RATIONALE
In everyday communication, people not only say things containing grammatical structures and words, but also perform actions via those utterances, namely speech acts We observe a variety of speech acts including requesting, complaining, asking for permission, inviting, and so on Apologizing, one kind of speech acts, is a common activity in communication playing an important role in maintaining social relationships.
When we make a mistake or hurt others unintentionally or deliberately, we will do apologetic actions to express repentance as well as take responsibility for hurting the listener However, to achieve successful communication, people are required to understand what the speaker is saying and know how to respond appropriately If there is no response to a particular speech act, the communication is not considered to be fully accomplished Since a conversation contains utterances among speakers and listeners which means there is an interpersonal relationship, the pragmatic act was employed to set light to this thesis.
(1.1) Employee: I’m sorry I’m late but my alarm clock didn’t go off this morning.
Boss: OK We’ve only just started the meeting.”
(No.1, Appendix 1)This is a conversation among an employee and a boss taking place in a meeting room The speaker apologizes explicitly by using the performative verb phrase be sorry when saying I’m sorry and then explains the reason for being late my alarm clock didn’t go off this morning The boss accepted the apologies when uttering OK and tried to minimize the offense of the employee by saying We’ve only just started the meeting.
(1.2) Student: I apologize for being late, teacher!
Teacher: No problem Take your seat.”
Example 1.2 also demonstrates explicit apologies with the use of the performative verbs apologize by a student when he comes to the class late The teacher responds to the apology directly by saying No problem which can possibly be regarded as positive responses Example 1.3 in Vietnamese sets an example of explicit apologies and positive responses.
(1.3) Con bà Tư: Mẹ, con xin lỗi ạ Con hứa lần sau sẽ cẩn thận hơn ạ.
Bà Tư: Không sao đâu con”
(Bà Tư’s daughter: Mom, I’m sorry I promise I will be more careful.
Bà Tư: It’s OK Don’t worry!)
As can be seen in example (1.3), the conversation takes place between a mother – Bà Tư, and her daughter The daughter says Mẹ, con xin lỗi ạ and promises not to repeat the offence The mother accepts the apologies by saying Không sao đâu con.
In some situations, the speaker expresses their apologies without containing performative verbs which can be considered to be implicit apologies The hearer can make use of negative responses to apologies.
(1.4) Patrick: What should I do to compensate you for your CD that I have just broken up?
Laya: Oh, really It’s my mom’s CD Why don’t you talk to her?
In example (1.4), since the speaker broke the CD, Patrick initiates the conversation by suggesting the compensation to the hearer for the broken CD The speaker wants to compensate the hearer since he could possibly make the hearer feel unhappy In this case, even though he is apologizing by delivering an utterance without any performative verbs regarded as an implicit apology, he expects to get the hearer’s acceptance However, since it is not the hearer’s CD, Laya in this case does not accept the speaker’s apology, which is a negative response to the apology.
In another case, although the speakers themselves do not do anything to hurt the hearers’ feelings, they still express their apology because they know the hearers have difficulties or encounter sadness with their work, family or other relationships.
More often, the speakers apologize for what they have already done to the hearers Sometimes, the speakers use apologies for what they are about to do such as asking for information, getting directions, or so on.
(1.5) Tourist: Excuse me! Can you show me the way to the post office please?
A local resident: OK, you just go along this street until the end, and it is on your left.
(No.5, Appendix 1) (1.6) Student: I'm sorry, can you say that again?
Teacher: You are always talking in my class.
(No.6, Appendix 1) (1.7) Anh Đào: Xin lỗi, bác có thể chỉ cháu đường đến sân bay được không ạ?
Người đi đường: Được chứ, cháu nghe kỹ nhé.
(Anh Đào: Excuse me! Can you show me the way to the airport?
A passer-by: It’s OK Listen carefully.)
(1.8) Khách hàng: Xin lỗi, chị có thể nói cụ thể hơn được không?
Người bán hàng: Tất nhiên rồi ạ.
(A customer: I’m sorry, but can you please give me further information?
The speakers in examples (1.5), (1.6), (1.7), and (1.8) make use of explicit apologies with performative verbs “excuse”, “be sorry” in English, and “xin lỗi” in Vietnamese These four utterances of apologies are also explicit ones.
In short, as mentioned in Section 2.1.4 in Chapter Two, the reasons why this thesis was conducted are due to the fact that there seemed very few previous studies investigating response strategies separately, the pragmatic acts of apology and response strategies in the light of sociopragmatics, and how gender and social power impacted the apology and response strategies used by the characters in film conversations Additionally, most previous studies depended on a DCT; by contrast, this thesis took advantage of the film transcript as a source of data, and adopted a qualitative method with the support of quantitative information.
People need to contact and exchange information with each other; in other words, people need to communicate However, how to communicate appropriately is not easy, especially between people of different cultures and languages For most language learners, it is difficult to understand the intended meaning communicated by pragmatic acts, or to produce a pragmatic act appropriately in the target language because of the close tie between the speech act of apology and culture This research aims to present an overview of pragmatic act theory, to examine the pragmatic act of apology and response under the light of sociopragmatics From the perspective of sociopragmatics, apology can be researched based on interactive relationships in communication, or social variables namely age, gender, social status, power, and educational types between apology givers and apology takers It could be said that gender and social power are among important variables influencing the way people apologize and make responses to apologies.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
Aims
This study investigates pragmatic apology and response strategies in English and Vietnamese film conversations Specifically, it examines how gender and power dynamics influence these strategies The goal is to uncover similarities and differences in apology and response patterns across both languages By analyzing film conversations, the study sheds light on the pragmatic use of language in intercultural communication.
Objectives
To achieve the above aims of the research, the following objectives are set:
- to discover apology and response strategies in English film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power;
- to identify apology and response strategies in Vietnamese film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power;
- to analyze similarities and differences in apology and response strategies inEnglish and Vietnamese film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In order to achieve the above aims and objectives, the research seeks to answer the following research questions:
1 What are apology and response strategies in English film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power?
2 What are apology and response strategies in Vietnamese film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power?
3 What are similarities and differences in apology and response strategies inEnglish and Vietnamese film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power?
SCOPE OF THE STUDY
Initially, the thesis based on theoretical foundations of sociopragmatics including Mey (2006, 2013)’s pragmatic acts, Schegloff (1974)’ adjacency pairs of speech or pragmatic acts of apologies and responses, Searle (1975)’s direct and indirect speech act, Hall (1997) and Hofstede (2011)’s cultural dimensions, Trosborg’s (2011) apology taxonomy, and Holmes’s (1990, 1995) apology response taxonomy The conceptual framework was then developed from these theoretical foundations to conduct this thesis Secondly, apology can be performed in verbal and non-verbal communication in order to express the repentance of speakers However, in this thesis, focus is laid on verbal apologies and apology responses only Both direct and indirect apology and response strategies used in film conversations in English and Vietnamese were both focused on In the third place, even though social variables include education, age, region, occupation, gender, and power, this thesis took into account the last two variables which are gender and power Gender in this thesis was biologically understood to include male and female The pairs of apologies and responses were used in conversations among male and male, male and female, female and female, and female and male In terms of power among the characters in film conversations, it was assigned three values between apologizers and apologizees: higher power apologizers, lower power apologizers, and equal power apologizers Furthermore, exchanges of adjacency pairs of apology and apology response consisted of minimal adjacency pairs of apology and apology response strategies for analysis Regarding the dominant research design, this thesis was a descriptive contrastive study using the qualitative method with the support of quantitative information Additionally, the conversations were extracted from socio-psychological film scripts and subtitles in both languages. These socio-psychological films have been produced since 2015 to represent the most updated ways of using apology and response strategies and keep up with the tendency of communication The number of socio-psychological films in English andVietnamese were 46 and 43, respectively; in particular, the English films which were created and released in the United States of America where English is spoken as a first language.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE STUDY
This study can, to some extent, make some contributions to knowledge from the theoretical and practical perspectives Initially, regarding the contribution to linguistics, this doctoral thesis combined and connected the two single speech acts namely apologizing and responding into the pragmatic acts Either the speech act of apologizing or the speech act of responding which was developed by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) has been widely investigated in different languages These studies focused on the single speech act or conventional speech act According to Austin
(1962) and Searle (1969), the act of apologizing occurred after the speakers violated, offended, or hurt the hearers Whereas, the act of apology responding was accomplished when the hearer accepted or rejected the apologies As opposed to the conventional speech acts, in daily life communication, that the act of apologizing is done does not mean the speakers have done the violating action to the hearers The speakers, for instance, may apologize since they have to take responsibilities as those who have higher powers, or they as males want to appease their female partners in romantic relationships Therefore, there was a shift from single speech acts into a pair of speech acts, or from conventional speech acts into pragmatic acts under the umbrella of sociopragmatics to clarify the interpersonal relationship among interlocutors when apologizing and responding to apologies in this thesis In particular, depending on the contexts, interlocutors take advantage of different apology and response strategies The investigation into the pragmatic acts of apology and response strategies in the light of sociopragmatics is expected to contribute to the field of linguistics A detailed description of what kinds of apology strategies and response strategies to apologies in terms of gender and power in English and Vietnamese in particular contexts are discovered A full analysis of the similarities and differences of apologies and their responses in both language in terms of gender and power would depict a more comprehensive picture of the pragmatic act of apology and response strategies.
Concerning practical significance, in daily-life communication, whenever the speakers apologize, they do hope to be responded whether the hearers accept or reject their apologies Depending on different contexts that the interlocutors involve, gender, and power, the hearers make use appropriate apology response strategies to reply apology strategies Additionally, with the aim to analyze the similarities and differences of apologies, apology strategies, and responses to apologies in terms of gender and power in English and Vietnamese, the study provides learners of English and Vietnamese with intercultural knowledge and a comprehensive understanding of apologies and apology-related issues in the two languages, which help them to give appropriate apologies in communicating with local speakers and with either English or Vietnamese In addition, it suggests some ideas for either Vietnamese teachers of English or English teachers to give apologies to Vietnamese learners of English, and for either Vietnamese learners of English or learners of Vietnamese to give apologies to Vietnamese teachers of English and English teachers To put another way, the thesis is intended to provide an insight into a fascinating aspect found especially in Vietnamese as well as make a modest contribution to language classroom management to better the relationship between teachers and learners The results of the thesis have certain practical values in explaining the effective use of apologies and their responses inEnglish and Vietnamese for better social language interactions.
DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS
Some key terms are defined differently by different scholars; nonetheless, in this thesis, the ones below defined by the researcher are employed These glosses are thus consistent with the aims and context of the thesis:
(i) Apologizer is the one who apologizes and causes the act of apologizing (ii) Apologizee is to whom the apology is made and is attached to the act of apologizing, or the recipient of the apologies.
(iii) Apologizing is a speech act to remedize the social relationship among the apologizers and the apologizees verbally.
(iv) Apology responding as a speech act of reacting to the act of apologizing verbally.
(v) Apologizing and responding in conversations are considered to a pair of speech acts or a pragmatic act where there is an interpersonal relationship among apologizers and apologizees.
(vi) Strategies are the techniques which are chosen for interpersonal communication by the apologizers and apologizees depending on two social variables namely gender and power.
(vii) performative verbs in apologizing acts appear only in utterances which consist of direct apology strategies such as afraid, apologise, apology, excuse, forgive, pardon, regret and sorry in English or xin lỗi, tiếc, lấy làm tiếc, hối hận, tha lỗi, tha thứ, thứ lỗi, thứ tha and lỗi in Vietnamese.
(viii) performative verbs in apology responding acts appear only in utterances which consist of direct response strategies to accept apologies such as
OK, it’s OK, it doesn’t matter, not at all, alright, that’s alright, yes in English or được rồi, đồng ý, chấp nhận, không sao, không có gì, chuyện nhỏ in Vietnamese, and to refuse an apology such as no, never, do not forgive in English or không, không bao giờ, không bỏ qua, không quên được, không đời nào, không được, không thể tha thứ in Vietnamese.
(ix) high power apologizers are those who apologize and cause the act of apologizing, and their social powers are higher than apologizees In an interaction of higher power apologizers, the apologizees definitely have lower social power than the apologizers.
(x) low power apologizers are those who apologize and cause the act of apologizing, and their social powers are lower than apologizees In an interaction of lower power apologizers, the apologizees definitely have higher social power than the apologizers.
(xi) equal power apologizers are those who apologize and cause the act of apologizing, and they have the same power as their apologizees.
ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
The doctoral thesis is structured in seven chapters, including introduction, literature review and theoretical background, research methodology, four chapters of results, and conclusion and implications.
Chapter One - Introduction - includes the rationale, aims and objectives, research questions, scope, contributions, and the organization of the study.
Chapter Two - Literature Review and Theoretical Background - mentions previous studies relating to the research topic, and the theoretical background in light of sociopragmatics including conversation analysis, the theory of speech act and pragmatic act, taxonomies of apology and response strategies.
Chapter Three - Research Methodology - demonstrates the research method, data collection and analysis, analytical framework, the research procedures, and the reliability and validity of the data.
Chapter Four - Apology and Response Strategies in English Film
Conversations – analyzes the apology and response strategies in terms of gender and power in film conversations in English.
Chapter Five - Apology and Response Strategies in Vietnamese Film Conversations – identifies the apology and response strategies in terms of gender and power in film conversations in Vietnamese.
Chapter Six – Similarities and Differences in Apology and Response
Strategies in English and Vietnamese Film Conversations - compares and contrasts the similarities and differences of the apology and response strategies in terms of gender and power in English and Vietnamese film conversations.
Chapter Seven - Conclusion and Implications - draws the conclusions of the research and several implications for teaching and learning relating to using apology strategies and response strategies to enhance the efficiency of language communication in English as well as in Vietnamese; and also makes some suggestions for further research.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Chapter One has presented the reasons for the researcher to conduct this thesis thanks to the identification of the aims and relevant objectives, the three corresponding research questions The scope illustrated in Chapter One helped this
11 thesis to be implemented and orientated Moreover, some theoretical and practical significances of the thesis were considered to be the contributions of this thesis to language learning and teaching, and to language research Finally, this chapter assisted readers to outline this thesis by providing them with the organization of the study.
CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
• Previous Studies Related to Apologies and Responses
+Socio-pragmatic Studies +Contrastive or - Cross-cultural Pragmatic Studies +Interlanguage Pragmatic Studies
+Conversation and Film Conversation + Exchange in Adjacency Pair of Speech Acts +Speech Act and Pragmatic Act Theory + Language and Culture +Conceptual Framework of the Study
+Qualitative Method +Descriptive Method +Contrastive Method
+Sources of Data +Population, Samples, and Sampling +Data Collection +Instruments +Data Collection +Procedure
+Statistical Analysis Tool +Matrix of Collected Data +Data Analysis +Procedure +Analytical Framework of the Study
CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN
ENGLISH VIETNAMESE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES OF CONCLUSION AND
APOLOGY AND RESPONSE STRATEGIES IN IMPLICATIONS ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FILM
CONVERSATIONS APOLOGY AND RESPONSE STRATEGIES IN
• Apology and Response Strategies • Similarities in Apology and Response • Conclusions
• Gender Influences on Apology and Strategies in English and Vietnamese Film • Implications
Response Strategies Conversations • Limitations of the
• Power Influences on Apology and Response • Differences in Apology and Responses in Study
Strategies English and Vietnamese Film • Chapter Summary
Figure 1.1 Map of the thesis
CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
This chapter presented a brief review of previous studies related to apologies and responses, as well as the theoretical background Previous studies on cross- cultural, intercultural pragmatics, and both related to apology and response strategies in the perspective of social variables including gender and social power were reviewed Theoretical background involving the integration of various theories of sociopragmatics, pragmatic act, speech act, conversation analysis, and taxonomies of apologies and responses were also demonstrated in Chapter Two.
PREVIOUS STUDIES RELATED TO APOLOGIES AND RESPONSES
Socio-pragmatic Studies
Related to socio-pragmatics, there are different variables related to apology and response strategies to apology Within the scope of this thesis, the studies with the variables of gender and power were seeked.
Previous research on apologies has focused on the key distinctions between men and women in terms of how they produce apologies when they commit offenses.Differences between men's and women's speech have been extensively researched within the context of linguistic etiquette, yielding interesting scientific findings(Bataineh, 2006, 2008; Cameron et al, 1996; Gonzales et al., 1990; Holmes, 1995;Holmes, 2013; Majeed and Janjua, 2014; Meyerhoff, 1999; Meyerhoff, 2000, 2003;
Schumann and Ross, 2010; and Tannen, 1994) For example, it was found out in the studies by Gonzales et al (1990), Holmes (1995), and Brown and Attardo (2005) that women apologized more frequently than men They also explained that, in contrast to men, women appeared to make more effort to apologize after committing an offense Women were found to beg more often than men, apologize in greater detail and with greater complexity, and put forth more effort to lessen the harm that their offense had caused If women are perceived to be of lower status, then these findings are consistent with the Politeness Theory (Brown and Levinson, 1987), which postulates that those in lower positions tend to exert more efforts in maintaining positive relationships with others.
Women are perceived as being politer, less critical, and more likely to use more softening tactics than men, according to social norms that also revolve around politeness (Lakoff, 1973; Tannen, 1994) Since females tend to express themselves more in their apologies than males do, theirs are easier to foresee and may come across as more genuine Gonzales et al (1990), for instance, contend that women are perceived as being more concerned with preserving and maintaining relationships than men are It is believed that compared to men, women apologize more frequently Majeed and Janjua (2014) highlight how gender influences how an apology is produced in Urdu; men employ a range of tactics, whilst women utilize explicit strategies, yet women tend to offer repairs more frequently than men.
Other academics have argued (Cameron, 1995, 1997; Bergvall et al., 1996) that observing men and women in a divisive way ignores not only the variety of speech within groups of women and groups of men but also cultural differences and those that may arise from other social variables like class, age, and ethnicity According to Freed
(1995), this indifference contributed to the preservation of stereotypes regarding male and female discourse Holmes (1995), on the other hand, argued that while male participants apologized to women without considering their standing, female participants used more excuses than males and generally made them to people in similar positions of authority Such findings support research showing that people's
15 usage of speech actions in general, and apologies in particular, are significantly influenced by their gender (Lukasik, 2000) In conclusion, the findings of the studies discussed above show that the methods of apologizing are related to how men and women are brought up in various cultures.
Through an examination of gender and pragmalinguistic preferences within a modified version of Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness framework, Filimonova (2015) made an attempt to compare and contrast Russian and Spanish apologies The findings of this study indicate that both participants who spoke Russian and individuals who spoke Spanish used the primary apologetic tactics more similarly than differently, which is probably because both cultures place a strong emphasis on politeness The Russian version in this study is more positively orientated than the Mexican Spanish variety, which suggests that even positive politeness cultures show a continuum However, the types of directness and acceptance of responsibility were higher in Russian than in Spanish data This assertion is further supported by the research of gender-specific behavior, which demonstrates how different intensification methods are used by men and women to demonstrate positive politeness The findings indicate that Russian males intensify explanations while Russian females enhance IFIDs To illustrate and explain the comparison's findings, Blum-Kulka et al (1989) used a DCT with eight items for the investigation of language and social components The two kinds often exhibit considerable pragma-linguistic similarity with a few notable gender-related variances According to the observed differences, Mexicans and Russian-Ukrainians have slightly greater positive politeness indices than one another Holmes (1995) discovered that acceptance was the most widely utilized response technique utilizing a corpus of New Zealand English, with almost 40% of women and nearly 30% of men choosing it Evasion was the second most frequently used tactic, used by around 25% of the sample Men and women used rejection in roughly 20% and10% of the situations, respectively A bit more than 10% of the time,acknowledgement and no response were used.
