Speech Act Of Apology In The Cross-Cultural Comparative Aspect

Abstract

This paper is focused on the topic of Apology Speech Act in different cultural contexts: English, French, and Russian. Apologies are not all the same within and across cultures and languages. Due to its frequent use, the speech act of apology has received much attention in intercultural pragmatic studies. This study aims to identify what strategies are used by speakers in the English, French, and Russian contexts to produce the speech act of apology. Data for the study were taken from fiction. In this paper, the following research methods are used: descriptive method, method of Pragma linguistic analysis, comparative method, survey, statistical method, method of continuous sampling. An apology as an expressive speech act aimed at achieving or restoring social harmony between the speaker and the addressee is realized in the context of a speech situation that has some specificities. In the implementation of the communicative intention of apology in a speech situation, among other components, there is always a harm factor, since it determines its occurrence in interpersonal communication. Apology can be linguistically realized with conventional language means, conventional speech means, and nonconventional speech means. The results of the study revealed that when apologizing speakers prefer “direct apology strategies” (conventional language and speech means) to “indirect apology strategies” (nonconventional speech means).