A Pragmatic Study Of English Apologies In Netspeak

Apology, as one of the speech acts, its function and realization patterns have been the subject of extensive research in the fields of pragmatics and socio-linguistics. Meanwhile, as the Internet and computer online services further invade life over the world, more and more special words and new usage of them make their way into our dictionaries, netspeak will become increasingly prevalent in our written and spoken communication. This paper, therefore, focuses on investigating and analyzing the speech act of English apology in netspeak. The analysis of apology strategies follows the CCSARP (Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns) project. The findings indicate that most of the usage of apology in netspeak corresponds with the same set of routinized expressions and strategies as that in natural conversation. But there are still some differences; the analysis shows that speakers in online communication tend to choose the strategy patterns that are different from those in natural conversation, and since this pattern change has some advantages over the traditional one in natural conversation, this paper also makes a discussion of the possibility of the new usage being adopted in real conversation.The findings of this study indicate that on the one hand, the birth of new kinds of languages or new kinds of language varieties are closely related to the development of society, and such developments may be reflected by the evolvement of a language; on the other hand, if people adopt a correct attitude towards the new language or language variety, such variety of language will be conducive to the development of language.