Power is the last focus among the social variables in this thesis Looking at this variable in more details, previous research suggested a relationship between power and apologizing (Aquino et al., 2006; Chun & Yun, 2010; Gonzalez et al., 1990; Hill, 2013; Holmes, 1990; Kiger, 2004; Schumann & Ross, 2010) Differences in power between the offending and offended persons in a specific situation of offence have a major influence on their relation and they are expected to mark the effectiveness of an apology produced by one side to the other For instance, Gonzalez et al (1990) used politeness theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) to explore the relationship between proxies of power and apologizing They found those with low status made twice as many apologetic statements relative to high status transgressors Kiger (2004) argued that people who hold a high social position, like managers, found it difficult to apologize since they are afraid of appearing unimpressive if they admit to making a fault Aquino et al (2006) suggested that the relative high status of the interlocutors encountered in a conflict affects their will to give an excuse or forgive Thus, the higher the status of the offender was, the less likely an apology was According to Chun and Yun (2010), they found out that more apology strategies would be employed when the apologizer is more powerful than the apologizee Hill (2013) examined the components that render an apology more effective Identifying effective components may help apologizers who wish to mend relationships Based on the findings of the current research studies, apologizers in high social distance relationships who wish to mend their relationship with an offended party may wish to include a verbal statement of remorse, an offer of compensation, and should not make an acknowledgment of a violated rule or norm Making this acknowledgment may remind offended parties of what the apologizer has done and makes it difficult for them to forgive Apologizers in low social distance relationships seeking forgiveness should include a verbal expression of remorse in their apology.
According to the above argument, when a person with lower status does apologize to a person with high status for committing a particular offence, the offended person may
17 not necessarily accept that apology and may reject it In contrast, when a person of high power apologizes to a lower power person, the offended in this case is not in a strong position to refuse the apology Thus, it can be concluded that apologies produced by high power parties are more effective than lower status parties because they are more salient and marked Olshtain’s (1989) study compared how Hebrew, Australian English, Canadian French, and German apologized from a cross-cultural perspective using a DCT The data analysis was focused on social factors (distance and power) and contextual factors (severity of violation) The findings from the study revealed that the speakers of the four languages, Hebrew, French, English, and German used similar Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID) such as “I’m sorry” and preferred the expression of responsibility The study concluded that at the global level of analysis, different languages would realize apologies in similar ways The choice of apology strategies is often closely related to social/situational parameters that affect one’s choice of these strategies.
While there is etiquette guidance on how to handle apologies and information for non-native English speakers on how to do so, there is comparatively little research on how English speakers actually handle apologies, and in particular, the kinds of responses and expressions interlocutors use in responding to apologies (Jones, 2013) They collected reactions to apologies from Australian English speakers and compared them to replies from speakers of Bahasa Indonesia using an oral DCT in which participants were given scenarios and asked how they would react to the apology Although rejections were more frequent than the researchers had anticipated, they discovered that a majority of speakers in both languages utilized acceptance techniques Participants might have felt more liberated to reject apologies in hypothetical scenarios than they would have in real relationships, where doing so might have had an adverse effect on the relationship.
There have been many studies on apologies in pragmatics research, but few studies on apology reactions (ARs) By analyzing these comments in two languages, AustralianEnglish (AE) and Bahasa Indonesia, the current study fills a gap in the research (BI).Gender and culture are the two factors on which the study eventually focuses It investigates behavioral disparities between women within and between the two societies and takes into account cultural variations in how ARs are expressed The researchers recorded and examined 360 replies to three apology circumstances using oral discourse completion tasks (DCTs) The results show that both languages' ARs were intricate and complicated, incorporating numerous auxiliary speech acts and expressions The ARs typically avoided direct eye contact with interlocutors and exhibited indirectness One surprising finding, however, is that neither within nor between languages, there was a discernible gender difference in AR approach, debunking the myth that women are more accommodating and nicer than men (Brown, 1980; Holmes, 1995, 2008) Another finding was that, in a sizeable minority of instances, Indonesians were found to be more direct and face-threatening than their Australian counterparts This result challenged another common misconception about speech behavior—that Asians are less direct and ambiguous than native English speakers in Western cultures.
Contrastive or Cross-cultural Pragmatic Studies
The scope of pragmatics is to investigate the rules that control the use of language in a specific context Cross-cultural pragmatics examines and compares native speakers’ pragmatic strategies and associated utterances in different languages Thus,cross-cultural pragmatics can be possibly defined as ‘the study of the similarities and differences in language usage in a given context in different cultures Studies on the speech acts of apologies in various languages have been conducted by Thomas (1983),Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), Trosborg (1987), House (1988), Olshtain (1989),Garcia (1989), Cohen and Olshtain (1989), Hudson et al (1995), Wierzbicka (2003),Brown and Gullberg (2008), Stadler (2013), Salehi (2014), and Brubaker (2016) InVietnam, some authors have also studied single speech using traditional contrastive pragmatics in the languages of greetings (Nguyen, 1990), compliments and their responses (Nguyen, 1998), requests and their responses (Do, 2000; Phan, 2001),requests and their responses to disagreements (Kieu, 2006) There have been few master's and bachelor's theses written on a single speech act of apologies Dang (2000),for example, discovered that the degree of directness and
19 indirectness in apologies in English and Vietnamese differed depending on the communication circumstances and that English used a lot of lexical markers while Vietnamese used a lot of politeness markers These earlier studies on contrastive or cross-cultural pragmatics include a variety of data gathering techniques, including questionnaires, role plays, and the Discourse Completion Task (DCT).
Various studies have employed Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) for data collection House (1988) analyzed apologetic realizations in German students learning English, revealing translation of German styles into English with less common apology terms Nguyen (2010) examined apology production strategies in Vietnamese and American groups, finding parallels in their use of apology tactics but also differences in their sensitivity to distance in choosing tactics Salehi (2014) compared apology techniques of Iranian EFL students and native English speakers, highlighting similarities and variances in their apology strategies Qari (2017) analyzed requests and apologies in native British, native Saudi Arabic, and Saudi EFL speakers, showing cross-cultural preferences for direct requests by Saudis and indirect requests by EFL and British groups Saudis preferred direct linguistic means to express politeness, while British speakers used syntactic and linguistic devices.
Some research utilized the role play technique as their data collection methodology, in contrast to other cross-cultural studies on apology that used DCTs.
In an investigation of the reality of apologies among Danish English language learners, Trosborg (1987) found no conclusive evidence of negative first language (L1) pragmalinguistic transfer from Danish English language learners Garcia
(1989) compared the apologies made by native English speakers and non-native English speakers from Venezuela and discovered that the Venezuelans used more positive politeness strategies, such as saying something kind to show their friendliness or good feelings, while the native speakers used more negative strategies, such as self-effacing According to Brown and Gullberg (2008), they looked at the domain of method of motion in which monolingual Japanese and English speakers differed both in speech and gesture and compared L1 with second language (L2) English usage Additionally, they conducted a cross-cultural pragmatics study on denial in order to compare and contrast the request refusals made by Australian native English speakers Frescura (1993), who examined apologies between native Italian and native English-speaking groups, is another researcher who used role plays The results showed that native English speakers chose hearer-supportive formulas while native Italian speakers favored self- supportive formulas While Canadian Italians preferred various native Italian formulae, native English speakers learning Italian made no preference indications.
In addition to using roleplay and DCT to examine the spoken act of apologizing, many researchers also use a set of questionnaires to gather information Sugimoto
(1997), for instance, contrasted the apologies of Japanese and American pupils 200Americans and 181 Japanese college students participated in her data collection, which required answering a questionnaire in an average of 15-20 minutes during regularly scheduled classes The questionnaire asked open-ended questions about circumstances that called for an apology Her study's findings showed that more Japanese pupils emphasized the significance of atonement Statements of regret, accounting,descriptions of damage, and reparation are the four most frequently
21 employed tactics With the exception of accounts, Japanese students employed these techniques more frequently than Americans The way in which apologies were used varied across cultural boundaries Japanese students expressed their regret in statements that were more elaborate and exaggerated Americans utilized intensifiers, although they frequently repeat words Japanese pupils described the negative aspects of the scenario, in contrast to Americans Hussein and Hammouri
(1998) conducted a study on apologetic techniques using a questionnaire in which they examined the methods employed by American and Jordanian English speakers. They discovered that Jordanians apologize more frequently than Americans Only Jordanians use strategies like praising Allah (God) for what happened, attacking the victim, downplaying the severity of the offense, and interjecting Americans and Jordanians both use the expression of apology, the offer of repair, the acknowledgement of responsibility, and the promise of forbearance The adoption of less straightforward and more complex methods by Jordanian speakers is another distinction between the two groups These distinctions, according to the researchers, are influenced by culture, mental processes, and religious affiliation Thanks to a meta-analysis of the various literatures addressing the practice of apology, Brubaker
(2016) discovered that leaders typically apologized on behalf of their organizations during his investigation on apology in an organizational setting.
One of the strategies for gathering data has been to use corpora or corpus, which include both tiny and huge amounts of data in each specific language With a focus on apologies and appreciation, Intachakra (2004) investigated the characteristics of conversational routines in Thai and British English By using field notes and observation of various types of interactions, a corpus of British English and Thai expressive was compiled in order to clarify the pragmatic variations between speech acts in English and Thai The results showed that although the Thais would offer an apology without saying anything at all, the British would occasionally apologize The expression of apology in Japanese and English was the subject of a contrastive analysis by Kartika and Aditiawarman (2019) Depending on the gravity of the errors and the relationship between the offender and the offended, there are many types of apologies in Japanese Depending on the error made, each apology statement in Japanese has a different purpose Similar to the fact that not all phrase constructions in English are appropriately given the circumstances and context; therefore, not all English apology expressions can be utilized in every circumstance Both formal and informal ways of expressing the sentence exist in both languages However, the Japanese apologies are modified to reflect the circumstances surrounding the error's occurrence The English apologetic expression is adjusted to the situation of what we do, unlike other languages where the expression must adapt to the situation or the person being spoken to A recent study by House and Kádár (2021) looked at a contrastive pragmatic examination of Second World War crime apologies from German and Japanese speakers using a diachronic corpus According to the data, German war apologies have been more conservative than those of Japan. Additionally, war apologies have various elements that are not included in the traditional pragmatic inventory of the speech act of apology in interpersonal interactions, in addition to the "super-component" of "accepting responsibility." Studies on how people respond to speech actions in general and apologies in particular appear to be far less numerous than those on apology tactics within the lens of contrastive pragmatics Studies on the impact of an apology by the offender on the recipient, however, have been conducted For instance, Darby and Schelenker (1989) discovered that an apology made the offender appear better, less blameworthy, and more likeable How the actor's actions were seen depends on his or her standing.Likeable actors were perceived as having better motivations, inflicting the harm inadvertently, being more apologetic, and being less blameworthy This was to be expected Additionally, actors who were repentant and good received the least punishment, indicating that punishment was administered in a therapeutic manner The apology-forgiveness script may be so established in social interactions that its appearance elevates the actor's status They looked at how offenders can improve perceptions Bennett and Dewberry (1994), in contrast, focused on the limitations
23 related to the receipt of apologies They discovered that the interlocutor frequently felt compelled to maintain the relationship by forgiving an offender who made an apology It is shown that across a range of assessments, accepting an apology leads to the most positive perceptions of the performer, while rejecting it results in the least positive ones The purpose of a follow-up study was to see whether this impact will be true when unconvincing excuses are rejected The results show that judgments of actors are unaffected by the apology's position as persuasive or unconvincing Such apologies are often accepted with restrictions that are explained to the perpetrator, although this tendency is rather prevalent.
Since the most common responses to apologies are acceptance or forgiveness, which reflect relief, appreciation, and reduction, apologies were rarely rejected across cultures (Bennett & Earwaker, 1994; Robinson, 2004) Bennett and Earwaker (1994) came to the conclusion that two factors, including the level of offender responsibility and the severity of the outcome, determine whether an apology is accepted through the data collection of role play as the victim of a negative event in which offender responsibility and outcome severity were independently manipulated by respondents in Scotland According to Robinson (2004), there are many different ways that people can react to apologies, from silence to other linguistic expressions He believed that the most common reply to apologies in American and British English discourse was the phrase "That's alright" or "That's okay." He added a judgment, such as OK or alright, which was inherently understood as the speaker's assessment of the offense.
Nguyen (2018) investigated the pair of speech acts of asking for permission and responses in English and Vietnamese Although this study did not focus on the pair of apology and response strategies, it somehow instructed this doctoral thesis to be analyzed when the researcher read the part about exchanges of asking for permission and responses.
In addition to strengthening the basis for second language studies and curriculum materials, intercultural pragmatics has made a substantial contribution to the development of linguistic models and the identification of the relationships between language and culture (Shardakova, 2005) Intercultural misunderstandings, according to Moeschler (2004), are examples of pragmatic misconceptions that are provided along with an explanation of how intercultural pragmatics attempts to understand the extent to which non-shared information influences and impacts the retrieval of intended meaning Because of these communication gaps, the study of intercultural pragmatics has become a burgeoning new area (Chen et al.,1998; Deutschmann, 2003; Kotthoff & Spencer-Oatey, 2007; Murphy, 2014; Murray et al.,1987; Rocci, 2006; Wannaruk, 2008; Wierzbicka, 2003; Wolf & Polzenhagen,
2006) In addition to the DCT, role play, and questionnaires indicated above in Section 2.1.2, the intercultural pragmatic research also included corpus, natural- setting recordings, and interviews as additional data collection techniques.
Deutschmann (2003) investigated the form, function, and sociolinguistic distribution of explicit apologies in the spoken component of the British National Corpus using the corpus as a tool for data collection The structure and purpose of the apologies were primarily assessed in light of the nature of the offense that preceded the speech act The distributions of the various forms of apologies were then examined in relation to the two independent variables conversational environment and speaker social identification (gender, social class, and age) (genre, formality and group size). The prototype apology in this study, a verbal act intended to atone for an actual or imagined offense, was just one of many instances where the apology form was used in the corpus Age and power were two speaker social characteristics that had the greatest impact on the speaker's apologetic conduct Young and middle-class speakers preferred using the apology form, it was discovered There are not any observable significant gender disparities in apologizing in the corpus According to the study, formulaic politeness is a significant language indicator of social class and that controlling the addressee is frequently included in its use.
Interlanguage Pragmatic Studies
The study of interlanguage pragmatics has developed as a flourishing new field precisely because of such communication breakdowns (Demester, 2006; Kecskes & Romero-Trillo, 2013; Le, 2011; Qadoury, 2011; Shardakova, 2005; Shariati & Chamani, 2010; Wannaruk, 2008).
Demester's (2006) analysis focused on explicit apologies, defined as those containing direct expressions of regret ("I'm sorry," "excuse me") While explicit apologies are common, many forms of apology lack such explicit declarations Demester's corpus analysis could only capture explicit apologies, leaving unexamined those that did not fit this specific criterion Shariati and Chamani (2010) and Shariati and Sharikova's research addressed this limitation by expanding the scope of apology analysis to include more varied expressions.
(2005), two relatively new research on intercultural pragmatics, have shown how exposure to a second culture influences speakers' L1 apologies, causing them to be more similar to those of native speakers Additionally, the findings of both studies suggested that preferences for using apology tactics appeared to be culture-specific, highlighting the significance of culture in determining this choice The phenomenon of pragmatic transference is seen in two recent studies of "learners' refusals" - an analysis of the speech act of refusal of Thai EFL learners' realization (Wannaruk,
2008) and of Iraqi EFL learners (Qadoury, 2011).
As for those who recorded conversations in natural settings, Le (2011) was taken as an example She investigated the different linguistic etiquette used by Vietnamese L1 learners in two different contexts—Australia and Vietnam—and discovered evidence of pragmatic transference of Australian culture and Australian English in L1 Vietnamese speakers in Australia The data were recordings of naturalistic speech made during routine public interactions, such as trips to stores and markets She considered the effects of various factors, including the national setting, gender, role, and generation According to the study, Australian Vietnamese were linguistically more polite than Vietnamese living in Vietnam and utilized much more politeness signals Their usage of courtesy was influenced by two factors: sociocultural change in Vietnam and linguistic and cross-cultural interaction in Australia.
Communication between languages and cultures has emerged as the new challenge for pragmatics research in the twenty-first century, as Kecskes andRomero-Trillo (2013) have recently argued Intercultural pragmatics, according to them, examines how the language system works in social interactions between speakers of various native languages from different cultures as they try to connect and communicate in a language, they both understand In their attempts to communicate in their second language, L2 learners and speakers may borrow
27 pragmatic language practices from their first language.
Al Ali (2018) advocated that the act of expressing an apology was an essential part of interpersonal interaction which investigated the distinctive differences between how Saudi and Australian women position themselves in performing the act of apologizing in two distinctly different national cultural settings, Australia and Saudi Arabia This thesis was about social and cultural factors that influence the activity of saying sorry Applying the lens of positioning theory as expounded by Harré and Van Langenhove (2001) and using DCT and role plays that are so heavily adopted in linguistic cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics research., the results of the analysis demonstrated that the Saudi and Australian women had both similarities with and differences from each other regarding ‘saying sorry’ contexts and positions A key finding was a noticeable variation in the apology positionings within the same cultural group, indicating that individual variation occurs between participants from similar gender and cultural backgrounds As there has been no previous research investigation of apology behavior comparing Saudi and Australian women through the lens of positioning theory, this study marked an initial step in filling a gap in the Saudi-Australian literature relating to cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics Some conclusions can be drawn that L2 learners tend to transfer their native socio-pragmatic strategies to apologies in L2 and L2 learners tend to apologize differently in L2 from L1.
Regarding the intercultural pragmatics of response to apologies, the researcher has not identified any studies, which may be due to a lack of search methodology on their part.
Research Gaps from the Previous Studies
Studies on apologies and other speech actions have completed its development if enough studies on apologies have been conducted in numerous languages over the past few decades These earlier studies examine apology strategies using various theoretical frameworks, such as politeness, speech acts, implicatures, discourse,pragmatic failure in communication, and sociolinguistics, in addition to looking at them separately in the context of cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics Previous studies have demonstrated that several tactics can be used to realize an apologetic speech act These techniques typically vary from language to language and rely on the seriousness of the offense, the aggrieved party, and the level of social distance and authority that exists between the apologizer and the apologizee. The flexible concept of apology methods allows for the investigation of apologies as a pragmatic and cultural phenomenon present in various languages and cultures (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989; Cohen & Olshtain, 1989; Fraser, 1981). Despite the fact that there has been a lot of research on apologies, no certain number of strategies has been identified Due to this diversity, researchers are free to develop novel techniques or, more specifically, to reclassify existing ones There are a few ways to collect data, including the discourse completion task, role play, questionnaire, audio-taped dialogues, and corpus, with the first one being the most popular Many studies undergo qualitative rather than quantitative analysis These studies concentrate on explicit apologetic techniques, whereas implicit apology techniques have not yet been studied It appears that there have not been many pieces of research done on how people should respond to apologies.
These earlier investigations provided a greater understanding of research trends, theoretical frameworks, data collection techniques, and limits that served as a foundation for this PhD thesis.
When it comes to study trends, they are all examined through the lenses of cross- cultural pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, or a hybrid of these two types of pragmatics Since saying sorry is a speech act, all these studies have used the speech act theory of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) as their theoretical foundation They also used the theory of politeness, speech acts, implicatures, discourse, pragmatic failure in communication, and sociolinguistics, all of which will be discussed in more detail in the following section Olshtain and Cohen's (1983) taxonomy of apologetic tactics was used in most of these research studies The results of these research were constrained by the approach used; as a result, with a fixed number of strategies, they
29 were unable to consider an extension into additional methods The type of offense and other social factors, such as the relationship between the offender and the person who was offended, also influenced the choice of those techniques After reviewing the broad prior empirical studies on apologies, the following section will further illuminate the various apologetic tactics as well as social characteristics including age, gender, and social standing.
As for data collection methods, DCTs, role play, questionnaire, and audio- taped discussions are used, of which the first one is employed the most Not many studies use corpus to analyze data more in quantitative.
Looking into apology and response strategies, these studies have some gaps as follows:
1 These previous studies focused more on direct apology strategies This thesis investigated both direct and indirect apology strategies.
2 There have been studies related to response strategies to other speech acts; however, there seemed few research studies on response strategies to apologies recorded This thesis examined response strategies to apologies.
3 Regarding research of a pair of speech acts, there was one study in Vietnamese which investigated the pragmatic act of asking for permissions and responses by Nguyen (2016) Not many research studies on the pragmatic acts of apology and response strategies were found due to the time limit and the incompleteness of the researcher’s research competence This thesis, hence, focused on the apology and response strategies as a pair of speech act or pragmatic acts.
4 Most previous studies depended on a DCT This thesis collected data from socio-psychological film conversations in both languages.
5 Many previous studies on pragmatics, cross-cultural, intercultural, and interlanguage have been conducted; however, very few studies under the umbrella of sociopragmatics on the apology and response strategies were found This research examined how gender and power impacted the apology and response strategies used by the characters in film conversations.
