E。 Goffman puts forward the “face” problem from the perspective of sociology。 He thinks that face-work is involved in communication between the people all the time。 Face-work is one of the principles of people’s standard of behavior and it has permeated in the communication。 What’s more, it reflects oneself and it is the pivot of happiness and sense of security。 Goffman thinks that explanation, request and apology are three ways to remedy face。 Explanation is to alleviate the offender’s sense of guilty。 The same part of apology and explanation is that they all belong to subsequent conduct。 Goffman also points that apology is also the way for people to express pity and apology can be pided into two parts, one is apology for formality and the other is apology for substance。 They are can be described as expressing the regret orally and compensating the material。 (Goffman 346-367)

P。 Brown and S。 Levinson agree with Goffman’s “face” concept and they pide it into positive face and negative face。 Positive face means the approval of other people, such as admission, sureness and appreciation。 Positive involves person’s right and it ‘s the normal principle that people should obey in communication。 It equals what Chinese said that give other a face in a way。 In communication, it is reflected in agreeing with others’ thoughts, supporting others’ viewpoints, having common sense with others and showing appreciation and compliment to others。 The discourse strategy it uses is listening to others’ talk and showing interesting to the topic, which is to show that we are the ingroup member and we have common sense。 Positive face is also called solidarity politeness face by some sociolinguists。 For sociolinguists, positive face means that both have reached a common view in many aspects。 (Jia 302-303)

     Negative, which is also called deference politeness, means the avoidance of imposition。 It emphasizes the personal aspects of communicator。 It stresses that the personal right at least not all constrained by the group they belong to and the values of the group。 What’s more, personal rights shouldn’t be attached to any people and shouldn’t be forced by others。 This independence often reflects that people have a certain extent of freedom and also respect the right of freedom of others’ activities。 The strategy the negative uses is speculating others’ needs and interests minimally, not attach own advice to others and give others enough choices to choose。 (Jia 302-303)

     According to the extent of the faces are threatened, P。 Brown and S。 Levinson can pide the polite language into the following five parts: bold on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record politeness, non-face threatening acts。 (Brown&Levinson 164-175)文献综述

     The English linguistic philosopher John Austin put forward the speech act theory in his famous work “How to Do Things with Words” firstly。 He is the earliest one who differentiated the three acts that happens in the people’s speaking。 The three acts are locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act。 Austin also mentioned the difference in the excuse, justify and apology in his other book “philosophical literature”。 He pointed out that excuse and justify belong to the explanation。 Explanation is the justify that offenders do for the indeterminism acts。 Excuse is the denial of the responsibility of their acts that the offenders do and its purpose is to get rid of others’ or opponent’s censure。 On the contrary, apology expresses the meaning that offenders admit their faults and take the responsibilities。 After the Austin, John Searle developed the twelve sides of the speech act on the Austin’s theoretical basis。 The most important sides of the twelve sides including illocutionary point, the suitable ways and the expressive mental state。 Searle pitching-in from this point and pided the speech act into five parts in detail: representatives, directives, commissives, expressive and declaratives。 What’s more, he classified the apology into the expressive speech act to show the speaker’s specific mentality towards the something’s state of development。(Austin 254-263)