POWER RELATION AND SEVERITY OF OFFENSE IN THE STRATEGIES OF APOLOGIZING BY INDONESIAN EFL TEACHERS : A Case Study on Indonesian EFL Teachers at an English Course in Tasikmalaya.

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APPROVAL PAGE ……….... i

DECLARATION ……… ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……….. iii

ABSTRACT ……… iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS ……… v

LIST OF FIGURES ……….………... vii

LIST OF TABLES ………... viii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1Background ………... 1

1.2The Purpose of the Study……… 4

1.3Research Questions ……… 4

1.4Limitation of the Study ……….. 5

1.5Significance of the Study ……… 5

1.6Organization of the Thesis ………. 6

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Speech Act ……… 8

2.1.1 Apology……….. 12

2.1.2 Apology Strategies……….. 18

2.2 Previous Studies on Apology ……… 25

2.3 Power, Distance, and Ranking of Imposition ………..………. 27

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH 3.1 Research Design ……….……….……….. 29

3.2 Setting and Participants……….. 31

3.3 Instrumentation ………..……… 32

3.4 Data Collection ………..……… 34

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CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 The Use of Apology Strategy: General Finding……… 39

4.2 Apologizing Strategy to the Hearer with Lower Power in Different levels of Severity………....… 42 4.3 Apologizing Strategy to the Hearer with Equal Power in Different

levels of Severity……… 52 4.4 Apologizing Strategy to the Hearer with Higher Power in Different

levels of Severity………... 63

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

5.1 Conclusion ………... 74 5.2 Suggestion ……… 76

REFERENCES…...……… 78

APPENDICES

Appendix 1 : Guided Situations (Discourse Role-Play Task)………. 83 Appendix 2 : The Data Transcribed from the Role Play ……… 86 Appendix 3 :The Distribution of Apologizing Strategy Used by Each

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Aijmer’s Apologizing Strategy………. 19

Figure 4.1 Numbers of Strategy Occurrence ………. 39

Figure 4.2 Strategy Used to the Lower Power ……….…..… 42

Figure 4.3 Strategy Used to the Equal Power ……….……… 52

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Olshtain & Cohen’s Apologizing Strategy………... 21 Table 3.1 The Distribution of Contextual Factors……… 37 Table 4.1 Number of Occurrence on Each Strategy………. 40

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1. 1 Background

Communicating in languages requires both linguistic competence and communicative competence. The notion “communicative competence” is proposed to cover the knowledge that a fluent speaker of a language must possess in order to understand and produce contextually comprehensible and appropriate utterances in the language (Hymes, 1972). This theory is in contrast with

Chomsky’s on linguistic competence which do not account for sociocultural factors or differential competence in heterogeneous speech community (Sahin, 2009). Hymes believes that language competence does not rely exclusively on linguistic competence. Stern (1983, as cited by Sahin, 2009) also says that language competence is not solely concerned with the rules of a language. Communicative competence is wider than linguistic competence. Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1984), in Bagarić and Djigunović (2007), propose four areas of knowledge and skill: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence. This study is mainly concerned with sociolinguistic competence as it addresses the extent to which utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors such as participants,

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purposes of the interaction, and norms or conventions of interactions (Collie and Slaler, 1988, in Sahin, 2009).

In sociolinguistic contexts, it is likely that most of the problems that L2 learners face in communicating are mainly pragmatic. L2 learners tend to be exposed to linguistic knowledge, yet to a certain extent they have limited exposure to pragmatic knowledge (Grossi, 2009). Furthermore, there are also sociocultural norms and constraints that can influence the L2 learners in speaking another language, thus these factors are considered natural for L2 learners (Franch, 1998). From this problem, it is possible that L2 learners produce negative transfer or, furthermore, it may lead to pragmatic failure when they are actually communicating with native speakers or lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding (Gass and Selinker, 2008; Zhao and Throssell, 2011). When it leads to communication breakdown, then the purpose of communication cannot be achieved.

