Abstract
Apology has been an important topic in personal relationship studies over the past three decades. This study is based on Sugimoto’s empirically derived characterization of apology strategies and explores how Saudis of both genders and of different ages use apology strategies to demonstrate their politeness. The study’s three main objectives were to identify the most commonly employed apology strategies and to determine the significance of gender and of age on how people used apology strategies. Data collection relied on the Multiple Discourse Completion Task Questionnaire, which contains questions about different real-life scenarios and multiple answers that measure the use of apology strategies. It was distributed to 102 female and 93 male participants of different ages (between 18 and 50). The study established that the most used apology strategies are self-blame and then compensation, while the least used are blaming the victim and asking the victim not to be angry. The rest of the apology strategies occur at different frequencies. The study also found that women use apology strategies significantly more than men do. Women tend to use thanking, lack of intent, asking for forgiveness, and asking the victim not to be angry, whereas men use compensation, avoiding the victim, blaming the victim, promising not to repeat, and offending the victim more than women do. In addition, the study found significant differences in which apology strategies people of different ages used.
Introduction
Performing an apology is relevant to whether the speaker is the offender or the offended. By apologizing, the speaker recognizes that a violation of a social norm has occurred against the hearer and the speaker admits that they are somewhat involved in its cause. Thus, by nature, apologies are face-threatening acts to the speaker, but they save and support the face of the hearer (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984; Brown & Levinson, 1987).
Strategies for apologizing are also major communicative behaviors that ought to be investigated. Such strategies focus on fulfilling the “universal felicity conditions,” or “general mechanisms,” that are identical across various cultures (Flores-Salgado, 2011, p. 29). However, Searle (1969) and Leech (1983) argued that significant differences in apology strategies exist across cultures and that these differences can be shown through differences in verbalization and conceptualization. It is of value to explore this communicative behavior in a particular speech community in Saudi Arabia. In fact, studies of apology and gender may be influenced by culture (Bennet, 2008). Social variables, such as age and gender, may play a role in the use of apology strategies. As a social factor, age and gender contribute to the intensity of the apology. In particular, women are expected to be more polite and more apologetic and less critical than are men (Holmes, 1989; R. Lakoff, 1973; R. T. Lakoff & Bucholtz, 2004). When sociopragmatic studies began analyzing politeness in relation to apology speech acts, the studies attempted to understand the factors that lead to forms of politeness and how social variables, such as gender and age, affect the use of these forms. Researchers generally believed that people differed in their use of apology strategies given their social differences (Meier, 1998; Olshtain & Cohen, 1983; Trosborg, 1987).
Across the Arabic speaking communities, apology research has been conducted on different dialects (Al-Sallal & Ahmed, 2020; Bataineh & Bataineh, 2006; Harb, 2015; Jebahi, 2011). However, for Eastern Province Saudi speakers
Eastern Province in Saudi Arabia
The Eastern Province is the largest geographical region within Saudi Arabia; it encompasses a desert that extends from the shore of the Arabian Gulf to the Al-Dahna desert. This region comprises the cities of Dammam, where the Emirate of Eastern Province is located, Dhahran, Al-Khobar, Qatif, Hofuf, Mubarraz, Jubail, Al-Ayoun, Ras Tannurah, Al-Qateef, Jubail, Hafr Al-Batin, Al-Khafji, and Al-Na’iriyah as well as many small towns (Ministry of Interior, 2022). The history of human settlement, as well as commercial activities, in the eastern region dates back 5,000 years as confirmed by the archeological burials in the eastern region (Ministry of Interior, 2022). The dialect of this region is a Saudi Arabic dialect. Nevertheless, it is a dialect of Gulf Arabic as well the dialects spoken in the Gulf region include the dialects of the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the eastern region of Saudi Arabia (Holes, 1990; Johnstone, 1967) (Map 1).
Eastern Province in Saudi Arabia.
