Apology Strategies Research Articles

Apology and Linguistic Politeness Strategies in English among Igbo Native Speakers in Nigeria: an Inter-language Study

The study sought to explore the conversational English politeness strategies used by Igbo learners of English in Nigeria. Through a purposive sampling process, a total of 3000 copies of questionnaire in the form of Discourse Completion Task (DCT) consisting of 10 different apology discourse situations positing extent of familiarity, hierarchy and degree of infraction were distributed to undergraduates of Igbo extraction at seven universities systematically selected from the South-East and South-South zones in Nigeria. In all, 2748 copies of questionnaire representing 92 percent were duly completed, returned, coded and analysed using the quantitative tool for analysis of production data. Findings demonstrated that the samples used politeness strategies very significantly in apology discourse. Also, the study revealed that apologies are conversational habits of Igbo bilinguals as the offenders willingly made an apology regardless of social differences and context which were also reflected in their choice of strategies as there was obvious transfer of the nuances of the first/native language/mother tongue to their target language production. The study established that apology realisation in an interlanguage context i.e. Igbo speaking learners of English necessarily bears the burden of native language transfer into target language. In conclusion, this study showed that because of the Igbo understanding that in human interactions, there are possibilities of instances of affront or outrage Igbo bilinguals adopted mainly the positive and negative forms of politeness strategies in apology discourse as the case may be to accomplish a conversational demand. The study found evidence to further dispute the universality of politeness and argued that politeness is culture-specific.

Linguistic Politeness and Gender: Apology Strategies: A Sociolinguistic Research

This paper addresses Geoffrey Leech's (2014) three semantic classifications of apology on The Portrait of a Lady which was written by Henry James. The researchers apparently address Leech’s three semantic classifications and also there are two charts and a statistic table in order to be scientific while answering the preceding assumption about gender differences in apology strategies. Apology strategies sound well-known in Anglophone. In the literature of gender, this paper targets the linguistic politeness and gender to give the readers extra vision by studying the fiction. Moreover, the researchers' purpose in this paper is to address the stereotypical assumption that women used to be politer than men. In order to find out whether these differences in number of utterances by the two groups are statistically significant or not, the researchers have used some statistical tools, namely a (T-test). An analysis of the linguistic politeness and gender can help to deep insight into each character’s personae and experiences in the fiction as well as appreciate the special gist of the fiction as well.

How the Interplay of Consumer-Brand Identification and Crises Influences the Effectiveness of Corporate Response Strategies

Consumer-brand identification (CBI) establishes when consumers use the defining attributes of a brand to define themselves. This study examines whether and how CBI influences the effectiveness of corporate response strategies suggested by the situational crisis communication theory in preventable crises and whether this influence is moderated by a threat to the self-defining attributes shared between consumers and a brand. A total of 868 consumers of two brands took part in an online experiment. CBI increases the effectiveness of corporate response strategies at mitigating negative consumer reactions. Response strategies are even more effective when a crisis does not threaten the shared defining attributes. Additionally, compensation is the strategy that really reduces consumers’ negative reactions, instead of apology strategy. More theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

"Sorry, Darling": Apologizing in <i>The Crown</i> TV Series

The present research investigates the realization of apologies in the TV series entitled The Crown. In doing so, the study attempts to identify and classify apology strategies employed by the characters in the series using the taxonomy proposed by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984). The collection of the apology data was done through observation of the series, starting from the first episode in the first season to the twentieth episode in the second season. The investigation has successfully identified and classified 45 apologies. From a total of 45 apologies found, 33 (73.4%) were classified as direct realizations (27 or 60% as standalone IFIDs and 6 or 13.3% as IFID combinations). Indirect apology realizations, however, were relatively rare with only 12 (26.6%) occurrences in total. The explanation of situation was found to be the most commonly used indirect strategy with six (13.3%) instances. The results seem to suggest that the characters in the series prefer direct strategies in apologizing in English.

