| Interpersonal pragmatics has become a core topic of pragmatics in recent years.Speech acts,as an important field of interpersonal pragmatics,has been the focus of recent research by more and more scholars.The present research,based on the research on apology speech act for English learners at home and abroad,analyze apology speech act for Chinese non-English major college students in the daily life from the perspective of interpersonal pragmatics.The present research,based on Rapport Management Theory by Spencer-Oatey,regards qualitative research as the main part,aided by quantitative research,to analyze the sequence,frequency and combination of apology semantic formulas,the characteristics of the distribution of apology intensifications and apology strategies,and the influencing factors of apology strategies.This study,referring to Blum-Kulka "Discourse Completion Test(DCT)" uses a questionnaire survey to investigate the use of apology speech acts in daily communication among 100 non-English major college students of Jilin University,and analyze how social distance and social power influence Chinese college students’ choice of apology strategies.This questionnaire is designed into ten different scenarios.Under the premise of understanding the scenarios,the college students were asked to imagine making corresponding apologies in similar real situations.The present research covers the following three research questions:(1)What are the characteristics of frequency,combination,and sequential position of apology speech act for Chinese college students?(2)What are the characteristics of distribution of apology strategies for Chinese college students?(3)What factors influence the choice of apology strategies for Chinese college students?Based upon previous literature review and theoretical research on apology speech acts and combined with empirical analysis of collected corpus,the findings of this research are as follows:First of all,on account of Blum-Kulka and Olshtain’s classification of apology semantic formulas,the present research finds that the percentage of "head act" in the total is much lower than that of "supportive moves" although "head act" is an essential part of apology speech act and the proportion of “head act” only accounts for 31% of the total.Among them,"an expression of regret" is the most popular among Chinese college students,at the same time,the using frequency of "head act" is strongly influenced by the degree of intimacy between college students and the listener.In addition,79% of college students would like to use "supportive moves" to explain the current situation to the listener and offer to correct the mistakes by themselves.Among them,the college students prefer to use "pre-supportive moves" and it take s up about 27% of the total.Based on the semantic sequence classification of Blum-Kulka and Olshtain,the four apology sequences of Chinese college students in the daily life were summarized,namely:(1)head act,(2)head act + supportive moves,(3)supportive moves + head act,(4)supportive moves.In addition,this study also explored the differences of using frequency.In terms of the combination of both,the frequency of use of "supportive moves + head act" is higher than "head act +supportive moves",to be more specific,"supportive moves + head act" and " head act+ supportive moves" take up 17% and 15% of the total respectively.Therefore,the most popular apology sequence among Chinese university students is "supportive moves + head act".Then,this research,based on the classification of apology strategies proposed by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain,finds that the three kinds of apology strategies used have the same using frequency generally.The percentage of direct apology strategies,indirect apology strategies and the combination of both are 37%,31% and 32%respectively.Therefore,Chinese college students are more inclined to use implicit and euphemistic apology strategies.Among them,the college students prefer to use "an expression of regret" of the direct apology strategy to apologize,whereas "an offer of apology" of the direct apology strategy is always ignored by them.Moreover,"taking responsibility" and "explanation or account" are the two most popular indirect apology strategies among college students.Therefore,the most popular apology strategy among college students is "take responsibility + an expression of regret".In addition,the three apology modifiers were summarized,namely:(1)internal intensifiers,(2)external intensifiers,(3)mixed intensifiers,in which the proportion of internal intensifiers and external intensifiers are basically same,with internal modifiers accounting for 32.1% and external modifiers taking up 30.5%,and the number of mixed intensifiers is least and it takes up 15.4%.Among them,the college students prefer to use the internal intensifiers to apologize in the daily life.At the same time,this research also finds as the level of directness of the apology strategy used by college students increases,the number of the apology intensifiers used by college students also rises,and vice versa.In addition,the present research,based on the overall analysis of the use of apology strategies in different apology scenarios in the questionnaire,conducts an empirical study on the influencing factors of rapport management strategies in Rapport Management Theory from the perspective of interpersonal pragmatics and“P” value obtained by SPSS,among them,the correlation between ‘social power” and the directness of apology strategies is “P” value(P=0.0435<0.05).The result shows that indirect apology strategy could increase with the decrease of social distance,whereas the direct apology strategy does the opposite.In addition,direct strategies will decrease with the increase of closeness of two interlocutors,while indirect strategies will rise with the fall of closeness.On the other hand,the correlation between ‘social distance” and the directness of apology strategies is “P”value(P=0.0355<0.05)and the research concludes that direct apology strategy will decrease with the increase of the status of the listener,while the indirect apology strategy will rise with the fall of the status of the listener,but the change range is slight.Finally,this research summarizes and categorizes the college students’ apology sequence,frequency and combination by analyzing apology speech act for Chinese college students in the daily life,and explore the characteristics of distribution of apology strategies and the influencing factors of apology strategies for the college students from the perspective of Rapport Management Theory.The results indicate that Chinese college students can achieve harmonious interpersonal relationship management through the use of different apology strategies and the accurate analysis of social distance and power.However,when the hearer has the higher social power,the choice of apology strategies for college students needs to be improved.The present research,to a large extent,has broadened the scope and horizon of interpersonal pragmatics,and also provides the important enlightenment for the study of apology speech act of domestic English learners,and also provides some practical guidance for promoting the construction of harmonious interpersonal relationships. |
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