Abstract:
This study is a semantic and pragmatic analysis of the uses of three apology expressions in English: I’m/I am sorry, pardon me, and forgive me. Although English apologies have attracted considerable attention in the linguistic literature (e.g. Borkin and Reinhart 1978; Blum-Kulka and Olshtain 1984; Fatigante et al. 2016; Page 2014), no study has compared the meanings and uses of these three expressions. For example, Borkin and Reinhart compare only excuse me and I’m sorry. Blum-Kulka and Olshtain investigate strategies of apology in general, without a focus on similarities and differences across the three expressions studied here. In addition, Borkin and Reinhart appear to use constructed rather than naturally occurring examples as data, and Blum-Kulka and Olshtain elicited constructed apologies with a Discourse Completion Test. English as a Second/Foreign Language Learners notably have a difficult time distinguishing among the uses of these apology expressions, thus making desirable a more detailed description of their use.
Based on 100 examples of each expression from the online Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (Davies 2008-), and 100 examples of each expression in the online Corpus of American Soap Opera (CASO) (Davies 2011-) (total 600 tokens), I examine the ways these expressions are used for certain offenses such as interrupting and making requests such as clarification, recasting, and repetition. The functions of I’m/I am sorry are also distinguished in terms of whether its use in specific contexts represents a real apology or an expression of sympathy. In addition, the frequency of each expression within the 600 tokens sat from COCA and CASO, and the co-occurrence of each with common intensifiers such as so, very, and please are examined. Common collocations as well as adjuncts, or utterances that accompany each expression, are also considered. These data serve as the basis for constructing a Behavioral Profile (Gries 2010) of the expressions to distinguish them and show how they overlap under some conditions.
The study should be a useful resource for both teachers and students of English as a Second/Foreign Language.
