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A Study on Speech Act of Apologies used by the Indian ESL

Learners in Multicultural classes

B.Jamuna

Research Scholar,

Department of English & MEL, Banasthali University

Rajasthan, India

Abstract

The present study investigated the notion of polite and impolite apologies used by the Indian

ESL learners. The participants were taken from two different categories, i.e., 60 Professional

Course Students of B.Tech first year and 60 Post-graduate Management Course students of

MBA. The respondentswere asked to respond to a discourse completion task (DCT)

realizingthe0speech act of apology and the utteranceswere analyzed. First theapology

strategies/patterns were analyzed based on Blum-Kulka‟s CCSARPProject (1984). These

patterns were regrouped by three language experts in terms of politeness on a five-point

rating scale such as: (1) very impolite (2) impolite (3) partially polite (4) polite and (5) very

polite. Politeness scores were studied to find significant differences (if any) existed among

different groups of respondents classified based on the social variables such as age, gender

and region (based on their mother tongue).

Keywords: politeness, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, apology.

1. Introduction

Speech acts have an important role to play in our day to day use of language because they

allow us to perform a wide range of functions. They enable us to compliment, apologize,

request, complain, etc. Now if speech acts give us the chance to do all this in our native

language for sure they can do the same thing in the second/foreign language that we are

attempting to learn. It is important to master speech acts while learning a second language

because they not only facilitate the process of communication, but also make it more

effective. The important question to be considered is this: Are speech acts haphazardly picked

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up in the process of second language acquisition, or should they be systematically taught?

Olshtain and Cohen (1990), have argued that teaching speech acts to foreign students has a

marked effect on their performance. For example, Olshtain and Cohen (1990) at first

pretested a group of learners on their apologizing behavior. Then they provided them with

some instruction on how to make apologies in a native-like manner. The result of the posttest

revealed that the utterances produced by the learners were more in line with the native

behavior.

2.Cross cultural speech act research

Speech acts have traditionally been regarded as one of the major areas of pragmatic studies

(Levinson, 1983) and importantly, the major dominant area of pragmatics in SLA research.

In this regard, Olshtain and Cohen (1991) noted,

It seems that every language develops a set of patterned, routinized utterances

that speakers use regularly to perform a variety of functions, such as apologies,

requests, complaints, refusals, compliments and others. By using a routinized

utterance of this kind, the speaker carries out an act with respect tothe hearer.

The issue of universality is one of the basic challenges for research in pragmatics. Hence,

cross-cultural research in pragmatics is essential to make the second language learners to

acquire certain pragmatic rules of use for a given language to attain successful

communication in the target language.

There has been a large diversity of studies on the speech act of apology over the recent years.

Apologies are generally classified as a form of politeness.It is generally taken for granted that

“apologies are politeness strategies” (Holmes 1990: 155), as they have been, for most part,

examined through the lens of Brown and Levinson‟s politeness theory (Deutschmann 2003;

Holmes 1990, 1995; Márquez-Reiter 2008), or less commonly, Goffman‟s (1971) model of

facework (Owen 1983). There has thus been less focus on how apologies are perceived by

recipients, and the possibility that the same apology may be evaluated as polite, impolite, over-

polite or shades between by different interactants. And while there has been some work on

apologies that has encompassed the perspectives of both the speaker and addressee in analysing

them as a form of interactionally achieved social action (Owen 1983), the assumption that

apologies are in themselves a form of politeness or remedial facework has still been retained.

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Edmundson (1992) investigated the cues 161 native speakers used to judge whether apologies in

a number of television programmes were appropriate, sincere, and acceptable. Also he claimed

that studying the way apologies are perceived can lead to the understanding of the pragmatic

principles that determine how one apologizes in English.

Bergman and Kasper (1993) defined an apology as a “compensatory action to an

offense in the doing of which S was casually involved and which is costly to H” (p. 82).

The cost can be in terms of losing face or even a severe misunderstanding. It is clear that

different cultures have different degrees in perceiving how costly such an offense is, and

therefore how necessary an apology is. An action, in Bergman and Kasper‟s terminology,

that is considered very serious in one culture, may not require an apology at all in another

culture. Also, the severity of such a face threatening act seems to be in a direct

relationship with the type of apology chosen to defend face. Brown and Levinson (1987)

claimed that all speakers choose the same strategy under the same conditions, and tried to

demonstrate this by looking at three different languages, namely English, Tzeltal (a

Mayan language), and South Indian Tamil.

