Abstract
Abstract In daily life, apology is a speech act we often use. For this, I attempt to explore and analyze the uses of apology in Mandarin Chinese in this study. Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) once mentioned the speech act of apology in their researches into speech acts. However, they didn’t offer any further analysis. Later, Jenny Thomas (1995) followed Searle’s model of the speech act of promise, and proposed the felicity conditions of apology. The analysis is shown as follows (1995: 99):Propositional act The speaker (S) expresses regret for a past act (A) of S.Preparatory condition S believes that A was not in the hearer’s (H) best interest.Sincerity condition S regrets A.Essential condition Counts as an apology for A.Then, Thomas took some examples to point out that these felicity conditions must be revised. However, after re-examining Thomas’ claim, we find that her revision may still be modified further. Besides, by observing the data collected from various origins, I intend to categorize the strategies of apology, and examine the combinations of apology strategies. Then, we find that the strategies of apology used by the speakers in Mandarin Chinese are quite various, and the combinations of apology strategies are also in very free order. On the other hand, Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) claimed that the performance of the speech act would be influenced by social factors. These social factors include ranks of imposition, relative power and social distance between participants. Therefore, in this thesis, I attempt to make use of Brown and Levinson’s social factors to explore the influence of the apologizer’s choice of strategies and the distribution of apology strategies. Then, we find that if the seriousness of offence is heavier or the power of the addressee is higher, the apologizer tends to use more formal and more elaborate combinations of strategies. On the contrary, the apologizer would be inclined to using more informal and simpler combinations if the severity of offence is lighter or the power of the addressee is lower. As for the intimacy between interlocutors, the result is shown that the speakers in Mandarin Chinese tend to use a single apologetic formula to the strangers, the more informal strategies to the intimates, and the more formal and more elaborate combinations to the friends. Finally, in this study, I intend to observe and analyze the three apologetic formulae most often used in Mandarin Chinese: duibuqi 對不起 “sorry”, baoqian 抱歉 “sorry” and buhaoyisi 不好意思 “excuse me”. Then, we find that their usages and distributions are overlapped very much, but there are still some differences among them. At the end of this thesis, I give a conclusion and offer some suggestions of the further studies.