Although the dominant Arabic dialect used in the Eastern Province is Gulf Arabic, which is spoken exclusively in the Eastern Province, there are other people in the Eastern Province who use the Najdi, Hejazi, or Southwestern dialects because a large number of Saudis from other regions have come to work in the Eastern Province. Another dialect, called Dammami Arabic, is also spoken in the Eastern Province. Since the headquarters of Aramco lie in the Eastern Province, Dammami has a special feature that distinguishes it from other Saudi dialects: it contains more than 200 English words that are used in everyday speech. Thus, it is not odd for a Saudi who lives in the Eastern Region to say “I’m sorry” to apologize. Zughoul (1978, p. 214) emphasized that “the borrowing has been so extensive in some areas, especially the eastern province, that it is difficult to carry on a conversation with a Saudi Arab living in that area without hearing a couple of English words inserted here and there and given a touch of Arabic, the native language.”
Literature Review
Chamani (2014) conducted a study that examined the gender differences in apology strategies among Persian speakers. The study demonstrated the influence of social factors, including power and distance, rather than age and gender, on speakers’ choice of apology strategies. The researcher applied Olshtain and Cohen’s (1983) model to a sample of 500 apology exchanges that were collected from observations. The study revealed that Persian men apologized more to strangers than to women, while women only exchanged apologies with their friends. Gender was not a significant variable that affected the result. In fact, age, among other social variables, was an important variable given that young interlocutors apologized more often than older interlocutors.
On the other hand, there are some studies of Arabic speakers that consider the use of apology strategies by different genders and ages. Bataineh and Bataineh (2006), for example, studied the use of apology strategies among Jordanian ESL university students; the study considered gender as a vital variable. They used a 10-item questionnaire following Sugimoto’s (1997) strategy classifications. Their results revealed that women, more often than men, opted for primary strategies as well as non-apology strategies. For example, women were found to use statements of remorse more often than men did. Also, women were more likely to brush off incidents as unimportant and to avoid further discussion or the offended person, while men tended toward offending or blaming victims.
Al-Sallal and Ahmed’s (2020) study investigated the apology strategies that Jordanian Arabic speakers most often used; their study considered gender. The researchers used both quantitative and qualitative approaches to gather and analyze their data. The findings from 40 Jordanian (20 men and 20 women) participants revealed that both men and women used a variety of apology strategies, but there was no significant difference in terms of gender. Al-Harahsheh (2014) examined gender differences as well. The study analyzed 12 dialogs at Yarmouk University in Jordan. The length of each dialog was 30 min. After analyzing these conversations, the researchers concluded that both men and women tended to adopt different styles in their speech which contrasts with Al-Sallal and Ahmed’s (2020) findings. Women were more linguistically conservative than were men. In other words, women used more appropriate and polite expressions in their speech.
Researchers have investigated the apology strategies of Arabic speakers who live outside of the Middle East as well. Harb (2015) examined the role of gender in apology strategies used by Arabs (Jordanians, Saudis, and Egyptians) who reside in Britain. The study used a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), a questionnaire that consists of 10 situations that simulate real-life events. The results indicated that men and women’s apology strategies were more similar than they were different. Both males and females employed Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID) and Explanation strategies. Jebahi (2011) investigated apology strategies produced by university students in Tunisia. He adopted the DCT method to collect random responses from 100 undergraduate students. Power and distance were major variables that affected apologies. The findings of the study indicated that Tunisian university students dominantly used the statement of remorse (64.9%) strategy in three major scenarios. In two cases, the offended is a close friend or an older person; in the third, the offended party has authority over the offender. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of responses indicated a denial or shift in the responsibility of the respondents’ actions.
Studies of apology strategies among Saudis tend to focus on different contexts. Alrshoudi (2020), for example, recently explored how Qassimi speakers (n. 53) perform apology strategies. However, this study did not consider age and gender as variables. Following Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) taxonomy of apology strategies, Alrshoudi found that Qassimi speakers tended to employ a range of explicit and implicit apologies, such as IFID, taking responsibility of, and admitting responsibility for the offense. Offering repair and denying responsibility, however, were less likely to be used. These results are valuable as the study examined the use of apology strategies within a particular Saudi region. It would be valuable to uncover apology strategies that larger groups of people from other Saudi regions utilize; this is the goal of this paper.
