Lingvocultural specifity of the speech act “etiquette apology” in the British communicative tradition

The article presents the results of the study of ethnopragmatic specifity of the speech act “Etiquette apology” in the British culture, which is a form of restoration of a social image of a person, as one of the dominant values of the British communicative tradition, who broke the norms of interpersonal relations; gives a description of a lingvocultural context (presupposition) referring to the described speech act based on the restoration of the conventions of interpersonal distance in order to maintain the social image of one of the speakers in the process of communication. Presupposition, activated under the influence of verbal and nonverbal speech acts of etiquette apology in the British lingvoculture, is seen as the situational-discursive environment that forms these extralinguistic circumstances, including personal space, social image and status of both partners who take part in the communication. These factors are the motivational background to refer to the speech act of the English etiquette apology; they determine the choice of verbal and non-verbal ways of using an apology within the boundaries of a separate communicative culture. It is shown that the speech act of the English etiquette apology is realized to demonstrate the respect of a social image of the speaker involved into communication when the norms of interpersonal space are broken. The comparison of methods of representation of English etiquette apology speech acts in the English original literature and its translation into Russian has been made, which helped to establish a relatively unequal ranking of apology speech acts in the described lingvocultures. The situations of interpersonal communication with the reference to the cases of intrusion into personal space have been investigated where the English etiquette apology, based on the norms of moral behaviour, is used with an intention to restore the harmony in relations and improve the social image of one of the speakers who broke the norms of morals.