“Sorry for the Long Message”: A Discoursive Approach to Analysing Japanese Apologies in Online Settings

Conference: The Asian Conference on Language (ACL2022)
Title: “Sorry for the Long Message”: A Discoursive Approach to Analysing Japanese Apologies in Online Settings
Stream: Language and Communication
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Eugenia Diegoli, University of Bologna, Italy

Abstract:

This paper investigates the use of the Japanese apologetic devices gomen ‘sorry’, su(m)imasen ‘(I’m) sorry’, mōshiwake arimasen ‘I apologise’ and shitsurei shimasu ‘excuse me’ in a corpus collected from the Q&A website Yahoo! Chiebukuro. I focus on standard situations where such expressions are conventionalised (ritual) relative to the minimal context of the utterance (Terkourafi, 2012), as opposed to apologies closer to strategic politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Though there is no clear-cut distinction between ritual apologies that simply meet interactants’ expectations and marked expressions strategically manipulated by individuals, I will consider an expression to be conventionalised to achieve a particular illocutionary goal if it is used frequently enough in that context. Their identification is thus frequency-based: the more frequent expressions are (as observed within their surrounding co-text), the more conventionalised they are taken to be. Yahoo! Chiebukuro was chosen as data source because it provides a cluster of standard situations with explicit norms of behaviour users are expected to follow and where interactions are often predetermined. For example, I see how the set chōbun ‘long message’ + apology, which occurred 176 times in a set of 2160 examples (8.1%), was used almost exclusively at the beginning or at the end of the message, often preceding a direct request as in chōbun ni narimasu. Mōshiwake arimasen ga, yorosiku onegai itashimasu ‘it is a long message. I apologise, but please treat me favourably’. In this context, the apology expression is used in a ritual standard situation to indicate awareness of normative behaviour.

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