Apology Behaviour: Methodology Chapter and Literature Review - Thesis Example

Both the context of an apology and the actual words spoken work together to make it an effective piece of communication, and so it is a topic best considered with a comprehensive method, such as discourse analysis, where all the relevant linguistic and social factors can be included. Within this broad area, there are three main theories that are relevant to apologies: interactional theory, e.g. Goffman (1967) politeness theory, e.g. Leech (1983), and speech act theory, e.g. Austin (1962). These authors examine a wide range of different speech acts but they will be examined here only with reference to their different approaches to the study of apologies.

This review will consider first the theoretical background of the apology (section 2.2) and then it will survey the very many empirical studies that have been conducted on apologies. The scope of the empirical section 2.3 is international and comparative, covering secondary literature written up to the mid-1990s. During this period there is a marked Anglo-centric focus on most of the research produced in this field. These empirical studies will be grouped in terms of their focus, namely culture (section 2.3.1), gender (section 2. 3. 2), or class (section 2.3.3 In some contexts such as workplace apologies this last variable may be presented as “power”.

Since the context of the present study is a single-sex educational organization, where the subject as are all peers, the detail of these studies will be only marginally relevant. They are included, however, to give an overview of the methods and the range of the literature, showing how the topic has been treated in different contexts. This will allow the best methods to be selected, with a good underpinning of past studies.After this general overview of the topic of apologies, section 2.

4 turns to the more specific area of apologies in an Arabic/English educational context. After this, the very latest publications which are relevant to an understanding of apologies in a specifically Arabic/English cross-cultural and educational context will be reviewed.