In general communication, most societies are well-aware of various utterances and purposes of a certain speech act, such as request, offer, and apology. Apology as a verbal language is one type of speech acts that are varied across cultures (Demeter, 2006), particularly it differs in certain way from Indonesian to English (Kadarisman, 2011). Despite the similarity of the forms and strategies across cultures (Olshtain and Cohen, 1990; Demeter, 2006), apologies come in various form, particularly when they are conveyed by learners from two different cultural backgrounds and holding two different powers. The way of conveying apology is certainly different for every nation, including situations that

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preceded it. For instance, when Japanese learners are given a gift, instead of expressing gratitude, they express apology because thank you does not sound sincere enough in Japanese (Richards & Sukwiwat, 1983 cited by Franch, 1998). Another example is Indonesian culture and context, in which apology goes into wider social domain. In ending a speech, Indonesian people tend to convey an apology, such as Should there be any mistakes, I apologize…. Certainly, when applied in English, this kind of apology is not appropriate as the convention in English never allows an apology to end public speech, hence it is culturally rejected (Kadarisman, 2011). Those are some of the examples of what may influence the L2 learners in conveying apologies. Other than that, power and severity of the offense, in particular, may also highly affect the conveyance of apology and the applied strategies of apology (Hou, 2006; Reiter, 2000, as cited by Wagner, 2004). Based on that particular background, this study attempts to identify the strategies of apologizing used by the Indonesian teachers of English related to the power of the speakers (P) and based on the rank of imposition (R)/severity of the offense. Distance (D) as another factor is held constant, as it is not a main topic for this study.

To date, there have been a number of researches investigating the

apologizing strategies in various contexts and settings (Hou, 2006; Aloia, 2009; Rasekh & Mardani, 2010, Ӧzyildirim, 2010). Nonetheless, the number of research on apologizing with Indonesian setting is still limited. Therefore, this study focuses on the strategies of apologizing in Indonesian setting, particularly in an English course. In addition to the primary subject of this study, the apologizing

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strategies are observed related to the power of the interlocutors and the severity of offense. The present study is expected to enlighten the language teaching professionals in building more awareness of pragmatic knowledge and pragmatic factors that their students possess, particularly regarding apology strategy.

1.

2 The Purpose of the Study

This study aims to identify on how Indonesian teachers convey their apologies in English based on given situations and severity of the offense, and find out whether power relation affects the strategies of conveying apologies.

1. 3 Research Questions

This study attempts to find out the way Indonesian EFL teachers convey their apologies in L2 and the strategies they apply based on given situations. This study also attempts to inquire whether power relation affects the utterance in the apologizing strategies.

The inquiry would be guided by the following questions:

1. What strategy do the Indonesian EFL teachers apply to express an apology in their L2?

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2. How do the Indonesian EFL teachers convey their apology in their L2 to the hearer with different levels of power and in different severity of offense?

1. 4 Limitation of the Study

This study focuses mainly on describing the strategies of apologizing to hearers with different powers applied by Indonesian EFL teachers based on given situations that illustrate the severity of offense and how power (P) of the interlocutors may relate to the strategies that the speakers use. Distance (D) as another primary factor in the utterance is not included in the topic of the research, therefore, distance in this study is held constant.

1. 5 Significance of the Study

This study very likely enriches the literature on viewing pragmatics as one of the major parts in second language learning. Furthermore, this study is expected to throw lights on pragmatic competence and its effect in L2 learning. Identifying the pragmatic factors of L2 learners may assist the L2 instructors in comprehending the variety and difficulty that L2 learners may face.

This study would also possibly contribute to the language teaching professionals in general, particularly in introducing other apology strategies and discovering the most appropriate way in teaching apology to the students, thus the students would apply the apology accordingly. Furthermore, language teaching professionals may view power relations as one of the possible features and

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influence in communication strategy, therefore, they may see it as one of many reasons in different strategies of apologizing.

The research site in this study is an English course and the participants are Indonesian EFL teachers. Therefore, this study may juxtapose the real-life case faced by EFL teachers in general, particularly in the case of pragmatics. The method in this study applied a Discourse Role-Play Task (DRPT) that has been modified in order to obtain more real-life data. Thus, the study may contribute some pragmatics perspectives to the language teaching professional that closely related to their teaching methods.

1. 6 Organization of the Paper

This research is organized into five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction to the paper. It discusses mainly about the background of the study and the purposes of the study. The second chapter provides clear theories and literatures that highly support the study and become the framework of it. The third chapter discusses the methodology applied for this study and the data that further analysed and interpreted into required result. The fourth chapter is an elaboration of findings and discussions of the result. Lastly, the fifth chapter concludes the overall writing of the paper and provides some contributing remarks as suggestions.

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CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH

Speech act studied in this research is apologizing. The data consists of speech act data obtained from non-native speakers by means of an elicitation method – Discourse Completion Test (DCT).

3. 1 Research Design

This study was conducted by using descriptive qualitative method. According to Miles & Huberman (1994), the well-collected qualitative data feature mainly on naturally occurring, ordinary events in natural settings, so that a strong handle on what “real life” is like can be obtained. Furthermore, Bodgan (1998, as cited in Riyani, 2010) explains that qualitative research is designed from designed from the process of finding social phenomena, discussing, analyzing which occurs naturally; it means the research is not done in laboratory and dealt with numbers or statistics as the tools in analyzing the data.

