The genre of video apology in the context of contemporary ethics and politeness

The paper focuses on the description of the genre of video apology, its forms and linguistic features. This genre has taken shape over the last decade and functions in the sphere of networked public discourse characterized in the paper. The popularity of on-camera apologies is increasing and attracts the attention of specialists from different spheres. This necessitates a linguistic comprehension of video apologies viewed as a polycode genre. The material under analysis comprises more than 25 video clips posted online over the last 10 years. The paper describes the differences between interpersonal, public, and video apologies as well as general prerequisites of the latter related to the violation of ethical norms accepted in society and correlated norms of polite speech actions and behaviours. The features of the communicative situation of a video apology discussed in the paper include: different composition of participants, the variability of its components depending on the hosting platform, and long storage in the internet space. We distinguish two main forms of video apologies: monological and question-and-answer ones – and identify the most frequent speech clichés and strategies.

speech genres, video apologies, speech cliches, online publicity, polite communication, ethical norms