Apologies are ubiquitous in contemporary societies, yet their meanings and functions are rarely straightforward. Online Apologies in Japanese provides a comprehensive account of how three Japanese expressions commonly considered apologetic (gomen, su(m)imasen and mshiwake arimasen) work in a data set collected from the Q&A website Yahoo! Chiebukuro. The focus is on three variables: their pragmatic functions, the discursive strategies they co-occur with, and the events and behaviours that warrant them.
Theoretically, this book introduces a combination of established and emerging approaches in the field of pragmatics. Methodologically, it brings together corpus linguistics and discourse analysis for the study of Japanese. En route, it contains numerous insights on the speech act of apology, (im)politeness and related areas in a non-Western context.
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
Abbreviations
Conventions
1 Introduction
1What is it to apologise?
2From form to function
3A brief introduction to pragmatics and discourse
4The choice of data
5Defining apology
6Morphosemantic features of Japanese apologetic IFIDs
7Why apologies in Japanese?
8Bringing together corpus linguistics and discourse studies
9The data source: Yahoo! Chiebukuro
10Research questions and aims
11Conclusions
2 Speech Acts, (Im)politeness and Norms
1From apologies to (im)politeness
2Operationalising politeness
3Operationalising impoliteness
4(Im)politeness as implicature
5Brown and Levinsons universals in language use
6Culturally determined (im)politeness
7The discursive approach to (im)politeness
8Conclusions
3 (Im)politeness in Computer-Mediated Discourse
1Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Discourse
2Expectations and norms in Computer-Mediated Discourse
3Deceptive genres
4Speech acts in online settings
5Conclusions
4 Methodological Approaches to Speech Acts in Online Setting
1A closer look at discourse and pragmatics
2Corpus linguistics
3Combining qualitative and quantitative analysis
4Other viable approaches
5Conclusions
5 Description of Corpus Construction and Annotation
1Corpus construction
2Corpus description
3Limitations to the corpus construction
4Pragmatic annotation of the corpus
5Limitations to the corpus annotation
6Conclusions
6 The Multifunctionality of Japanese Apology-like Expressions
1Im sorry, what?
2Pragmatic functions across the three IFIDs
3Comparison and visualisation of pragmatic functions
4Conclusions
7 The Apology Metadiscourse
1Why metadiscourse?
2Operationalising metadiscourse
3From metadiscourse to metacomments
4Other forms of reflexive awareness
5Drawbacks of metadiscourse
6Conclusions
8 Apology Strategies
1The steps required for a proper apology
2The coding scheme
3Results
4Discussion
5Conclusions
9 The Role of Intensification and Downgraders
1Intensification
2Downgraders of the apology
3Conclusions
10 What People are Apologising for
1Offence and morality
2Offence: a problematic notion
3Types of transgression
4Apologies and morality
5The apology tradeoff
6Conclusions
11 Conclusions
1Overview
2Findings
3General discussion
4Limitations
5Whats next?
6So what?
Appendix1: Concordance corpus
Appendix2: Additional figures
Bibliography
Index
Eugenia Diegoli, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the University of Bologna. In her work, she studies how the Japanese language is used and interpreted in online settings. She has published translations and many articles in the most important venues in her field.
