Sociopragmatic analysis on apology strategies used by Kevin Rudd in Political apology

ABSTRACT

Apology is speech act that is used to restore relationship between a speaker (S) and a hearer (H) after S has offended H intentionally or unintentionally. The topic of apology is important to investigate because apology often occurs in daily communication. It can maintain and restore the harmony between each other, especially in political context. It also strongly affects many people. With saying apology, it can change government policies. Because the apologizer shows his/her responsibility to acknowledgement, resolve and repair his/her mistakes. This research is conducted in order to find the apology strategies which including types and the social functions of apology used by Kevin Rudd which found in his political apology in the form of speech.

This research uses descriptive qualitative method because of some characteristics. First, the form of data is in the words, phrases, clauses and sentences of Kevin Rudd rather than number. Second, this research is concerned to characteristics of the qualitative research, which is human instrument: the researcher herself as the primary instrument for the gathering and analyzing of data. And the last, the researcher describes the data from the utterances which are spoken by Kevin Rudd. The researcher uses the theory of Trosborg and Norrick to analyze the data. The primary source of data of this research is Kevin Rudd utterances in speech of political apology which was searched in official sites http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Speech/2008/speech_0073.cfm.

In analyzing the data, the following activities were done. The data that contain of Kevin Rudd sentences are analyzed sentence by sentence. The obtained data are identified and classified into the parts of apology strategies and the social functions of apology. After that, the data are described and explained based on the type of apology strategies by using Trosborg’s theory and the social functions of apology by using Norrick’s theory to answer research problems. Then the data are presented descriptively to draw conclusion.

From this investigation, the researcher found five types of apology strategies which are used by Kevin Rudd in political apology. They are acknowledgement of responsibility, expression of apology, explanation or account, promise of forbearance and offer of repair. Furthermore, the researcher also found five social functions of apology; they are admitting responsibility for a state which affected someone in an adverse way (thereby implicating contrition), asking to be forgiven, showing good manners, assuaging the addressee’s wrath and getting off the hook.