| Summary: | 博士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 104 === ABSTRACT
In pragmatic studies, the speech act of apology has been much explored from different perspectives. However, when it comes to studies on the use of apology strategies, the recruited subjects are mostly students. Thus, to fill this gap, subjects in the present study are restaurant servers. It aimed to explore the respondents’ use of apology strategies and modality markers in the working setting and the effects of social factors on subjects’ use of apology strategies and modality markers.
The data were collected from two groups of subjects: British and Taiwanese, with 34 males and 34 females in each group. All of the 136 subjects, at the time of being recruited, were restaurant servers who had had working experience at restaurants more than 12 months. The research instrument was role-plays. The subjects orally responded to six scenarios with regard to service encounters. The scenarios were designed according to three social factors: social distance, social dominance, and gender difference. Quantitative analyses were conducted to examine the subjects’ realization patterns of the apology speech act.
Similarities and differences were found to exist between the two subject groups in their use of apology strategies and modality markers. The effects of the three social factors on the subjects’ employment of apology strategies and modality markers were also confirmed.
In the utilization of apology strategies, the British and Taiwanese subjects commonly used the highest numbers of offer of apology and offer of repair. While socializing with interlocutors with different social distances from them, the British and Taiwanese respondents commonly used the highest frequency of occurrence of offer of apology and offer of repair to high-distance interlocutors, offer of apology and account of the cause to medium-distance interlocutors, and offer of apology and offer of repair to low-distance interlocutors. While conversing with interactants with varying social dominance from them, the British and the Taiwanese subjects respectively, in their use of apology strategies, produced different numbers of items with significant differences. And such items were commonly used more to addressees with high social dominance from them. In their interaction with different genders of interactants, the British and Taiwanese subjects respectively used different numbers of apology strategies with significant differences, but the two groups of subjects commonly employed more offer of apology, self-blame, and admission of fact to their male interlocutors, and used more account of the cause to their female addressees.
In the overall use of modality markers, the British subjects used the highest frequency of occurrence of intensifiers and downtoners, whereas the Taiwanese group resorted to honorific address terms and intensifiers the most. While interacting with people with different social distances, be that high, medium, or low, the British respondents commonly used the highest numbers of intensifiers, whereas the Taiwanese subjects used the highest occurrences of honorific address terms to interlocutors with high and medium social distances from them, and the highest number of intensifiers to their low-distance interlocutors. Moreover, in their conversation with interactants with high or low social dominance from them, the British and the Taiwanese subjects respectively, in their use of modality markers, although produced different numbers of items with significant differences, all of which were commonly used more to interactants with high social dominance from them. In addition, in their service encounters with different genders of addressees, the British group only employed three items of modality markers with significant differences, of which, the female subjects used more honorific address terms to their male interlocutors, and more conditional if to their female interactants. As for the Taiwanese group, they produced eight items of modality markers with significant differences; the female and male subjects commonly used more politeness modals, hedges, downtoners, and emphatic do/does to their female interlocutors; the female subjects used more conditional if and politeness markers to their female addressees than to their male interactants.
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