Gender Differences in Using Apology Strategies in Jordanian Spoken Arabic

Rawan E Al-Sallal,Madani O Ahmed

doi:10.5539/ijel.v10n6p54

Abstract

This study investigated apology strategies used in Jordanian spoken Arabic. The main purpose was to find whether gender plays a role in selecting apology strategies related to different situations. A modified version of Harb&rsquo;s discourse questionnaire was employed for collecting the data. The participants included 20 males and 20 females. The data were codified and classified using Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP), by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984). Both qualitative and quantitative approach was used in analysing the collected data. The findings of the study demonstrate that there are more similarities than differences between females and males in the use of apology strategies. In addition, it was found that both groups tend to use multiple apology strategies in the same utterance; however, their strategies vary in frequency. The results demonstrated that there is no substantial quantitative difference in the use of apology strategies between Jordanian males and females. Further research employing a multi-factor framework (age, gender, education) of addressees is needed.

Highlights

Linguists such as Olshtain and Cohen (1983), Trosborg (1987), Meier (1998) and others believe that people from different social backgrounds have different ways of expressing apology. Searle (1969) considered strategies of apology as a universal feature “based on universal felicity conditions” (Salgado, 2011, p. 29)
This study was conducted to investigate the use of apology strategies by native speakers of Jordanian Arabic and how apologies are realised
It set out to discover the impact of gender, if any, on the respondents’ choices of apology strategies

Summary

Introduction

Linguists such as Olshtain and Cohen (1983), Trosborg (1987), Meier (1998) and others believe that people from different social backgrounds have different ways of expressing apology. Searle (1969) considered strategies of apology as a universal feature “based on universal felicity conditions” (Salgado, 2011, p. 29). Searle (1969) considered strategies of apology as a universal feature “based on universal felicity conditions” Salgado argued that apology strategies are “general mechanisms” that are “essentially identical across different cultures and languages and any differences that may exist are not that important” Comparing apology speech according to gender is very important in the field of sociolinguistics and cross-cultural pragmatics. Since the 1970s, sociolinguists have been intrigued by the role of gender differences in linguistics variation in different social contexts. Researchers have tested the effect of social variation such as class, age, and gender, fewer studies have been conducted on the impact of gender apology utterances. This study attempted to answer the following questions: 1) What are the apology strategies used by native speakers of Jordanian Arabic?

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion