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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

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

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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


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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
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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


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
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19

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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
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mistakes weren‘t caused by them; they still say ―sorry‖. For example: when
walking on the road, someone bump into each other, the first words they say
are sure that ―sorry‖ or ―I‘m sorry‖ instead of finding it to be whose mistake
first. This communicative culture has existed in Western communities for a
long time. This help people communicate and work very comfortable and
effective.
However, contrary to Western countries, Vietnamese people from Eastern
culture rarely say something to express their apology such as ―Sorry‖ or ―I‘m
sorry‖ …. My personal observation shows that the expression of apology is a
ceremonious and affected action; sometimes it is even a bit shameful. In
Vietnam, even for some situations in which we can‘t help expressing the

pointing to any similarities or differences that two groups might display in
their responses to the situations calling for apology and explaining the
motives that cause those similarities and differences. Answers to this question
will be of particular importance in that it constitutes a fertile ground upon
which the other questions that underlie this thesis can be examined.

3- Research questions
The study focused to answer the following research questions:
1- How do English people apologize?
2- How do Vietnamese people apologize?
3- Are there any similarities and differences between their usages of
apologizing strategies?

4- Scope of the study
 The thesis focuses on analyzing situations and strategies of expressing
apology in English and Vietnamese culture.
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 The data were collected by making a Discourse Completion Test
(DCT), based on socially different situations in which apology is
recommended.

5- Methods of the study
In this study, I would like to use both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Quantitative data was elicited by means of a Discourse Completion Test
(DCT) which consists of ten different situations. The collected data will be
analyzed in comparing and contrasting techniques to find out the similarities
and differences in the ways English and Vietnamese perform the act of giving

theory of politeness and apology. It also shows a review of previous studies
on apologizing, some situations in which apologies are recommended in
English and Vietnamese and strategies to face with these difficulties.
Chapter 2 – Methodology details the methods that have been used, the subject
selections, data collection instruments and procedures and a discourse
completion task.
Chapter 3 – Findings and discussions presents findings of the study and
discusses more about ways to express apology. The similarities and
differences between English and Vietnamese in the apologizing strategies will
be presented and discussed deeply.
Part C – Conclusion summarizes main points of the study, limitations,
implications and some suggestions for further studies in this field.
At the end of this study, there is an Appendix which supplies the reference of
the study and a survey questionnaire for English and Vietnamese.

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PART II – DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1 –THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In this chapter, the first part will review the previous studies on the speech act
of apology. The second part will be a brief review of the speech act model. It
mainly based on the theories of speech acts of Austin‘s (1962) and Searle‘s
(1969, 1979). Besides, I want to go beyond this particular speech act and
widen the scope of the study by discussing the main outlines of politeness

The study of Garcia (1989) compares the expression of apologies which
performed between non-native speakers of English from Venezuela and
native speakers of English in open-ended role-plays. The findings of this
study indicated that when the respondents want to express apologies to the
host because of their absence at the party, Venezuela respondents employed
the positive politeness strategy which combined explanations of the reason
why they didn‘t attend, avoidance of disagreement with the host and
repetition of the host‘s words and in-group identity markers; otherwise, native
speakers of English mainly used the negative politeness approach. These
apologies included paying deference to the host, self-effacing behavior and
devices to maintain social distance.
Edmundson (1992) carried out an investigation into the perception of
apologies by 161 American native speakers of English. They took part in
assessing whether apologies in an appropriate, sincere, and acceptable number
of television programs. The findings of this research showed interesting
information that not only the sincerity but also the length of the apology
regarded as a standard to decide whether an apology was appropriate. Most of
the respondents said that the apologizer should employ longer apologies
instead of appearance of many too short ones. Almost previous studies I
reviewed in my thesis gave the common conclusion that non-native speakers
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expressed their apologies with the greater length than native speakers did.
However, up to now, none of researches can quantify the exact length of the
apologies which to be regarded as a criterion for an appropriate apology.
According to Hussein (1995), 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

(1962) recognized the existence of thousands of verbs in English like
‗promise, invite, refuse, request, require, claim, apologize, comment, suggest
…‘ which mark speech acts. In his opinion, he considered these verbs as
performatives because by using one of them in the first person, a speaker can
perform an act.
For example: „I promise to come to your house at 7 o‟clock.‟

1.2.1.1 Austin’s theory of speech acts
John Langshaw Austin was a British philosopher of language. We remember
him as the developer of the theory of speech acts. He pointed out that ―we use
language to do things as well as to assert things, and that the utterance of a
statement like ‗I promise to do so-and-so‘ is best understood as doing
something — making a promise — rather than making an assertion about
anything‖. The name of one of his best-known works: ‗How to Do Things
with Words‘ – The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University
in 1955, in which he examined how acts of speech can constitute a change in
the world in virtue of having been uttered; the second paragraph reads:
It was for too long the assumption of philosophers that the
business of a ‗statement‘ can only be to ‗describe‘ some state of
affairs, or to ‗state some fact‘, which it must do either truly or
falsely (1962: 1).
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So I found it simply astonishing that language could be used as an instrument
of performance rather than just a tool to describe reality. Therefore, for
example: when someone says ―It‘s cold‖, it doesn‘t simply mean to describe
the fact of cold weather, in some contexts it is a request to close the door or
open the air-conditioner to warm up. In order to gain any understanding on

