VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ĐOÀN THỊ PHƯƠNG GENDER DIFFERENCES BETWEEN VIETNAMESE AND AUSTRALIAN SPEAKERS IN MAKING APOLOGIES SỰ KHÁC BIỆT VỀ GIỚI GIỮA NGƯỜI VIỆT VÀ NGƯỜI ÚC TRONG CÁCH XIN LỖI M. Minor Thesis Field: English linguistics Code: 60 22 02 01 HANOI - 2018 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ĐOÀN THỊ PHƯƠNG GENDER DIFFERENCES BETWEEN VIETNAMESE AND AUSTRALIAN SPEAKERS IN MAKING APOLOGIES SỰ KHÁC BIỆT VỀ GIỚI GIỮA NGƯỜI VIỆT VÀ NGƯỜI ÚC TRONG CÁCH XIN LỖI M. Minor Thesis Field: English linguistics Code: 60 22 02 01 Supervisor: Dr. Hà Cẩm Tâm HANOI - 2018 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com DECLARATION I certify that the work contained in this thesis is the result of my own research, and this thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or institution.
Hanoi, September 2018 Signature Đoàn Thị Phương i TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Ha Cam Tam. I am blessed to have known you and to have been accepted as your student in this MA coursework program. My professional development has been growing increasingly with your precious guidance and continuous motivation.
My special thanks also go to Prof. Gary Carkin for his suggestions, and comments, which all helped to make this thesis. I wish to thank Ms Hien for releasing the burden of data collection in Australia. I would also like to express my gratitude and appreciation to all the Australian and Vienamese respondents for their willingness to have their apology expressions and complete the questionnaires for the data of the present study.
I would like to express my thanks to my mother and father for their whole hearted encouragement without which I would not be able to accomplish this study. Hanoi, September 2018 Đoàn Thị Phương ii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABSTRACT The present study investigates gender differences in the use of apologies between Vietnamese and Australian speakers via a Discourse Completion Task questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of four situations. Forty informants were divided into 2 groups, Australian and Vietnamese and each group consists of ten males and ten females.
Data were analysed based on Holmes' (1990) model. Findings reveal no fix or noticeable gender disparity between males and females within languages, however, there are differences in gender between the two languages, which may result in disparities between the cultures. The results of this study contribute to the current theoretical debate on gender topics. Keywords: Apology, Apology Strategies, Vietnamese, Australian English, gender.
iii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vi LIST OF TABLES.
vii PART A: INTRODUCTION. Problem statement and background. Aims of the study. Scope of the study.
Significance of the study.5 Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Theory of speech acts. Apology as a speech act. Social variables affecting politeness in interaction.
Politeness and gender. Politeness and culture. Previous studies on apologizing. Data collection instrument.
Discourse completion task (DCT). Data collection procedure .17 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.18 Chapter 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Main strategies and sub-strategies by Vietnamese and Australian males and females.1 Main strategies by Vietnamese and Australian males and females. Sub-strategies by Vietnamese and Australian males and females.
Main apology strategies and sub-strategies distribution across situations by Vietnamese and Australian males and females. Main apology strategies across situations by VS and AS. Sub-strategies across situations by VS and AS. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research:.
II v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DCT Discourse Completion Task Ex.Apo Explicit expression of apology Exp An explanation or account Ack An acknowledgement of responsibility Pro.For A promise of forbearance Apo An offer of apology Reg An expression of regret For A request for forgiveness Sym A request for sympathy Bla Accepting the blame Self-def Expressing self-deficiency Lac.Int Expressing lack of intent Rep An offer of repair/redress M Male F Female A Australian AE Australian English V Vietnamese VS Vietnamese speakers AS Australian speakers AM Australian males AF Australian females VM Vietnamese males VF Vietnamese females Str. Strategy Sit Situation vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 2. Apology strategy framework. Main apology strategies by Vietnamese speakers (VS) .Main apology strategies by Australian speakers (AS).
Comparison of main apology strategies by VS and AS. Sub-strategies of Ex.Apo by VS. Sub-strategies of Ack by VS. Sub-strategies of Ex.Apo by AS.
Sub-strategies of Ack by AS. Sub-strategies in Explicit expression of apology by Vietnamese and Australian males and females. Sub-strategy distribution of Ack by VS and AS. Apology strategies across situations by VS.
Main apology strategies across situations by AS .Main apology strategies across situations by VS and AS. Sub-strategies of Ex.Apo across situations by VS. Sub-strategies of Ex.Apo across situations by AS. Sub-strategies of Ex.Apo across situations by VS and AS.
Sub-strategies of Ack across situations by VS. Sub-strategies of Ack across situations by AS. Sub-strategies of Ack across situations by VS and AS .40 vii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Problem statement and background Relations between Vietnam and Australia have grown rapidly and effectively in recent years, especially since the establishment of the bilateral comprehensive partnership in 2009 and the signing of the declaration on enhancing the Vietnam- Australia comprehensive partnership in March 2015.
