A Pragmatic Study Of The Speech Act Of Apology In Friends

As one kind of speech acts, apologies have been drawing extensive attention from pragmatics and sociolinguistics. This thesis takes the speech act of apology in the first season of Friends as research target and conducts a pragmatic study. It analyzes the characteristics of the speech act of apology from its use frequency, distribution of apology strategies and responses to it, with the apology strategies based on the categorization in Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP) project. It classifies the offence types that elicit an apology, analyzes the underlying cultural causes of American apologies, explores the influence of socio-pragmatic factors upon apology strategies and summarizes pragmatic functions of apologies.The results of the study show that the frequency of apologies is pretty high in Friends,"Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices"(IFIDs) and"intensification"are two types of apology strategies which are used most frequently. The responses to apologies are full of sarcasm, which reflects the humor of Friends. The offences evoking an apology mainly include inconveniencing others, infringing personal space, wasting others'time, talking inappropriately, breaching social etiquette and damaging others'possessions. Individualism orientation in values, low context culture and parallel social construction are the main cultural causes that account for American apologies. There is limited correlation between the socio-pragmatic factors such as social distance, power and severity of the offence and the choice of apology strategies. The most important function of apology lies in rehabilitating the impaired interpersonal relationship and restoring the harmony between people. The significances and limitations of this study are pointed out and suggestions for pedagogy and future study on this topic are proposed in the last part of this thesis.