Almegren (2018) and Alsulayyi (2016) investigated the strategies of apology that EFL students and teachers used. Almegren (2018) investigated the strategies of apology that male Saudi students (ages 20–25) commonly used. She also compared the frequency of these strategies to the language used in the questionnaire and distributed two DCT questionnaires in Arabic and in English at different times. Her findings revealed that the explicit apology “sorry” is the most commonly used strategy in both languages, while offering an explanation, promise for forbearance (which in this study stands for promise not to repeat), acknowledgment of responsibility, and offering of a repair were used infrequently. Alsulayyi (2016), on the other hand, looked at the apology strategies of Saudi Najrani EFL teachers. He studied whether gender influenced different strategies of apology: men used the IFID strategy and the upgrader strategy more frequently than their female counterparts did, whereas women more frequently used the downgrading responsibility strategy. While these two studies are valuable in explaining the pragmatic competence of second language learners and their performance of apology speech acts, the current study’s goal is to investigate how gender and age affect how Arabic speakers of the Eastern Province apologize.
Al-Laheebi and Ya’Allah (2014) also conducted a study of the apology strategies of undergraduate university students in five Saudi regions, but they did not consider gender. They categorized the apology strategies into two main types: universal and culturally bound strategies. Data were collected through observation and a DCT, which was written in Standard Arabic and contained 12 different situations. They found that participants did not tend to apologize outright and that Saudi speakers predominately shifted the responsibility away from themselves given that apologizing is a face-threatening act for the speaker.
A computer mediated communication study that explored the relation between politeness or solidarity was conducted in an academic context as well. Alqahtani (2021) examined emails written by female undergraduates to their instructors. The findings revealed that, in 200 emails, apologies were present in the openings of 34 emails and in the closings of 17 emails. Female students in English courses particularly tended to show politeness by apologizing for impinging on the instructor’s time, their non-attendance to class, and for late submissions. In a similar context, Hariri (2017) studied email exchanges based on the participants’ different genders and roles: apologies were rarely used (13.6%) and men apologized slightly more (14.3%) than women (12.9%).
Aims of the Current Study
No research currently examines the apology strategies of Arabic speakers in the Eastern Province on the basis of age and gender, so this study sheds light on their strategies and potential differences based on gender and age in the Eastern Province. To realize these aims, the study was guided by the following objectives:
(1) to examine the commonly used apology strategies among Arabic speakers in the Eastern Province.
(2) to examine the effect of gender on which apology strategies are used among Arabic speakers in the Eastern Province.
(3) to examine the effect of age on which apology strategies are used among Arabic speakers in the Eastern Province.
Methodology
In this quantitative study, the social factors of age and gender were considered independent variables, while apology strategies were examined as dependent variables. Descriptive analysis is used where results are a percentage. This provides statistics that specifically measure the frequency of each apology strategy on the basis of gender and age. Johnson (2013) described descriptive statistics as a “valuable set of simplifications that allow us to capture the essence of a dataset-and compare it to other datasets-using a few numbers” (p. 314).
This study examines apology strategies that are based on a questionnaire about real-life scenarios that was distributed among different groups of male and female speakers in the Eastern Province. This multiple discourse completion task (MDCT) questionnaire included two sections: (i) demographic information and (ii) a discourse task of 12 questions in which participants were asked to choose an apology strategy from three choices.
Unlike the previous studies on Saudi apology strategies, the current study involves participants from different social backgrounds. Of the 355 collected questionnaires, only 195 completed surveys were good enough for inclusion in the current study. Cleaning data was a necessary step to approximate the questionnaire’s responses and subsequently arrive at logical results. For instance, women responded at a higher rate than did men, and people in the youngest age group responded at a higher rate than did those in the older groups. Hence, it was best to approximate their numbers. Table 1 shows the number of the participants of each gender and in each age group Which are AG1 (18–28), AG2 (29–38), and AG3 (39–48).
The Number of the Participants of Each Group and Gender.
Most previous studies have depended on DCT for data collection. Yet, for the current study, a MDCT was more practical and efficient for eliciting the best results, in part because it does not require written responses from the participants. Loewen and Philp (2012) suggested that MDCTs provide the researcher with more control into the desired speech strategies. However, a drawback of the tool is that it might affect reliability given that it is an interventionist approach (Ahn, 2005; Loewen & Philp, 2012) and is less dynamic. Nonetheless, it remains a convenient tool in pragmatics studies for administering surveys in a short period of time and for analyzing language performance; also, it does not raise interrater reliability issues (Ahn, 2005).