The two countries have strong cooperation in investment, education, labor, tourism, and science and technology. According to Foreign Investment Department (2017) investors from Australia invested 396 projects in Vietnam, with a total registered capital of $ 1.82 billion, ranked 19/116 countries and territories invested in Vietnam. Australians born in Vietnam represent the sixth largest migrant community in Australia whereas around 28,000 Vietnamese students enroll in education institutions in Australia each year, which gives Australia as one of the most destination for Vietnamese students‟ studying abroad. The context is an important reason for the need to gain deeper understanding of the aspects of the two languages and cultures since Geertz (1973), Trice and Beyer (1992) pointed that: “Communication across cultures is, by definition, problematic, for cultures are systems of symbolic meanings shared by one group yet foreign to another”.
Speech acts have been shown to vary in conceptualization and verbalization across languages and cultures. According to Wierzbicka (1994), people from different cultural backgrounds often realize speech acts differently, using different linguistic forms, social norms or conventions, and speech styles. The variations have often accounted for undesired social consequences, and caused communication breakdown and misunderstanding in societies. It is for such reasons, that the majority of speech act and pragmatics studies are comparative in nature and often conducted cross-culturally.
The speech act of apology, in particular, has gained a great deal more attention and interest among sociolinguistics and pragmatics scholars compared 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com with other speech acts. Presumably, this is not only due to its vital social functions (Lakoff, 2001), but also to the fact that such a speech event is believed to be one of the commonest speech acts in society (Cordella-Masini, 1989). Apart from its frequent usage, the act of apologizing is also seen to have certain social qualities, and is regarded as a unique representation of people‟s speech behaviour as it involves many aspects of social, psychological, linguistic, and paralinguistic values or subtleties in its realization. Not only is it believed to be complex in nature, but also the realization of such a remedial exchange has also been proven to be both linguistically and culturally specific (Holmes, 1990; Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984).
Therefore, as Bataineh and Bataineh (2008) regard it, it is a problematic speech act that is often difficult to learn for most foreign and second language learners. The subject of gender and apology has attracted the attention of many scholars however, their findings are quite different. The study of Holmes (1989) showed that New Zealand women apologized and were apologized to significantly more than men. Whereas Bean and Johnstone (1994) found that American males apologized twice as often as females during telephone interviews.
Besides, Deutschmann (2003) reports that there are no significant gender differences in the use of apology in English. In spite of being among the most-interesting topics in the world, the speech act of apologizing is still an under-researched one in Vietnam, especially in terms of gender variation. Some Vietnamese authors have been working on this topic such as Dang Thanh Phuong (1999), Kieu Thi Hong Van (2000) and Nguyen Thi Thuy Trang (2010), however, none of them focused on the act of apology on gender or cross culture between Vietnamese and Australians. To fill this gap, the present study endeavors to investigate a relatively unexplored aspect of apologies, namely, gender differences between Vietnamese and Australian speakers in making apologies.
2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Aims of the study This study aims to investigate the differences between Vietnamese and Australians in expressing their apologies in respect of language and gender variables in situations under study. It examines how the act of apology is realized cross-culturally, in both languages, looking specifically at differences and commonalities in the use of strategies. It attempts to determine if there are any differences in the apology strategies employed by the native speakers of both languages with regard to language and gender variables.
Scope of the study The study only examines potential gender differences in the ways young adult Australians and Vietnamese make apologies and the use of linguistic strategies in both languages to achieve the appropriate degree of politeness in the contexts studied. Speech features such as overlaps, intonation pattern, turn operation, and non-verbal expressions are not included. The age of participants is limited to 20 to 30 years old. The study focuses on apologies among participants who are identified as friends having an equal status and power.
Four situations were developed with the level of offence as moderate. How apologies varying in degree of imposition, social relationships and power status or social distances between interlocutors are not included. What are the differences between Vietnamese men and Vietnamese women in terms of language strategies when making apologies? 2. What are the differences in language strategies used by Australian men and Australian women in terms of language strategies when making apologies? 3.
How are Vietnamese men and women different from Australian men and women in making apologies? 5. Significance of the study The present study will hopefully add to the existing literature on speech acts and pragmatics. To the best of the researcher‟s knowledge, there has been no cross- 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com cultural apology study focusing on gender of both languages. Thus, the results can provide useful information about how the speech act of apology is realized in both languages in terms of politeness conceptualization and verbalization.
They can also provide a basis for comparing the use of linguistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic values in the realization of apologies in both languages and identifying common features in cultural and politeness patterns in both languages. 4 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Theory of speech acts Searle (1969) and Austin (1962) are the pioneers of the speech act theory, which includes the way people apologize, promise, request and perform other linguistic acts. The concept of speech acts was defined by Austin (1962, p.6) in the first edition of the book How to do things with word, which indicated that " the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action".