MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY PHAM THI HONG NINH A PRAGMATIC STUDY ON APOLOGY IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NGHIÊN CỨU NGỮ DỤNG HỌC VỀ HÀNH ĐỘNG XIN LỖI CỦA NGƯỜI ANH VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT M.A THESIS Hanoi, 2013 i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY PHAM THI HONG NINH A PRAGMATIC STUDY ON APOLOGY IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NGHIÊN CỨU NGỮ DỤNG HỌC VỀ HÀNH ĐỘNG XIN LỖI CỦA NGƯỜI ANH VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervior: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que Hanoi, 2013 ii DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced from any other’s work without acknowledgment and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi, 30 th December 2013. Pham Thi Hong Ninh APPROVED BY Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am gratefully indebted to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que for his valuable suggestions, advice and corrections during the course of my writing. I also wish to express my sincere thanks to all my lecturers at the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, Hanoi Open University, for their useful lectures, supports, encouragements and for inspiring in me the love for English - foreign language teaching and doing research. I also take this opportunity to send my thanks to all my colleagues in Chu Van An University in Hung Yen province for their supports and encouragements during the thesis preparation. Finally, I would like to show my deep gratitude to members of my family, especially my husband, for their great supports, encouragement, love and unshakeable trust without which my thesis would not have been accomplished. iv ABBREVIATIONS N: Number Per: Percentage IFID: Illocutionary Force Indicating Device v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1.1: The five general classifications of speech acts 11 Table 3.1: Degree of frequency in saying apologies provided by English and Vietnamese speaker 31 Table 3.2: Structure of IFID strategy provided by the English and Vietnamese speakers: Situation 1 37 Table 3.3: Structure of IFID strategy provided by the English and Vietnamese speakers: Situation 2 39 Table 3.4: Structure of IFID strategy provided by the English and Vietnamese speakers: Situation 3 40 Table 3.5: Structure of IFID strategy provided by the English and Vietnamese speakers: Situation 4 42 Table 3.6: Structure of opting out strategy provided by the English and Vietnamese speakers: Situation 2 43 Table 3.7: Structure of opting out strategy provided by the English and Vietnamese speakers: Situation 4 44 Table 3.8: Structure of admitting guilt with explanation strategy provided by the English and Vietnamese speakers: Situation 1 47 Table 3.9: Structure of offering a repair strategy provided by the English and Vietnamese speakers: Situation 1 49 Figure 3.1: The degree of frequency in saying apologies provided by English and Vietnamese speakers in situation 1 33 vi Figure 3.2: The degree of frequency in saying apologies provided by English and Vietnamese speakers in situation 2 34 Figure 3.3: The degree of frequency in saying apologies provided by English and Vietnamese speakers in situation 3 35 Figure 3.4: The degree of frequency in saying apologies provided by English and Vietnamese speakers in situation 4 36 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABBREVIATIONS iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES v TABLE OF CONTENTS vii PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Rationale of the study 1 2. Aims of the study 2 3. Research questions 2 4. Scope of the study 2 5. Methods of the study 3 6. Significance of the study 3 7. Design of the study 4 PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1.1. Literature review 5 1.1.1. Previous studies oversea 5 1.1.2. Previous studies in Vietnam 8 1.2. Theories on speech acts 9 1.2.1. Definition 9 viii 1.2.2. Type of speech acts 10 1.3. Speech act and politeness 12 1.3.1. Politeness 14 1.3.1.1. Definition of politeness 14 1.3.1.2. Politeness across cultures 15 1.3.1.3. “Politeness- directness- indirectness” in apologizing 16 1.4. Speech acts of apology 16 1.4.1. Definitions of apologies 17 1.4.2. Apologizing forms in English and Vietnamese 19 1.5. Apology strategies used in the researcher’s study 22 1.5.1. Strategy 1: Illocutionary Force Indicating Device ( IFID) 22 1.5.2. Strategy 2: Opting out 22 1.5.3. Strategy 3: Admitting guilt with an explanation 23 1.5.4. Strategy 4: Offering of repair 25 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 26 2.1. Subjects of the study 26 2.2. Research procedure 26 2.3. Research instruments 27 2.3.1. Questionnaire 28 2.3.2. Interview 28 2.4. Method of data analysis 29 2.4.1. Statistic 29 2.4.2. Compare and contrast 29 ix CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 31 3.1. Results of questionnaire 31 3.1.1. Situation 1 33 3.1.2. Situation 2 33 3.1.3. Situation 3 34 3.1.4. Situation 4 35 3.2. Results of interview 36 3.2.1. Strategy 1: Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID) 36 3.2.2. Strategy 2: Opting out 43 3.2.3. Strategy 3: Admitting guilt with an explanation 46 3.2.4. Strategy 4: Offering of repair 49 3.3. Discussion 51 3.3.1. Similarities 51 3.3.2. Differences 53 PART 3: CONCLUSION 56 1. Recapitulation 56 2. Limitations of the study 57 3. Suggestions for further studies 57 REFERENCES I APPENDICES IV [...]