Due to the gaps of those previous studies, the researcher decided to carry out this research with aims and objectives as stated in Section 1.2 in Chapter One.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Sociopragmatics in Speech Acts
In order to perform any speech act successfully, there should be two bases: sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic; that is to say how to perform it (Thomas,
1995) The sociopragmatic basis refers to the contextual factors such as social distance, power, rights, social imposition, obligations, aims of the speech act to be performed There is a considerable amount of literature available discussing the relationship between language and social variables in the context of speech acts. Trosborg (2011) mentions that sociopragmatic competence as knowledge of when to use forms in actual social situations Parameters such as social status, social distance, age must be taken into account.
Brown and Levinson (1987) suggest three factors which may affect how face- threatening an interaction might be as follows: (1) social distance (D), that is how well you know someone; (2) relative power and status (P); and (3) how a particular imposition is ranked in a specific culture (R) These factors need consideration when calculating the weightiness of the face-threatening act (FTA) The overall weightiness indicates the degree of the face threat that is involved in performing the FTA and is calculated using this formula:
Where Wx is the numerical value that measures the weightiness of the FTA x, D (S, H) is the value that measures the social distance between S and H, P (H,S) is a measure of the power that H has over S, and Rx is a value that measures the degree to which the FTA x is rated an imposition in that culture (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.76).
The role of social power in communication involves the ability to recognize each other’s social position and social power is regarded as the position or rank of a person or group, within the society (Holmes, 1995; Leech, 1983) Status can be determined in two ways One can earn their social status by their own achievements, which is known as
Status can be achieved through one's accomplishments, known as achieved status, or inherited from one's family, known as ascribed status Embodied status, on the other hand, is based on physical characteristics such as beauty or physical disability.
Under the influence of these factors, the speaker can choose different strategies to apologize and respond to apologies In the scope of this thesis, two social variables including gender, and social power are the focuses for the research to investigate into.
There are many ways of understanding the gender; however, the gender in this research is biologically understood including male and female Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex, sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity There have been many studies on the effect of gender on language, and intersex communication in a single culture.
In this thesis, how three types of interaction between men and women, men and men, women and women influenced the exchanges of apology and response strategies was studied.
According to Trosborg (2011), dominance and social distance are two potential factors that might influence the acts of apologies These two parameters are used to indicate the role relationships between two participants in the acts of apologizing Dominance refers to the relationship between two participants which might be specified by the authority or by the lack of authority of one interactant over the other (Trosborg, 1987) As Trosborg (2011) explains, the addition of the two parameters would result in situations demanding different types of politeness.Three different types of role constellations are described below.
Table 2.1 Trosborg’s classification of social power Power Dominance and Social Distance
Status unequals, non-intimates + dominance
(authority figures/ subordinates) + social distance
Status equals, non-intimates – dominance
(friends or near acquaintances) – social distance
(Adapted from Trosborg, 2011, p.153) Together with gender, the social power of interlocutors plays an important role in investigating the exchanges of apologies and responses The social power is then essentially considered to investigate whether the apologizer's social power influences on the apology responses Holmes (2008) employs three key criteria to recognize the relative standing of apologizers in this regard:
1) U – upwards, that is, apology to a person with more P.
2) E – equal, that is, apology to a person of equal P.
3) D – downwards, that is, apology to a person with less P.
In this thesis, the exchanges of apology and response strategies were considered under the influences of power which included the interactions among high power apologizers, low power apologizers, equal power apologizers.
(i) high power apologizers are those who apologize and cause the act of apologizing, and their social powers are higher than apologizees In an interaction of higher power apologizers, the apologizees definitely have lower social power than the apologizers.
(ii) low power apologizers are those who apologize and cause the act of apologizing, and their social powers are lower than apologizees In an interaction of lower power apologizers, the apologizees definitely have higher social power than the apologizers.
(iii) equal power apologizers are those who apologize and cause the act of
33 apologizing, and they have the same power as their apologizees.
Conversation and Film Conversation
Different definitions of a conversation are proposed by many linguists (Collins, 1987; Hornby et al, 1963; Levinson, 1983) They all define a conversation as the exchange of language through language; or a friendly, natural talk in which people exchange information, ideas, and emotion to one another; or a familiar predominant kind of talk in which two or more participants freely alternate in speaking generally occurring outside specific institutional settings like religious services, law courts, classroom, and the like However, the definition of Finegan et al (1994) about the conversation to some extent suits the aims of this thesis the most Finegan et al (1994) define a conversation as a series of speech acts, including greetings, questions, congrats, remarks, invites, requests, and apologies, to carry out their functions We alternate speaking turns, respond to inquiries, announce the start and end of conversations, and correct mistakes as necessary.
Unlike speech act theory which emphasizes too much on the speakers and their intentions, conversational analysis deals with the idea that speech acts are not performed isolatedly but are produced in larger sequences In other words, it relies on actual conversations which could be usually recorded and transcribed and rejects the use of intuition about language and invented examples, which tends to be the staple of work in speech act theory Since this thesis is conducted to investigate the speech act of apologizing and responding in English and Vietnamese film conversations, it should integrate the theory of speech act and conversation The theory of conversation involves in many issues; however, this thesis demonstrates some conversation-related theories within the scope of its Conversation analysis was used in this thesis to identify when the conversation containing a full pragmatic act of apologizing and responding initiates, sequences, and ends thanks to the turn- taking, exchanges, and adjacency pairs in a conversation; therefore, the sequence of each conversation was able to be analyzed.
According to Geis (1995) and Heritage (2010), conversation analysis is more related to the spoken discourse because it comprehends social activity as accomplished through the mode of talk in communication Hutchby and Wooffitt (2001), and Hutchby (2017) reckon that conversation analysis is an approach to sociology that investigates the sequential organization of talk as a way of accessing participants' understandings of, and collaborative means of organizing, natural forms of social interaction As a method it has been widely applied not just to the analysis of conversation but to numerous forms of institutional interaction Conversation analysis will be always found beside the speaker and analyzing what the speaker says in a proper context This kind of analysis creates its place in a wide range of disciplines such as sociology, linguistics, business administration, psychology and so on One more advantage of CA is that instead of relying on participants' retrospective accounts of interactions derived from interviews, it gathers data of naturally occurring interactions as they unfold in real time using video‐ or audio‐recording technology, or the researchers usually hear the interaction and then transcribed it to text for further analysis The general strategy in conversation analysis is to examine actual verbal interactions in order to bring the structural properties of talk The descriptive units that the conversation analysis has been using in describing the structure of conversation are turn-taking, adjacency pair, and sequence
Context is regarded as a relational construct in sociopragmatics (Fetzer 2004,
2010) Context is brought into the communicative exchange, and it is brought out in the communicative exchange (Gumperz, 1992a) According to Huang (2017), there are three kinds of context namely linguistic context, cognitive context, and social and sociocultural context of which the last kind is of this thesis’ scope Social context comprises the context of a communicative exchange.
This doctoral thesis analyzed conversational exchanges from film scripts and subtitles, focusing on socio-psychological films The study examined contexts among individuals in romantic relationships, family units, friendship circles, and professional settings As a descriptive contrastive qualitative study supported by quantitative data, it explored apology exchanges and response strategies within conversations derived from romance and family film scripts.
Schegloff (1974) observe that a conversation is a string of at least two turns which are produced by different speakers and are related to each other in such a way they form a pair type In most of daily conversations there is a correspondence of one’s saying and another’s reply or between the utterance function and the expected response These constitute adjacency pairs which include two parts in which the utterance of the first part immediately creates an expectation of the utterance of the second part of the same pair Preference structure divides the second parts into two likely responses including the preferred and dispreferred parts; for example, an invitation is most likely to be responded by either an acceptance or a refusal In such cases, one of the responses is termed the preferred response and the other the dispreferred response The preferred is the structurally expected next act and the dispreferred is the structurally unexpected next act.
Table 2.2 Correlation of content and format in an adjacency pair
Question Expected answer Unexpected answer or non-answer
An adjacency pair is a two-part exchange in conversation analysis where the second utterance is functionally dependent on the first Adjacency pairs come in a variety of forms: question - answer; greeting - greeting; offer acceptance/declination. Levinson (1983, p.303) also suggests apology - minimization as an adjacency pair.
The first pair part of the adjacency pair (e.g the question) makes relevant the second pair part (e.g the answer) If this second pair part is absent, it will be in some way marked and S1 (i.e the questioner) will pursue a response or the lack of response will give rise to some effect in S1.
B: Hello! (Greeting) B: About eighty-thirty (Expected answer)
B: I’m terribly sorry I promise it won’t happen again (Admission)
Conversation exchanges typically consist of adjacency pairs, where one speaker's utterance initiates the conversation and the other responds For example, greetings, questions, or blame from Speaker A elicit greetings, expected answers, or admissions from Speaker B, respectively Apologies frequently initiate these adjacency pairs as apology units begin sequences involving requests for forgiveness.
Exchange in Adjacency Pair of Speech Acts
In conversation analysis, every speech act needs response and adjacency pair in this thesis is response Response utterances occur when the H responds to the S. According to Nguyen (1998, 2008), Nguyen (2001), and Nguyen (2002), the function of responding speech act is regarded as an illocutionary act of response utterances Responses can be divided into two groups:
Positive response satisfies the purpose of the apologizing speech act, and the needs of the S in apology utterances It is possible to view that the introductory dialogue and its positive response form a preferred exchanges or adjacency pair. (2.1) Peter: I’m terribly sorry to hurt you I didn’t mean that.
Mary: It’s OK, by accident, I know.
A: What time is it? (Questioning)
In example (2.7), Peter wants to apologize for hurting Mary and gives an explanation Mary has a positive response to Peter since it satisfies the purpose of Peter of being sorry.
Whereas, negative response goes against the target of the introductory dialogue which means it does not satisfy and does not meet the S's apology Together with the apology utterance, negative response creates a dispreferred exchanges.
(2.2) Peter: I’m terribly sorry to hurt you I didn’t mean that.
Mary: You didn’t mean to hurt me, really?
In example 2.8, Peter's attempt to apologize for unintentionally hurting Mary fails to appease her because she questions his sincerity Mary's skepticism undermines Peter's intended expression of remorse, rendering the apology ineffective.
Thus, from the analysis of the above researchers on the responses, we can draw out the general characteristics of the application and response behavior as follows: The act of apologizing and the responding is called "adjacency pair” in the basic structure of conversation.
In summary, this thesis defines apology responding as a speech act of reacting to the act of apologizing The response to apology is defined as the apologizee’s verbal reaction to an apology made by the apologizer However, related to investigation into sociopragmatic features of apologizing and apology responding in conversations, apologizing and apology responding should be considered to be a pragmatic act The definition of apology and response sequence is the verbal interactions between the apologizers and apologizees.
(i) Apology responding as a speech act of reacting to the act of apologizing verbally.
(ii) Apologizing and responding in conversations are considered to a pair of speech acts or a pragmatic act where there is an interpersonal relationship among apologizers and apologizees.
Speech Act and Pragmatic Act Theory
This section of speech act would be discussed since the act of apologizing and apology responding belong to the speech act theory; however, the limitation of speech act is that this theory focuses only on the speaker’s act This thesis aims to investigate the sociopragmatic features of apology and response strategies in English and
Vietnamese conversations where there is interaction or interpersonal relationship between speakers and hearers Therefore, the pragmatic act theory was resorted to as one of the theoretical frameworks to achieve the research aim.
Since its introduction by Austin (1962) and further elaboration by Searle
(1969), the theory of speech acts has been growing over time with the contribution of numerous scholars (e.g Brown & Yule, 1983; Grice, 1957, 1975; Hymes, 1972; Levinson, 1983; Thomas, 1995; Yule, 1996) Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), for example, have the same standpoint when viewing that each speech act is an utterance that implements a linguistic function in communication such as praise, forgiveness, invitation, explanation, thanks, admonition, request, apology, and greeting They all propose that people do not only use grammatical structures and words, but they also perform actions via those words.
In other words, the saying of words constitutes the performing of actions whereby people use language to do something Speech act theory can, therefore, be applied to apologies and used to define the action of apologizing Within its scope, this paper presents some basic concepts of speech acts, including three dimensions of speech acts, and classification of speech act. a Three-dimension Speech Act
Austin (1962) classifies linguistic acts into three categories: Locutionary acts, Perlocutionary acts, and Illocutionary acts which are all performed simultaneously in their production.
(1) A locutionary act is the basic act of utterance performed by producing a meaningful linguistic expression This meaningful expression is formed by sounds, words and grammatical rules Therefore, one may fail to produce a locutionary act if he/ she has problems with making sounds, words, or he/she does not know those grammatical rules That is the production of the utterance (e.g., the physical act of spoken or written language, the construction of the utterance, and the disambiguation of the utterance within discourse).
(2) An illocutionary act: whenever we produce an utterance, we have some kind of function of producing the utterance in our mind The act is performed by the communicative force of an utterance is called illocutionary act In other words, it is the speaker’s purpose or intent in producing the sentence (e.g apologizing, joking, refusing, promising) Illocutionary aspects of utterances are often referred to as their illocutionary force.
A perlocutionary act encompasses the impact of an utterance, aiming to evoke a particular response or effect in the listener This effect can be either intentional or unintentional, irrespective of the speaker's original intent.
Of the three speech acts, the illocutionary act is an act which draws the attention of many researchers Austin (1962) claims that it is illocutionary acts that are his main focus Yule (1996) confirms that in fact, the definition of a speech act is typically extremely limited, referring simply to the illocutionary force of an utterance. b Classification of Speech Act
Classified as his main strand, Austin (1962) identifies five more general classes of illocutionary acts: commissives, exercitives, behabitives, verdictives, and expositives.
Table 2.3 Austin’s classification of speech acts
Commisives to commit the speaker to do promising, guaranteeing, betting, something vowing, offering
Executives to get the hearer to do requesting, permitting, ordering, something forbidding, warning, advising
Behabitives to express feelings and thanking, apologizing, greeting, attitudes of the speaker objecting, congratulating, welcoming
Verdictives to tell the hearer how swearing, insisting, suggesting things are
Expositives to change the status of baptizing, surrendering, resigning, some entity appointing, naming, arresting
Although Austin (1962) is considered the founder of the speech act theory, his classification of illocutionary has been criticized for its ambiguity in definitions and overlapping categories Austin (1962) himself declares that it should be obvious right away that there are still a lot of potential for overlaps or uncomfortable or marginal scenarios His classification has been largely replaced with a taxonomy put forward by Searle (1969) who also asserts the limitations of Austin’s classification due to the fact that Austin (1962) does not clarify a set of criteria to clearly classify the speech acts According to Nguyen (1998), the classification proposed by Austin
(1962) is also overlapped, ambiguous, and not clearly identified Another criticism against speech act theory that was proposed by Mills (2011) is that the theory neglects the idea that linguistic realizations can be used to convey requests, compliments, and apologies This could be true of the speech act work of Austin, who was particularly concerned with making the link between verbs as they appeared in the dictionary and acts which they could perform.
Basing on Austin‘s work, the Searle’s approach starting with the act to be described on the basis of its felicity conditions (rather than starting with the linguistic form) limits the potency of this criticism, since any linguistic form which fulfills the felicity conditions for the act can be said to have the illocutionary force in question Searle (1969) describes five main categories of illocutionary speech acts somewhat differently than Austin (1962) He names them representatives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations.
Table 2.4 Searle’s classification of speech acts
Directives attempt to get the hearer (H) to ordering, requesting, begging do something
Assertives attempt to represent actual states informing, predicting, stating, of affairs claiming, reporting, announcing
Commissives attempt to get the speaker (S) to promising, threatening, swearing to commit to a course of action do something
Declaratives attempt to bring about change in naming a ship, resigning, an official state of affairs sentencing, dismissing, declaring war, performing a marriage
Expressives attempt to express one’s thanking, complaining, psychological state apologizing, and congratulating
(Adapted from Searle, 1969, p.151) The theory of speech act also draws a great attention of many Vietnamese linguists including Cao (1991), Nguyen (1998), Do and Bui (2001), Nguyen (2001), and Do (2005) Basing on Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), they give definitions of speech act, classifications of utterances consisting of speech acts, and other speech act related issues to set a theoretical framework to do research related to speech act in Vietnamese language.
However, according to Bilmes (1986) and Kasper (2006), speech act research emphasizes too much on the speakers and their intentions, to the extent that speech act theory precludes the idea that meaning is negotiated between speaker and hearer; whereas, the focus of this thesis is on apology and response in a conversation where the utterances of speaker and hearer are both discussed The researcher, therefore, have to base on the conversation analysis together with the speech act theory Another drawback is possibly considered to be the issue of using decontextualized and contrived examples Grainger (2013) affirms that this is obviously less of a concern for Austin and Searle who especially show their interest in the philosophical aspects of speech act theory; however, the focus of this study is on the sociolinguistics of the act of apologizing under the umbrella of gender, age, and social distance.
Apology holds a crucial position as a prevalent speech act observed across diverse languages and cultures Its significance has drawn extensive attention from sociolinguists Notably, Goffman regarded apologies as "remedial interchanges," emphasizing their function as reparative actions intended to restore social harmony after an offense has been committed or perceived These actions aim to heal the breach caused by the offense, whether actual or perceived.
42 classifies apologies into two categories: one is those which redress virtual offences, generally remedied by offering an apologetic formula, and the other is those which redress real damage on the addressee, apart from requiring an apologetic formula they may also include an offer of material compensation.
Language and Culture
On the issue of studying speech acts from a cultural perspective, Do (2000) affirmed that there are speech acts which exist in one culture but do not in others. More importantly, the motivation and strategies to a particular speech act is still governed by cultural factors There is a close and intimate relationship between language and culture Language is a tool of culture since if there is no use of language, it is impossible to organize cultural activities Culture strongly influences all behaviors of people in society, including speech acts Language is also a product of culture and arguably the most important component of culture According to Wierzbicka (1987), different cultures lead to different languages and different speech acts.
This thesis builds on the interaction between English and Vietnamese cultures and for the analysis of speech acts of apologies and responses The discussion of the findings later on in this thesis is based on the high and low context cultures developed by Hall (1976); the two dimensions of Hofstede (2011) namely individualism and collectivism, as well as masculinity and femininity.
According to Hall (1976), the high and low context cultures describe the level of context that exists in a given society and organization in a given country, and how that level of context influences the degree of explicitness needed in verbal engagement It emphasizes the significance of the society's members' relationships The amount of information that needs to be transmitted, depending on whether the context is considered high or low, has a significant impact on communication within a culture as well as communication with people from other cultures Cross-cultural communication is classified as high or low context by Hall (1976), depending on how much meaning must be explicitly stated versus how much can be suggested by the context and hence already available to the addressee Low context culture is defined by a relatively low inferred meaning, and high context culture is characterized by a significantly higher indicated meaning This indicates that in low context cultures, direct and explicit utterances are dominating in communicating meaning, whereas in
In high-context cultures, communication relies heavily on indirect cues and shared understandings, making it context-dependent and suitable for in-group communication Conversely, low-context cultures prioritize explicitness, requiring speakers to provide additional contextual information to ensure comprehension This difference stems from the focus on in-groups in high-context cultures, while low-context cultures prioritize communication among individuals.
The first dimension is the relationship among individualism and collectivism which is the degree to which persons in a society are integrated into groups. Hofstede (2011) stated that on the individualist side, there are societies where there are weaker bonds between people and where everyone is expected to take care of themselves and their immediate families On the collectivist side, there are societies where people are raised in strong, cohesive in-groups, frequently extended families with grandparents, uncles, and aunts who continue to look out for them in return for unwavering allegiance and who oppose other in-groups Once more, the issues this dimension addresses are very essential to all societies in the world.
Another dimension by Hofstede (2011) applied for further discussion is the relationship among masculinity and femininity since this thesis was set under the light of sociopragmatics where gender and power were taken into account to investigate apologies and responses as a pair of speech acts Either masculinity or femininity, which is a societal, not an individual feature, refers to the distribution of values between the genders The values are considered to be another essential role for any civilization or society with a variety of solutions Hofstede (2011) also showed that
(i) the values performed by women had less differences across societies and nations as opposed to those of men's; (ii) the values performed by men vary greatly among societies and nations On the one hand, they are very assertive, competitive,and maximally different from the values of women On the other hand, they are modest, caring, and similar to the values of women The assertive pole has been dubbed "masculine," whereas the modest and caring pole has been entitled
In fact, Hofstede (2011) asserted that in feminine nations, women share the same modest, compassionate values as men; in patriarchal nations, women are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as men, demonstrating a difference between men's and women's values.
