Apologies as politeness strategies expressed by characters in “Revolutionary Road” Movie

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate kinds of offences that motivate the characters in the movie “Revolutionary Road” to deliver their apology and to describe the way the characters express their apologies. The study used Trosborg’s apology strategies and Holmes’ social dimensions of communication and kinds of offences finding, Hymes’ ethnography of communication with SPEAKING formula. The data of the research were taken from apology expressions employed in the movie entitled “Revolutionary Road”. The corpus included the sentences containing apology expressions following an offence, and other supporting expressions employed by the characters in the movie “Revolutionary Road”. The dialogues containing apology expressions and the types of offenses from the apology expressions were transcribed. The result showed that the kinds of offenses were infringement on space, infringement on talk, infringement on time, infringement on possession and social behavior offence. The characters in the movie “Revolutionary Road” expressed their apologies with the simple and complex form of apology strategies both directly and indirectly. They also delivered their apologies in high tone and low tone. They also showed nonverbal expressions in apologizing. The apology strategies were influenced by the degree of severity of the offence and the response given by the addressee. The employing of apology strategy in apologizing was influenced by the social distance, the formality of the situation, and the social status of the participants. It is implied that the speech act of apology in different contexts including movies should be regarded and considered by sociolinguistics.