Apology behavior: A comparison between native speakers of American English and Chinese English learners

Sociolinguistic competence is considered as an important component of communicative competence that language learners need to acquire. In recent years, there has been much interest in measuring this kind of competence in such communicative acts as apologizing by asking the learners to react in given situations by using appropriate strategies. However, studies on the apology behavior have been conducted so far for the most part with the native speakers of western languages and cultures. No systematic study has been done with native speakers of Chinese. The present study is motivated by a series of studies done by Olshtain and Cohen on· apology behavior, and is an attempt a) to expand the scope of the study of apology behavior to include a non-western language; b) to determine the differences in the apology behavior between Chinese English learners from Mainland China and native speakers of American English; and c) to investigate whether the differences are caused by native language transfer. The data were collected by a refined Discourse Completion Test (OCT) in written form. The whole test consisted of twelve situations with the three variables (distance, power and severity of offense) systematically embedded in each of the situations. A total of ninety subjects took part in this study: thirty native speakers of American English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), thirty native speakers of Chinese at Beijing Commerce University in Mainland China, and thirty Chinese graduate students as English learners from Mainland China at UIUC. The apology behavior of the Chinese English learners in the twelve given situations has been analyzed as compared to the performance of the native speakers of American English and the native speakers of Chinese in their native languages. The data analysis using crosstabulations and the chi-square statistic reveals the following tentative conclusions. Compared with the native speakers of American English, the Chinese English learners use the expression of apology and intensification consistently more but exclamation consistently less. Moreover, these learners overuse in most• cases the strategies of acknowledgment of responsibility, repair, and minimization, but use the. strategy of explanation less in some cases. Furthermore, these learners display some apology patterns different from those of the native speakers of American English under the variables of distance, power and severity. Native language transfer is a more likely hypothesis in explaining most of the variations. Based on the results of this study, some preliminary implications for English classroom teaching are suggested. Limitations of this study and potential directions for further research are also presented.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Teaching English as a Second Language

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

1996

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Su

Contributors dc:contributor

• Bouton, Larry

• Teaching English as Second Language
• Sociolinguistic Competence Apology Behavior
• Native Language Transfer
• English Classroom Teaching

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright owned by the author.

Language dc:language

eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125903

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/125903