A Cross-Cultural Study of Apologies in British English and Persian

Abstract

大部分多語言的跨文化抱歉表達研究，都是根據提析而得的語料庫；鮮少關注自然語料或考量社會上約定俗成的規範。本研究透過真實生活情境蒐得的自發性語料庫，調查英式英語及波斯語母語使用者抱歉策略的使用及導致抱歉產生的冒失。結果顯示兩語言使用者有差不多的抱歉策略，但卻有明顯不同的使用偏好。除此之外，兩語言對相同冒失類型所展現的抱歉以及相同冒失所引發的抱歉比例也不同。

Most cross-cultural apology studies have investigated apologies across different languages based on a corpus of elicited data. Rarely have apologies been examined in the natural data; nor have the social offenses that obligated these apologies been considered. This study investigated the use of apology strategies, and also the offenses that motivated apologies among native speakers of British English and Persian by analyzing a large corpus of naturally-occurring data collected from real-life situations. Results indicated that both English and Persian speakers used relatively the same set of apology strategies, yet with significantly different preferences. In addition, it was also found that the two groups did not make apologies to remedy the same offense types and even the same offenses obligated different apology rates.