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

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

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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.

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H

: Hearer

S

: Speaker

RESP

: Acknowledgement of Responsibility

REP

: Offer of Repair

VNM

: Vietnamese

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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

ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................... iv
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ...........................................................................v
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................1
1.1 Rationale ...............................................................................................................1
1.2 Aims and objectives of the study ..........................................................................2
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 .................................................................................................3
1.6 Significance of the study .......................................................................................3
1.7 Design of the study................................................................................................4
CHAPTER II - LITERATURE REVIEW..............................................................5
2.1 Previous studies .....................................................................................................5
2.2 Theories of speech acts .........................................................................................8
2.3 Politeness.............................................................................................................13
2.4 Apologizing .........................................................................................................18
CHAPTER III – THE STRATEGIES OF APOLOGIZING IN ENGLISH
AND VIETNAMESE ..............................................................................................25
3.1 Research methods................................................................................................25

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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

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale
Vietnam is entering the hectic development flow of the world in
which international cooperation in general and cultural, educational exchanges in
particular are strongly pushed up. In fact, learning foreign languages and
especially English has been extremely important. The international language of
English has been considered an effective tool to supportably proceed those
activities much more easily. In all aspects of language, speech acts are assessed
as the most specific culture. In each language and culture, people have different
ways to express their behavior. It means speaker will have different recognitions
of speech acts is of utterances that when issued perform an action. Making
apologies which are observed in English and Vietnamese is a good example. It is
common and important in daily interaction. Apologies show the fact that a
language is not just a simple utterance at all. Many problems will certainly
follow if culture and politeness factors are neglected. The two cultures have their
own politeness standards, 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 some cases,
people apologize directly while others apologize indirectly. Obviously, it is very
important to get ourselves well prepared for those matters. No matter how
different they are, politeness strategy is always a desirous goal to reach. On a
small scale of cross-culture communication, the study tries to make clear the
contrast between the two speech acts of apologizing in English and Vietnamese.
Apologies in English and Vietnamese share some certain similarities, but have
differences, too. Vietnamese and English speakers do not have the same
conceptions of apologizing based on their habits and cultures.
For those reasons, the contrastive study of speech act of apologizing in
English and Vietnamese is made. I hope that my thesis can provide the readers
more important knowledge and essential elements to become more confident in
cross-cultural communication. It is also useful for foreign language learning and

comparing and contrasting techniques to find out similarities or differences in
the ways English and Vietnamese perform the act of giving apology as a
politeness strategy.
Besides, the writer also uses two surveys for this thesis.

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The first survey includes 10 apology situations with 60 participants in
two groups: 30 native speakers of English and 30 Vietnamese people. The
collected data is to examine strategies of apologizing in English and Vietnamese,
and then they will be analyzed to find out the similarities and differences.
The second survey contains of 28 questions. There are 125 students at
Hanoi University of Business and Technology taking part in this survey. The
collected data will be analyzed to explore the students’ opinions in learning
strategies of apologizing to suggest ways for teaching English in order to
improve their ability in expressing the ways to apologize.
1.5 Scope of the study
The thesis focuses on analyzing situations and strategies of expressing
apology in English and Vietnamese culture.
The data were collected by making a Discourse Completion Test (DTC)
with two surveys. The first survey is based on 10 socially different situations in
which apology is recommended with 30 native speakers of English and 30
Vietnamese people. The second survey consists of 28 questions with 125
students.
My thesis doesn’t focus on analyzing behavior of apologizing; it only
concentrates on investigating strategies of apologizing in order to find out the
similarities and differences of apologizing between English and Vietnamese.
1.6 Significance of the study
The findings of the research will help increase reader’s awareness as well

At the end of this study, there is an Appendix which supplies the reference
of the study.

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CHAPTER II - LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Previous studies
Many researchers in the world chose the speech act of apology to be the
title of their studies. These researches indicated that the countries with different
cultures have different rules in expressing their strategies of apologizing to keep
politeness in each situation. The result of the studies revealed that pragmatic
competence expresses people‘s ability in employing speech acts appropriately.
The researchers have carried out many studies on apologizing in different
languages such as the politeness strategies employed, the cultural values
reflected in the realization of an apology, gender, the factors affecting the use of
a particular strategy and the strategies used by native and non-native speakers.
Studies of apologizing have been carried out by Kasper et al (1989,
1996), Trosborg (1987, 1995) and Olshtain (1989). Kasper and Berman (1993)
investigate perception and performance in native and non-native apology by
means of a Dialogue Construction questionnaire completed by three groups of
informants: Native speakers of American English (AEN), Thai and Thai nonnative speakers of English (IL). The data is coded into the five major categories
summarized according to the semantic formulae identified as constituting the
apology speech act set (Olshtain and Cohen, 1983; Blum-Kulka et al, 1989).
Through the data collected, they find out that contextual factors operate
differentially in the strategy selection. The most sensitive strategy to contextual
factors is Upgrading. The more Obligation and Face-loss involve in an offence,
the more upgrading of apology will be provided. Taking on responsibility is the
only strategy that related with context-external factor (Distance). The more
distant the relationship to the offended party, the less the informants are likely to

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 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 formulas of

