APOLOGY AND IMAGE REPAIR STRATEGIES USED IN BALINESE LANGUAGE LETTER

Abstract

An apology is an action that people perform to express their regret for committing certain offenses or mistakes. To save the speaker’s face, the act of apology also usually occurs with some image repair strategies. However, different languages and cultures may have different rules for expressing an apology and image repair. How apology is performed linguistically in Balinese is specifically less studied. This study examines apology and image repair strategies used in an apology letter written in the Balinese language taken from a Rancage Award-winning novel” Sunari” written by I Ketut Rida. The data were analyzed qualitatively using the theory of apology and image repair strategies. The finding shows that no explicit illocutionary force indicating device (IFID) is used in making an apology. Instead, the writer employed indirect non-conventional and conventional strategies together with the image repair strategies of reducing the offensiveness of events and corrective action.