In this paper, the analysis of apology strategies largely follows the classification of early pragmatists’ classifications (Fraser, 1981; Olshtain & Cohen, 1983; Trosborg, 1987). Since there is an overlap in their taxonomies, Sugimoto’s (1997) taxonomy of apology strategies was followed. Additionally, other strategies (i.e., strategies 7, 8, 9, and 10) were adopted on the basis of Bataineh and Bataineh’s (2006) research. The apology strategies investigated in this study are:
(1) Compensation occurs when the offender attempts to compensate the offended for a wrong by providing a new item or offering a sum of money. For instance, I spill your tea and buy another one for you.
(2) Avoiding the victim occurs when the offender escapes the offended in the hope that they forget about it or simply avoid confronting them. For instance, you avoid talking to the employees about the situation.
(3) Blaming the victim occurs when the offender directs blame onto the offended rather than accepting responsibility themselves. For instance, when one says “It is your fault that oil is on the table.”
(4) Self-blame, or “self-castigation” (Sugimoto, 1997), occurs when the offender criticizes themselves for their actions. For instance, when one says “This is my fault. I should have noticed.”
(5) Brushing off the incident as not important occurs when the offender tries to minimize the significance of the wrong. For instance, when one says “So, what! You can buy another one.”
(6) Thanking occurs when one apologizes for not being able to do something. For instance, “Thanks for the invitation but I cannot come.”
(7) Lack of intent occurs when the offender acknowledges full responsibility and says, for example, “I am sorry. I didn’t break it on purpose.”
(8) Promising not to repeat occurs when the offender promises not to repeat the harm they caused in the future. For instance, “I will not use the laptop again.”
(9) Asking for forgiveness occurs when the offender requests the offended to forgive them for the wrong. For instance, “Please, forgive me.”
(10) Offending the victim occurs when the offender attacks the offended by averting their attention from what has happened. For instance, “Don’t talk to me, we will set another appointment. This conversation is over.”
(11) Asking the victim not to be angry, which is derived from as expressing concern (Trosborg, 1987), occurs when the offender shows concern for the offended and attempts to calm them. For instance, “Please don’t be angry.”
Coding
Coding was important for tabulating each use of a strategy for each independent variable. Each multiple-choice option was grouped according to the 11 apology strategies. For example, “I did not mean to” was classified as the lack of intent strategy. Each strategy was given an abbreviation, for example, Strategy 1 (Compensation) was abbreviated as S1. The three age groups were labeled as Age Group 1 = AG1 (18–28), Age Group 2 = AG2 (29–38), and Age Group 3 = AG3 (39–48). Responses from women and men respondents were coded as W or M. Excel sheets calculated the use of each strategy properly. Pivot tables were used in the current data analysis to group the number of options that participants chose according to their gender and age. Ultimately, data from the pivot table were fed into tables to tabulate the frequency of each apology strategy. Prism was also used to test the significance and determine the results in figures. In order to test the second and third objectives, Chi-square and Friedman tests were used to find the significance of gender and age, respectively.
Results and Analysis
Data analysis accounts for 11 apology strategies that EPSSs used. The results were analyzed according to the study’s three objectives: (1) the commonly used apology strategies among EPSSs; (2) the effect of gender on how apology strategies are used by EPSSs; and (3) the effect of age on how apology strategies are used by EPSSs. Below are the results and analysis of the collected data.
The Commonly Used Apology Strategies in the Eastern Province
The most commonly used apology strategies among EPSSs are apparently shown in the results. See these apology strategies in descendent order in Table 2.
The Use of Apology Strategies Among EPSSs.
Table 2 shows that EPSSs used S4 (748 tokens) the most and S10 (21 tokens) the least. So, as will be discussed below, the most used strategy is self-blame and the lowest is offending the victim.
Gender Effect on the Use of Apology Strategies in the Eastern Province
The effect of gender was evident in the use of apology strategies among EPSSs; see Table 3. The difference between gender is significant given that a chi-square test indicated that p value is <.0001.
The Use of Apology Strategies Among Men and Women.