According to Austin (1962), a speech act consists of three facets: a
locutionary act – the speech act is performed by meaningful utterance,
illocutionary act – the speech act is performed by meaningful utterance with a
certain performative force and perlocutionary act – the act produces certain
consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts or actions of the speaker or
of the other people.
A locutionary act ―which is roughly equivalent to uttering a certain sentence
with a certain sense and reference, which again is roughly equivalent to
‗meaning‘ in the traditional sense‖, Austin said (1962: 108). He divides it into
three 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‖. The rhetic act generally performs ―the act
of using those vocables with certain more or less definite sense and
reference‖.
The illocutionary act puts the communicative force into the utterance, which
makes the illocutionary act carrying the illocutionary force the most
important. However, discussions on illocutionary force have figured out a
problem that a same locution can potentially forces, and therefore
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Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs) and felicity conditions of
speech acts need to be taken into consideration.
The act was an illocutionary act of promising and a perlocutionary act of
pleasing. However, Austin warns that ―we must avoid the idea, suggested
above though not stated, that the illocutionary act is a consequence of the

argument or conversation. For example: affirm, deny, illustrate, answer,
report, accept, class, identify and call.
In short, Austin summarized that ―the verdictive is an exercise of judgment,
the exercitive is an assertion of influence or exercising of power, the
commissive is an assuming of an obligation or declaring of an intention, the
behabitive is the adopting of an attitude, and the expositive is the clarifying of
reasons, arguments, and communications‖ (1962: 162).
The perlocutionary act displays the result of the speaker‘s utterance. Austin
expressed his opinion of a perlocutionary act: ―Saying something will often,
or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feeling,
thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons:
and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of producing them
We shall call the performance of an act of this kind the performance of a
perlocutionary act (1962: 101).

1.2.1.2 Searle’s theory of speech acts
The American philosopher, John Searle is considered as the person who had
the second great contribution to the development of speech act theory.
Besides inheriting ideas from Austin and elaborating on some of them, he
developed the theory in his own fashion: the essence of it being that to
perform an illocutionary act is to express an illocutionary intention (Searle,
1979). The researches of Searle (1983) and Searle and Vanderveken (1985)
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focus on explaining the illocutionary act in a formal model which is
compatible with the formal analysis of propositional contents.
In Searle‘s 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

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According to Searle (1976), there are five illocutionary points: assertives,
directives, commissives, expressives, and declaratives.
Assertives are such utterances which commit the hearer to the truth of the
expressed proposition (e.g. asserting, concluding). For example: ―The black
cat is stupid” - is an assertive illocutionary act (it intends to communicate),
“The name of the British queen is Elizabeth”.
Commissives are statements which commit the speaker to a course of action
as described by the propositional content. They are promises, threats, refusals
For example: “I‟ll be back in ten minutes”, “I promise to come at 6 o‟clock
and make some cakes for you”…
Declaratives are statements that attempt to change the world by ―representing
it as having been changed‖. For example: “You are victory”, “You are out.”
Directives are statements that attempt to make the auditor´s actions fit the
propositional content like suggestions, requests, orders For example:
“Could you give me some money?”, “Turn off the radio.”
Expressives express a psychological state like apologies, thanking, greetings,
compliments For example: “I‟m sorry I‟m late”, “Great!”
As defined, the illocutionary point of the act is the pupose of the act. It means
the illocutionary point of directives is to get the hearer to do something.
Taking advantage of this one, Searle made an effort of establishing the
aforementioned speech acts.
The relationship between language and the world concerned directly with the
‗fit‘ of the illocutionary point. Therefore, the world gets to fit their words
when the speakers employ the illocutionary point of directives; and contrary
to it, their words get to fit the world when the speakers employ the
illocutionary point of assertives. To find out clearly Searle‘s speech act

1.2.2.1 Theories of politeness
There are many definitions of politeness. According to Wehmeier, politeness
means having or showing good manners and respect for the feelings of others
(2000: 976). Politeness is the expression of the speakers‘ intention to mitigate
face threats carried by certain face threatening acts towards another (Mill
1003: 6). Or according to William Foley, politeness is a battery of social skills
whose goal is to ensure everyone feels affirmed in a social interaction. Theory
of politeness is the theory that accounts for the redressing of the affronts to
face posed by face-threatening acts to addressees (1997). Through a process
of researching related documents, I found that Lakoff and Brown and
Levinson were some of the earliest linguists to study politeness. Since then,
many other theorists have either built on their ideas and principles or disprove
them.