In particular, Vietnamese people, according to Nguyen (1998), tend to value collectivity and communicative contexts They prefer to communicate more subtly, with a lot of hidden meanings, and in a way that pleases other people in community.
In high-context cultures like Vietnam communication is much more implicit. Vietnamese have learned how to read between the lines as not all information is given as explicitly as in low-context cultures In addition, Nguyen (1998) asserted that Vietnamese people handle social problems more affectionately than rationally.
In other words, community members value emotions and expressions of gratitude and support harmony in interpersonal relationships Prioritizing the collective face and interests over their own is a Vietnamese cultural trait (Hofstede, 2011) Nguyen
(1998) reasoned that when an individual makes a mistake, other family members, such as parents, siblings, relatives, and ancestors, may be mentioned and involved. According to Tran (1997), traditional Vietnamese communication culture is influenced by power and hierarchy People with higher power blame mistakes that they make on their subordinates Tran (2008) stated that the context of conversations can also provide further meaning to their words, as there are well- established hierarchies between speakers in the Vietnamese language.
In contrast, in low-context cultures like American cultures, according to Hall
(1976), Americans tend to honor individuality, and communication is not strongly influenced by social power between individuals in society It is said that this is a culture that emphasizes equality, and people handle social interactions more rationally than affectionately Nguyen (2006) commented that this is one of the cultures in which people social behavior comply with ethics and laws.
This thesis also had a discussion on findings based on the two dimensions
58 proposed by Hofstede (2011) which were the relationships among individualism and collectivism, and among masculinity and femininity.
Conceptual Framework of the Study
This chapter discussed the conceptual framework of the whole thesis It was specified to be under the umbrella of sociopragmatics Subsequently, based on the conversation analysis by Schegloff (2007), pragmatic act theory by Mey (2006,
2013), the apology strategy taxonomy by Trosborg (2011), response strategy taxonomy by Homes (1990, 1995), and direct and indirect theory speech act bySearle (1975).
Figure 2.2 Conceptual framework of the thesis
CHAPTER SUMMARY
The previous studies helped reveal gaps that this thesis could fill, and literature review contributed to understanding the research problems When studying the pragmatic act of apologizing and responding, a variety of theories was required which included sociopragmatic, conversation analysis, pragmatic act theory, apology and apology response strategy taxonomies Firstly, since this thesis was in the light of sociopragmatics, it presented social variables of gender and social power which this thesis aimed to investigate the relationship among the pragmatic act of apologizing and apology responding with these two social variables Furthermore, the conversation analysis including context, conversation, and adjacency pair was presented to assist the researcher to pick up minimal adjacency pairs of apology and apology response strategies for analysis in Chapter Four and Chapter Five Since minimal adjacency pairs were sorted out, the researcher needed to apply the pragmatic act theory of apologizing and responding to apologies in order to analyze apology and response strategies based on the apology and response to apology taxonomies, and the patterns of adjacency pairs of apology and response strategies in conversations In summary, Chapter Two helped the thesis to be directed and prepared the researcher for analysis in Chapter Four andChapter Five.
This chapter restated the three research questions; and demonstrated the research design, the primary research methods, and research instruments of the study The data collection illustrating the description of the samples together with criteria for choosing samples of the study, the data analysis, the procedures of the study, the analytical framework, and reliability and validity were also clarified.
RESEARCH DESIGN
This thesis was designed as the descriptive contrastive research which used the qualitative method with the support of quantitative information This thesis is set in light of sociopragmatics to investigate the apology and response strategies in terms of gender and power in English and Vietnamese film conversations, and subsequently find out the similarities and differences in the apology and response strategies in both languages The identification of objectives and question types for each research question played a crucial role in helping researchers choose the research design for the thesis based on the characteristic of each question as affirmed by Creswell (2017) As stated in Chapter One, this thesis had three objectives to be achieved:
- to discover apology and response strategies in English film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power;
- to identify apology and response strategies in Vietnamese film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power;
- to analyze similarities and differences in apology and response strategies in English and Vietnamese film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power.
After the research objectives were identified, this thesis was based on the two taxonomies which were used to identify the apology strategies developed by Trosborg
(2011) and the apology response strategies by Holmes (1990, 1995) Trosborg (2011) categorized five apology strategies namely direct strategies, indirect strategies,
To organize the apology strategy taxonomy, Searle's (1975) speech act theory was applied, dividing the six categories into direct and indirect strategies Direct strategies include expressing regret, apologizing, and requesting forgiveness, while indirect strategies encompass evasive tactics, opting out, and providing remedial support.
The researcher, subsequently, checked whether Trosborg (2011) also developed the taxonomy of apology responses or not; however, there was not. Therefore, the researcher had to look for another linguist’s taxonomy of apology responses even though the previous studies on apology responses have been limited. The apology response strategy taxonomy developed by Holmes (1990, 1995) included four categories namely acceptance, acknowledgement, evasion, and rejection These four categories were also grouped into direct response strategies consisting of acceptance and rejection; and indirect response strategies including acknowledgement and evasion.
In order to achieve the aforementioned objectives, there was a correlation among the objectives and research questions which were restated in this chapter. This thesis was tended to seek the qualitative and quantitative information for the following three research questions:
1 What are apology and response strategies in English film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power?
2 What are apology and response strategies in Vietnamese film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power?
3 What are similarities and differences in apology and response strategies in English and Vietnamese film conversations, especially those under the influences of gender and power?
Research questions 1 and 2 employ the descriptive method to analyze apology and response strategies within English and Vietnamese film conversations, considering the influence of gender and power Research question 3, on the other hand, utilizes the contrastive method to compare and contrast these strategies across both languages Consequently, the thesis adopts a descriptive contrastive approach, employing qualitative methodologies supplemented by quantitative data.
RESEARCH PLANS
After the research design was determined, this thesis was carried out with steps as follows.
Step 1: Identifying problems about the apology and response strategies as a pair of speech acts in daily life conversations.
Step 2: Criticizing the previous studies to determine the research gaps related to apology and response strategies.
Step 3: Setting aims, objectives, and their corresponding research questions of this thesis.
Step 4: Applying a theoretical framework of sociopragmatics, conversation analysis, speech act and pragmatic act theory, apology and apology response strategy taxonomies to describe and investigate the apology and response strategies under the influences of two sociable variables namely gender and power.
Step 5: Designing this thesis as a descriptive contrastive qualitative research with the support of quantitative information.
Step 6: Choosing sources of data.
Step 7: Sampling the data based on the sample design and description of apology and response strategies which were extracted from exchanges in socio- psychological film conversations.
Step 8: Determining the three data collection instruments namely checklists for observation, film scripts as existing data, and researcher analysis.
Step 9: Collecting exchanges including pairs of apology and response
64 strategies in socio-psychological film conversations.
Step 10: Analyzing the data qualitatively by describing and contrasting the apology and response strategies in terms of gender and power in English and Vietnamese Simultaneously, calculating the quantitative information and demonstrating them in numbers, charts, and tables.
Step 11: Discussing the data in the relation among languages and gender, power, and culture.
Step 12: Summarizing the results and findings for conclusions.
Step 13: Giving implications for language research, practical social communication, and language learning and teaching.
Step 14: Suggesting some further research based on the limitations of this doctoral thesis.
RESEARCH METHODS
Qualitative Method
This thesis used the qualitative method with the support of quantitative information According to Rasinger (2013), qualitative approach builds its premise on inductive methods which can possibly involves discovery or exploration. Anguera (2018) confirms that qualitative research identifies and describes features of language’s usage, and provide real occurrences of a particular phenomenon On the one hand, the qualitative method used in this thesis was listed as follows:
(i) Providing in-depth data of apology strategies, apology response strategies, and minimal adjacency pairs in English and Vietnamese conversations.
(ii) Examining the patterns and socio-pragmatic features of utterances in conversations which included apology and response strategies.
(iii) Describing characteristics of utterances which included apology strategies, apology response strategies, adjacency pairs, and patterns in terms of gender and social power in each language.
On the other hand, quantitative information about frequency and occurrence of apology and response strategies in terms of gender and power was calculated, counted, and demonstrated in numbers, charts, and tables Thanks to the statistical information, the essence of apology and response strategies was analyzed in greater details.
(i) Giving information about the number of apology strategies, apology response strategies, and minimal adjacency pairs in English and Vietnamese conversations.
(ii) Finding out how many patterns of utterances in conversations which included apology and response strategies.
(iii) Quantifying the more or less numbers of apology strategies, apology response strategies, adjacency pairs, and patterns in terms of gender and social power in each language.
(iv) Investigating the number of similarities and differences of apology strategies, apology response strategies, adjacency pairs, and patterns in each language.
This research was approached by using qualitative method with the help of quantitative information; therefore, the final results of this research were reliable.
Descriptive Method
The descriptive method seems to be the most popular tool in doing any linguistic research since linguistics is by nature a descriptive science (Litosseliti,
2018) According to Knupfer and McLellan (1996), the descriptive method involves collecting the data, then organizing, tabulating, depicting, and describing them In this thesis, the description mainly focused on describing (i) patterns of apology and response strategies in English and Vietnamese film conversations, (ii) gender influences on apology and response strategies, (iii) power influences on apology and response strategies.
Contrastive Method
In this thesis, the parallel contrastive method was applied to English and Vietnamese conversations and the steps were carried out to compare and contrast as follows:
(i) Patterns of apology and response strategies, gender and power influences on apology and response strategies were compared and contrasted to see which were common in two languages, and which were unique to one language but not the other.
(ii) If they were the same, the researcher mentioned the common ones and gave explanations for such similarities via two variable factors of gender and power.
(iii) When a particular apology and response strategy was unique to a language, the researcher explained the differences via two variable factors of gender and social power.
The contrastive analysis method is an area of contrastive linguistics, an inductive approach that deals with the issues of similarities and differences in morphosyntactis systems, semantics and so on between languages (Tajareh, 2015). The contrastive method is, in fact, a part of descriptive method which is considered to be a fundamental procedure, a basic tool in linguistic contrastive analysis because by focusing on intriguing parallels and contrasts between situations, it strengthens our ability to describe and plays crucial roles in concept formation (Collier, 1993).
In short, the parallel contrastive method was employed in this thesis to compare and contrast the apology and response strategies in English andVietnamese conversations to find out the similarities and differences between these two languages English and Vietnamese were both the source languages.
DATA COLLECTION
Sources of Data
Socio-psychological films were chosen because they had a number of everyday conversations among members in family, friends, lovers, and colleagues with many exchanges of apology and response strategies in the different contexts of socio-psychological films.
and **film scripts/subtitles** The films were meticulously selected and streamed from platforms like YouTube, Netflix, and FPT play Additionally, film scripts and subtitles in both English and Vietnamese were acquired from specialized movie websites These diverse sources provided a rich foundation for the exploration and interpretation of socio-psychological themes in both domestic and international cinematography.
There were four criteria for choosing the sources of data for this thesis including objectivity, coverage, currency, and availability Initially, the doctoral candidate checked the objectives of these websites to make sure that the intended information of these websites was for entertainment and education Subsequently, the coverage of these website was considered whether these two data sources covered socio- psychological films with the intended contexts The next step to evaluate the data source was to look into the currency of films Since it was difficult to get access to the socio-psychological films in 2021 and 2022, socio-psychological films in both languages were produced and released from 2015 to 2020 It means that the collected data represented the most updated strategies of apologizing and responding to apology; and kept up with the tendency of communication Last but not least, the availability of films in which free download websites were prioritized to download scripts was searched to relieve the financial burden for the doctoral candidate.
A list of websites together with links in English and Vietnamese was illustrated in details in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 List of film scripts’ free download websites in English and Vietnamese
No Websites in English Websites in
1 Simply Scripts Fptplay.vn http://www.simplyscripts.com/movie.html
2 Internet Movie Script Database Trangphim.net https://imsdb.com/
3 The Weekly Script Tv.zing.vn http://www.weeklyscript.com/
4 Screenplays for You Vtvgiaitri.vn http://sfy.ru/
5 John August Movies.fimplus.vn https://johnaugust.com/
6 The Daily Script Hplus.com.vn https://www.dailyscript.com/
7 Movie Scripts and Screenplays ClipTv.vn http://www.moviescriptsandscreenplays.com/
9 Internet Movie Screenplay Database (IMDB) http://www.imsdb.com/
10 Go Into the Story http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/free-script- downloads/
11 Drew’s Script-o-Rama http://www.script-o- rama.com/snazzy/table.html
12 AwesomeFilm http://www.awesomefilm.com/
13 The Daily Script http://www.dailyscript.com/movie.html
14 The Screenplay Database http://www.screenplaydb.com/film/all
15 The Script Lab https://thescriptlab.com/
16 Movie Scripts and Screenplays http://www.moviescriptsandscreenplays.com/
Population, Samples, and Sampling
Related to the population, there were 46 English socio-psychological films which were produced and released in the United States of America where English is the first language A list of films in English was illustrated in detail in Table 3.2.
Table 3.2 List of socio-psychological films in English
1 The end Insecure Manhunt: Dear white The other Never The boss of the tour Unabomber people side of the rarely baby wind sometimes family always business
2 The Max: Atlanta Future man The The sisters I’m your
Fury road 1 Americans brothers women
3 Ex Stranger Orange is The Motherless Promising
Machina things the new handmaid's Broklyn young black 5 tale women
4 Carol Westworld The sinner The terror Little Herself women
5 Spotlight The people Crashing 1 Barry The wife The father
6 Tangerine Baskets Godless 1 Killing Eve Honey boy Let him go
7 Clouds of Game of Master of Atlanta After the One night
Sils Maria thrones none 2 wedding in Miami
Table 3.3 includes 43 Vietnamese films which were produced in Vietnam.There were 7 films in 2015, 5 in 2016, 7 in 2017, 6 in 2018, 7 in 2019, and 11 in2019.
Table 3.3 List of socio-psychological films in Vietnamese
1 Khép mắt Zippo, mù Gia đình là Quỳnh búp Về nhà đi Nàng dâu chờ ngày tạt, và em số 1 bê con order mai
2 Chàng trai Khúc hát Người Đánh tráo Mê cung Chạy trốn năm ấy mặt trời phán xử số phận thanh xuân
3 Đập cánh Bao giờ có Chiều Cả một đời Hoa hồng Gạo nếp gạo giữa không yêu nhau ngang qua ân oán 2 trên ngực tẻ 2 trung phố cũ trái
4 Tôi thấy Những Sống Ngày ấy Những cô Đừng bắt em hoa vàng ngọn nến chung với mình đã gái trong phải quên trên cỏ trong đêm mẹ chồng yêu thành phố xanh 2
5 Hôn nhân Sài Gòn: Tuổi thanh Mộng phù Tiệm ăn dì Lựa chọn số trong ngõ Anh yêu xuân 2 hoa ghẻ phận hẹp em
6 Tuổi thanh Thương Gạo nếp Mối tình Những ngày xuân nhớ ở ai gạo tẻ 1 đầu của tôi không quên
7 Tuổi thanh Cả một đời Bán chồng Tình yêu và xuân ân oán 1 tham vọng
10 Gia đình là số 1 (phần 3)
Concerning the samples of this thesis, the exchanges of apology and response strategies were regarded as the samples In detail, the conversations were extracted from film scripts and subtitles in these socio-psychological films in both languages A conversation might include one to several exchanges The exchanges chosen for this research must be realized and identified through the apology strategy taxonomy byTrosborg (2011) and apology response strategy taxonomy by Holmes (1990, 1995) as presented in section 2.2.3.4 In this thesis, the exchanges which were made up from a pair of speech acts including apology and response strategies were collected Since direct and indirect apology strategies; and direct and indirect response strategies taken from exchanges in English and Vietnamese conversations were the scope of this thesis, the description of a typical sample is as follows:
Regarding an exchange in a conversation which included direct apologies with different performative part of speech, it comprised of utterances with explicit performative markers of apologizing act such as afraid, apologise, apology, excuse, forgive, pardon, regret and sorry in English or , xin lỗi, tiếc, lấy làm tiếc, hối hận, tha lỗi, tha thứ, thứ lỗi, thứ tha and lỗi in Vietnamese As regards responses in an exchange, it might comprise utterances which included explicit performative markers of responding act such as OK, it’s OK, it doesn’t matter, not at all, alright, that’s alright, yes in English or được rồi, đồng ý, chấp nhận, không sao, không có gì, chuyện nhỏ in Vietnamese, and of refusing an apology such as no, never, do not forgive in English or không, không bao giờ, không bỏ qua, không quên được, không đời nào, không được, không thể tha thứ in Vietnamese.
The instance (3.1) illustrated the exchange of [direct apology strategies- direct positive response strategy] while (3.2) described the exchange [direct apology strategies- direct negative response strategy].
(3.1) Laura: It’s nothing Sorry Sorry It’s just the whisky.
(No.1, appendix 3) (3.2) Anh công nhân: Tôi rất xin lỗi, thưa ông! Ông Bình: Không được, cậu phải đền bù cho tôi, không nói suông vậy được
(No.2, appendix 3) (Male employee: I’m so sorry, sir!
Mr Bình: No, you have to compensate for what you have just destroyed.)The two examples (3.1) and (3.2) demonstrate the explicit apologies by apologizers when uttering “Sorry” and “Tôi rất xin lỗi” The apologizees in both situations use direct response strategies While the apologizee in (3.1) takes advantage of direct positive response strategy by accepting the direct apology when
72 uttering It’s OK, the apologizee in (3.2) employs direct negative response strategy by rejecting the direct apology when saying Không được.
Utterances in an exchange might not include direct apology markers and response markers but still performed the act of apologizing and responding indirectly were also collected.
Anthony: I forgot all about it.
(No.3, appendix 3) The instance (3.3) is a conversation among two lovers which illustrates the exchange of [indirect apology strategies- indirect positive response strategy] Anne indirectly apologizes when saying I know that I overacted while Anthony indirectly accepted the apology when saying I forgot all about it.
(3.4) Ông Bình: Đừng có giận nữa mà, bà giận dai thế không biết!
Vợ: Tôi mệt lắm, ông đừng nói gì cả.
(Mr Bình: Don’t be angry, you are always getting mad at me.)
His wife: I’m tired of you, don’t say anything.)
The instance (3.4) is a conversation among a husband and wife which reveals the exchange of [indirect apology strategies- indirect negative response strategy].
Mr Bình indirectly apologizes when saying Đừng có giận nữa mà while his wife indirectly rejected his apology when saying I’m tired of you.
A total of 1,207 exchanges featuring apology and response strategies were examined These exchanges were extracted from 46 English and 43 Vietnamese socio-psychological films produced between 2015 and 2020 The sample was chosen randomly to represent the full range of apology and response strategies used in these films This study focuses on interactions within family, romantic, friend, and colleague relationships.
Table 3.4 The description of collected data
3 Contexts From socio-psychological films
4 Apology strategies Direct and indirect apology strategies
5 Apology response Direct and indirect apology response strategies strategies
6 Population 46 English and 43 Vietnamese socio- psychological films
7 Samples 557 English and 650 Vietnamese exchanges
Data Collection Instruments
Based on the objectives and research questions, a set of three data collection instruments was chosen namely observation through the use of checklists in observation sheets, document reading of film scripts and subtitles as existing data, and human instrument.
In this thesis, a checklist consisted of a set of exchanges of apology and response strategies The matrix of collected data used for data analysis in Table 3.9 helped the researcher design the four observation sheets of Table 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8 In these four tables, checklists of patterns, sub-patterns, exchanges, and the identification of context, gender, power in detail were designed to allow the researcher to gather information about apology and response strategies in English and Vietnamese socio-psychological film conversations.
An observation was a means of measuring what was seen and watched by the researcher when collecting data during the time the socio-psychological films inEnglish and Vietnamese were being playscreened on YouTube Films were played several times to help the researcher gather data as described in four tables below.The checklist was also used when the researcher read the film scripts and subtitles
Shown in Table 3.5 was the observation sheet pattern of [Direct apology strategies - direct response strategies].
