2016 年日本語教育国際研究大会口頭発表 2016 年 9 月 9 日（金）
A Cross-cultural Study of Apology Speech Act in Japanese and Indonesian
―Focus on the hearer’s speech act strategy―
Nuria Haristiani（Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia）
1. Introduction
1.1 Research Background
In everyday life, when someone does something unpleasant, in many occasions, the person will try to
fix or do a 'remedial work' (Goffman, 1971). To study about how ‘remedial work’ conducted in many
cultural backgrounds, apology (as one of the most studied 'remedial work' speech acts) has been conducted
in cross-cultural context. However, the study about apology speech act in previous studies mainly analyzed
only about the speakers speech acts and strategies. Further, there are still only a few research that studied
about the hearer’s speech acts as well as the study about the interaction between the speaker and the hearer
(Boyckman & Usami, 2005). Nevertheless, the apology speech act as a remedial work can be classified as
succeess or fail which is not only decided by the speaker’s speech act alone, but also is strongly influenced
by the speech act and the response from the hearer. Ootani (2008) stated that although the speaker felt that
he has done the most appropriate speech act of apology, the speech acts could not be decided whether
appropriate or not, as long as the response of the speakers has not been revealed. Furthermore, in the study
of speech act of apology, it is important to look at the speech act of hearer despite the studies that analyzed
for this topic is still very limited (Ohlstain 1989, Sugimoto, 1997, Kumagai 1993, Ootani 2008, etc.).
Based on this background, to investigate apology speech act deeper, the study should analize not only
the speech act of the person requesting forgiveness (speakers), but also the speech act of people who asked
for forgiveness (hearer). This study only focused on how hearer respond to the speaker in apology situation,
and also aimed to find similarities and differences in the speech act of apology from the side of the hearer
in Japanese and Indonesian.
1.2 Research into Apology in Japanese and Indonesian
The study on apology speech act in Japanese has been widely implemented. Kumatoridani (1993)
mentions, that the study of language behavior in Japanese apology can be divided into three: (1) An
analysis of the behavior of apology theoretically, (2) Research on the form of the language used when
apologizing, and (3) analysis of language behavior apologized in certain situations.
Based on the results of previous studies, character of Japanese language behavior in Japanese apology
mentioned is as follows: (a) Many use the expression of apology, (b) Not many use the strategy of
"explaining", (c) Changing the strategy used in the apology in accordance with relationship with the other
person, and (d) In ‘misunderstanding situation’, although the speakers actually innocent but there is a
tendency to admit the mistake they actually did not do (Abe 2006, Barnlund & Yoshioka 1990). The study
about the Japanese hearer strategy used in apology speech act conducted by Jung (2011), indicated that
Japanese hearers tend to do confirmation, requesting for improvement in the future from the speaker and
give critic more than Korean hearers did.
Meanwhile, there only few research on the speech act of the Indonesian apology that has been done.
Some researches on apology speech act of the Indonesian language has been conducted by Hashimoto et.al.
(1992) and Takadono (1999), which compared the speech act of apology in Japanese and Indonesian. The
studies stated that: (a) The apology strategies used by the Japanese and Indonesian is quite similar, and that
(2) Japanese and Indonesian speakers tend to change their strategy depending on the relationship with the
hearer. However, there is no research on the hearer strategy used in apology speech act in Indonesian yet.
2. Methods
Data collections in this study were divided into two steps; 1) Role play, and 2) Follow-up interview.
There are four situations that were appointed in the role play, which the partner (hearer) in all situations in
‘Close friend’. The situations used in this study are, 1) Could not return the debt of 500 yen (or 10.000
rupiah), and 2) Could not return the debt of 10.000 yen (or 100,000 rupiah); 3) Late to the appointment for
15 minutes, and 4) Late to the appointment for 1 hour. The research sample consisted of 10 pairs of
women and 10 male couple native speakers of Japanese (JNS), and 10 pair of female and 9 male couple
Indonesian native speakers (INS). Data collected from role play are 156 conversations, which transcripted
then classified into semantic formulas for further quantitative and qualitative analysis.
3. The Data Results and Discussion
3.1 The Data Results
From the data results, 7 strategies were used by hearer of both language native speakers. Those
strategies type and number is as shown in detail in table 1.