A Study of Apology Strategies used by Bahdini Kurdish students with Reference to English

This research studies the frequently used strategies by Kurdish students when they express their apology in their mother tongue. The present study tries to address two questions related as to whether the participants in questions follow the same strategies classified by Sugimotos (1997) or not, as well as the impact of gender factor on these strategies. The corpus consists of responses to Discourse Completion Test (DCT), which includes five different situations. The informants have been 30 subjects: 15 male students and 15 female students. The informants were students at college of basic education, English department, 4th stage. The DCT is written in English and informants were asked to write their responses in Kurdish. The data collected have been descriptively analyzed according to the content, frequency, and order of semantic formulas used by Sugimotos (1997). Finally, the most used strategies are translated into English also the Kurdish responses were written in English letters. In order to arrive at statistical results, the percentage of the most frequently used strategy was counted.

Analisis Kontrastif Tindak Tutur Meminta Maaf Dalam Bahasa Jepang Dan Bahasa Sunda

In everyday life when someone did a wrong doing, that someone usually performs apologyspeech act to show his/her responsibilityor remorse. However,apology speech act may be conducted using different strategies influenced by several factors, such as cultural background, social values, social statutes, gender, or even the depth of the remorse felt by the wrong doer. This study aims to determine the level of awareness of apology by Japanese Native Speakers (JNS) and Sundanese Native Speakers (SNS) in an apology situation. Apology speech act strategies used in the same situation to five interlocutors namely 1) Distant lecturer (DT), 2) Closelecturer (DA), 3) Distant senior (KT), 4) Close senior (KA), and 5) Friend (T) were also examined. A Likert scale questionnaire was used to find out about the level of awareness of apology, while Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was conducted to examine about apology speech act strategies used by seventy four (74) JNS and seventy eight (78) SNS participated in the data collection of this study. From the results, the awareness of apology between JNS and SNS both different according to the interlocutors. While in apology strategies used, both JNS and SNS mainly used the expression of apology, acknowledgment of responsibility and offer of compensation. However, there is one striking difference strategy in apologizing between JNS and SNS. SNS frequently used address terms while JNS barely used address terms to their interlocutors.

Budaya Permintaan Maaf Di Tempat Kerja Dalam Drama Jepang: Tinjauan Sosiolinguistik

The apology is an action in which a person states his/her regret on the mistake which he/she did. The procedures in apology are closely related to the culture which is applicable in a region. This research in general aims to understand the apology culture in the workplace of Japan. The specific objectives of this research are 1) to identify the expression of apology used in the workplace; 2) to identify the apology strategy used in the workplace; and 3) to analyze the aspects which affect choices of expression and apology strategy. The qualitative research methodology was used, while the problem of research was viewed from the perspective of sociolinguistics. Source of the data in this research is a Japanese drama entitled Haken no Hinkaku (2007). In the drama, there are 78 (seventy-eight) apology expressions used in the workplace. The apology strategies are as follows: 1) directly apologizing; 2) providing explanation or stating the reason; 3) being responsible; 4) offering replacement of the damaged goods; and 5) making a promise to not repeat the same mistake. Furthermore, the aspects which play role in choosing expression and apology strategy are situation, degree of the mistake which was made, and the status of interlocutors.

Apology Strategies Among Libyan Learners of English at Omar Al-Mukhtar University

