Apology strategies on Kevin Rudd’ Forgotten Australian Speech

ABSTRACT

The apology strategies is a way to repair a condition from wrong to right. The apology from someone is not only by saying sorry to other people, offering compensation or admit the mistakes are also kinds of apology. This kind of strategy can be used in the form of daily conversation, speech, talk show even the movie. Therefore, Kevin Rudd’ Forgotten Australian speech used by researcher as an object of the study and the main focus of this study is the utterences containing Apology used by Kevin Rudd in his Forgotten Australian speech in Parliament House in Canberra.

To get the answer of the research questions, the researcher used the the theory formulated by Olshtain and Cohen (1981) about apology strategies. In doing this study, the researcher used the descriptive qualitative research to be applied on this study. The data were collected by taking all five types of apology strategies then drew the general conclusion based on theory and research findings.

The result of this study, the researcher found 30 data, which are divided into five types or categories. An expression of an apology (an expression of regret, an offer of apology, a request for forgiveness), an explanation or account of the situation, An acknowledgement of responsibility (accepting the blame, expressing self-deficiency, recognizing the other person as deserving apology, expressing lack of intent), an offer of repair and a promise of forbearance. All of the strategies are found in the data. However, not all sub-strategies are found in the data. The data ae taken from Kevin Rudd’s utterances in his Forgotten Australian speech.