Table 1 Strategies used by JNS and INS Hearer in Apology Situations
JNS
INS
Concession
222
(35.1)
199
(26.6)
Explanation
50
(7.9)
97
(13.1)
Ask for information
61
(9.7)
118
(15.9)
Confirmation
87
(13.8)
45
(6.1)
Problem solving
86
(13.6)
86
(11.6)
Critic
44
(7.0)
107
(14.4)
Concern
52
(8.3)
56
(7.6)
Others
32
(5.1)
36
(4.9)
Total
634
100
736
100
(
) percentage (%) of strategy use
The total number of strategies used by the hearer during the entire conversation is 634 times in
Japanese, and 736 in Indonesian, which shows that Indonesian native speakers tend to use more strategies
(9.8 strategies used in one conversation in average) than Japanese native speakers (8 strategies used in one
conversation in average).
The strategies mostly used by JNS are “Concession (Jouho)” (35.1%) as the main strategy, then
“Confirmation (Kakunin)” (13.8%), and “Problem solving (Mondai kaiketsu e no genkyuu)” (13,6). INS
also use “Concessions (Jouho)” (26.8%) as the most used strategy, but then “Ask for information (Jouhou
youkyuu)” (15.9%), “Critic (Hinan)” (14.4%), “Explanation (Setsumei)” (13.1%), and lastly “Problem
solving (Mondai kaiketsu e no genkyuu)” (11.6%) as five most used strategies. The numbers of strategy
types used by INS (5 types) are more than that by JNS (3 types). This confirmed that the main strategies
used by JNS and INS tend to be different.
3.2 Discussion
From the data, it is shown that the strategies used by JNS and INS in apology speech act is
significantly different. JNS mainly uses “Concession”, and after that, with a essential number difference,
“Confirmation” and “Problem solving”. In other hands, INS uses five main strategies such as
“Concession”, and then with not so many number difference “Ask for information”, “Critic”,
“Explanation”, and “Problem solving”. From JNS hearer’s strategies used, the JNS hearer give priority to
forgive the speaker firstly, and then confirm about the conditions happened to the speaker. JNS hearer also
offers some ways to the speaker to redeem the mistakes in most condition. This shows the hearer’s attitude
of cooperation or effort to understand the condition of the speaker, than to judge them about the mistake.
On the other hands, although INS hearers also use “Concession” as the main strategy to indicate that he
accepted the speaker’s apology, but at the same time he also asked for more information why the situation
happened. Further, they sometimes also criticize the speaker, as well as asking about speaker’s
responsibility. Then, INS hearer is also explain his own situation, or his unpleasant situtation in order to
make the speakers understand how uncomfortable the situation is. Lastly, similar to JNS, INS hearer is
also offering some problem solving options to the speaker. From these facts, there is a tendency that JNS
hearers put the priority on understanding the speakers situation and perform cooperatively throughout the
conversation. Meanwhile, INS put the priority not only to be cooperative to the speaker, but also trying
hard to resolve the occurred problem to fix the situation, and performing progressive communicate
throughout the conversation.
The detailed contents of the “Concessions” strategy (that both JNS and INS has been frequently used)
are mostly delivered directly by saying that the hearer accepts the speaker’s apology. But other than that,
many contents also delivered indirectly. In Japanese, this indirect concession is shows by saying hearer’s
understanding feeling about the speaker’s condition. While in Indonesian, this shows by telling their
concern to the speaker.
The second most used strategy by JNS and also used frequently by INS is giving a problem solving
reference to the speaker. In the problem solving strategy, especially in Japanese, speaker has a tendency to
give compensation to redeem their mistake (such as offering lunch, buying something as a gift, etc.), and
almost of the JNS the hearer respond to that by accepting the compensation. Or, even if the speaker did not
offer compensation, many hearers asked the speaker for it, in which speakers agreed in general. On the
contrary, in Indonesian, hearer who asked for compensation is very little, and furthermore, even though the
speaker offers to give compensation to redeem their mistakes, they mostly reject the compensation and
choose to discuss and solve the problem. This tendency shows that in Japanese, giving compensation or
accepting the compensation could be seen as an effective strategy to resolve the problem and balancing the
situation on the apology speech act, while in Indonesian it could not work similarly. Results in this study
have the same indications with Barnlund & Yoshioka (1990) result, but shows different tendency from the
result from Ikeda (1993).
4. Conclusions
This study aimed to find out about how hearer respond to the speaker in apology situation, and also
aimed to find similarities and differences in the speech act of apology from the side of the hearer in
Japanese and Indonesian. The data collected through role play and interview. The results shows that the
hearer of both Japanese native speaker and Indonesian native speaker use 7 strategies in common. Further,
in Japanese there only 3 types of strategy mainly used, while in Indonesian 5 types of strategies mainly
used. From those results, it is shown that Japanese hearers tend to use more cooperative strategies and
shows much consideration to the speaker than Indonesian. While in Indonesian, other than showing the
concern for the speaker, they feel the necessity to solve the program more directly and exchange more
actively throughout the conversation.
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