The Speech Act of Apology
In the classification to speech acts, the speech act of apology is put under the expressive speech acts since it expresses the speaker’s feeling toward the hearer. It aims to make a match or an agreement between the offender who is the speaker and the offended who is the hearer. The illocutionary point of the speech act of apology is meant to communicate the psychological state that is identified in the sincerity condition about a state of affairs that is specified in the propositional content (Searle, 1975: 359).
In this regard, Holmes (1990:156) relates the speech act of apology to politeness and believes that it is principally the social act whose aim is to maintain good relations between participants. To apologize is to act politely, both in the vernacular sense and in the more technical sense of paying attention to the addressee s face needs.
Trosborg (1995, 373) states that apologies are actions performed to express the regret to somebody who has been offended. According to this, apologies restrict the speaker to give a support for the hearer. Mostly, the speech act of apology is done to alter a fault or a mistake. If a person has been hurt or offended in an action, so the hearer respected again and the speaker must humiliate him\herself to satisfy the hearer. The speaker ought to make the hearer that s\he is sorry for his\her action. We perform apology, when some social conventions are in the speech act that there are two participants in the speech act of apology (the apologizee and the apologizer). Besides, the person who caused the violation might not realize him\herself as a sinner , therefore, s\he might not feel the need to apologize.
Blum-Kulka et al (1993: 156-7) argue that an apology is basically as a speech act which is intended to supply the hearer who was offended. When the offender determines to perform the verbal apology, (s)he should be willing to humiliate him\herself to some extent and confess the guilt and the responsibility for the violation. Accordingly, an apology is a face saving act for the hearer and face threatening act for the speaker.
Felicity Conditions
For any speech act, the felicity conditions are necessary to the success of that speech act. Felicity Conditions represent the criteria which must be satisfied in order for a speech act to be successful. They represent expected or appropriate circumstances for the performance of a speech to be recognized as intended (Crystal, 2003: 427).
Owen (1983: 117-122) indentifies three conditions for speech act of apology the first of which is subdivided into three rules as follows:
Preparatory condition rule (1) The act A specified in the propositional content is an offence against the addressee H
rule (2) H would have preferred S’s not doing A to S’s doing A and S believes H would have preferred S’s not doing A to his doing A
rule (3) A does not benefit H and S believes A does not benefit H
Sincerity condition S regrets (is sorry for) having done A
Essential condition Counts as an expression of regret by S for having one A