本研究旨在探討中英雙語者對於道歉回應策略的使用情況，探究其母語及 目標語的跨語言表現，並檢視兩大影響變因(社會權力高低、冒犯嚴重程度)對道歉回應表現之影響。共有十八位以英語為外語的臺灣大學生和十八位以華語為第二語言的在臺外國人參與本研究的中英版口語言談情境完成任務(Oral Discourse Completion Task)。研究發現如下:
一、兩組在道歉回應策略選擇上並無顯著差異:他們皆傾向使用「直接接受道歉」和「將冒犯最小化」兩種正向回應策略以展現禮貌。但質化分析顯示中文和英文在特定道歉回應策略的語言表現上仍有些微差異存在。
二、受跨語言影響，受試者的道歉回應表現呈現正影響(positive influence)和負影響之現象(negative influence)。偏誤分析結果顯示，二語學習者的偏誤大多源自於語言差異和其母語轉移。
三、受試者的道歉回應行為受到道歉者的社會權力高低影響，但該效果只在二語的使用情況下達到顯著，表示二語學習者在目標語的使用可能更為保守且更重視禮貌。
四、冒犯嚴重程度確實為影響道歉回應表現的決定性因素之一。
五、在合併策略的使用上，兩組皆傾向將「直接接受道歉」與其他策略合併，以維護社會關係。
根據上述結果，中英文的道歉回應表現同時展現了語言普遍性和獨特性兩種特徵。此外，正向策略的廣泛使用(「直接接受道歉」和「將冒犯最小化」)也證實禮貌原則對於道歉回應具重要影響。

The present study investigated the use of apology response (AR) strategies by Chinese-English bilinguals from a crosslinguistic perspective. The effects of two potential factors, namely social power and severity of offense, on the apology responses were examined. A total of 18 Taiwanese college students who learned English as a foreign language and 18 foreigners in Taiwan who learned Chinese as a second language were recruited to complete two versions of an oral discourse completion task: a Chinese version and an English version. The major findings are summarized as follows:
1. The two groups showed no significant difference regarding their choice of AR strategies: They both favored Acceptance and Minimization, two face-preserving types, to show politeness. Nevertheless, subtle differences regarding the linguistic performances of certain strategy types in the two languages were found.
2. Cross-linguistic influence was found to affect our participants' AR performances, in which both positive and negative influence occurred. Error analysis revealed that our L2 learners' errors often resulted from the differences between two languages (i.e., Chinese & English) and the interferences from the first language.
3. Social power was found to be a factor influencing the choice of AR strategies, but such effect was shown to be significant only in the L2 setting, indicating that the L2 learners were more conservative and more polite in the target language.
4. Severity of offense was shown to be a crucial factor affecting the AR realizations across languages and cultures.
5. Regarding the use of combined strategies, both groups of the participants tended to combine Acceptance with other strategies so as to maintain social relationships.

The above results showed both language universal and language-specific features in the AR realizations in Chinese and English. The dominant use of positive response strategies, namely Acceptance and Minimization, also highlights the profound influence of politeness principles.

References

Adrefiza, and Jeremy F. Jones. 2013. Investigating apology response strategies in Australian English and Bahasa Indonesia: Gender and cultural perspectives. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 36:71-101.

Al-Amoudi, Khadija A. 2013. Closing techniques for face-to-face conversation in Saudi educational institutes. Arab World English Journal 4.2:137-151.

Angouri, Jo. 2010. Quantitative, qualitative, mixed or holistic research? Combining methods in linguistic research. Research Methods in Linguistics, vol. 1, ed. by Lia Litosseliti, 29-48. London: Continuum.

Aston, Guy. 1995. Say ‘Thank you’: Some pragmatic constraints in conversational closings. Applied linguistics 16.1:57-86.
Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bardovi‐Harlig, Kathleen, and Rex A. Sprouse. 2017. Negative versus positive transfer. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, ed. by John I. Liontas, 1-6. Hoboken, NJ : Wiley Blackwell.

Barnlund, Dean C., and Miho Yoshioka. 1990. Apologies: Japanese and American styles. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 14:193-206.

