Gender Differences On Apology Strategies Of Chinese EFL Undergraduates

Apology is one form of speech act that commonly occurs in people's everyday life."I'm sorry.""I beg your pardon"-such apologies are made as remedial and compensatory activities by the offender to the offended. The speech act of apology is of great importance in interpersonal communication. To perform the speech act of apology, the offender should apply certain methods or techniques to show his/her remorse. These methods or techniques are called"apology strategies".Researches about apology strategies have been made in many languages, such as Arabic, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, American English, Australian English and Indian English. However, there are relatively few studies discussing the apology strategies applied by Chinese EFL learners, and fewer that make comparisons between male and female EFL learners'apology strategy selection. Furthermore, existing studies on Chinese EFL learner's apology strategies mainly focus on cross-cultural comparison between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers. The present research intends to examine apology strategy from a different perspective: conducting an inter-ethnic study which explores the potential gender effect on Chinese EFL learner's apology strategy selection.Through in-depth research of Chinese EFL learner's apology strategies, the current study is expected to offer some insights into the effect of gender on Chinese EFL undergraduates'use of apologies in interlanguage (English). This research is also hoped to have implications for EFL pedagogy in terms of enhancing Chinese EFL learners'pragmatic competence.The current study tries to find answers to the following questions: What strategies do Chinese male undergraduate students apply to express apology in English? What strategies do Chinese female undergraduate students apply to express apology in English? What are the differences, if any, between the apology strategies applied by Chinese male and female undergraduates? What are the differences, if any, between Chinese male and female undergraduates'evaluation of socio-pragmatic variables (social distance, social status, and the severity of the offence) in all the situations?The current study employs thirty subjects, including fifteen males and fifteen females. All the subjects are second-year English majors in the Department of Business English of Shangdong Foreign Trade Vocational College. The researcher adopts written questionnaire as the major source of data collection. Two sets of questionnaires are used in the current study: the DCT (Discourse Completion Task) questionnaire and the MCQ (Multiple Choice Question) questionnaire. The DCT questionnaire consists of eight scenarios each of which involves a situation that requires an apology. The MCQ questionnaire presents extended multiple-choice questions of all the eight situations given in the DCT questionnaire.The present research finds out that Chinese male and female undergraduate subjects differ in their apology strategy selection. The three major strategies employed by the male subjects are an IFID, offer of repair, and acknowledgement of responsibility, while those employed most by the female subjects are an IFID, concern for the hearer, and offer of repair. Despite of the fact that both males and females adopt an IFID as the foremost apology, female subjects tend to use this strategy much more than their male counterparts. Concern for the hearer is the second most frequently used apology strategy by female subjects, while it is second least employed strategy by male subjects. Compared with male subjects, females prefer to use exclamation, intensification and address terms in their apologies. No significant differences are identified between male Chinese male and female undergraduates'evaluation of the variables of social distance and social status in all the situations. In six of the eight situations, female subjects'evaluation of the severity of the offence is lower than their male counterparts'evaluation.Due to some practical reasons, the current study has certain limitations. Future study could apply more variety of data elicitation method and employ more number of subjects.