A contrastive study of apologizing in english and vietnamese

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A Thesis A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF APOLOGIZING IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐỐI CHIẾU HÀNH VI XIN LỖI TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) ĐIÊU THỊ THU PHƯƠNG Field: English Language Code: 62220201 Hanoi, 2017 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A Thesis A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF APOLOGIZING IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐỐI CHIẾU HÀNH VI XIN LỖI TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) ĐIÊU THỊ THU PHƯƠNG Field: English Language Code: 62220201 Supervisor: Nguyễn Đăng Sửu, PhD Hanoi, 2017 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF APOLOGIZING IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except for the indicated references, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis Hanoi, 2017 Dieu Thi Thu Phuong Approved by SUPERVISOR Date: …………………… i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to give sincere thanks to my supervisor Nguyen Dang Suu, PhD 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 Dieu Thi Thu Phuong ii ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on forms and strategies of apologies in English and Vietnamese, and is aimed at pointing out similarities and differences in linguistic means used to apologize between English and Vietnamese with focus on the categorical dimensions of conversation, politeness strategies and some particular situations in which apologies are recommended in English and Vietnamese The data collection and analysis of both books’ Vietnamese and English reveal that choices of strategies affected by the conversations’ parameters such as age, gender, occupation, marital status, living area and acquisition of foreign languages They have no much difference about the choice of positive and negative politeness strategies As such, the findings of the study prove that apologizing with various strategies of positive and negative politeness and different degrees of directness – indirectness is a sensitive and sophisticated communicative act in both English and Vietnamese cultures since apologizing means admitting one’s own failure or guilt Apologies show that a person takes responsibility and avoids blaming others The findings also confirm that performance of apologizing is cultural – specific and reflective of social values iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CON : Center for the hearer DCT : Discourse Completion Test ENG : English EXPL : Explanation FOR : Promise of Forbearance FTA : Face Threatening Act INT : Intensification H : Hearer S : Speaker RESP : Acknowledgement of Responsibility REP : Offer of Repair VNM : Vietnamese iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 3.1: Apologizing strategies employed by English and Vietnamese 27 Tablel 3.2: Frequency of the use of apologizing categories by English and Vietnamese across the first five situations 37 Table 3.3: Frequency of the use of apologizing categories by English and Vietnamese across the last five situations 47 Figure 1: First rule of Lakoff’s theory of politeness 14 Figure 2: Second rule of Lakoff’s theory of politeness 15 Figure 3: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 31 Figure 4: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 32 Figure 5: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 34 Figure 6: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 35 Figure 7: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 36 Figure 8: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 38 Figure 9: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 39 Figure 10: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 41 Figure 11: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 44 Figure 12: Apologizing strategies are used by English and Vietnamese in situation 10 46 v TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES v CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale .1 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 1.2.1 Aims of the study .2 1.2.2 Objectives of the study .2 1.3 Research questions .2 1.4 Methods of the study .2 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Significance of the study .3 1.7 Design of the study CHAPTER II - LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Previous studies .5 2.2 Theories of speech acts 2.3 Politeness 13 2.4 Apologizing 18 CHAPTER III – THE STRATEGIES OF APOLOGIZING IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 25 3.1 Research methods 25 vi 3.1.1 Subjects of the study 27 3.1.2 Data collection instruments 28 3.1.3 Data collection procedures .28 3.1.4 Questionnaires 29 3.2 Apology data analysis by situation 30 3.3 Discussions 48 CHAPTER IV SOME SUGGESTED APPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH FINDINGS .50 4.1 Survey questionnaires 50 4.1.1 Subjects 50 4.1.2 Questionnaires 50 4.1.3 Procedure 50 4.2 Common opinions given by learners of English when using strategies of apologizing 51 4.2.1 Students’ perception of learning using strategies of apologizing Error! Bookmark not defined 4.2.2 Learner’s factor that hinder the students’ participation in using strategies of apologizing 51 This part analyzes the facts related to the reasons preventing students from getting involved in using strategies of apologizing 51 4.3 Suggestions for teaching strategies of apologizing .60 