On Apologising in Negative and Positive Politeness Cultures

This book investigates how speakers of English, Polish and Russian deal with offensive situations in communication. It reveals culture-specific perceptions of what counts as an apology and what constitutes politeness. Departing from a careful reinterpretation of Brown and Levinson's theory, it argues against the correlation between indirectness and politeness. The analysis of face considerations involved in apologising shows that in contrast to disarming apologies, remedial apologies are mainly directed towards positive face needs, which are crucial for the restoration of social equilibrium and maintenance of relationships. English apologies are characterised by a relatively strong focus on both interlocutors' negative face, while Polish apologies display a particular concern for positive face. For Russian speakers, apologies involve a lower degree of face threat than they do in the other two languages.

ISBN 9027254354   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9789027254351 (What's this?)   Pages 291 Publisher John Benjamins Publishing Co   Published in Amsterdam Imprint John Benjamins Publishing Co   Series ISSN 0922-842 Format Hardback   Series title Pragmatics & Beyond S. Publication date 31 Oct 2009   Academic level Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY 306.44

		Abbreviations, figures, tables
		Preface
Ch. 1		Cross-cultural pragmatics
Ch. 2		The culture-specificity of politeness
Ch. 3		The speech act of apologising
Ch. 4		Literature review
Ch. 5		Methodological considerations
Ch. 6		Data collection
Ch. 7		Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices: IFIDs
Ch. 8		Accounts
Ch. 9		Positive politeness apology strategies
Ch. 10		On the culture-specificity of apologies
Ch. 11		Conclusion
		Appendices
		Notes
		References
		Index

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