According to Owen (1983), apologies are remedial moves that follow what he called

a priming move on the part of the person who expects the apology, which is a move that

triggers the apology. While such an approach makes sense, the problem with Owen‟s

definition is that he restricts the use of the term apology to only those utterances that

actually contain the explicit phrases “I‟m sorry” or “I apologize” and variants of these.

Trosborg (1995) in her study on apologies and complaints,says that “apologies are

expressive illocutionary acts which can be differentiated from complaints, which are also

expressive acts, by being convivial in nature” (p. 373). However, because apologies are

not the only convivial acts, Trosborg narrows down the definition even further by

claiming that apologies have a remedial function, and this function is the one that

differentiates them from thanking, congratulating, and other convivial acts. Thus, she

follows Owen‟s (1983) definition of apologies but she broadens it by including other

utterances that express apologies, not just the ones that are explicit apologies.

Leech (1983) viewed apologies as an attempt to recreate an imbalance between

the speaker and the hearer created by the fact that the speaker committed an offence

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against the hearer. According to him, it is not enough to apologize, this apology needs to

be successful in order for the hearer to pardon the speaker, and thus reestablish the

balance.

Holmes (1990) defined apologies as “social acts conveying affectivemeaning” (p. 155), and

believes they are politeness strategies meant to remedy an offenson the part of the speaker.

Holmes also made an interesting and important clarification indefining apologies that has not

been considered before. Thus, when defining apologies,one must take into consideration the

possibility of a speaker to apologize for somebodyelse‟s behavior. This leads to the

conclusion that “the definition refers to the person whotakes responsibility for the offense

rather than the offender” (p. 161).

In a later study on the same corpus of apologies in New Zealand English, Holmes

(1993) showed that there are significant differences in the distribution of apologies

between men and women, and also that women apologize more than men. She concludes

that the reason for such findings is that “women perceive [apologies] as important

facesupportstrategies while men appear to regard them as more dispensable” (p. 105). Also,

the author claimed that New Zealand women provided longer responses than American

women did. However, more studies on the distribution of apologies across gender in the

different dialects of English are needed before generalizing such results.

Bharuthram (2003) investigated in the case of the Englishspeaking Hindu Indians from South

Africa. He used a combination ofdata collection methods, namely interviews and discourse

completion task questionnaireswhich were then analyzed using the coding system developed

for the CCSARP (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989b). The author aimed at demonstrating that in the

culture of the Englishspeaking Indians from South Africa, the concept of face is different

from that describedby Brown and Levinson (1987), and that it is more consistent with

findings on Asianlanguages such as Chinese and Japanese (as described above in the section

on SpeechActs and Politeness). Thus, what these speakers care about when apologizing

orrequesting is the face of others, rather then their individual face. One of the examples

thatthe author gave is the inclusion of the phrase “please” into both apologies and

requests,which demonstrates the importance of politeness in their culture.

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Most importantly, apology varies across cultures, and therefore it is even impossible to use

one and the same apology to study the way apologies are produced in different cultures.

However, no matter what features one includes in adefinition, what should be present in any

definition is the fact that an apology is given notonly when there is a behavior (be it an

action, the lack of an action, or a verbal behavior)that violates the social norms of the

respective culture, but also as an anticipation in casea future or proposed behavior may

violate such norms.

A standard DCT comprises constructed situations and necessitates completion of utterances

by the respondents. However, in the event of individual speech acts, “What is polite in one

culture may not be polite in another”. Importantly, “… as cultures are different, so are the

manifestations of the pragmatic acts that make it possible for humans to live in a particular

„lingua-cultural‟ habitat.” (Mey, 2007. pp.277-280).

This particular paper focuses on polite and impolite apologies used by the Indian ESL

learners in a multicultural class context. The present paper focused on the socio-linguistic

development of Indian ESL learners (of a multicultural background) in apology by

scrutinizing the extent to which requests were analyzed (with the help of three language

experts) in terms of politeness on a five-point rating scale such as : (1) very impolite (2)

impolite (3) partially polite (4) polite and (5) very polite based on Blum-Kulka‟s patterns. By

investigating the politeness realizations can be of significance importance for the teachers to

handle the second language learners to overcome these practical difficulties in intercultural

communication.

3. Method of the Study

3.1 The Method

A Discourse Completion Task (DCT) – a modified version of the DCT questionnaire used in

Kachru, Yamuna (1998) was used. The questionnairedescribes situations that students

encounter in a normal social setting and seeks to elicit responses to such situations.