A good body of research has been conducted to investigate the realization of apology speech act. Much of the literature investigated focused on western languages. The increase of research on apology has lead other non-western scholars to explore apology in their languages. However, fewer have addressed this issue in Arabic language varieties in general, and Libyan Arabic in particular. This has presented us with a challenge worthy of a deeper investigation. The rationale behind investigating apology as a speech act is to indicate how findings can be used to facilitate the way people of diverse socio-cultural backgrounds interact with each other. The aim of this study is to discuss selected points relating to the type and use of apology strategies in Libyan Arabic. The investigation is based on a corpus of Libyan apologies collected from fifty students at Omar Al-Mukhtar University (OMU). This article uses a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) that comprised 10 situations to elicit apology strategies from the participants. The findings indicated that the informants used the expression of remorse in situations in which the offended person was a friend, an elderly and a teacher/supervisor/boss who has some authority. A reasonable number of informants refused to admit responsibility for the harm and used explanations to put the blame on other sources. Strategies, such as self-blame, reparation, intensification, and use of Allah’s name were also used in this study.The results of this paper, it is hoped, could have profound implications for researchers seeking to address this issue or any other area pertinent to inter-cultural communication further.

A Comparative Study of Apology Strategies produced by Indonesian and Australian Bridge Players

This study aims to identify, classify, and compare the apology strategies used by Indonesian and Australian bridge players. The data were gathered from 10 Indonesian bridge players and 10 Australian bridge players through a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) questionnaire. There are 173 apology strategies found among Indonesian bridge players and 146 apology strategies among Australian bridge players. The data are classified by the categorization adapted from previous research such as Cohen and Olshtain (1981), Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) and Shahrokhi and Jan (2012). The result of the study shows some similarities and differences in terms of frequency of apology strategies used by Indonesian and Australian bridge players. The findings of this study describe the speech acts of apology between two groups of people with different cultural backgrounds.

ANALYSIS OF APOLOGIES SPEECH ACT IN JAPANESE AND ENGLISH: CONTRASTIVE PRAGMATICS

Purpose: In everyday life, humans when interacting with others often misunderstands and make apologies. Apologies in Japanese and English have different ways of delivering. Like the expression of apology "sumimasen" in Japanese and "Sorry" in English. This study uses a corpus-based approach to check the variation of apology strategies used in Japanese and English and then analyzed. This study aims to analyze and compare apologies in Japanese and English also study their contextual use. 
 Methodology: The method used in this study is a qualitative method with content analysis techniques consisting of the form of Japanese and English language apologies. Sources of research data are qualitative data sources from examples of Japanese and Bahasa sentences.
 Main Findings: it can be concluded that the expression of apology in Japanese and English is very diverse. Judging from the origin he said some phrases of apology in Japanese are more likely to be a misconception or misconduct (sumimasen, gomennasai, shitsureishimashita, mooshiwakearimasen, warui). Apologies in Japanese may vary depending on how severe the mistakes have been made and how well a person relates to the person who is the object of the error.
 Implications/Applications: The findings of this research can help individuals in communication and social interactions. Also, it provides an overview of apology in different settings and social situations.

I’m Sorry for My Bad English: Why Does EFL Learner Say It?

Generally, people are apologizing after they make a mistake or do certain acts which offense others. But the context in which the apology needs to be said in every culture can be different. Therefore, EFL learners may fail to use appropriate apology strategy within the context since they are interfered by their L1 culture. However, the case of Richy, an adult EFL learner originally from Java, is a bit different. He apologizes by saying “I’m sorry for my bad English” before he starts speaking. This unique phenomenon leads me to observe and interview him to gain an answer to what factors which might affect him to do so and how that act will influence his speaking. The result shows that Richy’s act was affected by cultural and psychological aspects where he got a pragmalinguistic failure in using his speech act of apology and tried to reach his need for safety through it. By reaching his need, he felt more motivated and gained his self-efficacy in delivering his speech.

The Impact of Gender Differences in the Degree of Familiarity on Apology Strategy

The purpose of this study is to see whether gender and degree of familiarity simultaneously play roles in the apologystrategies employed by Chinese native speakers and to put implications on English pragmatic education of Chinesepeople about how to adjust English apology strategy in English context. There are 95 people participating in thisstudy including 39 males and 56 females. The significant differences of gender only show in one situation and oneapology strategy. However, the degree of familiarity can pose a profound influence on the choice of apology strategy.

