Towards a sociopragmatic characterization of apologies in Mexican Spanish

ABSTRACT

Traditional approaches to the treatment of apologies have analyzed

this function of language within the rigid confines of speech act theory.

Speech act theory maintains that verbal acts are structured and regulated by

such universal principles as cooperation, directness, politeness and face

(Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969;1975; Brown and Levinson, 1978 and Leech, 1983).

However, a large portion of this claim is based upon studies which have

targeted but one language: English. Studies of these types will allow one to

test the theoretical notion that all languages manifest the same primary

characteristics in terms of speech act realization.

The current undertaking focuses on one specific speech act: the act of

apologizing. I reject the position than an apology refers to the same social act

across all cultures and societies and argue that notions of offense, the

obligation to apologize and the means by which an apology is rendered are

not global in nature, but rather are socially and culturally defined. This

doctoral dissertation includes: 1) a review of the literature on apologies

within speech act theory, cross-cultural- interlanguage- and sociopragmatics,

focusing on the relationship between apologies and such previously noted

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universals as cooperation, directness, politeness and face; 2) a review of the

literature of recent investigations of apologies across many different

languages; 3) an original investigation into the perceived nature of apologies

within two speech communities (Cuernavaca, Mexico and Granada, Spain)

and 4) an in-depth analysis of a corpus of apologies collected from the speech

community of Cuernavaca using two approaches to data collection: a) written

questionnaires and b) ethnographic notebook recordings. I specifically isolate

the variable of gender and discuss the influence of this variable in

contributing to both the realization of an apology and the communicative

strategies used by males and females to perform this function of language.

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