Apologising in British English

The politeness norms of any society can be seen as the product of socio-economic factors and reflect not only the current social structures but also the historical circumstances out of which these norms have grown. This sociolinguistic study of apologies in the spoken part of the British National Corpus examines the use of the apology form in dialogues produced by over 1700 speakers, acting in a number of different conversational settings. The forms and functions of the apologies are examined an