Table 3.5 An observation sheet for the pattern of [Direct apology strategies - direct response strategies]
Apology and response strategies Patterns Sub-patterns Exch- Identifi- Description Detail anges cation
Expression of Regret – What happened?
Direct Rejection Where? apology Offer of Apology – Male – male strategies Acceptance
- direct response Offer of Apology – Female - female strategies Rejection Female - male
Request for Forgiveness – Higher power
Po we r Lower power apologizer
Request for Forgiveness – Equal power
Table 3.6 reveals an observation sheet for the pattern of [Indirect apology strategies - direct response strategies].
Table 3.6 An observation sheet for the pattern of [Indirect apology strategies - direct response strategies]
Indirect Acceptance apology Evasive strategies – strategies Acceptance
- direct Opting out – Acceptance response Remedial support – strategies Acceptance
Acknowledgement of responsibility – Rejection Explanation or account –
Rejection Opting out – Rejection Remedial support –
What stands out from Table 3.7 is an observation sheet for the pattern of
[Direct apology strategies - indirect response strategies].
Table 3.7 An observation sheet for the pattern of [Direct apology strategies - indirect response strategies]
Patterns Sub-patterns Exch- Identifi- anges cation
Direct Evasion apology Offer of Apology – strategies
Gende r strategies Offer of Apology – Evasion
Table 3.8 demonstrates an observation sheet for the pattern of [Indirect apology strategies - indirect response strategies].
Table 3.8 An observation sheet for the pattern of [Indirect apology strategies - indirect response strategies]
Patterns Sub-patterns Exch- Identifi- Description Detail anges cation
Opting-out Strategy – Male – male strategies
Gender Male – female response strategies Opting-out Strategy – Female -
3.4.3.2 Document Reading of Existing Data
The document or existing data which was used in this thesis were film scripts and subtitles regarded as a useful tool of data collection Tables were drawn to arrange exchanges collected in the film scripts and subtitle texts.
Film scripts of socio-psychological films were downloaded from the Internet websites as shown in Table 3.1 They were then read thoroughly by the researcher to collect exchanges which matched the required description of exchanges described in section 3.3.2.
Data Collection Procedures
The data of this thesis were collected from socio-psychological films in English and Vietnamese produced from 2015 to 2021 The purpose of data collection was to collect exchanges of apology and response strategies in film scripts and subtitles In a conversation, there may have several exchanges; however, only exchanges including a pair of apology and apology response strategies were picked up Then, the total number of exchanges were counted After that, the types of apology strategies and apology response strategies were separately identified. Concrete steps for data collection are showed below.
Step 1: Watching and observing socio-psychological films several times on YouTube, using checklists in four observation sheets as demonstrated in Tables 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8 in Section 3.4.3.1 to collect exchanges.
Step 2: Downloading film scripts from the Internet free download websites as shown in Table 3.1.
Step 3: Reading intensively the film scripts to collect exchanges.
Step 4: Copying and pasting exchanges into tables for data analysis.
Step 5: Classifying exchanges with the initiation acts of direct apology strategies.
Regarding direct apology strategies, and direct acceptance and rejection in apology response strategies, Microsoft word 2019 was used to find out the performative markers of these strategies in film scripts and subtitles in both languages Based on the direct strategies collected, any corresponding apology response strategies were picked up as well By this way, the exchanges of [direct apology strategies - indirect response strategies] and [direct apology strategies - direct response strategies] were collected.
Step 6: Classifying exchanges with the closing acts of direct apology response strategies.
Microsoft word 2019 was also used to find out performative expressions of the direct response strategies of acceptance and rejection After that, the researcher collected the preceding apology strategies By this way, the researcher collected exchanges of [direct apology strategies - direct response strategies] and [indirect apology strategies - direct response strategies].
DATA ANALYSIS
Statistical Analysis Tool
According to Almela (2020), statistical analysis is an important step of data analysis which helps to describe data, to show the data distribution, and to summarize the data under the fields related to the objectives of the study At the same time, the statistical analysis also reveals trends of using the information in the data, which helps the researcher compare and contrast the similarities and differences between some sources of data as mentioned in the previous part In addition, it is obvious that the software can assist the researcher reduce the time consumed for the data statistical analysis (Hinton, McMurray, and Brownlow, 2014).
In this thesis, the program Microsoft Excel 2019, the latest version ofMicrosoft Excel was chosen to analyze the data of this thesis With this newMicrosoft Excel software, the data statistics were, to some extent, carried out easily,accurately, and time-saving.
Matrix of Collected Data
This thesis adopted the apology strategy taxonomy by Trosborg (2011) and response strategy taxonomy by Holmes (1990, 1995) with the theory of direct and indirect speech act by Searle (1975) A matrix of exchanges including apology and response strategies was designed to support the researcher to collect data more conveniently.
Table 3.9 Matrix of exchanges including apology and response strategies in terms of gender and power
No Patterns Pragmatic acts of apology and response Gender Power strategies
1 DirectExpression of Regret – Acceptance apology Expression of Regret – Rejection Male – strategies Offer of Apology – Acceptance Male Higher
- direct Offer of Apology – Rejection power response apologizer strategies Request for Forgiveness – Acceptance Male –
Request for Forgiveness – Rejection Female
2 Indirect Acknowledgement of responsibility– apology Acceptance strategies Acknowledgement of responsibility– Lower
- direct Rejection Female power response
Explanation or account– Acceptance – apologizer strategies
Explanation or account – Rejection Female
Evasive Strategy – Acceptance Evasive Strategy – Rejection
Opting-out Strategy – Acceptance Female - Equal
Opting-out Strategy – Rejection Male power
3 Direct Expression of Regret – Acknowledgement apology Expression of Regret – Evasion strategies- indirect Offer of Apology – Acknowledgement
Offer of Apology – Evasion response strategies Request for Forgiveness –
Acknowledgement Request for Forgiveness – Evasion
4 Indirect Evasive Strategy – Acknowledgement apology Evasive Strategy – Evasion strategies- indirect Opting-out Strategy – Acknowledgement
Opting-out Strategy – Evasion response strategies Remedial Support – Acknowledgement
Data Analysis Procedure
According to Creswell et al (2007) and Rossman and Rallis (2011), the process of data analysis involves making sense out of texts It involves preparing the data for analysis, conducting different analyses, moving deeper and deeper into understanding the data, representing the data, and making an interpretation of the larger meaning of the data An overview of the data analysis process is seen in Figure 3.1 from the specific to the general and involves multiple levels of analysis
Figure 3.1 Data analysis in qualitative research proposed by Creswell
(Adapted from Creswell, 2017, p.185)Based on the proposed data analysis procedures by Creswell (2017) in Figure 3.1, this thesis data analysis procedure included description and contrast analysis
82 based on the matrix in Table 3.9:
Step l: Identifying and classifying 4 types of exchanges including [direct apology strategies - direct response strategies], [indirect apology strategies - direct response strategies], [direct apology strategies - indirect response strategies], and [indirect apology strategies - indirect response strategies] in contexts.
Step 2: Identifying and classifying subcategories of each type of four exchanges in contexts.
At this point, the adoption of apology strategy taxonomy by Trosborg (2011) and response strategy taxonomy by Holmes (1990, 1995) set light for apology strategies and response strategies used in exchanges to be identified and described. Subsequently, the researcher clarified that a specific apology strategy matched with a particular corresponding response strategy Each exchange of apology and apology response strategies was analyzed in the context of the conversation in which it was uttered
Step 3: Analyzing the exchanges in terms of gender which were divided into
4 groups: male – male, male – female, female – female, and female – male.
Step 4: Analyzing the exchanges in terms of power which were divided into
3 groups: higher power apologizer, lower power apologizer, and equal power apologizer.
Step 5: Counting and calculating the occurrence of 4 exchange types and subtypes in terms of gender and power with the application of MCE2019 to present information of these types Reliability checks for the internal consistency of the information were conducted in this step The information was then illustrated in tables, and percentages with the help of MCE2019 The calculation was shown as follows:
F: frequency of each exchange n: total number of samples
Step 6: Presenting the calculation results into tables and figures to interpret the findings.
Step 7: Describing the results for research question 1 and 2.
Step 8: Comparing and contrasting to find out the similarities and differences in exchanges of apology and response strategies in terms of gender and power in both languages where English and Vietnamese were source languages.
Step 9: Drawing the conclusions and suggesting implications for language research, and language teaching and learning.
Analytical Framework of the Study
Based on the theoretical framework of this thesis as mentioned in Chapter Two, the analytical framework followed the steps as shown in the Figure 3.2 below. Firstly, from scripts and subtitles in films with the context of socio-psychological films, exchanges were extracted Subsequently, exchanges of apology and apology response strategies in each conversation were picked up Each exchange was separated into apology strategy and apology response strategy to identify what apology and apology response strategies were used in both languages After that, the combinations of apology strategies and apology response strategies in exchanges were identified.
Figure 3.2 Analytical framework of the thesis
RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY
Noticeably, reliability and validity are the two most important criteria to guarantee the quality of the data collection procedures.
As for reliability, the exchanges of apology and response strategies were collected from recent socio-psychological films in English and Vietnam Since the whole research work relied on these samples, it is all important that these films should be carefully seen and samples should be cautiously selected thanks to a detailed description of samples in order to ensure a satisfying reliability of results Data triangulation among methodological, researcher, and theoretical background was also used to measure reliability The patterns from the data collection were always compared with the results from theoretical background presented in Chapter One to maintain the quality of the research The information about speech act, apology, apology strategy, gender, and power given by various educators, researchers and linguists have been sorted carefully which makes theoretical backgrounds of the study sound Different methods were used in this thesis to collect and analyze the exchanges of apology and response strategies Also, the exchanges of apology and response strategies were collected and analyzed steps by steps which were described in above sections in Chapter 3 The reliability this thesis also depended on the appropriateness of the data collection instruments which included checklists for observation, document reading of film scripts and subtitles, and human instrument As suggested by Gibbs
(2007), statistical procedures or reliability subprograms in qualitative computer software packages can then be used to determine the level of consistency of numbers. Miles and Huberman (1994) recommend that the consistency of the data agree at least 80% of the time for good qualitative reliability.
Validity, on the other hand, is one of the strengths of qualitative research and it is based on determining whether the findings are accurate from the standpoint of the researcher (Creswell, 2007) A procedure is to identify and discuss one or more strategies available to check the accuracy of the findings From all accounts, the study was reliable and valid The information achieved from the data collection is assumed
86 to be valid thanks to the design of a descriptive contrastive qualitative research with the support of quantitative information Qualitative validity means that the researcher checked for the accuracy of the findings by employing certain procedures, while qualitative reliability indicated that the researcher's approach was consistent across different researchers and different projects (Gibbs, 2007).
CHAPTER SUMMARY
This thesis was conducted based on the data collected from conversations in socio-psychological film contexts The conversations included exchanges of apology and response utterances in English and Vietnamese The sources of data were taken from socio-psychological films which were produced from 2015 to 2020 This is a descriptive contrastive qualitative research with the support of quantitative information.
A clear identification of what research design this thesis should adapt helped it follow a specific and proper direction Furthermore, its results can meet the demand of aims and objectives The data analysis process was carefully done with the support of the statistical analysis instrument Microsoft Excel 2019 All the samples from adjacency pairs in English and Vietnamese were chosen, synthesized, categorized into sociopragmatic features and statistically analyzed carefully to give believable output reports shown in the Chapters Four, Five, and Six.
Figure 3.3 Overview of the research methodology
CHAPTER FOUR APOLOGY AND RESPONSE STRATEGIES
Chapter Four aimed to find out (1) the exchanges of apology and apology response strategies, (2) the gender influences on the exchanges of apology and apology response strategies, and (3) the power influences on the exchanges of apology and apology response strategies in English film conversations.
EXCHANGES OF APOLOGY AND RESPONSE STRATEGIES
Direct and Indirect Apology Strategies
This thesis adopted the AS taxonomy developed by Trosborg (2011) to investigate what ASs the characters from socio-psychological film contexts often made use of in their conversations in English This AS taxonomy includes five different categories namely direct strategies, indirect strategies, evasive strategies, opting out, and remedial support After the adoption of the direct and indirect speech act theory by Searle (1975), the adopted apology taxonomy comprises of two main categories of direct strategies and indirect strategies There are three sub- categories in the former including expression of regret, offer of apology, and request for forgiveness Meanwhile, the latter covers acknowledgment of responsibility, explanation or account, evasive strategies, opting out, and remedial support.
From the exchanges or adjacency pairs extracted from English conversations in film scripts and film subtitles, two more strategies were found out to express apologies or to illustrate the act of apologizing The first AS was entitled no apology by the researcher The apologizers did not say anything; however, the apologizees responded that they understood that the apologizers wanted to apologize even though they said nothing Therefore, the item no apology was not added into Table 4.1 since the scope of this thesis is on verbal apologies The other AS was the integration of several AS when making apologies, this new AS – the one under the label of mixed apology strategy was then added into Table 4.1 helping to highlight the information about the frequency of ASs in English conversations extracted from scripts and subtitles of film extracts.
Table 4.1 Frequency of apology strategies in English
Apology Macro types Micro types n %
Direct 1 Expression of regret 134 24.06 strategies
Indirect 1 Acknowledgment Implicit acknowledgment 108 19.39 strategies of responsibility Explicit acknowledgment
Expression of lack of intent Expression of self-deficiency Expression of Embarrassment Explicit acceptance of the blame
2 Explanation or Implicit explanation 43 7.82 account Explicit explanation
3 Evasive Minimizing 59 10.6 strategies Querying precondition
4 Opting out Explicit denial of responsibility 20 3.59
Implicit denial of responsibility Justification
5 Remedial support Expressing concern for hearer 85 15.26
Offer of repair Promise of forbearance
As Table 4.1 demonstrates, indirect strategies were the most frequently used apology strategy which accounted for 56.55% (n15) and was more than 21 times higher than the new type of apology strategies known as mixed apology strategy which
90 made up the least at 2.69% (n) Ranking second was direct strategies, at 40.75% (n"7) The indirect strategies were nearly 1.4-fold compared to direct strategies.
Direct strategies’ universality was affirmed to be in line with many previous studies
(Altayari, 2017; Bataineh, 2008; Deutschmann, 2003; Holmes, 1990, 1995; Hussein and Hammouri, 1998; Qari, 2017; Shardakova, 2005).
Direct apology strategies in English employ specific performative expressions known as IFIDs (Illocutionary Force-Indicating Devices), which explicitly convey an apology These IFIDs, coined by Olshtain and Cohen (1983), include "be afraid," "apologize," "apology," "excuse," "forgive," "pardon," "regret," and "be sorry." The use of these IFIDs directly indicates the speaker's intention to apologize, making the apology explicitly understood by the recipient.
There are three macro types of IFIDs namely expression of regret, request for forgiveness, and offer of apology which made up 24.06%, 11.67%, and 5.02% respectively Looking at the data in more details, the author recognized that the top was more than twice higher than the second highest of this kind, and nearly five times higher than the least.
This can be interpreted as evidence of direct strategies universality This was in line with prior research, such as those conducted by Holmes (1990, 1995), Hussein and Hammouri (1998), Deutschmann (2003), Shardakova (2005), Bataineh (2008), Altayari
(2017), and Qari (2017) which indicated that most used direct strategies in English were expression of regret This result also coincidened with those by Holmes (1990,
1995), Hussein and Hammouri (1998), Deutschmann (2003), Shardakova (2005), Bataineh (2008), Abdi and Biri (2014), Altayari (2017), and Qari (2017) showing that most used direct strategies in English was expression of regret The high frequency of this strategy in the corpus is thought to be due to its utility and effectiveness, as well as the fact that it is less demanding for speakers (Holmes, 1990) It is desirable because it allows offenders to make amends and restore the relationships that they have shattered for the least amount of money feasible (Nikmah, 2012) This was in line with Sari
Expression of regret remains a prevalent apology strategy in films Studies like those by Nikmah (2012) and (2009) highlight this approach's common use in films like "Twilight" and "Pretty Women." Expression of regret directly acknowledges the offender's remorse for their actions, making it a straightforward and widely employed apology method in cinematic contexts.
However, Shariati and Chamani (2010) found that request forgiveness and expression of regret were the most and least common apology strategies, respectively, in their research of apology expressions in Persian.
Figure 4.1 Frequency of direct strategies in English
The analysis of examples in the next three subsections provides a clear understanding about direct strategies. a Expression of Regret
To express the regret to the apologizees, the apologizer used performative expressions and verbs such as regret, afraid, and sorry The example below shows how expression of regret occurs in conversation:
His mother: It’s okay, my dear.
(No.1, Appendix 4) The son said sorry to his mother since he did not turn off the lights after going out his bedroom He uttered an explicit apology because he felt regret. b Request for Forgiveness
This micro level of direct strategies appeared when the apologizers wanted the forgiveness from the apologizees and was uttered through performative
92 expressions or verbs namely forgive, pardon, and excuse.
(4.2) Olivia : Well, I think I will go to the bookstore in the next two days.
Lilly : Pardon me, I didn’t hear what you said.
In the conversation, Lilly did not hear the information of what Olivia had uttered before; therefore, she subsequently requested Olivia for forgiveness by using
“Pardon me” to express her regret. c Offer of Apology
The last type of direct strategies was used when the apologizers offered an apology to the apologizees for the mistakes or offends they made.
(4.3) Staff : I apologize for my late submission of the project.
In this conversation, the company staff did not submit the project before the deadline, hence he offered an apology to his manager The staff offered an apology when uttering “I apologize for my late submission of the project” to the manager as the regret for late submission.
As mentioned in the scope of the study in Chapter One, both explicit and implicit apology strategies and apology response strategies were used in conversations in English and Vietnamese; however, for the matter of convenience and within the scope of the thesis, only explicit apology and apology response utterances were taken for analysis That is, performative markers were under scrutiny when analyzing their patterns and linguistic realizations.
Table 4.2 and Figure 4.2 below provide information about the occurrence of apology forms and their linguistic realizations of utterances performing the act of apologizing As one can see, there are 227 direct strategies using performative expressions namely sorry, apology, apologize, fault, excuse, pardon, regret, forgive, and afraid Also, another five more utterances using performative expressions in mixed apology strategy were collected In total, 232 utterances of apology containing performative expressions were found from 557 exchanges of pragmatic acts of apologizing and responding While Table 4.2 describes 21 patterns and their linguistic realizations with specific details, Figure 4.2 displays the overview frequency of patterns only.
Table 4.2 Distribution of patterns and linguistic realizations of apology utterances in English
3 Apologizing + Apologizer + Pardon me for Gerund/ 5 2.15
4 Apologizing + Apologizer + Forgive me this but 1 0.43
5 Apologizing + Apologizee Sorry, proper name 15 6.47
6 Apologizing + Explanation Forgive my NP 1 0.43
7 Apologizing + Preposition + Sorry for NP/ gerund 17 7.33
8 Apologizing + Preposition + My apology to 1 0.43
11 Apologizer + Aplogizing + I apologize if Clause 1 0.43
12 Apologizer + Apologizing+ I apologize for NP/ that 26 11.2
I’m sorry about/ for NP/ that Clause/ Gerund
13 Apologizer + Apologizing + I apologize that Clause 7 3.02
15 Apologizer + Verb + Intensifier I’m really sorry 24 10.34
16 Apologizer + Verb + Intensifier I’m truly sorry for what 1 0.43
17 Apologizer + Verb + I’m afraid that Clause 12 5.18
Apologizing + Explanation I’m sorry that Clause
18 Apologizer + Verb + I want to apologize to 2 0.86
Apologizing+ Apologizee proper name/ pronoun
19 Apologizer + Emphatic form I do apologize 1 0.43
20 Apologizer + Intensifier I do apologize for 3 1.29
21 Apologizee + Modal verb + You can forgive me 3 1.29
Apologizing + Apologizer Would you excuse me?
