THE WAY OF EXPRESSING SPEECH ETIQUETTE ACT OF "APOLOGY" IN MODERN ENGLISH COMPARED TO THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
Based on Speech Act Theory as integral part of Theory of Communication, the paper presents analysis of the speech act “apology” in modern English and Russian. The authors of the article make analysis of the principle of politeness and its maxims used in speech communication; give characteristics to an indirect statement and discuss the problem of the context as one of the main factors to determine the type of a statement. Speech act of apology and its varieties are analyzed within the frameworks of two theories: Theory of Speech Acts and Theory of Communication. The research material is based on novels and detective stories by modern Russian and American writers. The analysis results show that the number of speech acts of apology with direct illocutive force in English equals 56.3% of the general number of speech act of apology with the same meaning while the Russian language number in this case is only 25.8%. The number of constructions and their variants used to express an apology in the English language outnumbers those of Russian, with the ‘I am sorry’ pattern as the most frequently used one. Both Russian and English forms of apology can be expressed with transitive illocutive force, with 73% in the former and 40% in the latter language. It is worth mentioning that the functions of the speech acts are mostly the same in both languages: act of apology with the shade of regret, attracting attention, underlined politeness, etc. The Russian language forms of apology with transitive illocutive force of apology also have such shades as polite refusal, irony, clarification, and excuse. Both Russian and English speech acts of apology can be presented by unique means with basic illocutive force of apology, though this group is very small (1.2% of the whole number of examples selected). The speech etiquette act of apology analyzed in the article reflects national and cultural peculiarities of the American English and Russian speakers and therefore is to be further studied deeper within the theory of intercultural communication on the basis of mass media, questionnaires, talk - shows and movie series.