A Contrastive Analysis Of Apology By Han-Chinese & Tibetan-Chinese College Students

Apology is arguably the most popular speech act in cross-cultural pragmatic studies, and differences in apology and response to apology are a good manifestation of distinctive cultural values. The past studies on apology focus on languages in Indo-European family, neglect apology response and frequently adopt a stereotyped method to collect data, which, thus, provides a research gap for this research.Adopting the framework of Austin and Searle’s speech act theory and Brown & Levinson’s politeness theory, this study analyzes apology by Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese college students and investigates the influence of culture and gender upon apology and its response. In doing so, the study addresses the following three points:1) the similarities and differences between the strategies employed by Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese; 2) the similarities and differences between the psychological tendencies of Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese; 3) the impact of gender on apology and apology response strategies of Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese.Observation, Role play and Rating task are used to collect data, and strategies of apology and its response are labeled, analyzed and compared. At the same time the psychological attitude in apologizing and responding to apologies is also analyzed and compared. More than 2,000 Han and Tibetan freshmen of Xizang Minzu University voluntarily participated in the study.It has been found that Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese share most of the apology strategies and apology response strategies, both consisting of basic and supplementary ones, and those shared strategies are used in a similar pattern.Among the basic apology strategies, there is no significant difference in the use of "Statement of remorse", "Request for forgiveness", "Admitting faults" and "Promise of forbearance" between Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese, but there exist significant differences in the use of "Statement of responsibility", "Reparation" and "Showing concern". Tibetan-Chinese use "Statement of responsibility " more often than Han-Chinese, but Han-Chinese use "Reparation" and "Showing concern" more often than Tibetan-Chinese.Among the basic apology response strategies, there is no significant difference in the use of "Showing forgiveness", "Positive effects", "Claiming no compensation", "Sharing responsibility" and "Gratitude" between Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese, but there exist significant differences in the use of "Negative effects", "Claim of compensation", "Consideration", "Highlighting relationship" and "Positive remarks". Tibetan-Chinese use the former three strategies more often than Han-Chinese while Han-Chinese use the latter two more often than Tibetan-Chinese.In general, Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese show a high degree of similarity in Choosing strategies, which may result from the fact that Han culture and Tibetan culture, as two important components of Chinese culture, share a lot of commonalities due to a long history of mutual communication and influence. The differences that are observed in the use of apology and apology response strategies may result from different politeness tendencies of Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese. On one hand, a Han apologizer tends to save the positive face of the offended, while a Tibetan apologizer prefers to save the negative face of the offended. On the other hand, a Tibetan apology receiver tends to save the positive face of the apologizer, while a Han apology receiver prefers to save his/her own negative face.Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese also show a similar psychological attitude in apologizing and responding to an apology. Both Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese tend to apologize after an offense, and the more severe the offense is, the more necessary they feel obliged to express an apology. Both Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese also prefer to forgive the offender and accept his/her apology, and the degree of anger they feel after being offended has no significant relation with the severity of the offense they perceive. This offers a psychological explanation why Han-Chinese and Tibetan-Chinese share a lot of apology and apology response strategies and use them in a similar way.The study finds no sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that gender may have an influence upon the use of apology strategies or apology response strategies, which is consistent with the fact that in China both male and female enjoy an equal social status, at least in a legal sense.