3.2 Tools used

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The apology strategies/patterns were analysed based on Blum-Kulka‟s patterns. These

patterns were evaluated and regrouped by language experts in terms of politeness on a five-

point rating scale such as : (1) very impolite (2) impolite (3) partially polite (4) polite and (5)

very polite. The scores reveal on the whole the extent of politeness among the respondents.

The politeness scores will have a theoretical minimum of 6 to a maximum of 30.

3.3 The Subjects

The subjects were taken from two different categories, i.e., 60 Bachelors degree Professional

Course students of first year B.Tech and 60 Mastersdegree management course students of

first year MBA. The group consisted of both bilingual and multi-lingual in a multicultural

class of Indian scenario. Some of them were basically from different regions and settled

down in Delhi for quite sometime. (See Appendix B: Demographic details of the students)

3.4 The Purpose

The objective of the study was to determine whether there were any significant differences on

politeness level existed among different groups of respondents based on the social variables

such as age, gender and region (based on their mother tongue).

3.5 The Analysis

A statistical analysis of politeness score level was found out using the test of significance (t-

test) and Analysis of variance (ANOVA) to show the significant difference (if any) between

the variables. For this purpose SPSS software was used.

3.6 Designing the framework for analysis of speech act patterns : The coding Scheme :

The politeness score for apology situations were studied and analysed. A politeness score

was found out by adding the ratings given for each of the six apology situation. The scores

will reveal on the whole the extent of politeness among the respondents. The apology

strategies/patterns were analysed based on Blum-Kulka‟s patterns(1984).The patterns used by

our respondents are further classified into 5 point rating scale which are given below:

5 point rating scale Speech act patterns

Very Impolite - No Apology given

Impolite - Blaming someone else , denial of responsibility,

Attacking the complainer

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Partially Polite - Providing a justification

Acknowledgement of responsibility

Offer of repair, Promise of non-recurrence

Polite - Illocutionary force indicating device (IFID), Pleading

for

understanding

Very Polite - Intensified IFID

These patterns were evaluated and regrouped by language experts in terms of politeness on a

five-point rating scale such as : (1) very impolite (2) impolite (3) partially polite (4) polite

and (5) very polite. The scores reveal on the whole the extent of politeness among the

respondents. The politeness scores will have a theoretical minimum of 6 to a maximum of

30. The ratings given for each situation are as follows: Very Impolite – 1 ; Impolite - 2 ;

Partially Polite- 3 ; Polite - 4; Very Polite - 5

4.The Results and Findings

Results of the independent „t‟ tests showing the influence of the age of the respondents on the

politeness score of the apology situations are presented and analyzed below in succession.

Table No. 1: Results of „t‟ test showing the influence of the age of the respondents on the

politeness score of all 6 apology situations used in this study.

Table No.1

t-test for Equality of Means

T df Sig.

.918 118 Ns

1A Table of Means

Apology-Politeness Score

Mean S.D No.

Age of the Respondent 17 - 20 years 24.92 3.41 60

21 - 30 years 24.33 3.55 60

Total 24.63 3.48 120

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As it can be seen from the table, the mean politeness score for 17 – 20 years is 24.92 which is

marginally higher than the mean scores of 21 – 30 years (24.33). „t‟ test was applied to find

whether significant difference existed between the two age groups. The test result shows that

the t-value is 0.918 which was found to be not significant. Thus the t-test result shows that

no significant difference existed between the two age groups in the level of politeness.

In sum, difference in Age did not affect the politeness level of the apology situations.

Table No. 2: Results of „t‟ test showing the influence of the gender of the respondents on the

politeness score of all 6 apology situations used in this study.

Table No.2

t-test for Equality of Means

t df Sig.

2.160 118 *

2 A. Table of Means

Apology-Politeness Score

Mean S.D No.

Sex Male 23.95 3.89 60

Female 25.30 2.88 60

Total 24.63 3.48 120

From the table, it infers, the mean politeness score for female group is 25.30 which is higher

than the mean scores of male group (23.95). „t‟ test was applied to find whether significant

difference existed between the two gender groups. The test result shows that

the t-value is 2.160 which was found to be significant. Thus the t-test result shows that

significant difference exists between male and female respondents. The female respondents

have scored higher politeness level compared to male respondents.

In sum, the politeness level of the female respondents is higher than that of the men

respondents in the apology situations.