Bataineh, Rula F., and Ruba F. Bataineh. 2008. A cross-cultural comparison of apologies by native speakers of American English and Jordanian Arabic. Journal of Pragmatics 40.4:792-821.

Beebe, Leslie M., and Martha C. Cummings. 1995. Natural speech act data versus written questionnaire data: How data collection method affects speech act performance. Speech Acts Across Cultures: Challenges to Communication in a Second Language, ed. by Susan M. Gass and Joyce Neu, 65-88. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Bennett, Mark, and Deborah Earwaker. 1994. Victims’ responses to apologies: The effects of offender responsibility and offense severity. The Journal of Social Psychology 134.4:457-464.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1982. Learning to say what you mean in a second language: A study of the speech act performance of learners of Hebrew as a second language. Applied Linguistics 3.1:29-59.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, and Elite Olshtain. 1984. Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics 5.3:196-213.

Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press.

Chang, Yuh-fang. 2016. Apologizing in Mandarin Chinese: A study on developmental patterns. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics 42.1:73-101.

Chen, Li-Ying. 2018. A Bi-directioal Study of Request Strategies in Chinese and English. MA thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei.

Chen, Rong, and Dafu Yang. 2010. Responding to compliments in Chinese: Has it changed?. Journal of Pragmatics 42.7:1951-1963.

Cook, Vivian J. 2002. Background to the L2 user. Portraits of the L2 User, ed. by Vivian Cook, 1-28. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Cook, Vivian J. 2005. Basing teaching on the L2 user. Non-native Language Teachers. Perceptions, Challenges and Contributions to the Profession, ed. by Enric Llurda, 47-61. Boston: Springer.

Dewaele, Jean-Marc. 2008. “Appropriateness” in foreign language acquisition and use: Some theoretical, methodological and ethical considerations. International Review of Applied Linguistics 46.3:245-265.

Dhami, Mandeep K. 2016. Effects of a victim’s response to an offender’s apology: When the victim becomes the bad guy. European Journal of Social Psychology 46:110-123.

Fu, Bei, Sheng-fang Jiang, and Fei Liao. 2012. A study of strategies for apologizing and responding to apologies between English and Chinese interlocutors in discourse. Journal of Zhejiang University of Technology (Social Science) 11.1:87-92.

Gass, Susan M., and Larry Selinker (eds.) 1992. Language Transfer in Language Learning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Golato, Andrea. 2002. German compliment responses. Journal of Pragmatics 34.5:547-571.

Grice, Herbert P. 1975. Logic and conversation. Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41-58. New York: Academic Press.

Guan, Xiaowen, Hee S. Park, and Hye E. Lee. 2009. Cross-cultural differences in apology. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 33.1:32-45.

Holmes, Janet. 1986. Compliments and compliment responses in New Zealand English. Anthropological Linguistics 28.4:485-508.

Holmes, Janet. 1989. Sex differences and apologies: One aspect of communicative competence. Applied Linguistics, 10.2:194-213.

Holmes, Janet. 1990. Apologies in New Zealand English. Language in Society 19:155-199.

Holmes, Janet. 1995. Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.
Kasper, Gabriele. 1992. Pragmatic transfer. Second Language Research 8.3:203-231.

Kitao, Kathleen S., and Kenji Kitao. 2014. A corpus-based study of responses to apologies in US English. Journal of Culture and Information Science 9.2:1-13.

Kong, Lei, and Hongwu Qin. 2017. The development of manner of speaking markers in English and Chinese: Pragmaticalization, grammaticalization and lexicalization. Journal of Pragmatics 107:16-30.

Kuo, Yueh-Huel. 2011. A Study of the Development of Mandarin-Speaking Children’s Compliment Responses. MA thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei.

Larsen-Freeman, Diane, and Michael H. Long. 1991. An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research. New York: Routledge.

Lightbown Patsy M. and Nina Spada 2013. How Languages are Learned (4th edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lin, Ting-Chou. 2010. A Study of the Developmental Patterns of Apologies by Chinese Children. MA thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei.

Lin, Yu-Chun. 2012. An Investigation on College Students’ Verbal and Nonverbal Responses to Apology. MA thesis, Tamkang University, Taipei.

Lorenzo-Dus, N. 2001. Compliment responses among British and Spanish university students: A contrastive study. Journal of Pragmatics 33:107-127.

