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1. Introduction
Nowadays, there are a large number of studies on gender difference in language use, however, most of them are limited to western languages, with a few on localized apology performance in Chinese (Guo, 2010, p.177). Therefore, this study attempts to present the gender differences in the performance of apology speech act, especially differences in use of apology strategies between female and male college students.
2. Methodology
2.1 Data collection
This study is conducted on the basis of the corpus of 219 apology exchanges in spoken Chinese mandarin which are extracted from six Chinese TV series and two novels. The TV series and novels are chosen from those produced in recent years, all of which describe the life of college students. Since age and education are important sociolinguistic variables which have great effect on the language use, the data collected for this study are all produced by college students as a special social group in order to ensure the homogeneity.
The genre of the TV series and novels is strictly limited to those presenting normal life of college students, without those about horror, violence or gunfire. The plots and the interaction between characters are similar to what happens in real daily life. The conversation and language use is close to those in real life as well so that valid data can be ensured. TV series chosen in this study are listed as follows: At the End of College Life，Summer in Being, Red Apple Home, Dream of being a supper star, Smell of Sunshine, Peacock Blue; and two novels are To Our Past Youth, and A Gentleman’s Word. When watching TV series and reading novels on line, the author noted down the dialogues involving expressions of apology in Chinese in the Excel form prepared beforehand. However, in some cases, a direct strategy of apology (with words like “sorry”, “apologize”) does not appear, but other indirect strategies are used. This kind of conversation is also taken down in the Excel form since the author can clearly feel the regret either through his/her countenance or gesture. The Excel form contains 6 items: the name of the play, the time when the apology occurs, and the apologizer ,the apologizee, the context (why the apology is performed), the exact words that are uttered, and the response from the apologizee. Actually, this form indeed provides enough information for the author to examine every apology .
Most of the research into apologies is based on the data elicited through role-play or discourse completion test (DCT). It has been argued that “elicited data are valuable since they reveal the forms that natives and non-natives know, and show the range of strategies that the respondents think they would use in specific situations” (Mohammad
Nowadays, there are a large number of studies on gender difference in language use, however, most of them are limited to western languages, with a few on localized apology performance in Chinese (Guo, 2010, p.177). Therefore, this study attempts to present the gender differences in the performance of apology speech act, especially differences in use of apology strategies between female and male college students.
2. Methodology
2.1 Data collection
This study is conducted on the basis of the corpus of 219 apology exchanges in spoken Chinese mandarin which are extracted from six Chinese TV series and two novels. The TV series and novels are chosen from those produced in recent years, all of which describe the life of college students. Since age and education are important sociolinguistic variables which have great effect on the language use, the data collected for this study are all produced by college students as a special social group in order to ensure the homogeneity.
The genre of the TV series and novels is strictly limited to those presenting normal life of college students, without those about horror, violence or gunfire. The plots and the interaction between characters are similar to what happens in real daily life. The conversation and language use is close to those in real life as well so that valid data can be ensured. TV series chosen in this study are listed as follows: At the End of College Life，Summer in Being, Red Apple Home, Dream of being a supper star, Smell of Sunshine, Peacock Blue; and two novels are To Our Past Youth, and A Gentleman’s Word. When watching TV series and reading novels on line, the author noted down the dialogues involving expressions of apology in Chinese in the Excel form prepared beforehand. However, in some cases, a direct strategy of apology (with words like “sorry”, “apologize”) does not appear, but other indirect strategies are used. This kind of conversation is also taken down in the Excel form since the author can clearly feel the regret either through his/her countenance or gesture. The Excel form contains 6 items: the name of the play, the time when the apology occurs, and the apologizer ,the apologizee, the context (why the apology is performed), the exact words that are uttered, and the response from the apologizee. Actually, this form indeed provides enough information for the author to examine every apology .
Most of the research into apologies is based on the data elicited through role-play or discourse completion test (DCT). It has been argued that “elicited data are valuable since they reveal the forms that natives and non-natives know, and show the range of strategies that the respondents think they would use in specific situations” (Mohammad