4.4 Summary of the chapter .62 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION 63 Recapitulation .63 Limitations of the study 64 APPENDIX 68 vii APPENDIX 71 viii how to pronounce it Feeling that they would be laughed at by others hindered them from speaking out their opinions In reality, uncorrected pronunciation is considered as the biggest issue and worry in speaking English In addition, learners are heavily affected by traditional ways of teaching and learning at secondary schools where teaching and learning a foreign language only focused on vocabulary and grammar In summary, the students’ lack of knowledge is one among the main factors affecting their participation in speaking strategies of apologizing In these case, the reasons can derive from both teachers and students Obviously, to help students, teachers may give them the topics before the lesson or provide them necessary vocabularies, strategies related to the topics In the class, it is vital for the teachers to correct their students’ mistakes in pronunciation and expression 4.3 Suggestions for teaching strategies of apologizing Based on the data collected through the survey questionnaire on the teaching and learning strategies of apologizing at Hanoi University of Business and Technology I would like to give some suggestions that are served as a tool to hopefully enable the teaching of strategies of apologizing become more successful The researches’ results show that apologizing is a complicated mission for the reason that it needs the acquisition of the social-cultural values of the target culture So as to successfully communicate, it is necessary for the learners to obtain the social-cultural strategies applied most regularly by native speakers, and the rules for their suitable implementation Under some characteristics of contrastive view into making apologies both in English and Vietnamese, the study is on the point of discussing some implications for Vietnamese to learn English According to Rianes (1999), language is the most distinctive, the most representative and the most essential factor in any culture Language and culture are basically not separable; one cannot entirely recognize the nature of either language or culture unless they are seen as in in inseparable It shows that second language learning is regularly second culture learning (Brown, 1989) First of all, in order to improve pragmatic ability in the English classes, language teachers ought to design contextualized, task-based activities which 60 expose learners to diverse types of pragmatic input and make learners produce proper output In particular, students ought to be taught how to apply various speech acts in various situations of social distance, social status, and with regards to the gender relation between the speakers and interlocutors Both socio-cultural and sociolinguistic information should be combined into the language curriculum and language textbooks Our globe is shrinking and the possibility of our students working abroad, or even in domestic workplace with foreigners is much greater than before Our students are very likely to communicative with both native and non-native speakers of English FitzGerald (1999) thinks that teachers ought not to forget that we are preparing our students not only for the national workplace and society Secondly, teachers ought to offer their students any input that is essential to improve their understanding in the way of apologies made in both languages as well as to develop students’ language and communicative skills The input can be offered in a variety of ways For instance, modern technology in language teaching nowadays provides a great help for teachers to supply students with many sources of refusals such as internet, television, videos, and many others From that teachers can offer students a lot of choices for selecting appropriate politeness strategies that are related to real situations Those are fairly different to what are shown in the textbooks in order to bring reliable documents into class Thirdly, it is vital for teachers to make students aware of cultural similarities and differences of making apologies in Vietnamese culture and the cultures where the target language is spoken In other words, teachers ought to distinguish and emphasize which politeness strategies we should use, when they are applied in informal situations as well as formal ones Through that, students are able to understand obviously the functions of this speech act in order to apply it efficiently in daily communication It helps the students to be more selfconfident when they make and keep the talks with other people, particularly those who come from English speaking countries It is important for the reason that teachers themselves are making every attempt to qualify our students for using English for communication To successfully perform a speech act, language instructors should teach language forms and functions contextually in 61 communicative oral activities in both formal and informal cases in order to develop the learners’ sociolinguistic ability Last but not least, teachers should also offer their students as many as communicative chances as possible Teachers should renovate the class into a small society, or a neighborhood or an office where students can practice some activities as role play or mapped dialogue according to one group work or one pair work These activities can encourage students’ enthusiasm, creativity in making apologies in English as well