An Analysis Of Apologies In American Sitcom The BIG Bang Theory From The Perspective Of Politeness Principle

An apology is a speech act that frequently occurs in our daily life. Study on apology can help people clear up misunderstandings and make our communication proceed smoothly. Nowadays, all kinds of English movies and TV series have become the primary way for Chinese English learners to know native English speaker’s communication habits. This research analyzes apologies in American situation comedy The Big Bang Theory from the perspective of Politeness Principle, and explores why different apologies have different effects in restoring people’s relationship. This study is based on a corpus of 17 apology dialogues that randomly selected from The Big Bang Theory, and qualitative analysis of these apology dialogues from the perspective of Politeness Principle and its six maxims is applied to achieve the research objectives.Based on an intensive study of apology dialogues, this thesis draws the following conclusions:(1) when people make apologies, they may follow or break the Politeness Principle, and their choices have great impact on apologies’ effects. Therefore, applying the Politeness Principle to the study of apologies could deepen our understanding about the speech act of apology.(2) In order to make apologies more effective in repairing people’s relationship, we should follow the Politeness Principle and its maxims and try to avoid the behaviors that violate the Politeness Principle and its six maxims. Otherwise, our apologies will be useless and even can make things worse.(3) All the maxims of Politeness Principle can not exist independently and they usually work together to affect the apology’s effect in restoring people’s relationship.(4) The apologies must be sincere and honest, and it is the precondition for people to repair their relationship. In the end, this thesis puts forward some suggestions for oral English teaching. That is, in oral English classrooms, students learn some theories of Pragmatics, such as Politeness Principle can be helpful in their communication. Meanwhile, English movies and TV series can be used as input materials to improve students’ oral English.