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Table No.3 :Results of t-test showing the influence of the region (based on mother tongue)

of the respondents on the politeness score of all 6 apology situations used in this study.

Table No.3

Apology-Politeness Score

Mean S.D No.

Mother Tongue Hindi 24.18 3.67 68

Punjabi 24.77 4.14 22

Tamil 24.89 2.93 9

Bengali 25.70 1.95 10

Odiya 25.91 1.64 11

Total 24.63 3.48 120

ANOVA for Apology-Politeness Score

Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

Between Groups 44.481 4 11.120 .918 Ns

Within Groups 1,393.644 115 12.119

Total 1,438.125 119

Mean scores were found out for respondents of different mother tongue. The highest mean

scores of politeness were found for Odiya as mother tongue. The mean score was 25.91. The

lowest level of politeness was found among respondents with Hindi as mother tongue and

the mean score was 24.18. The next highest politeness was found among the respondents

with Bengali as mother tongue. The mean score was 25.70. The next highest politeness after

Bengali was Tamil. The mean score was 24.89. The next highest politeness after Tamil was

Punjabi. The mean score was 24.77.

ANOVA (Analysis of variance) was applied to find whether significant difference existed

among respondent with different mother tongue. The „F‟ test value (0.918) revealed that no

significant differences existed among different mother tongue groups.

Insum, difference in region (based on language) did not affect the politeness level of the

apology situations.

Table No 4: Situational Differences

Table No.4 .Apology situations

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V. Impolite Impolite Partially Polite Polite V. Polite total

A1

No

.

5 51 64 120

% 4.2 42.5 53.3 100.0

A2

No

.

4 7 2 66 41 120

% 3.3 5.8 1.7 55.0 34.2 100.0

A3

No

.

2 51 67 120

% 1.7 42.5 55.8 100.0

A4

No

.

3 11 18 59 29 120

% 2.5 9.2 15.0 49.2 24.2 100.0

A5

No

.

2 11 10 72 25 120

% 1.7 9.2 8.3 60.0 20.8 100.0

A6

No

.

9 2 3 87 19 120

% 7.5 1.7 2.5 72.5 15.8 100.0

Scale Definitions:

*Situations used to elicit requests

A1 –Apologising to known person (non-specific gender): A2 – Apologising

to unknown person (male);

A3 –Apologising to unknown person (female); A4 – Apologising toknown person (male);

A5- Apoloigising to unknown person (male);

A6 –Apologising to unknown person (non-specific gender)

Findings in Table No. 4 show that the majority of the speakers were polite, i.e., they made

use of - Illocutionary force indicating device (IFID) and Pleading for

understanding. In situation 1 and 3 the speakers used very polite apologies (A1-53.3% ; A3-

55.8%) i.e. Intesnified IFID since the hearers are friend and a female respectively. Whereas

in other situations, the hearers are strangers or people with whom no relationship is

established. In all these situations, the respondents used the polite apologies i.e.Illocutionary

force indicating device (IFID) and Pleading for understanding (termed as polite in 5 point

rating scale) i.e., in A2-55%; A4- 49.2% ; A5 – 60% ; and in A6 – 72.5% as per the

findings.

When examining the 5 point rating scale for politeness in all situations, variation is observed

based on the situational severity level, i.e., different patterns of speech acts were used in

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different situations. From Table No.4, we could see there is evidence that majority of the

speakers used polite expressions. Based on the 5 point rating scale, we came to know that

the respondents used Illocutionary force indicating device ( IFID) without intensifiers.

5. CONCLUSION

The entire sample shows thatonly gender, one of the sociological variables influences the

politeness level of the respondents. The Age and the region (based on the mother tongue) did

not differ significantly with regard to the politeness level when they make apologies. From

Table No.2, we conclude that the female respondents have scored higher politeness level

compared to male respondents. . Unlike the native speakers, Indian English speakers have

their own way of expressing politeness since the Indian system is more hearer-based.The

respondents, irrespective of the regions they belong to, still they did not differ in politeness

when they make apologies in English. This shows that Indian cultures are more culturally-

based in which they are guided by an underlying principle of politeness.

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REFERENCES

Austin. J. 1962. How to Do Things With Words. London: Oxford University Press.

Bergman,M.L., & Kasper, G. 1993. Perception and performance in native and non-native

apology. In

G.Kaper& S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics(pp.82-107). New York: Oxford

University Press.