as they help students remember strategies of apologizing clearly 4.4 Summary of the chapter In this chapter, I have conducted the survey questionnaire for teachers and students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology The teachers who have been teaching English at Hanoi University of Business and Technology for at least years The subjects of this survey are 125 first year students of English Faculty The questionnaire for students explored the opinions encountered by students of English Faculty at Hanoi University of Business and Technology in learning strategies apologizing to suggest ways to improve their ability in speaking strategies of apologizing The questionnaire for teachers aims at figuring out difficulties that teachers have in teaching strategies of apologizing for students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology so as to suggest ways to help teachers solve the problems Data were collected during the action stage: Identifying the problem, Collecting initial data, Analyzing data and generating hypothesis, Showing some suggestions in teaching strategies of apologizing According to the survey, some common opinions made by learners of English when using strategies of apologizing are showed: poor language ability, little experience, lack of confidence and native language interference The author suggested some ways or methods to motivate students in learning strategies of apologizing in class 62 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION Over the previous chapters of this study, we have discussed the findings of the data analysis of the act of apologizing as realized in English and Vietnamese In the final chapter, we provide a summary of the whole thesis The limitations of the study, some implications along with suggestions for further study will also be discussed Recapitulation In this study, I have made an effort of finding out the similarities and differences in the recognition patterns of the speech act of apologizing in English and Vietnamese Brown and Levinson (1987) argued that the facets such as social distance, social power, and level of the imposition or many variable elements in particular situations will reflect differently the recognition of the general speech acts and the speech act of apologizing Through the analysis data, we can understand that Vietnam is known as a more sentimental culture where people tend to maintain the harmony with others so that regretting before self-mistake and offering of repair are preferred behaviors by every individual, especially when a social violation happened However, English culture is a more rational one where individualism is highly emphasized Instead of expressing the heart-feeling, they focus on displaying the legal ethics for social behaviors It can be explained by the minimization of the use of concern for the hearer in the situations The findings also revealed a rather high percentage of the respondents deciding to financially resolve the offence We can see that English and Vietnamese respondents from two cultures also employed many different strategies of politeness by selecting the different strategies of apologizing It is noted that the English respondents employed the strategy of IFIDs more frequently than the Vietnamese ones did Otherwise, Vietnamese respondents are more interested in using ―offer of repair‖ or ―explanation or accounts‖ to make the offended accept their apologies It demonstrates that Vietnamese respondents preferred to positive politeness In conclusion, the employments of the apologizing strategies of two groups obviously support the stereotypical description of English as being individualistic and equal on the contrary to Vietnamese as being more 63 collectivistic and hierarchical Although at the present, Vietnamese people have a good condition to learn and work with English people in a multi-cultural working environment, they are still heavily affected by Vietnamese communicating culture Limitations of the study In this study, there are certain limitations that need to be recognized The first limitation is the return of the non-completed English questionnaires Besides, some English and Vietnamese subjects focus on fill in the form of reported speech rather than in the form of direct quotation, though it had been emphasized in the questionnaire instructions that respondents should react to the apology situations as if they were in such situations But this state is only hardly However, the findings and conclusions of this study showed the achievement of the study‘s goals which focus on unveiling the similarities and differences between the two groups The second limitation related to the recognition of utterances that an explanation or account and self-deficiency which is a sub-formula of the strategy of responsibility The classification of apology strategies included the assignment of each utterance to the appropriate category of the cross-cultural speech act realization project scheme Some Vietnamese respondents gave blur utterances that could be categorized as both explanation and self-deficiency However, the co-existence of these two strategies indicated this defect That is, when a nonstraightforwardly identified self-deficiency sub-strategy co-existed with an easily recognized account, this made it easy to reinforce our opinion that the former was really used as self-deficiency and vice versa Driven by the doubt that my theory in this regard might not work well, I consulted some Vietnamese