Apologies in New Zealand English

TLDR

Apologies are primarily social acts conveying affective meaning and are analyzed within a model of interaction that distinguishes affective and referential dimensions. The study aims to relate the perceived weight of an offense, as defined by Brown and Levinson's politeness model, to the features of apology strategies used to address it. The authors analyze a corpus of 183 apologies, describing their syntactic, semantic, and sociolinguistic features and relating them to offense weight. The corpus shows that nearly all apologies are explicit, with exchanges equally split between single and combined strategies, and that while Brown and Levinson's model receives some support, Wolfson's bulge theory better explains many patterns, especially in friend relationships. Keywords: apologies, politeness, speech functions, New Zealand English, sociolinguistics, pragmatics.

Abstract

ABSTRACT The function of apologies is discussed within the context of a model of interaction with two intersecting dimensions – affective and referential meaning. Apologies are defined as primarily social acts conveying affective meaning. The syntactic, semantic, and sociolinguistic features of apologies are described, based on a corpus of 183 apologies. While apology exchanges divided equally between those which used a combination of strategies and those where a single strategy sufficed, almost all apology exchanges involved an explicit apology. An account is provided of the kinds of social relationships and the range of offenses which elicited apologies in this New Zealand corpus. Apologies are politeness strategies, and an attempt is made to relate the relative “weightiness” of the offense (assessed using the factors identified as significant in Brown and Levinson's model of politeness) to features of the apology strategies used to remedy it. Though some support is provided for Brown and Levinson's model, it is suggested that Wolf-son's “bulge” theory more adequately accounts for a number of patterns in the data. In particular, the functions of apologies between friends may be more complex than a simple linear model suggests. (Apologies, politeness, speech functions, New Zealand English, sociolinguistics, pragmatics)