This research is about the analysis of apology speech acts by collecting data through the method of verbal reports, based on a viewpoint that speech acts research should be conducted by the method that could explore the motive and the process of the s...
This research is about the analysis of apology speech acts by collecting data through the method of verbal reports, based on a viewpoint that speech acts research should be conducted by the method that could explore the motive and the process of the specific locutionary act.
The process and motive of the apology speech acts were explored through the verbal reports method that verbalize one's thoughts about utterence. The objectives of this research is to verify whether verbal reports is adequate method of speech acts research, by exploring the aspect of excuse strategy that is found in apology speech acts, finding how the motive for the excuse appears to be different between Japanese who learned Korean language and Korean native speakers, and defining the characteristics of apology speech acts that could be distinguished by verbal acts method.
Firstly, eight apology situations were selected, then correction of the contents was made to explore the different aspects of excuse strategies in order to let the subjects make excuse in each situation. Then, preliminary experiment was conducted to modify procedural issues and prepare for the outline of the analysis.
Total number of twelve subjects were selected, consisting of six Japanese who are learning Korean, and six Korean native speakers. The ages ranged from 25 to 35 and the gender of sex was all female. The level of Korean speaking skills for Japanese subjects were all high.
For the reliability and validity of the result, the triangular surveying method which uses multiple research methods was employed; think-aloud for each apology situation, verbal discourse completion, and retrospective reports.
The subjects were briefed about the general overview of this research, and prepped and trained for the think-aloud method before the actual experiment. In this research, for each apology situations, the subjects were allowed to think-aloudand verbally respond and the whole procedure was videotaped. After performing think-aloud and verbal reports, the subjects were exposed to their videotaped utterence and made to do retrospective reports to the researcher's questionnaire. Japanese subjects were allowed to speak Japanese if they wanted to except for the verbal apology response.
The collected verbal reports data were transferred, and these transferred verbal reports data , i.e. the protocol was analyzed based on the analysis module that was mentioned above.
As a result, Japanese subjects tended to apologize more under bigger pressure without making excuse due to feeling bad for the other person and responsibility whereas Korean subjects tended to explain about the situation in order to persuade other person, i.e. make excuse, instead of apologizing be it more burdened situation.
In the situation where the level of pressure was relatively small, both the Korean and Japanese subjects showed the tendency of making excuse, and the degree aroused the more the subjects were friendly with the opponent.
Also, in the excuse strategy aspect, it was notable for the Japanese subject that they apologized with no excuse when they were the staff position in customer and staff relationship. This originated from the Japanese way of thinking that 'customer is always right'.
Number of characteristics of apology speech acts as a way of verbal reports could be observed such as alternatives, planning, reason for not apologizing, knowledge in Korean language apology speech acts, educational backgrounds in Japan, transition to Japanese language. Through this research, we could verify that the procedure and motives of speech acts aspects could be drawn by verbal reports method that could not be done by traditional research methods which only focus on results.
This research is meaningful in a way that it is the first speech acts research that was conducted by verbal reports method, it explored the aspect of excuse strategy and its background by selecting Japanese who learned Korean language and Korean native speakers as subjects, it demonstrated that verbal reports method is effective and useful method in performing speech acts research, and lastly, this research result could contribute and be readily applied to Korean language speech acts research field.