language teachers from Hanoi University of Business and Technology regarding such confusing pairs of strategies and they offered invaluable comments confirming this approach, which helped me greatly In this study, the intercultural analysis (resulting from data collected from subjects at the age of 25-35) revealed the fact that the combination of seriousness of offence and social distance are likely to determine the frequency and intensity of apology in Vietnamese Further study is needed to examine Vietnamese over 64 35-year-olds apologies to discover whether and how children apologize And a study might also show that whether or not children realize offences that infract social norms, and discuss any possible strategies used to compensate such offences According to Mills (2005:264), he said that ―there are occasions when people indeed attack rather than support their interlocutors, and sometimes those attacks are considered by others to be impolite and sometimes they are not‖, it gives me an inspiration to create some ideas for future work I intend to investigate this particular area in Vietnamese culture and demonstrate whether or not displays of interruptions, aggression and negotiation of conflicts always amount to rudeness Culpeper (1996:352) and later Culpeper et al (2002: 1546) draw a distinction between ―genuine‖ and ―mock‖ impoliteness According to him, untrue impoliteness is created from mock impoliteness or banter It can be understood not only to be offensive but also to strengthen social intimacy Context always plays an important role if impoliteness is not considered as the reason of an offence This indeed shows that speech acts cannot be classified as intrinsically impolite 65 REFERENCES English materials Austin, J L (1975) How to things with words (2nd ed.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press Bach, K., &Harnish, R M (1979) Linguistic communication and speech acts.Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press Bergman, M L., & Kasper, G (1993) Perception and performance in native andnonnative apology In G Kasper & S Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguagepragmatics (pp 82-107) New York: Oxford University Press Blum-Kulka, S., &Olshtain, E (1984) Requests and apologies: A crosscultural study ofspeech act realization patterns (CCSARP) Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 196-212 Brown, P (1994) Investigating the production of speech act sets In S M Gass& J Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language (pp 21-44) New York: Mouton de Gruyter Brown, P., & Levinson, S C (1987) Politeness: Some universals in language usage.New York: Cambridge University Press Cohen, A D., &Olshtain, E (1985) Comparing apologies across languages In K R.Jankowsky (Ed.), Scientific and humanistic dimensions of language Philadelphia:John Benjamins Deutschmann, M (2003) Apologising in British English Unpublished doctoraldissertation, UmeåUniversiteit, Unmeå Geis, M L (1995) Speech acts and conversational interaction New York: CambridgeUniversity Press 66 10 Huynh Cam ThaoTrang, (2009) Observations on Some Apology Strategies in English and Vietnamese Unpublished Study, Dalanar University 11 Leech, G N (1983) Principles of pragmatics New York: Longman 12 Márquez-Reiter, R (2000) Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A contrastive study of requests and apologies Philadelphia: John Benjamins 13 Mey, J L (1993) Pragmatics: An introduction Oxford: Blackwell 14 Mir, M (1992) Do we all apologize the same? - An empirical study on the act of apologizing by Spanish speakers learning English Pragmatics and LanguageLearning, 3, 1-19 15 Olshtain, E., & Cohen, A D (1983) Apology: A speech-act set In N Wolfson& E.Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and Language Acquisition (pp 18-35) Rowley, MA:Newbury House 16 Searle, J R (1969) Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language London:Cambridge University Press 17 Searle, J R (1976) A classification of illocutionary acts Language in Society, 5, 1-23 18 Searle, J R (1979) Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts NewYork: Cambridge University Press 19 Wee, L (2004) 'Extreme communicative acts' and the boosting of illocutionary force.Journal of Pragmatics, 36(12), 2161-2178 Retrieved December 22, 2005, fromScienceDirect Vietnamese materials 20 Hoàng Tuệ (1996) Ngôn ngữ đời sống xã hội – văn hóa NXB Giáo dục 21.Huynh Thi Nhi, (2009) SựTươngĐồngvàDịBiệtTrongPhátNgơn “XinLỗi” Tiếng Anh-Việt Unpublished study, Dong Thap University 22 Nguyễn Quang (2002) Giao tiếp giao tiếp giao văn hóa NXB Đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội 67 APPENDIX THE SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE This survey questionnaire is designed for my study with the title ―A contrastive analysis of apologizing by English and Vietnamese speakers‖ Your assistance in completing the following items is highly appreciated You can be confident that this questionnaire is for research purpose only Thank you very much! Your age: Your nationality: Your status: Married Single Your occupation: Area where you spend most of your living time: Rural Urban Your highest level of education: High school University Others Your situation: Formal Neutral Informal 68 Please read the situations on the following pages and write down the apology you would offer Situation 1: In a crowded elevator, you accidentally step on a stranger ‘s foot What would you say to his/ her? You: ………………………………………………………………………… Situation 