Instrument in This Study

Before the informants commenced with the situations in the questionnaire, all of them were asked to provide background information, which included age, education level, gender, etc.

Besides, in the case of native speakers of Chinese, background information also includes the length of learning English, the motivation to learn English, and the way and the average amount of exposure to English every day. In the case of EFL learners, background information also includes their English proficiency and their familiarity with and feelings toward American culture. And in the case of native speakers of English, it includes languages they know by level of competence and their familiarity with and feelings toward Chinese culture.

The questionnaire consists of 20 randomized situations eliciting apologies, and each situation presents a short description, specifying the setting such as the social distance between the interlocutors and their social status relative to each other. Something noteworthy is that in order to control the speakers’ educational background and age, all the informants selected for

the study are university students, and in order to obtain responses that are as natural as possible, all the situations designed in the study are events that were likely to take place in the university setting. Informants were asked to write down what they would say in each situation.

And they were also free to opt out (choose not to perform the speech act of apology) but had to write down the reasons why they chose to opt out.

The contextual factors concerned in this study cover almost every factor concerned in previous studies on interlanguage apology, including severity of offense, speaker gender, interlocutor gender, interlocutor’s social status and the social distance between the speaker and the interlocutor, and the distribution of the contextual factors is listed in Table 1.

Two categories were used to classify the data in terms of severity of offense: (1) ＋ severity (high severity), e.g. broke an expensive vase, damaged the car of a friend’s, and lost a friend’s wedding ring, etc. and (2) －severity (low severity), e.g. stepped on a lady’s foot, forgot a professor’s name, and hiccupped while talking to a friend, etc. Two categories were used to classify the data in terms of speaker/interlocutor gender (1) male speakers/interlocutors, and (2) female speakers/interlocutors. Three categories were used to classify the data in terms of interlocutor’s social status: (1) ＋status (high status): apologize to a person with higher status, such as professors and advisors, (2) ＝status (equal status): apologize to a person with equal status, such as friends and classmates, and (3) －status (low status): apologize to a person with lower social status, such as restaurant staff or waitresses, and store cashiers. And three categories were used to classify the data in terms of social distance: (1) ＋distance:

apologize to strangers, (2) ＝distance: apologize to acquaintances, and (3) －distance:

apologize to very close friends.

Table 1 The distribution of the contextual factors concerned in this study

You found that the file your advisor needed for an important conference had not been saved in the computer.

＋ M ＋

2 You accidentally took your advisor’s

book home. ─ M ＋

3 You broke your best friend’s mysterious

crystal ball. ＋ F ─

4 You knocked over your coffee and made

a lady’s coat stained. ＋ F ＋

5 You broke your classmate’s digital

camera. ＋ M ＝ ＝

6 You bumped into a man and you heard

something in his shopping bag crash. ＋ M ＋

7 You bumped into a lady. ＋ F ＋

8 You accidentally stepped on a lady’s foot. ─ F ＋

9 You forgot the name of your former high

school teacher. ─ F ＋

10 You lost your classmate’s wedding ring. ＋ F ＝ ＝

11 You damaged your best friend’s car. ＋ M ─

12 One of your best friends misunderstand

what you said to cheer her up ─ F ─

13 You hiccupped when talking to one of

your best friends ─ M ─

14 Your stomach rumbled in front of a UPS

deliveryman. ─ M ＋

15 You were 10-minute late for having lunch

with a friend. ─ M ＝ ＝

16 You break an antique vase in a restaurant. ＋ M ─ 17 You spilt hot chocolate on a waitress’

hand. ＋ F ─

18 You realized you were out of money

when you were going to pay for a pop. ─ M ─

19 You want to change your order. ─ F ─

20 You were 10-minute late for studying

together with a classmate. ─ F ＝ ＝

The following example is extracted from the questionnaire, and the situation in this example is constructed to elicit an apology for breaking a precious vase. From the answers to question (3) in each situation, we can tell whether informants consider it appropriate to apologize in the specific situation or not, and if they do, what apology strategies they will use in their apologizing.

Situation 16 “You are in a very famous restaurant filled with many antiques. While you are appreciating these antiques, you knock down one vase made in the Ming Dynasty and it breaks! A gentleman comes to see what has happened.”

(1) severity of the situation is ---［］1 ［］2［］3［］4 ［］5 (2) the possibility of you apologizing is ---［］1 ［］2［］3［］4 ［］5 (3) I would say:

(4) difficulty of the apology for me is ---［］1 ［］2［］3［］4 ［］5 (5) likelihood of the apology accepted is ---［］1 ［］2［］3［］4 ［］5

Furthermore, the questionnaire used for this study has three versions. One is presented in Chinese and is for NS-C to respond in Chinese, another is presented in English with Chinese translation of directions, questions, and descriptions of all situations and is for EFL to respond in English; the other is presented in English and is for NS-E. The appendix contains the sample questionnaire of each version. Furthermore, to eliminate the factor of participants’

fatigue when filling in the questionnaire, the sequence of situations was further reordered so that there are two forms of questionnaires for each version.