This study investigated the speech act of apologizing in a broader scope of pragmatic knowledge and it was unlikely to gather data in a natural and candid manner considering the large amount of time that had to be spent. Therefore, to collect the data, the DCT was used for this study, because it was considered as a

“highly effective means of instrumentation”. Zuskin (1993) explains that a DCT is

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problematic, contextually-specific prompts ( cited by Parvaresh & Tavakoli, 2009). Cited by Byon (2005), Lyuh (1992) describes that the use of DCT has more advantages than other interlanguage pragmatics research methodologies, such as natural observational data, and role play. The advantages are as follow: (1) it allows for large amounts of data to be collected in a relatively short period of time; (2) it is capable of revealing the normative or stereo-typical expressions of a certain speech act in a given language; (3) it provides information regarding the kinds of strategies that learners use to perform speech acts; (4) it identifies social variables that are sensitive to given speech act situations; and (5) it offers standardization of situations across cultures.

Nevertheless, DCT has been reported to have some drawbacks:

(1) learners’ DCT responses may differ from the naturally-occurring data in terms of the actual wording and the contents and frequency of the semantic formulae used; (2) DCT responses may not represent sophisticated interactional features, such as elaborated negotiation tokens and indirect exchanges, seen in everyday conversations (Rintell and Mitchell, 1989, cited in Byon, 2005); and (3) DCTs do not allow learners to remain silent, even in situations where they prefer to do so because in the DCT, learners are obliged to perform linguistically (Byon, 2005). However, to counter the drawbacks, the DCT for this study is modified as it will be discussed in instrumentation subject.

DCT has been widely applied for studies concerning pragmatic knowledge. It was initially used by Blum-Kulka (1982, cited by Parvaresh & Tavakoli, 2009) to investigate speech acts. In regards of apology studies,

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Blum-Kulka & Olshtain (1984) used a DCT in their study of Cross-Cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP). After the CCSARP project, the subsequent studies regarding apologies applied DCT as an instrument to collect the data (Mir, 1992; Rizk, 1997; Byon, 2005; Hou, 2006, Todey, 2011)

3.

2 Setting and

Participants

The participants of the study were Indonesian native speakers (I-NSs) Consisting of 3 participants (2 females and 1 male), aged between 27 to 34 years old. All of them were full-time English teachers at an English course in Tasikmalaya. They came from the same ethnicity background, i.e. Sundanese. They had same responsibilities in performing their job descriptions and spent the same amount of time in the work place. They had similar level of familiarity/distance (supposedly medium level) with their academic coordinator, among their peers, and one particular student, hence appointed as an informant. It was crucial to have this sort of similar level of distance to avoid any biases in analyzing the data, therefore, distance (D) was held constant as it was not part of a subject in the study.

The participants were faced with three informants. The first informant was a student who had been taught by all participants and she filled in as the hearer with low power (- power). The second informant was the participants’ colleague and filled in as the hearer with equal power (= power). Another informant was an academic coordinator, thus filled as the hearer with higher power (+ power).

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The research site took place in an English course that is well-known to the local people in Tasikmalaya. The teachers mainly use English, both written and oral, in formal and informal manner in the course environment. The course provides a training centre and held an English Proficiency Test (EPT) annually for the teachers to improve their skills and knowledge in teaching, and also to measure their proficiency in English, so that they would be aware of their level of proficiency. Nevertheless, the training centre and the EPT do not fully support the teachers in improving their English, particularly for their pragmatic knowledge. The course considers the policy of using English out of class sessions as a necessity for the teachers, because they deal with all English communication in almost every day of their work life. Therefore, it is a suitable research site for this study because of its well-rich English atmosphere.

3. 3 Instrumentation

The main instrumentation used for this study is a type of DCT, i.e. Discourse Role-Play Task (DRPT). According to Blum-Kulka (1982, cited by Parvaresh & Tavakoli, 2009), there are six types of DCT. They include:

(1) Written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT), (2) Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Task (MDCT), (3) Oral Discourse Completion Task (ODCT), (4) Discourse Role-Play Task, (5) Discourse Self-Assessment Task, (6) Role-Play Self-Assessment (RPSA).

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and asked the participants to play a particular role with another person in that

situation. However, in this study the DRPT was somewhat “modified” in order to

obtain more real-life data, so the results would be less artificial and the drawbacks of DCT, as mentioned previously, can be lessened. This study used participants and informants with real positions in their real jobs. For instance, the participant, as a real English teacher at the research site, was expected to apologize based on given situations to the hearer holding higher power who was a real academic coordinator, not playing a role as an academic coordinator. Thus, the utterance produced by informants, in particular, were quite different from one participant to another, however, they did not deviate from the provided situations. Observation

was also applied as an additional instrumentation during the “role-play”. Afterwards, the collected data was triangulated by using field notes to fill the gaps during data collection.