2: You completely forget an important meeting at the office with your boss 30 minutes later, you call him to apologize The problem is that this is the second time you ‘ve made this mistake Your boss gets in the line and asks: Boss: ―What happened to you? ‖ To answer him, you say: …………………………………………………………………………… Situation 3: You bump into a well-dressed elderly lady at a shopping center and shake her up a bit It’s your fault The lady says: ―Oh my God! ‖ You say……………………………………………………………… Situation 4: You forgot an appointment with your close friend at the cinema but you were 30 minutes late because you had taken a nap What would you say to his/ her? You say: …………………………………………………………………… Situation 5: You visited your girlfriend ‘s house Accidentally, you broke an ancient vase of her father What would you say to her? You say: …………………………………………………………………… 69 Situation 6: You made an appointment with your lecturer at his office But you were 20 minutes late because you had got a traffic jam You knock on the door, go in, and say the professor: You say: …………………………………………………………………… Situation 7: Backing out of a parking place, you ran into the side of another car It was exactly your fault You dent the side door slightly The driver (adult-your age) gets out and comes over to you angrily The driver: ―Can ‘t you look where you ‘re going? See what you ‘ve done!‖ You say: ………………………………………………………………… Situation 8: You borrowed one book from your classmate and promised to return it within one week Over a week, you completely forgot the promise and when your classmate asked the book, you couldn’t ‘t find it, it lost What would you say to his/ her? You say: ……………………………………………………………… Situation 9: You make a phone call from your office to ask how everything is at home and your son reminded you that you forgot to take him to go shopping as you had promised yesterday evening And it is the second time this problem happened Your son: ―No, you promised, you forgot again.‖ To answer him, you say: ………………………………………………… Situation 10: At a buffet party, you are carrying food to your seat, when walking between tables; you stumble and make your soup over an elder lady ‘s dress You say: ………………………………………………………………… 70 APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS The following questionnaire aims at figuring out problems encountered by students of English Faculty at Hanoi University of Business and Technology in speaking strategies of apologizing to suggest ways to improve their ability in speaking strategies of apologizing Please answer the following questions as honestly as you can Thank you very much for your cooperation! 71 To what extent you agree with each of the following statements Please indicate your answer using the following five-point scale where: = Strongly agree = Agree = Disagree = Extremely disagree Question = Neither agree nor disagree I only like speaking strategies of apologizing with friends next to me or at the same table with me 72 □ Question I like using strategies of apologizing to discuss about □ the topics I have already prepared at home Question I only like speaking strategies of apologizing when □ appointed by the teacher Question 10 In the class, I only speak strategies of apologizing □ when the teacher asks and I answer Question 11 I like speaking strategies of apologizing through □ speaking activities Question12 I just practice speaking strategies of apologizing at home □ Question 13 I speak strategies of apologizing whenever and wherever is possible □ Question 14 I really enjoy speaking strategies of apologizing in the classroom □ Question 15 In the classroom, I often take every opportunity to speak strategies of apologizing □ Questions 16 In the classroom, I often feel stress and nervous when the teacher asks me to speak strategies of apologizing □ Question 17 It’s important to me to speak strategies of apologizing better than other students in my class □ Question 18 In the classroom, I prefer listening to others speaking to speaking it myself □ Question 19 Speaking strategies of apologizing well is important because it is useful for my career □ Question 20 I like to practice in strategies of apologizing activities because it helps me to get good marks □ Question 21 I would be very proud of myself if I could speak strategies of apologizing well □ 73 Question 22 I think I can’t learn strategies of apologizing well without speaking □ Question 23 I am not afraid of making mistakes while I am speaking strategies of apologizing □ Question 24 I like speaking strategies of apologizing in the class but I not know what to say □ Questions 25 I like using strategies of apologizing to discuss about the topics that I have already prepared at home □ Questions 26 I find the topics difficult and I have nothing to say □ Question 27 I am afraid of my pronunciation □ Question 28 I not have enough vocabularies to discuss the topics with my friends □ 74 ... so an utterance in general and an apology as well in particular may be acceptable in Vietnamese, but unacceptable in English and vice-versa or the ways people make apologies are different In. .. (HUBT) 1.3 Research questions • What are strategies of apologizing in English and Vietnamese? • What are similarities and differences of apologizing between English and Vietnamese? • What are some... on forms and strategies of apologies in English and Vietnamese, and is aimed at pointing out similarities and differences in linguistic means used to apologize between English and Vietnamese with