Apology Essay

1We employ different speech acts (viz. greeting, apology, request, complaint, invitation, compliment, and refusal) in our daily communication and most of the situations. Among the speech acts we utilize, apology is one of the most frequently employed speech acts. An apology is defined as “a speech act which is intended to provide support for the hearer who was actually or potentially malaffected by a violation” (Olshtain,1989:156–157). AB
Some speech acts are face threatening acts (FTAs) because they are threats to the face of a speaker or hearer or impose constraints on the speaker’s or hearer’s freedom of action. D An apology is a face-saving act for the hearer and a face-threatening act for the speaker because he/she is inclined to humble him-/herself and admit responsibility. AB Edmondson, House, Kasper, and Stemmer (1984: 121) perceive apology as an

These strategies minimize the degree of offence to the offended and establish rapport between the parties. Different scholars have proposed different apology strategy classifications which often overlap.
G Trosborg (1987: 150-152) presents the following strategies:
1. minimizing the degree of offense either by insisting that the alleged injury is not very serious, or by discussion preconditions of the complaint. Finally, the offender may blame someone else for the offense;
2. acknowledgment of responsibility in which the offender accepts responsibility implicitly or explicitly with different levels of self-blame in ascending order of the degree with which the offender accepts the blame: implicit acknowledgment; explicit acknowledgment; expression of lack of intent; expression of self-deficiency; expression of embarrassment; and explicit acceptance of the blame;
3. explanation or account by the offender to alleviate his/her guilt by giving an implicit or explicit explanation or account of the