... labor market However, it is not enough to teach and learn the grammar and vocabulary Learning pragmatic and cultural competence is also very necessary so that learners can use the target language in a socially and culturally appropriate way Speech acts are of importance in daily life in all languages In language acquisition, speech acts in a target language have been demonstrated in the field of inter-language... differences in Vietnamese and English in the way of native English and Vietnamese speakers using apologies 1.4.1 Definitions of apologies An apology is a word or statement saying for something has been done wrong or that causes problem (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 8th edition: 57) Bergman and Kasper (1993:82) define an apology as a “compensatory action to an offense in the doing of which the speaker... Her study focused on seven forms and three apology strategies in English and Vietnamese including “getting attention”, “rejecting a request or invitation” and “admitting guilt with explanation” Her study, however, did not concentrate on comparing how similarly and differently native speakers of English and Vietnamese use polite apologies in terms of crosscultural features The second study is made by...PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study The main reasons making English become one of the most important languages in the world are the speedy globalization of the world and the consequent need for effective communication language As the result, learning English has become a basic and urgent need for those who wish to be professionals in various fields and who are preparing to join an increasingly... has a special set of social norms consisting of more or less explicit rules that prescribe the certain behavior, a state of the affair, or ways of thinking in the context Thus, apologizing is not an easy matter in anyone’s own language, and making it in a second or foreign language more complicated That is why studying the way people apologize in different languages is important in order to understand... the participants of the study − Collect the data from questionnaire and interview − Analyze the data of the previous step to investigate the similarities and differences of using apologies between the English and Vietnamese speakers in reality − Draw the conclusion 6 Significance of the study The need for the paper entitled A pragmatic study on apology in English and Vietnamese is imperative as there... the action (“I’m only 10 minutes late”) The sixth one is offering repair or compensation (“I’ll pay for the damage”), and the last one is verbal 5 redress (“It won’t happen again”) Olshtain and Cohen’s (1983:167) taxonomy was also modified by Holmes (1990), who divided apologies into four main strategies, each category having sub-classifications The first one is “an explicit expression of apology and. .. combination of different methods as Compare and Contrast and Statistics The procedures of the study are as follows: − Collect apologizing forms which are extracted from English and Vietnamese books − Analyze the data collected from the books to find out the similarities and differences in making apologies in English and Vietnamese so as to provide theoretical background − Deliver questionnaire and interview... studies above 1.2 Theories on speech acts 1.2.1 Definition of speech acts Searle (1969:24) claims that “Language is part of a theory of action, and speech acts are those verbal acts such as promising, requesting and complimenting that one performs in speaking On this view, minimal units of human communication are not linguistic expressions, but rather the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as making... besides a careful definition of the term used in the 13 research and an appropriate taxonomy, it is necessary to take a deep consideration into social, cultural, and pragmatic influences on the meaning, perception, and production of speech acts 1.3.1 Politeness 1.3.1.1 Definition of politeness Politeness is such an interesting phenomenon that many linguistic experts have done research so far The concept . certain behavior, a state of the affair, or ways of thinking in the context. Thus, apologizing is not an easy matter in anyone’s own language, and making it in a second or foreign language. entitled A pragmatic study on apology in English and Vietnamese is imperative as there are few studies on apologies in English and Vietnamese, so it is aimed to study the apology strategies in depth. necessary so that learners can use the target language in a socially and culturally appropriate way. Speech acts are of importance in daily life in all languages. In language acquisition, speech