I Modal verb apologize for NP/Gerund
As can be seen from Table 4.2 and Figure 4.2, Pattern 14 [Apologizer + Verb + Apologizing] reached its peak at 18.98% (nD) which was slightly higher than the second highest of Pattern 1 [Apologizing] at 16.81% (n9) Pattern 2 [Apologizing + Apologizer], Pattern 12 [Apologizer + Apologizing+ Preposition + Explanation], and Pattern 15 [Apologizer + Verb + Intensifier +Apologizing] experienced quite the same occurrence at the approximation of 11%, to make it more detailed, 10.78%(n%), 11.2% (n&), and 10.34% (n$) respectively There are 7 patterns ranking at the bottom of the list at 0.43% (n=) including Pattern 4 [Apologizing + Apologizer
+ Demonstrative+ Conjunction + Explanation], Pattern 6 [Apologizing + Explanation], Pattern 8 [Apologizing + Preposition + Apologizee], Pattern 10 [Apologizer + Apologizing + Apologizee], Pattern 11 [Apologizer + Aplogizing + Condition sentence], Pattern 16 [Apologizer + Verb + Intensifier + Apologizing + Preposition + Explanation], and Pattern 19 [Apologizer + Emphatic form +Apologizing].
Figure 4.2 Pattern distribution of apology utterances in English
Direct and Indirect Response Strategies
Regarding the response strategies, the ARS taxonomy proposed by Homes
(1990, 1995) and the direct and indirect speech act by Searle (1975) were integrated to examine what ARSs the characters from socio-psychological film contexts often utilized when communicating in English This adopted ARS taxonomy comprises of two separate groups embracing direct response strategies (acceptance and acknowledgement and indirect response strategies (evasion and rejection).
From the exchanges extracted from conversations in English film scripts and film subtitles, in some situations, the apologizees did not say anything to make a response to the apologizers; by contrast, also in some other cases, the apologizees tended to take advantage of several ARSs to respond to the apologizers The researcher named the former no response and the latter mixed apology response strategy Especially, no response was not added to Table 4.4 since this table illustrates the ARSs and this thesis investigated only the verbal responses The mixed apology response strategy therefore appeared in Table 4.4 as a new type of
ARS A glimpse at Table 4.4 given below reveals the data about the frequency ofARSs in English conversations extracted from scripts and subtitles of socio- psychological film contexts.
Table 4.4 Frequency of apology response strategies in English
Apology n response Macro types Micro types % strategies
Direct 1 Acceptance Absolution 95 17.06 response strategies Thanking 26 4.67
Indirect 1 Evasion Minimizing 15 2.69 response Deflecting 8 1.44 strategies Shift of blame 31 5.56
Mixed apology response strategy Subtotal 9 1.61
In general, direct response strategies were employed more than indirect response strategies at 59.25% (n30) and 39.14% (n!8), respectively The characters tended to directly accept the apologies since acceptance in direct strategies was the most frequently used AR, illustrated by its highest percentage at 39.14%(n!8); by contrast, mixed apology response strategy was the least one at 1.61%(n=9) There was a big differentiation of more than 24 times of the top as opposed to
112 the bottom The second highest belonged acknowledgement at 29.45% (n4).
Evasion comprising of 9.69% (nT) was the second lowest The only missing apology strategies at the macro level was expressing emotion in acceptance The examples in the following section highlight the use of response strategies in English by the apologizees to the apologizers in some particular contexts which satisfied the description in the scope of this thesis.
Margaret, Jennifer, and Joanna (2015) define acceptance as "the act of agreeing with something and approving of it." In English conversations, accepting an apology encompasses seven subcategories: absolution, thanking, advice/suggestion, request, expressing empathy, expressing emotion, and formal acceptance These subcategories vary in frequency of use.
Figure 4.10 Frequency of acceptance in English
As can be clearly seen from Figure 4.10, absolution ranked the top at 17.06% (n), which was more than twice as much as the second highest of request at 8.08% (nE) According to the ARS taxonomy by Homes (1990, 1995), expressing emotion is one of sub-categories in acceptance; however, there had no record of this type Apparently, formal acceptance was at the bottom with the least frequently use at 1.25% (n=7). a1 Absolution
This term is defined by Margaret, Jennifer, and Joanna (2015, p.45) as “a formal statement that a person is forgiven for what he or she has done wrong” In particular, the apologizees tend to forgive the offence caused by the apologizers It can be marked by using performative expressions like “OK” or “Alright”.
(4.26) Professor: Sorry I can’t give it back to you today.
Student: Well, well, okay, Sir Then, I will come back to you Umm when should I come to you again?
By saying “okay”, the student as the apologizee tended to understand why the professor could not give his writing assignment back to him. a2 Thanking
It seems quite unusual when the apologizees thanked the apologizers; however, the act of thanking could be understood as the appreciation of the apologizees when the apologizers uttered apology expressions.
(4.27) Freddie: I don’t believe that I did that to you I’m terribly sorry.
Julie: Thanks At least, you say sorry, not like the other ones.
In the conversation above, Julie said thanks to Freddie when he apoligized to her to show that she appreciates the willingness of saying sorry from
Advice or suggestion is given to the apologizers with the aim to better the situation or to give measures to a particular damage caused by the apologizers. (4.28) The horse rider: Oh sorry, Man I didn’t mean it at all.
The audience: Be careful! It could be dangerous for the others.
In this conversation, the audience got hurt when the horse rider passed by, then the apologizee advised the horse rider to be more careful next time.
The apologizees implied to accept the apologies when asking the apologizers not to repeat the offensive actions.
(4.29) Kya: Hey, I had to admit that I forgot your book.
Ava: Please return it as soon as possible.
(No.29, Appendix 4) Kya regretted that he forgot to bring Ava’s book; therefore, Ava asked him to return it. a5 Expressing Empathy
The apologizees showed their empathy to the offense made by the apologizers as illustrated in the example below.
(4.30) Thomas: It is my fault.
Julie: I understand that you didn’t mean to do so.
Such expressions “I accept your apology”, “I forgive you” were used more frequently in formal contexts.
(4.31) Student: Please forgive me for my cheating in the exam.
Rejection is the fourth category of apology response strategies which include complaining, asking for compensation, and refusal With 14.36% (n), asking for compensation had the largest proportion of use It had a big differentiation of 8 times higher than the least of complaining at 1.8% (n); whereas, refusal at 8.8% was nearly 5-fold in comparison with complaining.
Figure 4.11 Frequency of rejection in English b1 Complaining
The apologizees made comment on the personalities of the apologizers which could be the reason for the offense.
(4.32) Thomas: I did it again So sorry.
Julie: How careless of you!
(No.32, Appendix 4) b2 Asking for Compensation
The apologizees asked the apologizers to compensate for what they had done to the apologizees which may cause serious damage.
(4.33) Thomas: I apologize for the damage.
Julie: Yeah, you have to buy me another one.
In this strategy, the apologizees explicitly rejected the apology by uttering markers of refusal such as no, nah, nope, or I don’t think so.
(4.34) Thomas: Can you forgive me for what I have done?
(No.34, Appendix 4)There were 557 response utterances extracted from 557 exchanges of the
116 pragmatic acts of apologizing and responding However, when looking at linguistic realizations, the researcher based on the theory of positive and negative speech act of responses by Searle (1969) to find out the possible linguistic realizations there could be Response utterances can be categorized into four different patterns including direct positive responses, indirect positive responses, indirect positive responses, and indirect negative responses Direct positive responses were used if the apologizees wanted to accept the apologies from the apologizers explicitly thanks to the occurrence of yes,
OK, okey, alright, and it’s alright; whereas, the apologizers employed indirect positive responses including never mind, no problem, it’s nothing, not at all and so on to accept the apologies from the apologizers implicitly Negative responses were taken advantage of by the apologizees in case they would like to refuse the apologies from the apologizers Direct negative responses included no, I can’t, I will not, I can’t forgive you and so on while indirect negative responses may comprise of sorry or I’m sorry.
One more pattern explored from the data collection was the mixed responses since the apologizees combined both positive and negative responses It could be the combination between direct and indirect positive repsonses, or direct and indirect negative responses as illustrated in Table 4.5 below.
Table 4.5 Distribution of patterns and linguistic realizations of response utterances in English
No Response Linguistic realizations n % patterns
1 Direct positive Oh, yes 112 31.02 responses Yes, please/ sure
Yes, you can/ could OK/ Okay/ Okey It’s OK/ Okay/ Okey Alright
2 Indirect positive Never mind 83 22.99 responses No problem
No, not at all It’s nothing
3 Direct negative No, I can’t/ couldn’t 65 18.01 responses No, [explanation]
4 Indirect negative Sorry 67 18.56 responses I’m sorry
5 Mixed apology No, I’m sorry, I can’t/ couldn’t 34 9.42 responses I’m sorry that I can’t forgive you
Oh, yeah It doesn’t matter, you know.
It can be seen that English people prefered using direct positive responses the most at 31.02 % (n2), followed by the second highest of the indirect responses of
118 this kind at 22.99% (n) On the contrary, negative responses experienced the higher proportion of the indirect responses at 18.56% (ng) compared to the direct ones at 18.01% (ne) The two kinds of negative responses saw quite the same proportion at around 18% Standing at the bottom was mixed responses ay 9.42% (n4) which was more than 3 times lower than the top of direct positive responses at 31.02% (n2).
Turning to the acknowledgement where only 4 types out of 7 in total were recorded Absolution plus stood at the peak of this type at 13.29% (nt) while the least of formal plus was at 2.69% (n) The second least of warning/threatening and the second highest of evaluating were at 4.31% (n$) and 9.16% (nQ), respectively.
Figure 4.12 Frequency of acknowledgement in English a1 Absolution Plus
In this strategy, together with the use of markers OK, okay, or alright, the apologizees also asked the apologizers to do something to repair the offense.
(4.35) Erik: Sorry, I didn’t tell you about this.
Julie: It’s OK, but remember to tell me later I’m kind of busy right now
Apology and Response Strategies
The first two sections 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 examined the types and frequencies of apology strategies and apology response strategies separately as a single speech act of apologizing and responding The apology strategy taxonomy by Trosborg (2011), and the apology response strategy taxonomy by Homes (1990, 1995) were adopted into the theory of direct and indirect speech act by Searle (1975) In daily life, people perform many kinds of speech acts, in which the combination of apologizing and apology responding is an example of a pair of speech acts, known as pragmatic acts Unlike the first two sections, section 4.1.3, however, investigated the pragmatic acts of apologizing and responding In particular, the exchanges of pragmatic acts were
122 looked into, what specific apology strategy matched with what specific apology response strategy, and how often they were used in such particular sequence Once the apology strategies and apology response strategies used in English conversations were identified, exchanges of pragmatic acts of apology and response strategies were found out.
There were three different types of apology strategies used in English conversations namely direct strategies, indirect strategies, and mixed apology strategies In terms of apology response strategies, three separate types were recorded including direct response strategies, indirect response strategies, and mixed apology response strategies These strategies appeared in minimal adjacency pairs with different exchange patterns Each apology strategy could match with three different apology response strategies in different frequencies Specifically, apologizers could initiate the exchanges or adjacency pairs with either direct strategies, or indirect strategies, or mixed apology strategies and closed the adjacency pairs with either direct response strategies, indirect response strategies, and mixed apology response strategies In general, there were nine exchanges of pragmatic acts of apology and response strategies.
Looking at Table 4.6 in more details, top three exchanges of pragmatic acts of apologizing and responding were in turn [indirect strategies – direct response strategies] accounting for 33.21% (n5), [direct strategies – direct response strategies] at 24.06% (n4), and [indirect strategies – indirect response strategies] at 22.26% (n4), respectively.
Table 4.6 Exchanges of pragmatic acts in English conversations
Act 1 - Act 2 - Exchanges of pragmatic acts in n %
1 Direct Direct response Direct strategies - direct 134 24.06 strategies strategies response strategies
2 Direct Indirect Direct strategies - indirect 90 16.16 strategies response response strategies strategies
3 Direct Mixed Direct strategies - mixed 3 0.54 strategies response response strategies strategies
4 Indirect Direct response Indirect strategies - direct 185 33.21 strategies strategies response strategies
5 Indirect Indirect Indirect strategies - indirect 124 22.26 strategies response response strategies strategies
6 Indirect Mixed Indirect strategies - mixed 6 1.08 strategies response response strategies strategies
7 Mixed Direct response Mixed strategies - direct response 11 1.97 apology strategies strategies strategy
8 Mixed Indirect Mixed strategies - indirect 4 0.72 apology response response strategies strategy strategies
9 Mixed Mixed Mixed strategies - mixed 0 0 apology response response strategies strategy strategies
In contrast, the exchanges of [direct strategies - mixed response strategies] at 0.54% (n=3), [mixed strategies - indirect response strategies] at 0.72% (n=4), and
[indirect strategies - mixed response strategies] at 1.08% (n=6) were at the bottom three The pattern of [mixed apology strategies - mixed response strategies] was not recorded.
4.1.3.1 Direct Apology Strategies - Direct Response Strategies
Accordingly, there were six sub-exchanges which were initiated with direct strategies and closed by either two direct response strategies The exchange [direct
124 strategies – acceptance] at 15.8% (n) was nearly twice higher than the exchange
[direct strategies – rejection] at 8.26% (nF).
Table 4.7 Exchanges of direct apology strategies and direct response strategies in English conversations
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in English Act 1 - Direct apology Act 2 - Direct n % Direct apology strategies response strategies strategies - Expression of Regret Acceptance 88 15.8
Direct responsestrategies Offer of Apology Acceptance
Offer of Apology Rejection Request for Forgiveness Rejection
The exchange [direct strategies (expression of regret)– acceptance
(thanking)] in Example 4.44 is illustrated.
(4.44) Doctor: I’m sorry for the delay, Elizabeth.
Patient: Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.
(No.44, Appendix 4) This is a conversation among a patient and a doctor Holding the patient’s file, the doctor entered the room and explicitly said sorry for the delay I’m sorry for the delay She was sitting on the couch in the doctor’s office and thanked the doctor even though she was the one who had to wait.
4.1.3.2 Direct Apology Strategies - Indirect Response Strategies
This pragmatic act exchanges also comprised of six smaller ones which were initiated with direct strategies and closed by either evasion or acknowledgement in indirect response strategies The exchange [direct strategies – acknowledgement] at
12.21% (nh) was more than 3 times higher than the exchange [direct strategies – evasion] at 3.95% (n").
Table 4.8 Exchanges of direct apology strategies and indirect response strategies in
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in English
Act 1 - Direct apology Act 2 - Indirect n % strategies response strategies Direct apology Expression of Regret Evasion 22 3.95 strategies - Offer of Apology Evasion
Indirect Request for Forgiveness Evasion response Expression of Regret Acknowledgement 68 12.21 strategies Offer of Apology Acknowledgement
The exchange [direct strategies (expression of Regret)– acknowledgement
(deflecting or explaining)] in Example 4.44 is illustrated.
(4.45) Ted: Sorry sweetie, I can’t do Christmas on the twenty-fifth.
Tabitha: But Uncle Ted, I missed you so much!
(No.45, Appendix 4) Ted is Tabitha’s uncle and he said sorry since he could not be present at Christmas with his niece She tried to persuade him and explained that she missed him so much, which she implied at that she did not want to accept Ted’s apology.
4.1.3.3 Direct Apology Strategies – Mixed Response Strategies
The exchange [direct strategies – mixed response strategies] made up 0.54% (n=3).
Table 4.9 Exchanges of direct apology strategies and mixed response strategies in
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in English
Act 1 - Direct apology Act 2 - Mixed n % strategies response strategies Direct apology Expression of Regret Mixed response 3 0.54 strategies – strategies
Mixed response Offer of Apology Mixed response strategies strategies
Request for Forgiveness Mixed response strategies
The exchange [direct strategies (request for forgiveness)– mixed response strategies (rejection + acknowledgement)] in Example 4.44 is illustrated.
(4.46) Baby Tina: Excuse me, I hate to interrupt, but may I make a suggestion?
Why don’t you both suck it?
Tim: Nope, I don’t think that It’s ridiculous.
(No.46, Appendix 4) This is a conversation among a baby named Tina and Tim Holding her pacifier without knowing how to use it, Tim refused to try the way she suggested and then acknowledged the apology by evaluating that it was ridiculous.
4.1.3.4 Indirect Apology Strategies - Direct Response Strategies
Regarding indirect strategies as the first act, the exchange [indirect strategies
– acceptance] also ranked the top at 21.9% (n2).
Table 4.10 Exchanges of indirect apology strategies and direct response strategies in
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in English Act 1 - Indirect apology Act 2 - Direct n % strategies response strategies
Indirect Explanation or account Acceptance apology Evasive strategies Acceptance strategies -
Direct response Remedial support Acceptance strategies
Acknowledgement of Rejection 63 11.31 responsibility Explanation or account Rejection Evasive strategies Rejection
The exchange [indirect strategies (acknowledgment of responsibility) – acceptance (expressing empathy)] is presented in Example 4.45 as follow.
(4.47) Patrick: I knew I shouldn’t have drunk so much last night Car keys Car keys.
Anna: You hardly drank anything.
(No.47, Appendix 4) This is a conversation among two lovers after a night of making love together Anna sat on the bed, dressed, while another one tore around the room and she totally panicked Patrick apologized implicitly by explaining why he could not control himself which was because he had been drunk when saying I shouldn’t have drunk so much last night Anna accepted the apologies directly by expressing her empathy with Patrick when uttering You hardly drank anything.
4.1.3.5 Indirect Apology Strategies - Indirect Response Strategies
The exchange [indirect strategies – evasion] stood at 16.7% (n) was more than 3 times higher than that of [indirect strategies – acknowledgement] at 5.56% (n1).
Table 4.11 Exchanges of indirect apology strategies and indirect response strategies in English conversations
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in English
Act 1 - Indirect apology Act 2 - Indirect n % strategies response strategies
Indirect Explanation or account Acknowledgement apology Evasive strategies Acknowledgement strategies - Opting out Acknowledgement
Indirect Remedial support Acknowledgement response Acknowledgement of Evasion 31 5.56 strategies responsibility
Explanation or account Evasion Evasive strategies Evasion
Example 4.47 shows the exchange [indirect strategies (opting out)–
(4.48) Husband: I didn’t cheat on you She is a liar.
Wife: No smoke without fire.
(No.48, Appendix 4) This conversation happened after the wife’s friend told her that she saw her husband hung out with a woman but not the wife The husband denied his betrayal when saying I didn’t cheat on you The wife definitely did not believe and acknowledged by evaluating No smoke without fire.
4.1.3.6 Indirect Apology Strategies - Mixed Response Strategies
The least used exchange was [indirect strategies – mixed response strategies] at 1.08% (n=6).
Table 4.12 Exchanges of indirect apology strategies and mixed response strategies in English conversations
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in English Act 1 - Indirect Act 2 - Mixed response n % apology strategies strategies
Acknowledgement of Mixed response 6 1.08 responsibility strategies
Indirect Explanation or account Mixed response apology strategies strategies -
Opting out Mixed response strategies strategies
Remedial support Mixed response strategies
The exchange [direct strategies (expression of Regret)– acceptance
(thanking)] in Example 4.44 is illustrated.
(4.49) Doctor: I’m sorry for the delay, Elizabeth.
Patient: Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.
(No.49, Appendix 4) This is a conversation among a patient and a doctor Holding the patient’s file, the doctor entered the room and explicitly said sorry for the delay I’m sorry for the delay She was sitting on the couch in the doctor’s office and thanked the doctor even though she was the one who had to wait.
4.1.3.7 Mixed Apology Strategies - Direct Response Strategies
Eventually, initiating the adjacency pairs with mixed apology strategies, the exchange [mixed apology strategies – acceptance] also peaked at 1.43% (n=8), followed by [mixed apology strategies – rejection] at 0.54% (n=3).
Table 4.13 Exchanges of mixed apology strategies and direct response strategies in
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in English
Mixed apology Act 1 - Direct apology Act 2 - Direct n % strategies - strategies response strategies
Direct response Mixed apology Acceptance 8 1.43 strategies strategies
Below is an example of the pragmatic act with the use of the exchange
[mixed apology strategies – acceptance (expressing empathy)].
(4.50) Priscilla: Bobby, I love you Every since I met you, you’ve made me laugh Your crazy ideas, your schemes, your dreams, your scams You fill any room you walk into.God, I miss that But I need a husband, sweetheart, someone steady, a man
I can rely on And that’s just not you That’s okay, it’s more than okay, it’s wonderful. You’ve got to be who you are But I can’t be it with you Not anymore I’m sorry.
