A contrastive analysis of apologizing by english and vietnamese speakers

1 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN TRANG NHUNG A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF APOLOGIZING BY ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SPEAKERS PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁCH THỨC XIN LỖI CỦA NGƯỜI ANH VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT M.A. THESIS HANOI – 2013 2 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN TRANG NHUNG A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF APOLOGIZING BY ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SPEAKERS PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁCH THỨC XIN LỖI CỦA NGƯỜI ANH VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT M.A. THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van HANOI – 2013 i DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other‟s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi, October 10, 2013 Candidate Supervisor Nguyen Trang Nhung Prof. Hoang Van Van ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to give sincere thanks to my supervisor Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van for his continuous support, encouragement, patience, sympathy and critical feedback. I would like to extend my gratitude and appreciation to a number of people, without whose support this thesis would not have been completed. I am also grateful to my close friends and my colleagues at Hanoi Open University, Hanoi University of Business and Technology and ETC English Training Center for their contribution in helping me distribute my questionnaires and code data for the research. I also wish to thank other friends for their understanding and assistance during the process of this study. Finally, I would like to thank my family, especially my parents for their constant source of love, support and encouragement in times of difficulty and frustration. Nguyen Trang Nhung iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration Acknowledgements Table of contents ……………………………………………………………… List of abbreviations List of tables and figures PART 1 – INTRODUCTION 1- Rationale of the study 2- Aims of the study 3- Research questions 4- Scope of the study 5- Methods of the study 6- Design of the study PART 2 – DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Theoretical background 1.1 Literature review: Overview of previous studies on apologies 1.2 Theoretical background 1.2.1 Theories of speech acts 1.2.1.1 Austin‘s theory of speech acts 1.2.1.2 Searle‘s theory of speech acts 1.2.2 Politeness 1.2.2.1 Theories of politeness 1.2.2.1.1 Lakoff‘s theory of politeness 1.2.2.1.2 Brown & Levinson‘s theory of politeness 1.2.2.2 Politeness strategies and choices of strategy 1.2.3 Apologizing 1.2.3.1 Definitions of apology 1.2.3.2 Apologizing as a speech act i ii iii iv v 1 1 3 3 3 4 5 6 6 6 8 9 9 13 16 16 17 19 20 22 22 24 iv 1.2.3.3 Some particular situations in which apologies are recommended in English and Vietnames 1.2.3.3.1 In English 1.2.3.3.2 In Vietnamese 1.2.3.4 Apologizing strategies Chapter 2 – Methodology 2.1 Research methods 2.2 Subjects of the study 2.3 Data collection instruments 2.4 Data collection procedures 2.5 Questionnaires Chapter 3 – Findings and discussions 3.1 Apology data analysis by situation 3.2 Discussions PART 3 – CONCLUSION 1. Recapitulation 2. Limitations of the study 3. Implications of the study 3.1 Implications for English – Vietnamese cross-cultural communication 3.2 Implications for language learning and teaching 4. Suggestions for a further study REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………… APPENDIX 26 26 27 28 31 31 34 35 35 36 41 41 58 61 61 62 64 64 65 66 72 v LIST OF ABBREVIATION CON DCT ENG EXPL FOR FTA INT H S RESP REP VNM Concern for the hearer Discourse Completion Test English Explanation Promise of Forbearance Face Threatening Act Intensification Hearer Speaker Acknowledgement of Responsibility Offer of Repair Vietnamese vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: The relation between ‗words‘ and ‗world‘ Table 2: Patterns of apologizing in Vietnamese daily communication Table 3: Apologizing strategies employed by English and Vietnamese speakers Table 4: Frequency of the use of apologizing categories by English and Vietnamese speakers across the first five situations Table 5: Frequency of the use of apologizing categories by English and Vietnamese speakers across the last five situations Figure 1: First rule of Lakoff‘s theory of politeness Figure 2: Second rule of Lakoff‘s theory of politeness Figure 3: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 1 Figure 4: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 2 Figure 5: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 3 Figure 6: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 4 Figure 7: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 5 Figure 8: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 6 Figure 9: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 7 Figure 10: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 8 Figure 11: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 9 16 28 34 49 58 18 19 42 43 45 46 48 50 51 53 55 vii Figure 12: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 10 57 1 PART I – INTRODUCTION 1- Rationale of the study Nowadays, English plays an important role in many sectors all over the world. It is considered as an international language and spoken everywhere. It helps people from different countries and cultures communicate and become closer. In all aspects of language, speech acts are assessed as the most specific culture. In each language and culture, people have different ways to express their behavior. It means speakers will have different recognitions of speech acts. Up to now, there are many definitions of speech