Late Modern English Apology Instances in the COHA

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Late Modern English, language: English, abstract: This paper analyzes apologies in Late Modern English using the COHA corpus. The paper investigates patterns and functions of apology instances, shedding light on historical speech acts and power dynamics. The Late Modern English period is generally referred to as the period of prescriptivism. Therefore, one can assume that various conversational patterns and speech acts like apologies often were predefined by the royalty and upper classes and meant to fulfil a clear purpose. This purpose usually serves to maintain power structures and hierarchies in society. For example, if a person from the working class misbehaved towards a person from the upper class, oftentimes they were more pressured to apologise and clarify their intentions and willingness to redress their actions than vice versa because the worker was dependent upon the upper-class member as they received their loan from them.