What’s Beyond the Language of Apology? A Case Study

This study investigates the realization of the speech act of apology. It seeks to analyze the linguistic patterns used to represent apology from a pragmalinguistic point of view. It aims at presenting an actual insight on the impact of gender and social practices on performing different apology strategies through providing empirical evidence on the impact of the mother tongue on acquiring apology competence by EFL learners. The study made use of the written Discourse Completion Test (DCT) including 20 scenarios administrated to three groups of respondents of both genders: 100 native speakers of Jordanian Arabic, 100 Jordanian EFL learners, and 50 native speakers of American English. The findings revealed that gender has influenced the use of different apology strategies between the males and females of each group. It was also indicated that the sociocultural practices have played a big role in the socio-linguistic realization of apology. This impact was more pronounced throughout the different preference to the use of apology strategies among the three groups. In addition, it was found that there are interlingual hypotheses concerning the foreign language pragmatics prompting the EFL learners to deviate from the native language and English norms of apology. Thus, it was concluded that the mother tongue influence is not the sole source of pragmatic deviations from the second language norms; this influence cannot be described as negative transfer but a creative process done by EFL Learners to master English.

PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN APOLOGY EMPLOYED BY ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDENTS OF ISLAMIC STATE UNIVERSITY (UIN) RADEN FATAH

This study intends to find out and to describe apology strategies made by the sixth and eighth semester students of English Education Study Program of Islamic State University (UIN) Raden Fatah Palembang, and to explain how the pragmatic transfer interferes the apology strategies. This study used a qualitative descriptive design. Written discourse completion tasks and observation by doing a role play were used as the instruments to obtain the data. There were 66 students selected as the subjects of study. The data obtained were analyzed based on the classification of apology strategy proposed by Olshtain and Cohen (1983). As result, it was found that there were five apology strategies made by the students, for example, using the word sorry to express regret was considered the most frequently used strategy. Then, the result also showed that the speakers who have low social status tend to use polite strategy in all levels of social relationships (strangers and acquaintances). For the speakers who have high social status and equal tend to use less polite and casual expressions, respectively. Moreover, some students use some pragmatic transfers in expressing apology strategies influenced by their L1 (mother tongue) or L2 (Indonesian) culture.

Interrelationships of emotional intelligence with the awareness of request and apology strategies in an EFL setting

Taking the approach of interlanguage pragmatic analysis based on the theories of Speech Acts and Emotional Intelligence (EI), the main purpose of the present study was to find the interrelationships among components of EI, and awareness of request and apology strategies among Iranian TEFL students. The study was conducted on 200 English teaching majors from Mashhad universities. EI was measured through a translated form of Bar-On emotional quotient inventory and a self-developed questionnaire for measuring the apology and request strategies. The results of path analysis showed that among five sub-constructs of EI, four variables positively and significantly predict request strategies: Interpersonal (β= .40, p<.05), Intrapersonal (β= .16, p<.05), Adaptability (β= .17, p<.05), and Stress management (β= .15, p<.05). Moreover, among five sub-constructs of EI, three variables of Interpersonal (β= .16, p<.05), Intrapersonal (β= .22, p<.05), and Stress management (β= .12, p<.05) are predictors of apology strategy. The results also indicate that the proposed model had a perfect fit with the empirical data. Furthermore, the results of correlation showed that General Mood is positively and significantly correlated with apology and request. Thus, it is suggested that educators and policymakers consider the importance of EI in improving request and apology strategies.