Nelson, Gaylel, Mahmoud Al-Batal, and Erin Echols. 1996. Arabic and English compliment responses: Potential for pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 17.4: 411-432.

Nurani, Lusia M. 2009. Methodological issue in pragmatic research: Is discourse completion test a reliable data collection instrument?. Jurnal Sosioteknologi 8.17: 667-678.

Ohbuchi, Ken-ichi, Emi Atsumi, and Seiji Takaku. 2008. A cross-cultural study on victim’s responses to apology in interpersonal and intergroup conflicts. Tohoku Psychologica Folia 67:55–62.

Owen, Marion. 1983. Apologies and Remedial Interchanges: A Study of Language Use in Social Interaction. Berlin, New York: Mouton Publishers.

Pavlenko, Aneta, and Scott Jarvis. 2002. Bidirectional transfer. Applied Linguistics 23.2: 190-214.

Phakiti, Aek, and Brian Paltridge. 2015. Approaches and methods in applied linguistics research. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics: A Practical Resource, ed. by Brian Paltridge and Aek Phakiti, 5-25. Lodon & New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Qian, Le-yi, and Hui Yang. 2005. A critical analysis of the responses to the speech act of apology in Chinese. Journal of Hefei University of Technology (Social Science) 19.6:154-156.

Robinson, Jeffrey D. 2004. The sequential organization of “explicit” apologies in naturally occurring English. Research on Language and Social Interaction 37.3:291-330.

Rose, Kenneth R., and Reiko Ono. 1995. Eliciting speech act data in Japanese: The effect of questionnaire type. Language Learning 45.2:191-223.

Saleem, Tahir, and Uzma Anjum. 2018. Positive and negative politeness: A cross-cultural study of responding to apologies by British and Pakistani speakers. International Journal of English Linguistics 8.5:71-86.

Saleem, Tahir, Uzma Anjum, and Muhammad Khalid. 2020. Influence of social stratification on Pakistani English speakers apology responses: A phenomenological approach. Pakistan Journal of Society, Education and Language 7.1:52-63.

Selinker, Larry. 1969. Language transfer. General Linguistics 9:67-92.

Selinker, Larry. 1972. Interlanguage. IRAL-International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 10.3:209-231.

Shishavan, Homa B., and Farzad Sharifian. 2013. Refusal strategies in L1 and L2: A study of Persian-speaking learners of English. Multilingua 32.6:801-836.

Stenstrom, Anna-Brita. 1994. An Introduction to Spoken Interaction. New York: Longman.

Su, I-ru. 2012. Bi-directional transfer in Chinese EFL learners’ apologizing behavior. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics 38.2:237-266.

Turnbull, William. 2001. An appraisal of pragmatic elicitation techniques for the social psychological study of talk: The case of request refusals. Pragmatics 11.1:31-61.

Valdes, Guadalupe, and Cecilia Pino. 1981. Muy a tus órdenes: compliment responses among Mexican-American bilinguals. Language in Society 10:53-72.

Vanrell, Maria del Mar, Ingo Feldhausen, and Lluisa Astruc. 2018. The discourse completion task in Romance prosody research: Status quo and outlook. Methods in Prosody: A Romance Language Perspective, ed. by Maria del Mar Vanrell, 191-227. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Waluyo, sri. 2017. Apology response strategies performed by EFL learners. Metathesis: Journal of English Language, Literature, and Teaching 1.2:94-109.

Wang, Yi, and Chun-yin Doris Chen. 2014. Chinese children’s acquisition of the promissory speech act. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics 40.2:55-93.

Wu, Jue, and Wei Wang. 2016. “Apology accepted”: A cross-cultural study of responses to apologies by native speakers of English and Chinese. International Journal of English Linguistics 6.2:63-78.

Yeh, Hui-Chen. 2018. A Comparative Study of Chinese Speech Act of Comforting by English and Japanese Learners of Chinese as a Second Language. MA thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei.

Yuan, Yi. 2001. An inquiry into empirical pragmatics data-gathering methods: Written DCTs, oral DCTs, field notes, and natural conversations. Journal of Pragmatics 33.2:271-292.