Forms of Politeness Within the Speech Act of Apologies Compared to the Parameter Gender in the English Language

Abstract

The question of politeness in language has been one of the most popular in linguistic studies since the second half of the twentieth century, and as such, has intrigued us to make a presentation of forms of politeness in the speech act of apologies within the English language system. Interesting and complex at the same time, primarily due to the interweaving of grammar, psychology and sociolinguistics, this problem proved to be a huge challenge, asking for both theoretical and discussions of the results obtained in practice. This paper presents the results of a case study conducted on the corpus obtained from a popular reality show in order to show whether the women, and to what extent, tend to use more tentative language forms within the speech act of apologies.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n13p199