Note. S1 to S11 = the apology strategies from 1 to 11; WAG1 = women, age group1; WAG2 = women, age group 2; WAG3 = women, age group 3; WT = women total; MAG1 = men, age group 1; MAG2 = men, age group 2; MAG3 = men, age group 3; and MT = men total.
Effect of Age on the Use of Apology Strategies in the Eastern Province
Speakers’ age also affects which apology strategy is used by EPSSs. The Friedman test demonstrates that the difference is significant as the p value is <.0001. Table 4 shows the use of apology strategies given the age of the speakers.
The Total Use of Apology Strategies Among the Age Groups.
Note. S1 to S11 = the apology strategies from 1 to 11; AG1 = age group 1; AG2 = age group 2; and AG3 = age group 3.
Discussion
The findings indicate various assumptions about the use of apology strategies by the EPSSs. The occurrence of strategies varies among the different age groups and between men and women and will be discussed later in the paper.
The Most Used Apology Strategies of Speakers in the Eastern Province
The findings presented in Table 2 indicate three levels of frequency in which EPSSs use apology strategies. The most used strategies are self-blame (S4) and then compensation (S1). The strategies of lack of intent (S7), asking for forgiveness (S9), and thanking (S6) have a medium level of use. The least used strategies are offending the victim (S10), promising not to repeat (S8), avoiding the victim (S2), brushing off the incident as not important (S5), blaming the victim (S3), then asking the victim not to be angry (S11); see Figure 1.
Apology strategies used by Eastern Province speakers.
The results indicate that the EPSSs are ready to take the blame regardless of the cause of the event and that they will refrain from offending the victim. Although some of the results resemble those of Al-Laheebi and Ya’Allah (2014), Alsulayyi’s (2016), and Almegren (2018) in different Saudi Arabian regions, they are not similar to the results of Al-Laheebi and Ya’Allah (2014) and Alsulayyi’s (2016) findings about the types of apology strategy that were used. The participants in those studies either shifted or downgraded their responsibility. The participants in the current study, however, attempted to offer compensation, blamed themselves, or expressed their lack of intent, all of which indicates that they were assuming full responsibility for the offense.
It is notable that the literature on Saudis’ use of compensation has been found to be one of the most used apology strategies, while self-blame is used less, at least according to Alsulayyi’s (2016) findings. In the current study, both strategies rank second and first, respectively. However, the results are not similar to Al-Sallal and Ahmed’s (2020) Jordanian Arabic study in which the gender factor was an insignificant variable on speakers’ use of apology strategies. Moreover, compensation ranked as the third-most used apology strategy, while it ranks second in the current study. Additionally, Alsulayyi’s (2016) study participants rarely employed the self-blame and lack of intent strategies, though the current paper’s participants used these strategies frequently. The sampling and the questionnaire language might have affected the different findings. It is also worth noting that Alsulayyi’s (2016) attributes the participants’ reluctance to employ self-blame or lack of intent to Arabic cultural influences, which was similar to Bataineh and Bataineh’s (2006) suggestion. Nonetheless, EPSSs employed these strategies to varying degrees.
Figure 1 presents the variation of apology strategies used by EPSSs; the figure indicates that EPSSs are prone to taking rather than downgrading responsibility. The most used apology strategies are S1 and S4, and the second most used strategies are S6, S7, and S9. The other six strategies (S2, S3, S5, S8, S10, S11) are used to a lesser extent and this infrequency indicates EPSSs’ preference for confronting the offended with an apology rather than blaming and further offending the victim, minimizing the offense, or asking the offended not to be angry. This is similar to other findings reported by Jebahi (2011), who found that Tunisian speakers are less likely to blame the offended or brush off incidents as unimportant.
Gender Effects on the Use of Apology Strategies in Eastern Province Speakers
A chi-square test was used to identify whether the difference in how people of different genders used apology strategies is significant. The resulting p value is <.0001, so the difference is significant. Figure 2 shows that men use compensation (S1), avoiding the victim (S2), blaming the victim (S3), promising not to repeat (S8), and offending the victim (S10) more than women do; women are more likely to use thanking (S6), lack of intent (S7), asking for forgiveness (S9), and asking the victim not to be angry (S11). Women’s choice of apology strategies is relatively consistent with Alsulayyi’s (2016) findings. In his study, female EFL teachers did not attempt to engage in discussion about the offense with their victims. They used responsibility-downgrading apology strategies, while their male counterparts employed responsibility-upgrading apology strategies; a characteristic that was attributed to the women’s cultural background.