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any speech acts. A research of apology strategies has carried out by Hussein and
Hammouri in 1998. The respondents of this research are speakers of English
coming from Jordani and America. Looking at the statistical data, it indicated
that only Jordani used the strategy of minimizing the degree of offense or
interjecting; in general, all of respondents employ some main strategies like the
expression of apology, acknowledgement of responsibility, offer of repair or
promise of forbearance.
Besides, Trosborg (1995) deals with the act of apologizing in complaintapology situations as realized in the speech of Danish learners of English
compared to native speakers’ performance. The author examines apology
performance in role-plays, enacted by native speakers of British English
(NSBE), native speakers of Danish (NSDan) and three groups of Danish learners
of English at different levels of proficiency and outlines four categories (based

notion of speech acts dates back to the British language philosopher John L.
Austin (1962). In his influential book entitled How to do things with words,
Austin makes an interesting point that in saying something, one is actually doing
something. This view is considered a breakthrough in linguistics since it points
out that many everyday language declarative sentences are not intended to make
true or false statements, as it is firmly asserted by logical positivists. Rather, they
are used to “do things”, that is, to perform certain linguistic actions such as
requesting, complimenting, apologizing and so on. These utterances are termed
performatives by Austin. Austin conceptualizes performatives as involving three
acts, namely, locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary – the three kinds of acts
that, according to him, constitute what people “do with words”. Of these, a
locutionary act is defined as the act of vocalizing a sentence and assigning a
propositional meaning to it. An illocutionary act is the one of performing a
particular language function and a perlocutionary act is the one of producing
some kind of effect on the addressee. The core interest of Austin as well as of
other pragmatists is the illocutionary act, which Austin later termes “speech acts”
(Levinson, 1983).
For example, we might say “It’s hot in here!” (locutionary act ). Its
meaning may be, “I want some fresh air!”(Illocutionary act) and the hearer
might open the window (perlocutionary act). In general, there is a close and
predictable connection between the locutionary and perlocutionary effect so that
the hearer can understand and complete the speaker’s intention. But in fact, the
same locution could have different illocutionary forces in different contexts. For
instance, “What’s the time?” could, depending on the context of utterance, mean
any of the following:

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The speaker wants the hearer to tell him the time; The speaker is annoyed

I am sorry. I was ill. ]

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b)
A: Em nhảy điệu này với anh nhé?
B: Xin lỗi em nhảy không giỏi lắm.
[May I have this dance?
So sorry, I do not dance very well.]
c)
A: Cậu không bao giờ lau nhà cả. Sao cậu không ngăn nắp một chút?
B: Xin lỗi. Thế tất của ai vứt ở xó nhà kia?
[You never clean up around here! Why don’t you tidy up more?
Excuse me, but whose socks are those in the middle of the floor? ]
As such, through the IFIDs the Speaker’s intended illocutionary force can
be recognized. There are thousands of possible illocutionary acts and several
attempts have been made to classify them into a small number of types.
According to Searle (1979) speech acts can be classified into five types:
declarations, representatives, expressives, directives and commissives:
Declarations are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their
utterance. For example, the marriage candidates cease to be just an ordinary pair
of people, and become a married couple when the phrase “I now pronounce you
man and wife” is uttered. In using a declaration, the speaker changes the world
via
words.
Representatives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker
believes. They can be assertions, conclusions, descriptions, beliefs, reports or
denials. For example:
The earth is flat

We will not do that
In using a commissives, the speakers undertake to make the world fit the
words (via the speaker).

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Speech act classification
Speech act type

Direction of fit

S=Speaker; X=Situation

Declarations

Word change the world

S cause X

Representatives

Make words fit the world

S believes X

Expressives

Make words fit the world


things. The speaker then must achieve the intended effect on the hearer by
allowing him/her to recognize his/her intention to achieve that effect. Once the
hearer recognizes the intention of the speaker to archieve an effect this is
generally achieved.
Therefore, the recognition of the intention or intended meaning of the
utterance (speech act) seems crucial in achieving a level of success in
understanding. Nevertheless, Stubbs (1983) points out that utterances can be
wrongly interpreted and also speakers can say one thing and mean another.
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Because of this, it becomes crucial to consider the context in which a particular
speech act is conveyed in order to understand it fully.
2.3 Politeness
2.3.1 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.
a. Lakoff’s theory of politeness
Robin Tolmach Lakoff, one of the first linguists studying about
politeness, is the first person who gave the opinion that politeness is an
important aspect of interaction and it needs to be studied. After Lakoff, many

Expect the speakers to be
sincere and tell the truth

Be Clear
Be relevant
Relations

Speak briefly and orderly
without obscurity and
ambiguity

Manners

Figure 1: First rule of Lakoff’s theory of politeness
For example:
Tom: Good afternoon!
I want to buy a ceiling fan.
How much is it?
Cashier:
A ceiling fan is $100.
In the above example, the cashier answered the customer clearly (maxim
of manner), truthfully (maxim of quality) as well as gave him the right amount of
information (maxim of quantity) and focused directly on the demand of this
customer (maxim of relation). No more or less information as well as no
additional level of meaning was given by the cashier in the conversation with
Tom.

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purpose of illustrating ‗politeness‘ in the broad sense. During interactions, the

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