An Interlanguage Study of Thai EFL Learners’ Apology

Although a number of interlanguage studies on apologies have been conducted, there has been no study of apologies among Thai EFL learners that differentiates between learners with high and low levels of exposure to the target language. This study, differentiating between learners with high and low levels of exposure to the target language, addresses two research questions: (i) What are the similarities and differences between perception of offense context of Thai EFL learners and native speakers of English? (ii) What are the similarities and differences between apology strategies used by Thai EFL learners and native speakers of English? Data for the analysis came from a questionnaire consisting of 12 scenarios eliciting different offense contexts. The participants were divided into four groups: native speakers of English (NEs), native speakers of Thai (NTs), Thai EFL learners with high exposure to the target language (TEHs) and Thai EFL learners with low exposure to the target language (TELs). The results revealed that due to the influence of cultural background, the learners’ perception of offense context was dissimilar to the NEs in certain respects. However, the investigation of apology strategies showed that compared to the TELs, the TEHs’ apology strategies tended to be less influenced by their cultural background and more similar to the NEs’. Providing support for levels of exposure to the target language, as individual differences vary in L2 pragmatic development, the study sheds light on pedagogical intervention that may enhance learners’ pragmatic competence.

APOLOGY AND COMPENSATION STRATEGY ON CUSTOMER FORGIVENESS AND NEGATIVE WORD OF MOUTH

The service provider could not totally guarantee the service process without any failure at all. This study aims to measure the influence of service recovery strategy towards customer forgiveness and negative word-of-mouth (WOM) as the effect of service failure. The service recovery strategy is performed in three types of vignette: apology, compensation, and apology-compensation. Vignette was given to 94 participants who have encountered service of airline. The result of ANOVA shows that apology compensation achieves the highest score relates to forgiveness. The interesting result of this study shows that even the customers forgive the service provider due to the service failure they did, this cannot diminish the intention of negative WOM. This study offers an implication to the company in order to pay attention regarding the compensation and the spread of negative WOM to the other customers

Linguistic Construction of a Winning Apology

The study analyzes the apology delivered by the then-democratic Presidential contender in 2007, Senator Barack H. Obama, to the Indian-American community. This apology succeeded in convincing American citizens of Obama’s goodwill and clean political standards, which eventually led him to surpass his chief opponent, Senator Hillary R. Clinton and become the President of the United States. The study employs Searle’s (1969) speech act theory (SAT) and Holmes’s (1990) apology strategies through pragmatics. The study, then, administrates thematic analysis through positive discourse analysis to gain insights from Obama’s leadership values. Findings educate readers on the importance of an apology construction and encourage readers to follow the example of a world-class leader’s values by having an insight into Obama’s leadership.

Apology Strategies Used by Students in University of Balikpapan

There are two objectives of the study namely to investigate kind of apology strategies are used by students in University of Balikpapan and to investigate how age and social status affect their choice of apology strategies. The design of this study is descriptive qualitative. Instrument to collect the data was DCT task devised by Hasan in 2014. The data were analyzed and categorized by using theory of Trosborg and Aijmer compiled by Firiani & Lestari in Fitriani (2012). Findings have shown that an overwhelming majority of the apologies were combinations rather than single type. The most often used combined strategies by students in University of Balikpapan were ‘explicitly apologizing + acknowledging responsibility + offering redress’. Moreover, it can be inferred that age and social status affected participants’ choice of apology strategies since the result of this study showed that they had different combined apology strategies based on older, younger, same age and higher, lower, equal social status.

Investigating the apology strategies of Saudi learners of English

Abstract The present study examines the apologetic behavior of Saudi learners of English in a foreign language learning context. The study also investigates the influence of language exposure, gender, distance and dominance on the learners’ apologies. To this end, a Discourse Completion Test was completed by (1) 411 Saudi learners of English, (2) 42 native speakers of Saudi Arabic and (3) 47 native speakers of English. The groups of native speakers provided the norms of apologetic behavior in the learners’ first (L1) and second (L2) languages. The results showed the Saudi participants’ preference for face-saving strategies to both the speaker and hearer, and a positive influence for increased L2 exposure on the learners’ pragmatic competence. The variables of gender, distance and dominance also proved influential but to varying degrees. The results are interpreted in light of the existing literature and theoretical models. Pedagogical implications and research directions are proposed.