An Analysis of the Divergence of Apology in Online Game Setting based on Honor of King

Abstract

Apology manifests in various dimensions of social life and in sophisticate forms has partly contributed to its significance of research. Furthermore, technological affordance in current society has provided much more possibilities to apologetic behavior in terms of its realization through various expressions, which in essence is realized by an effort of dynamic adaptive process. It, therefore, has advanced new requirements for depiction comprehensive illustration of apologetic discourses, which should be a potential direction of further research. The present study sheds light on the apologetic behaviors in a unique but newly emerging environment of online game, Honor of King. The pieces of written discourses where an apologetic behavior occurred in this context is collected to form a corpus, which then was analyzed by virtue of relevant politeness and adaptability theory. A combination of both qualitative and quantitative analysis has led to the conclusion that due to technological affordance, apologetic behaviors in such an environment present a distinct landscape from offline one or even other types of online communication context. Moreover, it also finds further evidence to the claim that some disparities exist in terms of the apologetic pattern between the Chinese and the English. This, in the final analysis, demonstrates potential for more detailed illustration to a complete picture of apologetic behavior in modern society. Besides, it also lends more supports to the great significance of adaptability to dynamic context, where new possibilities and constraints are advanced by technological affordance.