Bharuthram, S. (2003). Politeness phenomena in the Hindu sector of the South African Indian

English speaking community. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(10-11), 1523-1544. Retrieved

December 30, 2005, from ScienceDirect

Blum-Kulka,S.,&Olshtain, E. 1984. Requests and apologies : A cross-cultural study of

speech act realizationPatterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics , 5(3), 196-213.

Blum-Kulka,S.,House,J.,&Kasper,G.(Eds.) 1989. Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and

apologies. Norwood,NJ:Ablex.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage.New

York: Cambridge University Press.

Cohen, A.D.&Olshtain, E. 1991. Teaching Speech act behavior to nonnative speakers. In

M.CelceMurcia (Ed.),

An Introduction to teaching English as a second or foreign language. 2nd

ed. Cambridge,

MA:Newbury House/Harper&Row,154165.

Deutschmann, M. (2003). Apologising in British English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,

UmeåUniversiteit,Unmeå.

Edmundson, R. J. (1992). Evidence for native speaker notions of apologizing and accepting

apologies in American English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,Indiana University,

Bloomington, Indiana.

Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in Public. London: Allen Lane.

Holmes, J. (1990). Apologies in New Zealand English. Language in Society, 19(2), 155-199.

Holmes, J. (1993). New Zealand women are good to talk to: An analysis of politeness

strategies in interaction.

Journal of Pragmatics, 20(2), 91-116. Retrieved March 30, 2005, from ScienceDirect.

Kachru, Yamuna. 1998. Culture and Speech acts: Evidence from Indian and Singaporean

English. Studies in the Linguistics Sciences. 28(1). (pp.78-98).

Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. New York: Longman.

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Márquez-Reiter, R. (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A contrastive

study of requests and apologies. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Mey, J.L. 2007. Pragmatics: An introduction (2nd

ed.) Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Owen, M. (1983). Apologies and remedial interchanges: A study of language use in social

interaction.

New York: Mouton.

Searle, J. 1969. Speech Acts-An Essay in the Philosophy of language. London: Cambridge

University Press.

Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints and apologies. New

York: Mouton de Gruyter.

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/267989392_Evaluations_of_impoliteness_of_an_int

ercultural_apology

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Appendix

Discourse Completion Test

Please read the following description of situations and write what you would

say in each situation.

1 You visit your friend at his/her house. Accidentally you hit his/her valuable

glassware and break it. What would you say to your friend?

You :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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2 You are walking in a street , suddenly you hit an unknown man who is carrying

many packages on his head. Because of your sudden and speedily hit, he drops

all his packages. What would you say to him?

You :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------

3 At a restaurant, you are supposed to carry your food to your table. When you are

bringing a cup of coffee to your table you stumble, and the coffee spills over a

lady‟s dress which is clearly your fault. How will you apologize to her?

You :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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4 You borrowed some money from your friend for some specific purpose and you

had forgotten to return it for a month. Oneday your friend approaches you to

return his money, how will you respond to this situation?

You :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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5 When you are in a meeting you utter something in a casual way, but unfortunately

one of the colleagues interprets it as a personal attack on him. He says, “I got

offended by your remark” , how will you tackle it?

You :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------

6 You wanted to make a call to your best friend and when you dialled his/her

number someone else picked it up and said it was a wrong number. How will you

react?

You :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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APPENDIX B

DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION OF THE PARTICIPANTS

1. Name :

2. Age : 17 – 20Yrs(UG) :_____________ 21 –30Yrs (PG): ____________ ( The Correct

option)

3. Gender : Male ________ Female______________ ( The Correct option)

4. Native Place :

5. Place you stay at present :

6. Duration of stay :

7. Mother Tongue (MT) :___________________________________________

8. Present Course:________________________________________________________

9. Medium of Instruction :

(a) School :

UptoXth:

10. The pattern of Schooling ( The Correct option)

(a) Board: State Board___________ CBSE_________________ICSE

(b) Govt.School_______________Private_____________Govt. aided__________________

11. Father’s Educational Qualification ( The Correct option/s);

Nil_______; Below 10_______; Class 10 ________; 10+2_______;Graduation__________ Post graduation ___________; PG and above__________

12. Mother’s Educational Qualification ( The Correct option/s);

Nil_______; Below 10_______; Class 10 ________; 10+2_______;Graduation__________ Post graduation ___________; PG and above__________

13. Father’s Occupation : ____________________

14. Mother’s Occupation : __________________

15. Other Languages known: ___________________________