Apologies in Akan Discourse
What is it about?
Akan interlocutors employ mitigating strategies that pay attention to the face needs of addressees either by softening the locution of a possible face-threatening act inherent in a speaker's stretch of utterance, or by attempting to remedy an offense committed by the speaker or by someone whose actions for which the speaker accepts responsibility. Among the Akan, apology expressions may be complex (involving a combination of both explicitness and implicitness) or compound (involving a combination of two or more implicit strategies). From Akan apologies we learn that it is too simple to look at politeness just from the point of view of the interactants or from the point of view of only their immediate social group(s). A study of politeness should be ethnographically grounded to enable us have a proper understanding of the interactional behavior of discourse participants.
Why is it important?
Apologies can be performed by or on behalf of an offender. Apologizing for an offense does not necessarily therefore mean the apologizer is culpable for the offense. Knowledge of Akan apologies teach us that studies on politeness should grounded ethno-pragmatically.