Primary Exploration On The Verbal Behavior Of Coping With The Apology In Chinese And Its Teaching Of Chinese As A Foreign Language

In daily oral communication,everyone may act as the person to whom the apology is made and respond to it.This paper regards this response as verbal behavior of coping with the apology issued by the one who makes the apology,and then attempts to overall describe and analyze the verbal behavior in detail.Verbal behavior of the apology and verbal behavior of coping with the apology constitute a simple communication together,which can also be regarded as a basic unit in the interaction mode of “apologizing--being apologized” between both sides.Between them,the verbal behavior of coping with the apology is not only a feedback behavior to the apologizing party,but also an expression of verbal behavior with subjective characteristics: it has the feature of being salvable,that is,saving the face of the apologizing party or saving their own damaged interests.To a certain extent,the response of the party being apologized determines the result of the apologizing party.When the discourse is handed over to the party being apologized,whether the two sides can reach a "reconciliation" and form a consensual communication depends on the coping intention of the party being apologized.If the intention is positive,then the purpose of the apologizing party is achieved,the apologized party also obtains psychological balance,the communication naturally leads to a “win-win” result.Otherwise,it means that the apology cannot make up for the loss of the party being apologized,the communication may be interrupted,or the sincerity of the other party may be felt,but the expected value cannot be reached,so that the next round of “apologizing--being apologized” interaction will take place.Throughout the whole process,the subject,the party of being apologized we are going to discuss,shall have a healthy mentality.Cooperation and friendship are the main melody of a civilized society,and politeness principle is the general style of verbal behavior.In this paper,strategies of coping with apology are divided into positive coping strategies and negative coping strategies,and the two types of strategies are divided and described in detail in line with the collected corpus.Among them,positive coping strategies include active coping,conditional coping and reluctant coping,while negative coping strategies include direct coping and indirect coping.Under each category,we further explore some specific sub categories in order to make a more comprehensive analysis of the strategies of coping apology.Of course,these strategies of coping apology are not completely free in specific use.It is expected to not only make reasonable expressions,but also cope with etiquette.It seems that the choice of these strategies is arbitrary,but it is restricted and influenced by many factors.It is believed that when choosing the coping strategy,the party being apologized will first consider the acceptability of the event or offence itself,that is,the cost of acceptance.When the cost is relatively low,in the light of the principle of cooperation and politeness,the party being apologized tends to choose positive coping strategies to save the other party’s face.If not,the party being apologized is more inclined to safeguard their own interests,and adopts the negative one.Secondly,the party being apologized would make their own judgment on the offending behavior and the behavior of the apologizing party by integrating the purpose,contents and ways of the other party’s apology,so as to determine their own strategy,choose appropriate verbal behavior,and anticipate their own response and the possible effects.Therefore,the core elements determining the coping strategy are the cost of the party being apologized and the acceptability of the apology method.In addition,the distance,social status,gender,personality and education level of the subject,the communication background and communication mode of the context will also have a certain impact on the verbal behavior and strategy choice of coping with apology.However,since these factors are far from the main object(the verbal behavior strategies)we want to analyze,which are not controllable,so they will not be detailed.In teaching Chinese as a foreign language,although the teaching and testing of “apologizing--being apologized” has been carried out,more attention has been paid to the former,and the research on verbal behavior of coping with the apology is obviously insufficient.Consequently,it is difficult for learners to achieve flexible and decent coping expressions under the current teaching mode.In view of the above,we believe that the teaching of verbal behavior of coping with the apology should adhere to the principle of politeness,with emphasis on training learners to flexibly and appropriately use strategies of coping with apology.At the same time,it is expected to attach importance to relevant cultural teaching and enrich its content.In the fifth chapter,some teaching suggestions are given in detail,including the arrangement of teaching contents and teaching strategies.The overall arrangement shall emphasize on comprehensive and balanced,and the overall layout should proceed in an orderly way and step by step,and move in a spiral line.Five teaching strategies have been put forward,including following the order of acquisition,creating communicative situations,combining chunk teaching,integrating cultural thinking,and arranging communicative tasks.It is hoped that the research and discussion of this paper can provide some inspiration and ideas for Chinese teaching of verbal behavior of coping with the apology.