The following is a couple of samples of the DRPT used for this study:

Situation 7

To the informant: The teacher is late coming to the meeting. To the participant: You are late coming to the meeting.

Situation 5

To the informant: Your friend is teaching a class next door, but the class is too

noisy because of doing an activity and your class is disturbed by the noise.

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To the participant: You are teaching a class, but the class is too noisy because of

doing an activity and your friend’s class next door is disturbed by the noise.

3. 4 Data Collection

To gather the data, each participant was given some situations and played a role as a speaker who was expected to apologize to the interlocutors.

Each participant was accompanied by three interlocutors who held different powers: 1) low power (- power), i.e. student; 2) equal power (= power), i.e. peer; 3) high power (+ power), i.e. academic coordinator.

A controlled elicitation procedure was employed in order to obtain relevant data and avoid further bias. More importantly, the elicitation was also intended to find out the effect of the severity of offense in the apology utterance. The elicitation was used in forms of situations that were divided into three categories: (1) low severity of offense, e.g. coming late to the class, (2) medium severity of offense, e.g. forgetting to put important files in the appropriate place, (3) high severity of offense, e.g. damaged the speakers. For each interlocutor who held different power, the scenarios of the situations were adjusted accordingly, but still with similar levels of severity.

The situations were taken in the context of working or at working place, so both the participant and the interlocutor could be easily familiar with the situations as it may have (or already had) happened in their routines. The

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situations were firstly consulted in an informal interview with the academic coordinator in order to get assistance in setting the levels of severity of offense.

3.

5 Data Analysis

The data analysis went through some stages. First, the strategies of

apologizing were identified according to Olshtain and Cohen’s basic

classification, i.e.:

a. Expression of apology, in which the speaker uses a word, expression, or

sentence which contains a performative verb such as: “apologize,” “forgive,” “excuse,” “be sorry.” The strategy are divided into three sub-strategies: 1)

expression of regret (“I’m sorry”), 2) an offer of apology (“I apologize”), 3) a

request of forgiveness (“Forgive me”).

b. An explanation or account of the situation which indirectly caused the apologizer to commit the offense and which is used by the speaker as an

indirect speech act of apologizing (“The bus was late”).

c. Acknowledgement of responsibility, in which the offender recognizes his/her fault in causing the infraction. There are three scales of degree of such

recognition. The highest level of intensity is an acceptance of the blame (“It’s my fault”). At a somewhat lower level is an expression of self-deficiency (“I

was confused”), and lower than this strategy is recognizing the other person as deserving apology (“You are right”), and considered to be the lowest level is the expression of lack of intent (“I didn’t mean to”).

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d. An offer of repair, in which the apologizer makes a bid to carry out an action or provide payment for some kind of damage which caused by his/her infraction

(“I’ll pay for the broken vase”).

e. A promise of forbearance, in which the apologizer commits him/herself to not having the offense happen again (“I won’t do that again”).

Then, the data was calculated for each strategy to gain the sum total of apologizing strategies used by the participants. This number was a necessity to find out the most and the least frequently used strategy.

Afterwards, each strategy occurred from each situation was re-calculated and coded based on the apologizing strategy proposed by Olshtain and Cohen (1983). The sample of the strategy is as follow:

Situation 4:

 (This elicitation was given to the informant)Your friend is late coming to

brainstorming session. It is your time to present the material.

You: …..

Your friend: (Response)

 (This elicitation was given to the participant) You are late coming to brainstorming session. It is your friend’s time to present the material. Your friend: (Initial expression/statement)

You: …..

The apologizing strategies produced from the situation were then coded like the following sample:

Informant (I): “……Where have you been, Mrs.Hesti? You’re quite late. Now, I’ve

been presenting for 15 minutes.”

Participant (P): “Sorry, Mr.Ciptadi, I got a stomachache”

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From the sample, the code (1a) which meant the strategy of expression of regret and the code (2) which meant the strategy of explanation or account of the situation were both applied. The code (1a) was the expression of regret taken from a wider strategy of expression of an apology.

This analysis helped to identify the differences of apology strategies that applied on each situation and to the hearer holding different powers.

The following table describes further distribution of the contextual factors concerned in this study.

