, these rules are proposed to make sure that one participant speak at the time, then they

give a turn next to the speaker, or next speaker take up the turn without being given

(1) - Tim: would you like some more sugar, John?

- John: Well, I’d love to

- Alex: No, I am good

1.2.2.2 Adjacency pairs

Adjacency pairs are “Pairs of utterances in talk are often mutually dependent” (McCarthy, 2002, p119) They always consist of a first part and a second part These parts are produced by the different participants in a conversation The first speaker utters the first part, then he/she immediately expects his/her conversation partner to utter the second part of the pair Adjacency pairs are the fundamental structural units

in conversation, they are used in starting and finishing conversation The most obvious examples of adjacency pairs are thanking-response, question-answer, request-acceptance, giving-receiving, greeting-greeting, apology-acceptance…The following example illustrates:

(2) Greeting-greeting:

- Nam: Hello!

- Tuan: Hi!

(3) Thanking-response:

- Hoa: Thank for your help

- Hương: Don’t mention it

(4) Request-acceptance

- Mother: Let’s go bed now!

- Son: Yes, mom

(5) Apology – Acceptance

- Mary: I’m so sorry for forgetting your birthday

- Anna: Don’t worry about it

(6) Invitation- acceptance

- Boy: Are you free tonight? I’d like to invite you go to the cinema

- Girl: That sounds great

(6) Question- answer

- Mom: Where is my dictionary?

- Son: It’s on the table, Mom

1.3 POLITENESS THEORY

1.3.1 Politeness and Face

All the speech acts cannot exist without face and politeness, they usually save face or threat face Politeness is usually an expression of concern for the feelings of other people both linguistic and non- linguistic ways It is used to express respect to the person who is talked So politeness can be considered as an important communicative strategy which helps to maintain good relationships and keep

conversations going on Many linguists share their understanding and their concern on the concept of politeness

Lakoff (1989: 102) defines politeness as a “means of minimizing confrontation

in discourse – both the possibility of confrontation occurring at all, and the possibility that a confrontation will be perceived as threating” She lists the following maxims of politeness:

1 Don’t impose

2 Give options

3 Make the receiver feel good

The first rule, “Don’t impose” states that we keep distance from others by not imposing In order to keep distance with others, we tend to use formal expressions or use technical vocabulary to exclude personal emotions

The second rule, “Give options” is characterized by saying things hesitantly, by not stating one’s will clearly or by using euphemisms It involves the status difference

of the speaker and the hearer, and the speaker yields to the power of the hearer by leaving the option of decision to the hearer For example;

(1) Would you mind…?

(2) Could you possibly…?

(3) May I ask you to…?

By using “Would you”, “Could you”, “May I” the imposition is lessened

“Could you” is in for of a question to examine the hearer’s willingness to do the action

The third rule, “Make the receiver feel good”, on the other hand, emphasizes equality between the speaker and the hearer And it enhances closeness between them For example: We may add in praise to make the hearer feel good

(4) Could you give me a helping hand? You know much more about it than I do

According to Yule (1997: 60), politeness is considered as “the ideal of “polite social behavior” or etiquette within a culture” In other words, politeness is “a number

of different general principles for being polite in social interaction within a particular culture”

Leech (1983) defines “Politeness as a type of behavior that follows the participants to engage in a social interaction in an atmosphere of relative harmony” In other ways, Leech says that the politeness principle has the role to maintain social balance and friendly relations which enable us to assume our interlocutors are being co-operative in the first place Then, he introduces a number of maxims which are

necessary in order to explain the relationship between sense and force in human conversation:

- Tact maxim: minimize cost to other; maximize benefit to other

- Generosity maxim: minimize benefit to self; maximize benefit to self

- Approbation maxim: minimize dispraise of other; maximize praise of other

- Modesty maxim; minimize praise of self; maximize dispraise of self

- Agreement maxim; minimize disagreement between self and other; maximize agreement between self and other

- Sympathy maxim; minimize antipathy between self and other; maximize sympathy between self and other

Each maxim is accompanied by a sub-maxim, which is of less importance They all support the idea that negative politeness is more important than positive politeness Not all of the maxims are equally important For example, tact influences what we say more powerfully than does generosity, while approbation is more important than modesty

According to Richard et al (1985: 281), politeness is defined as:

a) How language express the social distance between speakers and their different role relationships

b) How face - work, which is, the attempt to establish, maintain and save face during conversation, is carried out in a speech community Languages differ in how they express politeness

