Discourse in Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Research: A Case Study of War Crime Apologies

要旨

Chapter 13 provides a case study for cross-cultural discourse analysis, by studying war crime apologies performed by representatives of the Japanese and German states. The term ‘war crime Apologise’ (or simply ‘war apology’) refers to a public ritual speech centering on the speech act Apologise, realised by a ratified person (Goffman, 1967) – usually a representative of the state or a state minister – following crimes which were perpetrated during a wartime situation. War Apologise discourse represents a form of political rather than interpersonal Apologise, which can bring about reconciliation, but not necessarily so. Along with illustrating how the unit of discourse can be systematically compared across linguacultures, the chapter also illustrates that cross-cultural pragmatics provides a highly innovative way of engaging in the study of language and politics because it allows us to consider controversial and emotively loaded political phenomena, such as war crime apologies, from a non-ideologised angle.

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