(No.50, Appendix 4) This is a conversation among two lovers, Bobby and Priscilla Priscilla wanted to break up with Bobby She tried to utilize mixed apology strategy with the hope to mitigate the mental damage that she did to him In a turn, she showed her concern to him when saying Bobby, I love you, and then indirectly apologized by giving explanations that why she decided to break up with him But I need a husband, sweetheart, someone steady, a man I can rely on Subsequently, she explicitly said sorry to him I’m sorry In return, Bobby accepted the apologies and he understood why she did that to him when saying I understand Goodbye, Priscilla.
4.1.3.8 Mixed Apology Strategies - Indirect Response Strategies
Standing at the bottom was [mixed apology strategies – acknowledgement] at 0.18% (n=1) The exchange [mixed apology strategies - evasion] at 0.54% (n=3) was 3- fold compared to the former.
Table 4.14 Exchanges of mixed apology strategies and indirect response strategies in English conversations
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in English Mixed apology Act 1 - Direct apology Act 2 - Direct n % strategies - strategies response strategies
Indirect Mixed apology Acknowledgement 3 0.54 response strategies strategies
4.2 GENDER INFLUENCES ON APOLOGY AND RESPONSE
There were 557 exchanges in total which were collected from English conversations.
Figure 4.14 Distribution of genders on apology and response strategies in English
As can be evidently described from Figure 4.14, male started the conversations and initiated the exchanges of apology and response at 46.14% (n%7), slightly lower than female at 53.86% (n00) This result coincided with the findings of the study which was carried out by Holmes (1995) concluding that female employed apology strategies by initiating the exchanges among apologizing and responding more than male Male also had a lower proportion of responding to apologies compared to the opposite gender at 48.11% (n&8) and 51.89% (n(9),respectively Therefore, female had a tendency to apologize more than the counterpart and responded to apologies more than men It could be understood that the exchanges of pragmatic acts of apologizing and responding among women were more than those among men.
4.2.1 Gender Influences on Apology Strategies in English Film Conversations
POWER INFLUENCES ON APOLOGY AND RESPONSE STRATEGIES137 1 Power Influences on Apology Strategies in English Film Conversations 137 2 Power Influences on Exchanges of Apology and Response Strategies in
4.3.1 Power Influences on Apology Strategies in English Film Conversations
Unlike the exchanges of apologies and response strategies in terms of gender, there were statistics in two tables of apology strategies and response strategies separately since the social variable of gender had the interpersonal relationships among M-M, M-F, F-F, and F-M Otherwise, the social power in this thesis as stated in the scope was categorized into three groups namely people of a higher power apologizer to a lower power apologizee (H-L), a lower power apologizer to a higher power apologizee (L-H), and equal power apologizer and apologizee (E-E). Therefore, the statistics to look into the exchanges in terms of power was only based on the direction of apology strategies There are several contexts and pairs of social relationships reported from the data collections The contexts were in family, at works, among friends, between lovers; therefore, the social relationships could be listed namely parents-children, grandparents-grandchildren, parents in law- children in law, staffs-managers, friends-friends, people in romantic relationships.
A general picture is illustrated in Figure 4.17 of apology and apology response strategy distribution of social power It can be seen that the three groups tend to use different apology strategies and apology response strategies It is noticeable that higher, lower, and equal power exhibited different distribution patterns of apology strategies and apology response strategies.
Figure 4.17 Distribution of social power in apology and response strategies in
As can be evidently described from Figure 4.17, apologizers with higher power tended to apologize and respond the least with the proportion of under 30%, at 29.98% (n7) By contrast, those with lower power had a tendency to apologize at
35.73% (n9) Besides, equal power apologizers apologized at 34.29% (n1).
Looking at Table 4.18 which presents apology strategies in terms of social power in English In general, whether the apologizers in either higher, lower, or equal power to apologizees tended to use indirect strategies the most In more details, higher power apologizers used indirect strategies at 20.29% (n3), followed by direct strategies at 9.69% (nT) There was no record of mixed apology strategies.
Table 4.18 Apology strategies in terms of social power in English
Direct apology Indirect apology Mixed apology strategies strategies strategies Total
Turning to lower power apologizers, indirect strategies were also on top of all at 17.41% (n) while direct strategies on top 2 of 16.16% (n) It seems that lower and higher power apologizers tended to be similar in exploiting direct and indirect strategies Regarding those with equal power, they had the highest use in indirect strategies at 18.85% (n5) Power and gender are frequently perceived as linked elements since historically, women have been seen as having less power than men (Tata, 1998).
4.3.2 Power Influences on Exchanges of Apology and Response Strategies in English Film Conversations
Table 4.19 describes the power influences among gender interactions on exchanges of apology and response strategies in English film conversations.
Table 4.19 Power influences among gender interactions on exchanges of apology and response strategies in
Power Higher power apologizer – Lower power apologizer – Equal power apologizer lower power apologizee higher power apologizee - apologizee
1 Direct strategies - direct n 134 12 10 6 4 22 15 9 7 20 13 9 7 response strategies % 24.06 2.15 1.8 1.08 0.72 3.95 2.69 1.62 1.26 3.59 2.33 1.62 1.26
2 Direct strategies - indirect n 90 5 8 5 3 8 14 8 6 7 12 8 6 response strategies % 16.16 0.90 1.44 0.90 0.54 1.44 2.51 1.44 1.08 1.26 2.15 1.44 1.08
3 Direct strategies - mixed n 3 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 response strategies % 0.54 0 0.18 0.18 0 0 0 0 0.18 0 0 0 0
4 Indirect strategies - direct n 185 10 12 21 23 8 10 18 20 9 12 21 21 response strategies % 33.21 1.80 2.15 3.77 4.13 1.44 1.80 3.23 3.59 1.62 2.15 3.77 3.77
5 Indirect strategies - indirect n 124 6 9 14 15 6 9 12 13 5 8 14 13 response strategies % 22.26 1.08 1.62 2.51 2.69 1.08 1.62 2.15 2.33 0.9 1.44 2.51 2.33
6 Indirect strategies - mixed n 6 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 response strategies % 1.08 0 0.18 0.18 0 0 0.18 0.18 0 0.18 0 0 0.18
7 Mixed strategies - direct n 11 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 5 0 0 1 2 response strategies % 1.97 0 0 0 0 0 0.18 0.36 0.90 0 0 0.18 0.36
8 Mixed strategies - indirect n 4 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 response strategies % 0.72 0 0 0 0 0.18 0.18 0.18 0 0 0 0 0.18
9 Mixed strategies - mixed n 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 response strategies % 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4.3.2.1 Higher Power Apologizer – Lower Power Apologizee Interactions on Exchanges of Apology and Response Strategies in English Film Conversations
Figure 4.18 represents the H-L interactions among same genders on exchanges of apology and response strategies in English film conversations.
Higher power apologizer – lower power apologizee interactions of same genders on exchanges
Ex1 Ex2 Ex3 Ex4 Ex5 Ex6
Figure 4.18 Higher power apologizer – lower power apologizee interactions of same genders on exchanges in English
Unlike female who had a tendency to use exchange 4 [Indirect strategies - direct response strategies] at 3.77% (n!) and exchange 5 [Indirect strategies - indirect response strategies] at 2.51% (n) the most which meant that female tended to apologize to lower power apologizee indirectly The lower power female responded both directly and indirectly to the higher power female apologizers Meanwhile, male exploited exchange 1 [Direct strategies - direct response strategies] at 2.15% (n) to apologize to lower power male apologizees directly the most.
What should be taken into account of Figure 4.19 which describes the H-L interactions among mixed genders on exchanges of apology and response strategies in English film conversations is that the proportion of H-L interaction among F-M
142 was the top on exchange 4 and 5 at 4.13% (n#) and at 2.69% (n), respectively.
Higher power apologizer – lower power apologizee interactions of mixed genders on exchanges
Ex1 Ex2 Ex3 Ex4 Ex5 Ex6
Figure 4.19 Higher power apologizer – lower power apologizee interactions of mixed genders on exchanges in English
Whereas, H-L interaction among M-F experienced exchange 4 at 2.15% (n) the most often.
An example of the pragmatic act below illustrates the use of the pattern
[indirect strategies (remedial support) – direct response strategies (acceptance- thanking)].
(4.51).Older sister: What’s about a box of more crayons than the old ones I borrowed.
Younger brother: Thank you, sis.
(No.51, Appendix 4) The context of the conversation above happened when an older sister borrowed his younger sister a box of crayons and she dropped some crayons at school. She tried to compensate him by offer to buy him a bigger box with more crayons
What’s about a box of more crayons than the old ones I borrowed The younger brother absolutely liked the offer and said Thank you, sis to accept the apologies.
4.3.2.2 Lower Power Apologizer – Higher Power Apologizee Interactions on Exchanges of Apology and Response Strategies in English Film Conversations
Figure 4.20 compares the L-H interactions among same genders on exchanges of apology and response strategies in English film conversations.
Lower power apologizer – higher power apologizee interactions of same genders on exchanges
Ex1 Ex2 Ex4 Ex5 Ex6 Ex7 Exchange 8
Figure 4.20 Lower power apologizer – higher power apologizee interactions of same genders on exchanges in English
M-M witnessed the peak of exchange 1 at 3.95% (n") while exchange 4 at 3.23% (n) ranked the top among F-F Male with lower power still apologized directly to those who had higher power By contrast, female tended to apologize indirectly to those with higher power in the same gender.
Figure 4.21 represents the L-H interactions among mixed genders on exchanges of apology and response strategies in English film conversations.
Lower power apologizer – higher power apologizee interactions of same genders on exchanges
Ex1 Ex2 Ex3 Ex4 Ex5 Ex6 Ex7 Ex8
Figure 4.21 Lower power apologizer – higher power apologizee interactions of mixed genders on exchanges in English
There were only exchanges 1 and 2 among M-F which were higher than among F-M in L-H interactions There was a possibility that male apologized directly to female who responded to male either directly or indirectly M-F interactions saw the top of exchange 1 at 2.69% (n) and the second highest exchange 2 at 2.51% (n) F-M, on the other hand, experienced the peak of exchange 4 at 3.59% (n ) and exchange 5 at 2.33% (n) No information about M-F in exchange 3 and about F-M in exchange 6 and 8 was reported Both mixed genders saw no occurrence of exchange 9.
4.3.2.3 Equal Power Apologizer – Apologizee Interactions on Exchanges of Apology and Response Strategies in English Film Conversations
Figure 4.22 represents the E-E interactions among same genders on exchanges of apology and response strategies in English film conversations.
Equal power apologizer – apologizee interactions of same genders on exchanges
0 Ex1 Ex2 Ex4 Ex5 Ex6 Ex7
Figure 4.22 Equal power apologizer – apologizee interactions of same genders on exchanges in English
M-M with equal powers exploited exchange 1 the most at 3.59% (n ) while F-F was still loyal with exchange 4 at 1.62% (n=9).
The example below was the demonstration of the pattern [indirect strategies
(evasive strategies) – direct response strategies (rejection-complaining)].
(4.52).Mark: It is not that hurt.
Mark’s friend: It is ridiculous of you.
(No.52, Appendix 4) The context of the conversation above occurs after Mark on purpose slammed his friend’s back Mark apologized by minimizing his offence It is not that hurt His friend, however, rejected Mark’s apologies by complaining It is ridiculous of you.
Figure 4.23 represents the E-E interactions among mixed genders on exchanges of apology and response strategies in English film conversations.
Equal power apologizer – apologizee interactions of same genders on exchanges
Ex1 Ex2 Ex4 Ex5 Ex6 Ex7 Ex8
Figure 4.23 Equal power apologizer – apologizee interactions of mixed genders on exchanges in English
It seems that male used exchange 1, 2, and 4 relatively the same at around 2%, ranging from 2.15% (n) to 2.33% (n).
The influence of gender on the use of apology strategies may depend on the power of the apologizee in conversations Lower power apologizers are more inclined to apologize to higher power apologizees According to Aries (2006), gender inequalities may be lessened when men and women have equal power to the apologizees Furthermore, the power of the apologizees mediates the effect of gender,with gender having a stronger impact when there are greater power gaps Among E-E interaction, there were fewer variations between male and female responses.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
This chapter has so far examined the sociopragmatic features of apology and response strategies in English socio-psychological film conversations in terms of gender and social power including (1) the exchanges of apology and apology response strategies, (2) the gender influences on the exchanges of apology and apology response strategies, and (3) the power influences on the exchanges of apology and apology response strategies in English conversations Chapter Four helped the researcher visualize the outline to follow in Chapter Five for the analysis of Vietnamese conversations.
CHAPTER FIVE APOLOGY AND RESPONSE STRATEGIES
Chapter Five aimed to find out (1) the exchanges of apology and apology response strategies, (2) the gender influences on the exchanges of apology and apology response strategies, and (3) the power influences on the exchanges of apology and apology response strategies in Vietnamese socio-psychological film conversations.
EXCHANGES OF APOLOGY AND RESPONSE STRATEGIES
Direct and Indirect Apology Strategies
The adoption among the AS taxonomy developed by Trosborg (2011) and the direct and indirect speech act theory by Searle (1975) was utilized to investigate which ASs the characters in socio-psychological film scenarios frequently employed in their Vietnamese conversations The adopted AS taxonomy embraced direct strategies (expression of regret, offer of apology, and request for forgiveness) and indirect strategies (acknowledgment of responsibility, explanation or account, evasive strategies, opting out, and remedial support).
Two more ways for expressing apologies or illustrating the act of apologizing using exchanges derived from Vietnamese conversations in film scripts and film subtitles were discovered The initial AR was entitled no apology which was not included in Table 5.1 because the focus of this thesis is on verbal apologies. Although the apologizers did not say anything, the apologizees stated that they recognized the apologizers' desire to apologize despite their silence The second AR was the integration of numerous ASs when expressing apologies; it was dubbed mixed apology strategy and was put into Table 5.1 which displays information about the frequency of ASs in Vietnamese conversations collected from socio- psychological film scripts and subtitles.
Table 5.1 Frequency of apology strategies in Vietnamese
Apology Macro types Micro types n %
Direct 1 Expression of regret 194 29.85 strategies 2 Offer of apology 97 14.92
Indirect 1 Acknowledgment Implicit acknowledgment 34 5.23 strategies of responsibility Explicit acknowledgment
Expression of lack of intent Expression of self-deficiency Expression of Embarrassment Explicit acceptance of the blame
2 Explanation or Implicit explanation 61 9.39 account Explicit explanation
3 Evasive Minimizing 24 3.69 strategies Querying precondition
4 Opting out Explicit denial of responsibility 58 8.92
Implicit denial of responsibility Justification
5 Remedial support Expressing concern for hearer 118 18.15
Offer of repair Promise of forbearance
The characters tended to use direct strategies because the most commonly, was evidenced by its highest percentage of 50% (n25); on the other hand, mixed apology strategies were the least frequently used, as shown by the total numbers observed at 4.62% (n0) There was a significant difference of nearly 11 times between the top and the bottom Indirect strategies came in second with 45.38% (n)5), which was slightly lower than the top-used strategy of direct strategies. The examples in the next section demonstrated the employment of Vietnamese apology strategies by apologizers to apologizees.
In Vietnamese, direct apology strategies are directly understood thanks to performative apologetic expressions and apology markers such as xin lỗi, tha lỗi, tha thứ, thứ lỗi, thứ tha and lỗi Expression of regret, offer of apology, and request for forgiveness are the three main types of direct strategies, accounting for 29.85%
(n4), 14.92% (n), and 5.23% (n4), respectively When the data were closely analyzed, the top was nearly 6 times higher than the lowest, and more than 3 times higher than the second highest The universality of direct strategies was confirmed to be consistent with other earlier investigations (Holmes, 1990, 1995; Hussein and Hammouri, 1998; Deutschmann, 2003; Shardakova, 2005; Bataineh, 2008; Altayari, 2017; Qari, 2017).
This was also confirmed by Al Ali (2018), who discovered that the most common IFID sub-strategy among female Saudi and Australian participants was expression of regret According to Al Ali (2018), request for forgiveness was the least prevalent IFIDs sub-strategy for Saudi speakers, despite the findings ofShariati and Chamani (2010), who found that request for forgiveness was most employed IFIDs sub-strategy among Persian speakers This could indicate that theVietnamese people do not regard request for forgiveness as a viable apology strategy as expression of regret and offer of apology.
Figure 5.1 Frequency of direct strategies in Vietnamese
The next three subsections analyzed examples to provide clear knowledge of direct strategies in Vietnamese. a Expression of Regret
The apologizers employed performative expressions and verbs like tiếc, lấy làm tiếc, hối hận to show their regret to the apologizees The following discussion demonstrates how regret is expressed in conversations.
(5.1) Hân: Con hối hận lắm rồi mẹ ơi Mẹ có đau lắm không?
Hân’s mother: Mọi thứ rồi sẽ ổn, con gái của mẹ.
(No.1, Appendix 5) (Hân: I’m terribly sorry, mom Do you feel painful?
Hân’s mother: Everything will be OK, my little girl.)
In the conversation, Hân – the daughter rode carelessly which caused an accident Her mother got badly hurt from the accident and Hân felt so regretted for that and she said Con hối hận lắm to express her regret. b Request for Forgiveness
The apologizer employed performative expressions such as tha lỗi, tha thứ, thứ lỗi, thứ tha to request the apologizees to forgive them.
(5.2) Quân: Tha lỗi cho anh đi mà Hôm qua anh về rất sớm nhưng gọi điện cho em không được.
Hiền: Tránh cho tôi vào thay quần áo.
(Quân: Please forgive me Yesterday, I came home early, I kept calling you but you didn’t pick up your phone.
Hiền: Go away! I have to change my clothes.)
Quân and Hiền are husband and wife Quân asked Hiền to forgive him by saying Tha lỗi cho anh He uttered an apology explicitly to request for forgiveness. c Offer of Apology
The last type of direct strategies was used when the apologizers offered an apology to the apologizees for the mistakes or offends they made The performative expressions or verbs include xin lỗi and lỗi to illustrate the offer of apology.
(5.3) Kỉnh: Anh xin lỗi vì đã về trễ.
Dương: Anh cảm thấy ngột ngạt, khó sống lắm hả?
(No.3, Appendix 5) (Kỉnh: I apologize for being late.
Dương: Do you feel suffocated and difficult to live in this house?)
In this conversation, Kỉnh as a husband apologized for coming home late by offering an apology of Anh xin lỗi vì đã về trễ.
Table 5.2 below provides information about the occurrence of apology forms and their linguistic realizations of utterances performing the act of apologizing. There are 335 direct strategies using performative expressions namely xin lỗi, tiếc, lấy làm tiếc, hối hận, tha lỗi, tha thứ, thứ lỗi, thứ tha and lỗi Also, 20 more utterances using performative expressions in mixed apology strategy were collected.
In total, 355 utterances of apology with performative expressions were found from
650 exchanges of pragmatic acts of apologizing and responding Table 5.2 describes
14 forms and their linguistic realizations with specific details; whereas Figure 5.1 provides the overview frequency of forms only.
Table 5.2 Distribution of patterns and linguistic realizations of apology utterances in Vietnamese conversations
Lỗi của tôi (my fault)
2 Apologizing + Apologizer Thứ lỗi cho tôi (pardon me) 19 5.35
Tha thứ cho tôi (forgive me)
3 Apologizing + Apologizer + Tha thứ cho tôi vì … (forgive 30 8.45
Preposition + Explanation me for Gerund/NP but Clause)
4 Apologizing + Apologizee Xin lỗi, tên (sorry, proper 55 15.49 name)
5 Apologizing + Explanation Thứ lỗi cho … (forgive my 7 1.97
6 Apologizing + Preposition Xin lỗi vì … (sorry for NP/ 14 3.94
Xin lỗi đã …… (sorry to VP)
7 Apologizer + Apologizing Tôi xin lỗi (I apologize) 59 16.62
8 Apologizer + Apologizing + Con xin lỗi, tên 83 23.38
9 Apologizer + Aplogizing + Tao xin lỗi nếu … (I apologize 5 1.41
10 Apologizer + Apologizing+ Mẹ xin lỗi vì … (I apologize 25 7.04
Preposition + Explanation for NP/ that Clause/ Gerund)
11 Apologizer + Verb + Tôi biết lỗi rồi 9 2.54
12 Apologizer + Verb + Tôi thực sự xin lỗi (I’m really 10 2.82
13 Apologizer + Verb + Anh thật sự xin lỗi em vì 20 5.64
Intensifier + Apologizing + (I’m truly sorry for what
14 Verb+Apologizer+Apologi Có gì cho anh xin lỗi 7 1.97 zing Cho người ta xin lỗi đi.
As can be seen from Table 5.2, pattern 8 [Apologizer + Apologizing +
Apologizee] ranked top at 23.38% (n) which was slightly higher than the second highest of pattern 7 [Apologizer + Apologizing]at 16.62% (nY), and the third-highest of pattern 4 [Apologizing + Apologizee] at 15.49% (nU) Ranging from 5% to 10% were pattern 3 [Apologizing + Apologizer + Preposition + Explanation], pattern 10
[Apologizer + Apologizing+ Preposition + Explanation], pattern 13 [Apologizer + Verb + Intensifier + Apologizing + Preposition + Explanation], and pattern 2
[Apologizing + Apologizer] The remaining witnessed the occurrence of under 5% which included pattern 1 [Apologizing], pattern 5 [Apologizing + Explanation], pattern
6 [Apologizing + Preposition + Explanation], pattern 9 [Apologizer + Aplogizing +
Condition sentence], pattern 11 [Apologizer + Verb + Apologizing], pattern 12 [Apologizer + Verb + Intensifier +Apologizing], and pattern
Figure 5.2 Pattern distribution of apology utterances in Vietnamese conversations
Figure 5.1 illustrates the distribution of linguistic realizations of apology utterances in Vietnamese in their lexeme of performative expressions As mentioned in the previous chapter, there are several performative expressions namely xin lỗi, tiếc, hối hận, thứ lỗi, tha thứ, lỗi, and thứ tha from 355 apology utterances in the apology taxonomy of direct strategies and mixed apology strategies.