Apology strategies used by EPSSs of different genders.
Figure 2 shows that men and women are equally likely to use self-blame (S4) and brushing off the incident as not important (S5). Compensation (S1) seemed to be used more by men than women. Male speakers are more likely to employ the avoiding the victim (S2), blaming the victim (S3), and offending victim (S10) strategies; this result is similar to Al-Sallal and Ahmed (2020), who reported that male participants typically avoided apology and replaced it with an explanation or blamed the victims. These strategies reveal that men preferred to offend or evade the victims. So, the victim is left with offense or disregard. Nevertheless, men are more likely to use promising not to repeat (S8), which indicates an intended apology, and this finding does not corroborate Bataineh and Bataineh’s (2006) study but is similar to Alsulayyi’s (2016) findings.
Thanking (S6), lack of intent (S7), asking for forgiveness (9), and asking the victim not to be angry (S11) are strategies that women use more than men do. All of these strategies indicate appreciation, a careful attitude, and taking responsibility for the offense. This finding, in fact, is similar to Bataineh and Bataineh’s (2006, p. 2431). It implies that women tend to assign responsibility to themselves or others more than men do to ensure that the victim understands the situation for which women are apologizing.
Although both men and women tend to use the strategies that involve urgent settlement, men tend to use such strategies at a slightly higher rate than women do. In such strategies, the offender, according to Cohen and Olshtain (1981), attempts to repair damage that results from their actions. This repair can be literal in the form of monetary compensation to the victim when actual repair is impossible.
Age Effects on the Use of Apology Strategies in Eastern Province Speakers
The results show that the distinction between the use of apology strategies by speakers in different age groups is significant, as attested by the Friedman test. The p value is <.0001. Figure 3 reveals that Age Group 2 (AG2) employs the highest use of compensation (S1), avoiding victims (S2), blaming the victim (S3), self-blame (S4), brushing off the incident as not important (S5), thanking (S6), and asking for forgiveness (S9).
Apology strategies used by EPSSs of different age groups.
These strategies mostly carry a positive attitude toward the victim. For people in AG2, because they are mostly employers or employees, compensation is an easy tool for solving any conflict. On the other hand, people in this age group employing blaming the victim implies seriousness when it is necessary to do so. Furthermore, Age Group 3 (AG3) uses these strategies the least, except for compensation (S1), which they use more frequently than those in Age Group 1 (AG1) do. People in AG1 typically employ the strategies less than do AG2 but more than do AG3, with the exception of compensation (S1), which indicates that younger speakers most likely do not have the resources to compensate their victims.
Thus, both AG1 and AG3 exhibit similar linguistic behaviors, which parallels the classic age-grading pattern (see Holmes, 1992; Labov, 1994; Trudgill, 2000). This result is also relatively similar to those in Chamani’s (2014) study. He considered a classification of age groups that differs from the current study. For instance, speakers in his age grouping of 20 to 44 year-olds used apology strategies more frequently than those in other age groups. Interestingly, in the current study, speakers in AG2 (29–39 year-olds) apologized more than the younger and older age groups.
Conclusion
The study focused on age and gender differences in the use of apology strategies during contextual social interactions. A questionnaire that consisted of 12 questions was collected from 195 male and female participants of different ages. The data reveal that EPSSs use self-blame and then compensation most frequently; the least used apology strategies were blaming the victim and then asking the victim not to be angry. With respect to gender, the results indicate that women significantly use more apology strategies than do men. Moreover, the results indicate that young to middle-aged people 8 tended to use apology strategies more than people in the younger and older age groups. This indicates that EPSSs in this age group express politeness via the different apology strategies, which may have contributed to the findings of early studies regarding the linguistic behavior of people in young to middle-aged groups. It is recommended that more research be conducted in other regions of Saudi Arabia to better understand how apology strategies are used throughout Saudi Arabia.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.