Eva Ogiermann's comparison of apologizing between Polish and Russian cultures and English culture is motivated by the criticism directed at the cultural bias and presupposition of homogeneity inherent in Brown & Levinson's characterization of politeness strategies (Politeness: Some universals in language usage, Cambridge University Press, 1987). In this work of eleven chapters plus a preface, Ogiermann reveals culture-specific perceptions of apologizing and politeness and, more importantly, challenges the claim that there is a correlation between indirectness and politeness. This claim is underlined in the framework of Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness, which she adapts as the basis for her cross-cultural efforts.
After presenting an overview of her work in the preface, in Ch. 1, “Cross-cultural pragmatics,” Ogiermann assesses Brown and Levinson's theory as her theoretical basis in light of its problems and alternatives, contrasting it with postmodern politeness theories and cross-cultural politeness research. In Ch. 2, “The culture-specificity of politeness,” drawing on Geert Hofstede's dimensions of cross-cultural comparison (Culture's consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations, Sage Publications, 2001), the author introduces a new perspective on the variables of social power and distance while integrating cultural values underlying the Slavic cognition of politeness behavior into Brown and Levinson's universal framework. In Ch. 3, “The speech act of apologizing,” Ogiermann argues that apologies motivated by the interlocutors' face needs are culture-specific. Contrary to Brown and Levinson's classification of apologies as negative politeness devices, Ogiermann proposes remedial apologies as positive politeness strategies. In Ch. 4, “Literature review,” the author shows the value of cross-cultural studies of apologies by contrasting English with Polish and Russian.
In Ch. 5, “Methodological considerations,” Ogiermann explains the data collection method used in this volume and shows the advantages of the discourse completion test (DCT) in cross-cultural comparison, arguing that the DCT is indispensable the collection of corpora and cross-language research. The author describes the design of the DCT in Ch. 6, “Data collection,” dealing with five aspects: scenarios, social variables, translating, testing, and population description and category considerations. In Ch. 7, “Illocutionary force indicating devices” (IFIDs) are established for the three languages and classified according to the illocutionary forces they indicate. By analyzing the cultural implications underlying apologizing preferences and syntactic frames, Ogiermann finds that the use of IFIDs is affected by conventionalized apology formulae, which are culture-specific. In Ch. 8, “Accounts,” the author proposes a new classificatory scheme for apologies that not only depicts a continuum stretching from acceptance to denial of responsibility, but also takes both speakers' and hearers' positive and negative face into consideration, in contrast to previous schemes from pragmatics and sociology that only discuss the role of responsibility acceptance from the speakers' side. She finds that the role of responsibility acceptance is context-, language-, and culture-specific.
After providing a detailed discussion of positive politeness apology strategies, in Ch. 9, “Positive politeness apology strategies,” Ogiermann searches for culture-specific features of apologizing and politeness in general under Brown and Levinson's and Hofstede's frameworks, according to preferences for positive and negative politeness and the impact of contextual variables on strategy choice. In Ch.10m, “On the culture-specificity of apologies,” the author first discusses the influence that social variables have on apology strategy choice under Hofstede's cultural comparison theory and Brown and Levinson's weightiness formula, then looks at the formulation of culture-specific apologies strategies and classifies them into positive and negative politeness strategies according to the degree of interlocutors' involvement and avoidance. In Ch. 11, Ogiermann concludes that her analysis of apology across cultures reveals culture-specific perceptions and argues against the correlation between indirectness and politeness proposed in the framework of Brown and Levinson's theory.
