COMMUNICATIVE INTENTION IN APOLOGY SPEECH ACTS: A PRAGMATIC COMPARISON BASED ON TWO DRAMA SERIES IN AMERICAN ENGLISH AND BULGARIAN

Abstract

The paper presents a comparative analysis of apology communicative acts
observed in interaction and captured from two drama series, in American English and in
Bulgarian. The analysis further branches into examining the typology of apology
utterances in both languages, classifying them into direct/indirect, evasive and opting
out apologies while highlighting their pragmatic peculiarities. A focal point in the
research is the interpretation of communicative intention within each dataset and the
implications of apology utterances regarding specific conversational implicatures. The
study exceeds the conventional interpretations on the issue of implicature, offering a
modern approach on the matters of communicative interactions, as well as providing new
perspectives on the pragmatics of apology.