In this chapter, we will use our framework by focusingon a seemingly simple question, namely howexpressions – representing the lowest pragmatic unitof analysis – can indicate speech acts, and whatkind of L2 pragmatic issues arise from thisassignation. At this stage, we will make only asimple use of our speech act typology, in order togradually introduce the reader into the systemproposed in Chapter 3. That is, here we study howtwo particular Attitudinal speech acts – Request andApologise – are indicated by certain expressions inthe learners’ L1 and L2. However, even at this stagewe will make use of certain elements of the researchprocedure outlined in Figure 3.2, in that we willrely on multiple research methods, including acorpus-based contrastive analysis and thecontrastive use of DCTs.

Before venturing into the case study featured in thischapter, let us define expressions through whichspeech acts tend to be indicated acrosslinguacultures. In our framework, we call suchexpressions ‘ritual frame indicatingexpressions’ (henceforth RFIEs). Thisdesignation refers to the following: in everylanguage, certain expressions are popularlyassociated with speech acts. These expressions arealso normally associated with ‘politeness’, althoughthis latter association often fails to hold the testof real life, in that there are no inherently politeor impolite speech acts. Also, the popularassociation between expressions and speech actstends to be subject to linguacultural and contextualvariation, as this chapter will show. Thus, in orderto avoid claiming a direct link between theseexpressions and speech acts, we define them asexpressions that indicate rights and obligations instandard situations which can be recognised byeveryone (see House and Kádár, 2021a). Ininteractional ritual theory, such standardsituations with clear rights and obligations areritual, hence the name RFIE.