Table 5.3 below displays the frequency of eight different performative expressions.
Table 5.3 Performatives’ distribution of apology utterances in Vietnamese conversations
Xin lỗi Tiếc Hối hận Lỗi Tha thứ Thứ lỗi Thứ tha Tha lỗi
Figure 5.3 Performatives’ distribution of apology response utterances in
With the total occurrence (n40) of performative expressions, it can be seen from Figure 5.2 that xin lỗi was the most predominant word or lexeme which accounted for 67.03% (n= which was more than 2 times higher than the total percentage of the remain words at only 32.97% The occurrence of xin lỗi was more than 5.5-fold compared to the second-highest of tha thứ at 12.01%, and nearly 7.5- fold in comparison with the third-highest of lỗi at 9.05% The bottom belonged to thứ tha 0.86%.
The sub-types of indirect strategies included 5 different sub-strategies which had a variety of occurrences as demonstrated in Figure 5.4.
Figure 5.4 Frequency of indirect strategies in Vietnamese
A glance at Figure 5.4 revealed information of the occurrence of all 5 sub- types of indirect strategies The most striking apology strategy was remedial support at 18.15% (n8) Explanation or account and opting out had quite the same frequency in the region of 9.0% (n`) Ranking at top 3 was acknowledgment of responsibility at 5.23% (n4); whereas, evasive strategies stood at the bottom at 3.69% (n$).
Figure 5.5 Frequency of acknowledgment of responsibility in
Vietnamese (5.4) Đàm: Anh thừa nhận
(No.4, Appendix 5) (Đàm: I admit that I did it.
Direct and Indirect Response Strategies
As seen in the literature review, the adoption ARS taxonomy among Holmes
(1990, 1995) and Searle (1975) had set up certain categories of apology response strategies upon which this thesis is based However, the findings here have detected new apology response strategies used by the Vietnamese people In what follows, new apology response strategies in the findings were introduced Interestingly, these new apology response strategies were not found in the previous studies reviewed in the Chapter 2 of this thesis From the exchanges extracted from Vietnamese conversations in film scripts and film subtitles, five more apology response strategies were explored and put into the apology response taxonomy proposed by Holmes (1995) which were entitled ironic acceptance, refusal plus, unsatisfied questions, direct apologizing and mixed apology response strategy The first 4 sub- skills were in direct response strategies.
Initially, ironic acceptance was added into the macro level of acceptance which belonged to direct response strategies Even though the apologizees uttered performative expressions to accept the apologies, it was in fact they were not happy with being offended Therefore, they accepted the apologies ironically The other two of refusal plus and unsatisfied questions were also parts of rejection in direct response strategies The former of refusal plus meant the apologizees used performative expressions such as không, không bao giờ, không bỏ qua, không quên được, không đời nào, không được, and không thể tha thứ to refuse the apologies and they felt it was ridiculous of the apologizers to say sorry for such offenses they did to the apologizees; whereas, the latter of unsatisfied questions occurred when the apologizees asked questions to infer that they could not accept the apologies from the apologizers What makes refusal plus and unsatisfied question in common is that they both express they refuse the apologies However, refusal plus is explicitly uttered and unsatisfied question implicitly infers to rejection In terms of direct apologizing, the apologizees employed performative expressions such as xin lỗi, tiếc, lấy làm tiếc, hối hận, tha lỗi, tha thứ, thứ lỗi, thứ tha and lỗi to reject the apologies from the apologizers Last but not least, that in some situations, the apologizees did not say anything to make a response to the apologizers; by contrast, also in some different cases, the apologizees tended to take advantage of several ARSs to respond the apologizers The former and the latter were named no response and mixed apology response strategy, respectively.Especially, no response was not added into Table 5.2 since this table illustrates the ARSs and this thesis investigated only the verbal responses The mixed apology response strategy therefore appeared in Table 5.2 as a new type of ARS.
A glimpse at Table 5.4 given below reveals the data about the frequency of ARSs in Vietnamese conversations extracted from scripts and subtitles of socio- psychological film contexts.
Table 5.4 Frequency of apology response strategies in Vietnamese conversations
Apology Macro types Micro types n % response strategies
Direct 1 Acceptance Absolution 74 11.38 response Thanking 4 0.62 strategies Advice/suggestion 83 12.77
Indirect 1 Evasion Minimizing 88 7.38 response Deflecting 50 1.38 strategies Shift of blame 68 4.32
Mixed apology response strategy Subtotal 51 7.84
As Table 5.4 demonstrates, direct response strategies occupied the most at 47.7% (n10); however, it was slightly higher than indirect response strategies at 44.46% (n(9), and more than 6 times higher than the new type of apology strategies known as mixed apology response strategy which accounted for the least at 7.84% (nQ) In more detail, acceptance was the most frequent apology response strategy which has been used 39.85% (n%9) by the characters in Vietnamese films Ranking the second, third, and fourth were rejection at 32.62% (n!2), evasion at 13.08% (n), and acknowledgement at 7.85% (nQ), respectively.
Figure 5.9 reveals that advice/suggestion ranked the first at 12.77% (n), which was slightly as much as the second highest of absolution at 11.38% (nt). Apparently, thanking was at the bottom with the least frequently use at 0.62% (n=4) The response strategies of request and expressing emotions were at 3.85% (n%) and 4.31% (n(), respectively What have been recorded under 3% were expressing empathy at 2.46% (n), ironic acceptance at 2.61% (n), and formal acceptance at 1.83% (n).
Figure 5.10 Frequency of acceptance in Vietnamese a1 Absolution
In particular, the apologizees tend to forgive the offence caused by the apologizers It might comprise utterances having explicit performative markers of responding act such as được rồi, đồng ý, chấp nhận, không sao, không có gì, chuyện nhỏ in Vietnamese.
Vu and Lam decided to divorce and after they got out of court, they talked to each other They look at each other, pained.
(5.15) Hoàng Lâm: Vũ… Dù bây giờ nói chẳng để làm gì, nhưng anh vẫn muốn nói rằng… Anh …anh xin lỗi!
Vũ Vũ: - Không sao! Không sao cả Kết thúc rồi mà.
(No.15, Appendix 5) (Hoang Lam: Vu… Even though it's useless to say it now, I still want to say that… I…I'm sorry!
Vu Vu: It's okay! It's okay It's over.)
By saying “Không sao”, the ex-wife as the apologizee tended to understand why her ex-husband hurt her. a2 Thanking
The apologizees thanked the apologizers by uttering cám ơn, cảm ơn, or biết ơn for their apologies.
Tùng and Đào were in love and they were talking about Đào’s pregnancy (5.16) Tùng: Anh sẽ chịu trách nhiệm với cái thai trong bụng em Xin lỗi em. Đào: Cám ơn anh.
(No.16, Appendix 5) (Tùng: I will be responsible for your pregnancy I’m terribly sorry. Đào: Thank you.)
In the conversation above, Đào thanked Tùng by uttetering Cám ơn anh when he apoligized to her to show that she appreciated her partner’s willingness of taking responsibility for her pregnancy. a3 Advice or Suggestion
Advice or suggestion is given to the apologizers with the aim to better the situation or to give measures to a particular damage caused by the apologizers. (5.17) Bảo: Mày có đau lắm không? Tao vô ý quá.
Thư: Đau chứ sao không đau Mày khi nào cũng vậy Phải cẩn thận chứ
(No.17, Appendix 5) (Bảo: Is it painful? It’s careless of me.
Thư: For sure, you are always that careless You should be more careful.)
In this conversation, Thư got hurt when Bảo accidentally dropped the pencil case on her hands, then Thư advised Bảo to be more careful. a4 Request
The apologizees implied to accept the apologies when asking the apologizers not to repeat the offensive actions.
(5.18) Béo: Mình xin lỗi Tây Thu.
Tây Thu: Vậy thì Béo xin nghỉ tiết thể dục đi, đưa đồng phục của cậu tớ mặc.
(No.18, Appendix 5) (Béo: I’m sorry, Tây Thu.
Tây Thu: You will then ask the teacher for being absent from physical education class and lend me your uniform.)
Tây Thu requested Béo to give her his uniform for physical education class since hers was destroyed by Béo. a5 Expressing Empathy
The apologizees showed their empathy to the offense made by the apologizers as illustrated in the example below.
(5.19) Bò rừng: Con xin lỗi. Ông Phẩn: Mày không có lỗi liếc gì cả Chị mày u mê thì còn may có mày tỉnh táo gọi tao với mẹ mày xuống.
(No.19, Appendix 5) (Bò rừng: I'm sorry. Ông Phẩn: It is not your fault at all Your sister is so ignorant It is lucky that you are aware of this and tell me and your mother.)
In this conversation, Bo Rung told his father about Vu's divorce because Lam is an adulterer. a6 Expressing Emotion
The apologizees expressed their emotions on what they felt about the apologizers.
(5.20) Mạnh: Vợ, cho anh xin lỗi Anh…
Vợ Mạnh: Em quá thất vọng về anh.
(No.20, Appendix 5) (Mạnh: Honey, please forgive me! I…
Mạnh’s wife: I’m so disappointed with you.)
Mạnh took the saving money to invest in his own business without telling his wife When his wife realized the saving disappeared and knew Mạnh took it, she said Em quá thất vọng về anh since she felt disappointed with her husband. a7 Formal Acceptance
Such expressions “I accept your apology”, “I forgive you” were used more frequently in formal contexts.
(5.21) Hà: Ba ơi, con xin lỗi, con biết lỗi rồi ba.
Bố: Ba tha thứ cho con, nhưng con có biết con làm vậy ba đau lòng lắm không? (No.21, Appendix 5)
(Hà: Dad, please forgive me!
Her father: I forgive you, but you know it’s hurt.)
This is a conversation among a daughter and her father She asked her dad to forgive her faults and her dad, a retired old man accepted her apologies by uttering
Ba tha thứ cho con. a8 Ironic Acceptance
This was among the newly-discovered apology response strategies in Vietnamese conversations added into the apology response taxonomy proposed by Holmes (1995) Even though the apologizees utter performative expressions to accept the apologies, it is in fact they are not happy with being offended Therefore, they accept the apologies ironically.
(5.22) Nữ tặc: Xin lỗi Tắc đường.
Mạnh: Không sao Tại hạ mới đến có 2 tiếng thôi.
(No.22, Appendix 5) (Gamer: Sorry Traffic jam.
Mạnh: It is OK It's only been 2 hours since I arrived.)
Despite Mạnh’s waiting for 2 hours, he still accepted the apologies by uttering Không sao However, that he informed that he has been waiting for only 2 hours showed that he was annoyed. b Rejection
A glance at Figure 5.11 reveals data about Frequency of rejection in Vietnamese conversations.
Figure 5.11 Frequency of rejection in Vietnamese
With the percentage of 3.08% (n ), refusal was the most popular option It was 20 times higher than the lowest level of direct apologizing at 0.16% (n=1). Standing on top 2 was complaining at 2.0% (n) The others of asking for compensation and unsatisfied questions witnessed the same occurrence at 1.23%
(n=8) and at 0.92% (n=6), respectively Ranking at the second lowest was refusal plus at 0.46% (n=3). b1 Complaining
(5.23) Trâm: Xin lỗi anh, em….
Her boyfriend: Đừng nói anh là em lại để quên ví ở nhà đó chứ?Em hay quên thế nhờ?
Her boyfriend: Don’t tell me you forget your wallet again You keep forgetting everything.)
Trâm’ boy friend made comment on her short memory by uttering Em hay quên thế nhờ? and it seems he was not happy with that. b2 Asking for Compensation
(5.24) Thanh: Anh xin em, hay tha lỗi cho anh một lần này thôi Anh sẽ làm bất cứ điều gì mà em muốn.
Vân: Điều tôi muốn tôi vừa nói với anh rồi đấy.
(No.24, Appendix 5) (Thanh: I beg your pardon, please forgive me just this once I will do whatever you want.
Vân: I just told you what I want!)
Thanh and Vân are husband and wife and they are having an argument because Thanh is blindly jealous Thanh did not want Vân to leave and told her he would do everything she wanted Vân as the apologizee told him the compensation she wanted. b3 Refusal
Apology and Response Strategies
After being analyzed, exchanges of pragmatic acts of apology and response strategies in Vietnamese conversations were unwrapped It seems that the exchanges or minimal adjacency pairs could be initiated with either direct strategies, or indirect strategies, or mixed apology strategies, and ended with either direct response strategies, indirect response strategies, and mixed apology response strategies In total, nine exchanges of apology and response strategies were identified in Vietnamese.
Table 5.6 Exchanges of pragmatic acts in in Vietnamese conversations Act 1 - Act 2 - Apology Exchanges of pragmatic n % Apologizing responding acts in Vietnamese
1 Direct strategies Direct response Direct strategies - direct 156 24.0 strategies response strategies
2 Direct strategies Indirect response Direct strategies - indirect 146 22.46 strategies response strategies
3 Direct strategies Mixed response Direct strategies - mixed 23 3.54 strategies response strategies
4 Indirect Direct response Indirect strategies - direct 140 21.54 strategies strategies response strategies
5 Indirect Indirect response Indirect strategies - indirect 129 19.85 strategies strategies response strategies
6 Indirect Mixed response Indirect strategies - mixed 26 4.0 strategies strategies response strategies
7 Mixed apology Direct response Mixed strategies - direct 14 2.15 strategy strategies response strategies
8 Mixed apology Indirect response Mixed strategies - indirect 14 2.15 strategy strategies response strategies
9 Mixed apology Mixed response Mixed strategies - mixed 2 0.31 strategy strategies response strategies
A glance at Table 5.6 below reveals information about top three exchanges of pragmatic acts of apologizing and responding which were entitled [direct strategies
– direct response strategies] accounting for 24.0% (n6), [direct strategies – indirect response strategies] at 22.46% (n6), and [indirect strategies – direct response strategies] at 21.54% (n0), respectively.
5.1.3.1 Direct Apology Strategies - Direct Response Strategies
This pragmatic act exchanges included six smaller ones which were initiated
178 with direct strategies and closed by either acceptance or rejection in direct response strategies The pattern of [direct strategies – acceptance] at 20.0% (n0) was exactly 5 times higher than the pattern of [direct strategies – rejection] at 4.0% (n&).
Table 5.7 Exchanges of direct apology strategies and direct response strategies in Vietnamese conversations
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in Vietnamese
Act 1 - Direct apology Act 2 - Direct n % strategies response strategies
Expression of Regret Acceptance 130 20.0 Offer of Apology Acceptance
Offer of Apology Rejection Request for Forgiveness Rejection
Below is an example of the pragmatic act with the use of the pattern [direct strategies (offer of apology) – acceptance (suggestion)].
(5.37) Khánh: Anh xin lỗi mà cưng Nha ? Chỉ một giờ thôi.
Mai: Anh đi rồi về nhanh!
(No.37, Appendix 5) (Khánh: Honey, I'm sorry It'll only take one hour.
Mai: You go and come back quickly!)
Khanh had a crush on Mai; hence, he persuaded her to wait for him while he was at the meeting with his clients by saying Anh xin lỗi mà cưng Then, they could go out to dinner together In this conversation, Khánh explicitly uttered Anh xin lỗi mà cưng which was a direct strategy and Mai had no reason to refuse and had to indirectly accepted his apologies by suggesting You go and come back quickly.
5.1.3.2 Direct Apology Strategies - Indirect Response Strategies
Direct strategies employed by six smaller exchanges often elicited indirect responses, including evasion (16.0%) and acknowledgment This pattern highlights the nuanced communication strategies adopted by these exchanges to navigate challenging conversations.
(n4) was nearly 2.5-fold compared to the exchange [direct strategies – acknowledgement] at 6.46% (nB).
Table 5.8 Exchanges of direct apology strategies and indirect response strategies in
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in Vietnamese
Act 1 - Direct apology Act 2 - Indirect n % strategies response strategies
Request for Forgiveness Evasion Expression of Regret Acknowledgement 42 6.46 Offer of Apology Acknowledgement
5.1.3.3 Direct Apology Strategies – Mixed Response Strategies
The exchange [direct strategies – mixed response strategies] made up 3.54% (n#).
Table 5.9 Exchanges of direct apology strategies and mixed response strategies in
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in Vietnamese
Act 1 - Direct apology Act 2 - Mixed n % strategies response strategies
Expression of Regret Mixed response 23 3.54 strategies Offer of Apology Mixed response strategies Request for Mixed response
5.1.3.4 Indirect Apology Strategies - Direct Response Strategies
In terms of indirect strategies as the first act, the exchange [indirect strategies
– acceptance] also ranked the first at 18.0% (n7) which was more than 5-fold compared to the exchange [indirect strategies – rejection] at 3.54% (n#).
Table 5.10 Exchanges of indirect apology strategies and direct response strategies in Vietnamese conversations
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in Vietnamese Act 1 - Indirect apology Act 2 - Direct n % strategies response strategies
Indirect Explanation or account Acceptance apology Evasive strategies Acceptance strategies -
Direct response Remedial support Acceptance strategies
Acknowledgement of Rejection 23 3.54 responsibility Explanation or account Rejection Evasive strategies Rejection
Example 5.39 shows the exchange [indirect strategies (evasive strategies) – direct response strategies (rejection)].
(5.38) Thanh: Có tí thôi mà, gì mà làm quá lên vậy ?
(No.38, Appendix 3) (Thanh: Just a little, why overdo it?
The conversation was between the husband Thanh and his wife Vân Thanh got angry and slammed the bathroom door which accidentally hit his wife’s foot.
Thanh rushed to his wife, concerned about her pain Initially angered, he attempted to downplay his mistake, stating, "It's just a little, why are you making such a fuss?" Vân's response, "Just a little bit?" expressed her dissatisfaction and conveyed that his apology was insufficient, indicating that the pain she endured was significant.
5.1.3.5 Indirect Apology Strategies - Indirect Response Strategies
The exchange [indirect strategies – acknowledgement] and [indirect strategies – evasion] stood at 5.69% (n7) and 14.16% (n), respectively.
Table 5.11 Exchanges of indirect apology strategies and indirect response strategies in Vietnamese conversations
Exchanges of pragmatic acts in Vietnamese Act 1 - Indirect apology Act 2 - Indirect n % strategies response strategies
Indirect responsibility apology Explanation or account Evasion strategies - Evasive strategies Evasion
Opting out Evasion response strategies Remedial support Evasion
Explanation or account Acknowledgement Evasive strategies Acknowledgement
An example of the pragmatic act below illustrates the use of the exchange
[indirect strategies (explanation or account) – evasion (shift of blame)].
(5.39) Sơn: Hôm nay đúng là cháu có chút việc bận, đi hơi nhanh nên va phải cô ấy.
Thanh thoáng lúng túng quay sang nhìn Sơn.
Vân: Là lỗi của tôi Tôi sang đường mà không để ý tín hiệu đèn.