The pragmatic strategies of apology in WeChat communication

Abstract

A personal private apology is an interpersonal social act in which the apologizer makes an explanation for the offense and repairs the relationship between the two parties on the social media—WeChat. It also involves the harmonious relationship management of the apologizing subject. This paper uses 65 private WeChat chats as a corpus to explore the discourse strategies in private apologies. It is found that personal private apology strategies include expressing apology, explaining reason, self-blaming, and caring for the offended, and less often used strategies such as offering repair, promising to avoid, showing measures done and expressing will. The distribution of strategies indicates that personal private apology is mainly aimed to maintain one’s positive image and reduce self-blame and secondly to repair the face and dignity of the hearer in order to finally dissolve the offending crisis event and repair the friendly interpersonal relationship between both parties. Individuals have the discursive sense to repair the harmonious relationship between the offender and the offended.