Table 3.1 The Distribution of Contextual Factors

Situation Brief Description Contextual Factors Concerned Severity of Power 1 Coming late to the class - - 2 Misspelling the word = - 3 Ignoring the question + - 4 Coming late to the presentation - = 5 Having a noisy class next door = = 6 Damaging speakers + = 7 Coming late to the meeting - + 8 Not re-ordering the test booklets = + 9 Not returning the test booklets + +

Note: Severity: - low/= medium/+ high (Adapted from: Shih,2006) Power : - low/= equal/+ high

Lastly, the data was further identified, analysed and interpreted to find out how the participants applied the apologizing strategy and to find out the difference(s) of the applied strategies regarding the power that the hearer held.

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The final chapter of this thesis provides a brief summary of the results of the study concerning the apologizing strategies used by Indonesian learners of English. This chapter also suggests some remarks for related studies in the future and for pedagogical perspectives.

5. 1 Conclusion

This thesis reported the results of a study of apologizing strategies by Indonesian EFL teachers at an English course in Tasikmalaya. The study attempted to find out how Indonesian EFL teachers convey their apologies in English based on given situations that represent the severity of offense in the situation, and identify whether power relations affect the utterance in the strategies of conveying apologies. The results of the study showed that Indonesian EFL teachers used expression of apology, expression of regret in particular, most frequently than other apologizing strategies. They also used some intensifiers inserted in the strategies to make the apology expression stronger. Other modifications were also applied in the strategies of apologizing which partially downgraded the apology expressions.

The Indonesian EFL teachers applied several strategies when apologizing to the hearer with low power, and expression of regret was the most frequently

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used. However, in terms of severity of the offense, the result of the study revealed some inconsistency. Thus, it is too early to directly assume that the more severe the offense, the more strategies and intensifiers applied. The learners also tended to set up a defensive statement prior to acknowledging the blame from their student ( - Power). It is also noteworthy that in terms of length of expression, the learners expressed the apology to their student in short and simple statements and conveyed it in casual manner.

To the hearer with equal power, the Indonesian EFL teachers did not use expression of regret as many as to the hearer with low power; instead, they used various strategies and inserted intensifiers and other modifications at times. In addition, their apology expressions tended to be more casual, considering the power status of the interlocutors, therefore, the length of expression was quite short and kept simple. Nevertheless, in terms of severity of the offense, there was a minor difference in the apologizing strategies that occurred in the form of length of expression and modifications. Despite the equal status of power, it may be assumed that the more severe the infraction, the longer the apology expression and modifications applied in the utterance.

The Indonesian EFL learners expressed very distinctive apologizing strategies to the hearer with high power. They used various strategies and applied some linguistic complexity, so that the apology expressions tended to be stronger and quite formal. They also applied more intensifiers and at times repeated the apology expressions, particularly at the end of conversations. Severity of the

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offense also played a significant role in determining the appropriate strategies and modifications.

5. 2 Suggestion

The study of apologizing strategy may involve many variables, including sociocultural factors. This study is limited to a descriptive study regarding the way of conveyance of apologizing strategies based on the severity of offense and the effect of power status of the interlocutors in the apologizing strategies. As such, it is highly recommended for further research to consider more variables that may put more influence in the strategy of apologizing, such as gender, ethnicity background, age, etc. In addition for further research, it is also recommended to explore the background of the utterance in the applied strategies of apologizing, therefore, the identification and the results of the research can be examined under scrutiny.

From pedagogical point of view, it is recommended that English is taught more comprehensively to the students. For instance, apologizing may be

introduced and taught thoroughly not simply just saying “sorry” or “I’m sorry.”

EFL teachers may introduce their students to all apologizing strategies in English related to appropriate situations. Those strategies can be applied in many forms, such as texts, listening, or perhaps a short-duration video. Either way, English teachers should enrich their students with all appropriate English apologizing strategies, thus the true function of the apology expressions can be achieved and applied accordingly. EFL teachers should also consider the pragmatic knowledge

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of their students. Different cultural background may result in different ways of uttering or applying the strategies, particularly in apologizing. Thus, it is wise for

the teachers to consider the “unexpected” utterance as a repercussion of

inadequate pragmatic knowledge from the student and more importantly, not to see it as a mistake.

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offense also played a significant role in determining the appropriate strategies and modifications.

5. 2 Suggestion

From pedagogical point of view, it is recommended that English is taught more comprehensively to the students. For instance, apologizing may be introduced and taught thoroughly not simply just saying “sorry” or “I’m sorry.”

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of their students. Different cultural background may result in different ways of uttering or applying the strategies, particularly in apologizing. Thus, it is wise for the teachers to consider the “unexpected” utterance as a repercussion of inadequate pragmatic knowledge from the student and more importantly, not to see it as a mistake.

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