The Contexts and Pragmatic Functions of Review Apology in Wole Soyinka’s Alapata Apata and Kongi’s Harvest

Abstract

Review apology is an apology type resulting from contemplation, re-consideration and self-realisation of a mistake or offence committed. Existing studies on apology largely focus on types and strategies of apology performance in natural discourses with scanty attention paid to apology resources in drama texts. This study is therefore designed to examine the contexts of review apologies in Wole Soyinka’s Alapata Apata and Kongi’s Harvest with the purpose of examining their context types and pragmatic functions. Jacob Mey’s Pragmatic acts theory is adopted as the framework and the descriptive design is used. Wole Soyinka was purposively selected because of his literary prowess while the texts were selected because of thematic relevance and prominent deployment of apologies in them. Cultural and cognitive contexts are identified within review apology in the data. But while it manifests within cultural context in the two texts, it features within cognitive context in only Alapata Apata. It is also discovered that review apology manifests within the contextual features of shared situational knowledge, reference, inference and metaphor and performs pragmatic functions of pleading, regretting and repairing. The study finally submits that review apology has implications for enhancing self-evaluation, engendering fault admittance and encouraging social harmony. It is finally recommended that apology should not just be taught as a pragmatic concept, but as a topic where all its aspects will be covered.