Meanwhile, Brown and Levison (1987) state “politeness that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained or enhanced and must be constantly attend to

in interaction” The key notion in their politeness model is “face” In their opinion, in order to enter into social relationships, all people must acknowledge the face of other people

As a technical term, face means the public self-image of a person It refers to the emotional and social sense of self that people has and expects others to recognize Within everyday social interactions, people generally behave as if their expectations concerning their public self-image will be respected It also called as face wants The action of saying something that represents a threat to another individual’s face or self-esteem, it is described as face threatening act Meanwhile, if a speaker says something

to lessen the possible threat or to maintain a good self-image, it is called a face saving act To keep the conversations going on or to keep the solidarity, people will avoid face-threating act and try their best to use face –saving act that emphasizes other’s positive face needs In this study, apology regards as face saving act Apologies

typically occur post-event to restore harmony when an offense has been committed, but it is also face- saving one’s own face (Goffman, 1972:190) In this respect, apology involves a threat to the speaker, but it is possible for the offender to save face

by justifying or explaining the reasons for his/her fault

(5) Student: I am sorry for coming lately

For example (1), it is considered as face-saving act, the student is sorry for what

he has done, so the act is aimed to restore harmony and keep self-image

Brown and Levison also claim that human being have two kinds of face:

“positive face” and “negative face”

Positive face, according to (Yule, 1996), “is the need to be accepted, event liked, by other, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by other” On the other hand, negative face is the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed by others (Yule, 1996) Brown and Levison (1987) also claim that “negative face is the basic claim to territories personal preserves, right to non – distraction, etc to freedom of action and freedom from imposition Positive face and negative face are the two aspects of face that are the basic wants in any social interaction, and so during any social interaction, the participants need to keep each other’s face

In order to avoid conflict and respect people’s freedom of thought, and thus maintain the harmonious relations with others, politeness strategies can be implemented in conversation

1.3.2 Strategies of Politeness

In the Politeness theory by Brown and Levison (1987), politeness is considered

as a complex system for softening face-threating acts (FTAs) In the other words, Politeness strategies are used in order to reduce the imposition of FTAs As a result, Brown and Levison sum up politeness behavior in four strategies so as to minimize the loss of face:

1 Bald on-record strategy usually do not attempt to minimize the threat to the

hearer’s face, although there are ways that bald on-record politeness can be used in

trying to minimize face-threating acts implicitly E.g

(6) I want some beer

2 Positive politeness strategies seek to minimize the threat to the hearer’s

positive face They are used to make the hearer feel good about himself, his interest or possessions ,and are most usually used in situations where the audience knows each

other fairly well E.g

3 Negative politeness strategies are oriented towards the hearer’s negative

face and emphasize avoidance of imposition on the hearer E.g

(8) I don’t want to bother you but, would it be possible for me to have a beer?

4 Off-record strategies uses indirect language and removes the speaker from

the potential to be imposing E.g

(9) It’s so hot, it makes me really thirst

1.4 APOLOGY THEORY

1.4.1 Definition of apology

Apology is an expressive illocutionary act It is used commonly in human interaction There are numerous definitions of apology provided by many researchers

According to Garcia (1989: 44) Apology is defined as “An explanation offered

to a person effected by one’s action that no offense was intended, couple with the expression of regret for any that may have been given; or, a frank acknowledgement of the offense with expression of regret for it, by way of reparation” The typical expression of an apology is done by the words, “I am sorry” However, the word “I am sorry” can have many possible interpretations for a listener as well as a speaker The difference of meaning results in three elements in an apology (i) admitting one’s fault, (ii) expressing regret for the injurious action, and (iii) expressing sympathy for the other’s injury(Cohen ,1999)

Apologies are also defined as “primarily and essentially social acts, carrying effective meaning” (Homes, 1990) An apology is a fundamental speech act which is a part of human communication that is a typical phenomenon in every culture; they are very good indicators of distance and dominance in relationships, hence reflecting cultural norm Brown and Levinson (1987:66) regard apologies as “politeness strategies” in that they convey respect, deference, and distance rather than friendliness and involvement In performing an apology, the speaker acknowledges the addressee’s face - want not to be offended They add that an apology is for some behavior or failure to carry out some behavior that has proved costly to the hearer To apology is to act politely, both in vernacular sense and in more technical sense of paying attention to the addressee’s face needs (Brown and Levison, 1987)

According to Leech (1983: 104), apology is a convivial speech act whose goal coincides with the social goal of maintaining harmony between the speaker and the hearer’s Both theory of Brown and Levison and Leech are convenient and acceptable, because each one describes this process and captured this phenomenon from both sides individually and society