acts, however, according to Austin (1975), the most common and general view of speech acts is of utterances that when issued perform an action. In my thesis, I choose the speech act of apologizing to be the researched object. Fraser (1981) said that an apology is the speech act when somebody is offended due to the fact that personal expectations are not fulfilled. Besides, according to Trosborg (1995), the speech act of apologizing is required either when the social norms of politeness demand the mending of a behavior or when a linguistic expression has offended another person. This speech act always requires the presence of two respondents, one person apologizes and one person expects an apology. My thesis with the title ―A contrastive analysis of apologizing by English and Vietnamese speakers‖ focuses on analyzing the speech act of apologizing of two countries which represents for two different cultures: Western and Eastern culture. As we know, in Western countries, people have been living with the words to express apology in their whole life. When they were only small children, they have been taught to say these words. Whenever they make a very little mistake, they are always ready to say apology. Even some [...]... the similarities and differences in the ways English and Vietnamese perform the act of giving apology as a politeness strategy 10 native speakers of English and 10 Vietnamese people [5 native speakers of English and 10 Vietnamese people are working at ETC English Training Center, 5 other native speakers are foreigner tourists staying at Silver Hotel at 45 Phan Chu Trinh Street, Hanoi] participated in... languages such as the politeness strategies employed, the cultural values reflected in the realization of an apology, gender, the factors affecting the use of a particular strategy and the strategies used by native and nonnative speakers In 1989, Olshtain carried out her study on comparing the employment of strategies of apologies by speakers of English, French, German, and Hebrew The findings revealed... he argued that the individual information of respondents in the study such as their age, status, level of education, situation or social distance is one of the main elements affecting to determine the formulas of any speech acts A research of apology strategies has carried out by Hussein and Hammouri in 1998 The respondents of this research are speakers of English coming from Jordani and America Looking... affected the hearer‖ According to Olshtain and Weinbach (1993), when a social norm is violated, it is necessary for apologizer to realize their fault and responsibility with the conversational partner When lacking of an action or an utterance, the violator 23 has to apologize There will be an appearance of apologizer and recipient of apology This act bases on the violators who caused the offence accepts themselves... males and 121females) The results of the research indicated that the respondents focus on employing these strategies: explanation of the situation, regret and reparation The Japanese subjects may be interested in using these strategies than American ones A promise of forbearance and compensation were used mainly in Japanese strategies of apology The study of Garcia (1989) compares the expression of. .. classification of the speech acts of Searl (1976), apology is considered as an expressive act However, Olshtain and Cohen (1983) indicated that this classification is very useful but it still doesn‘t give us an operational definition of what a speech act actually is Formulas or strategies play an important role in set of the speech act of apologizing As discussed by Olshtain and Cohen (1983), they are... theory of speech act, he developed one more act: propositional act Then, he continued to subdivide it into two groups: a reference act and an act of predication This is the major difference between Austin‘s and Searle‘s theories of speech act Below I will show a brief of two ways of classification of the speech act by Austin and Searle to help the readers have a general view about the similarities and. .. aspects: phonetic act, phatic act and rhetic act As Austin argued in How to Do Things with Words (1962: 92- 93), the phonetic act is ―always to perform the act of uttering certain noises‖ The phatic act is that ―always to perform the act of uttering certain vocables or words, i.e noises of certain types belonging to and as belonging to a certain vocabulary, in a certain grammar, with certain intonation‖... with English and Vietnamese colleagues and friends  personal observation 4 6- Design of the study My research is divided into three main parts with many different sections: Part A – Introduction focuses on six issues: the rationale (showing the importance of English nowadays and apologizing culture in English and Vietnamese) , aims, research questions, scope, methods and design of the study Part B... Looking at the statistical data, it indicated that only Jordani used the strategy of minimizing the degree of offense or interjecting; in general, all of respondents employ some main strategies like the expression of apology, acknowledgement of responsibility, offer of repair or promise of forbearance In Vietnam, most of the limited pragmatics researches are in the tradition of contrastive pragmatics, . communication Table 3: Apologizing strategies employed by English and Vietnamese speakers Table 4: Frequency of the use of apologizing categories by English and Vietnamese speakers across the first. giving apology as a politeness strategy. 10 native speakers of English and 10 Vietnamese people [5 native speakers of English and 10 Vietnamese people are working at ETC English Training Center,. Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 8 Figure 11: Employment of apologizing strategies by English and Vietnamese speakers in the situation 9 16