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

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY PHAM THI HONG NINH

A PRAGMATIC STUDY ON APOLOGY
IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE


Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que
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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.

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
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

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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

APPENDICES IV

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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 competitive 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 pragmatics. The performance of speech acts is indicated to
differ considerably from cultures to cultures, which leads to communication
difficulties in cross-culture. In this study, the speech act is the apology which
belongs to expressive speech acts, in which speakers try to indicate their
attitudes.
Using apologies is a particular way of politeness in social situations.
However, each society 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 intricacies of language. Furthermore,

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comparative studies on languages taught as second or foreign language are

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 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 are few studies on apologies in English
and Vietnamese, so it is aimed to study the apology strategies in depth with the
hope of making certain contributions to existing knowledge of the same field and
the results presented can be used in a future comparative study.

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7. Design of the study
The thesis is composed of three parts including four chapters as follows:
Part I: ‘Introduction’, which gives in brief relevant information of the study
such as the Rationale, Aims, Research Questions, Scope, Methods and Design of
the study.
Part II: ‘Development’, which is subdivided into 3 chapters.
Chapter 1 reviews the theoretical background of the study including speech acts
of apologies, politeness, and strategies of apologies.
Chapter 2 discusses issues of methodology, research questions, research
participants, research procedure, research instruments, data collection, and

third one is taking responsibility (“I haven’t graded it yet”). The fourth one is
giving an account of the reasons that led to the action that requires an apology
(“I was suddenly called to a meeting”). The fifth one is minimizing the effects
and severity of 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

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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
contains the substrategies “offer apology/IFID,” “express regret,” “request
forgiveness.” The second main category is represented by “an explanation or
account, an excuse or justification.” The largest group, “an acknowledgment of
responsibility,” contains “accept blame,” “express self-deficiency,” “recognize H
as entitled to an apology,” “express lack of intent,” “offer repair/redress.”
Finally, the last category is “a promise of forbearance”.
A slightly different taxonomy was proposed by Trosborg (1995), who
distinguished five strategies. She found that apologetic strategies can be divided
according to whether the speaker considers that an action that requires an
apology occurred or not. The first two strategies come from the speaker’s not
accepting that an apology is necessary, and are “explicit denial” and “implicit
denial”. The remaining three strategies are the result of the speaker accepting the
fact that there is a need for an apology. They are “giving a justification”,
“blaming someone else”, and “attacking the complainer”.
Owen (1983:169) incorporated apologies in the broader context of primary
remedial moves. Thus, there are seven strategies for primary remedial moves:
“assert imbalance or show deference,” “assert that an offence has occurred,”
“express attitude towards offence,” “ request restoration of balance,” “give an


avoiding and postponing apologies should also be a part of the taxonomy
because choosing not to apologize or apologize is also a strategy used when an
apology is required.
1.1.2. Previous studies in Vietnamese
Through the research process, three previous studies related to this thesis
will be used to compare the findings. The first study was carried out by Huynh
Cam Thao Trang (2009). 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 cross-
cultural features. The second study is made by Huynh Thi Nhi. The paper
analyzed similarities and differences in English and Vietnamese in the light of
utterances of apology. However, her study did not focus on three apology
strategies as well as did not compare the degree of frequency in using apologies
between Vietnamese native speakers and native speakers of English. The third
study was conducted by Nguyen Thi Phuong Dung which combined the results

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of the two 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 statements, asking questions, giving
direction, apologizing, thanking, complimenting and so on. These acts are called
illocutionary acts.” In this sense, we share the definition that those actions
performed via utterances for the purposes of communicating are called speech

intentions: Declarations: are those kinds of speech acts that change the world
via their utterances. Representatives: are those kinds of speech acts that state
what the speaker believes to be the case or not, for example, statement of fact,

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assertions, conclusions and descriptions. Expressives: are those kinds of speech
acts that state what the speaker feels. They express psychological states and can
be statements of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy or sorrow. Directives: are
those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to get someone else to do something.
They express what the speaker wants. They are commands, orders, requests,
suggestions, compliments, etc. Commissives: are those kinds of speech acts that
speakers use to commit themselves some future action. They express what the
speaker intends. They are promises, threats, refusals an pledges.
Yule (1996: 55) presents a table showing speech act classification similarly:
Speech act types Direction of fit
S= Speaker/
X=Situation
Declarations Words change the world S causes X
Representatives Make words fit the world S believe X
Expressives Make words fit the world S feels X
Directives Make the world fit words S wants X
Commissives Make the world fit words S intends X

Table 1.1. The five general classifications of speech acts
Another approach to distinguish different types of speech acts is based on
relationship between the structure and functions. As Yule (1996) claims, three
structural forms (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and three communicative

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function (statement, question, command/ request) can be combined to create two

while group face refers to “the individual’s desire to behave in conformity with
culturally expected norms of behavior that are institutionalized and sanctioned
by society” .
Another problem that speech acts raise in connection with politeness is the
fact that some speech acts seem to be impolite by their nature, such as orders or
commands, while others are polite by nature, such as offers or invitations (Leech,
1983). Thus, according to Leech, when people talk about speech acts, they must
distinguish between positive politeness, which increases the politeness in the
case of inherently polite speech acts, and negative politeness, which reduces the
impoliteness of inherently impolite speech acts. He also argues that one has to
pay attention to the relative of politeness, as this depends, as it is believed by
authors of studies presented above, on the culture of the speakers.
To sum up, this section mentions theory of speech acts including what
speech acts are and how they are classified. Evidence on speech act perception
and realization from different cultures have demonstrated that more research
should be done so as to provide a theory that has an integrated approach to
speech acts. Therefore, besides a careful definition of the term used in the

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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 of politeness have expressed by many
authors such as Yule (1996), Lakoff (1983), Leech (1983), Richard, J.C.et al
(1990) and Brown and Levinson (1987). Yule (1996:60) states, “Politeness, in an
interaction, can then be defined as the means employ to show awareness of
another person’s face.” Leech (1983:80) notes that politeness means to minimize

fact that a violation of the social norm has been communicated and admits to the
fact that he or she at least partially involve in its causes. For example, In
Vietnam, a person says sorry without thinking when he/she bumps into someone
by mistake. As a norm of politeness and a social habit, they would definitely get
annoyed if his/her apology is not given at the appropriate time. However, in
Brazil, neither the teacher nor students always arrive at the appointed hours.
Arriving late may not be very important in Brazil, nor is staying late. In Brazil, a