Apology strategies between social unequals in The Dream of the Red Chamber

This is a study of apology strategies deployed by social unequals in The Dream of the Red Chamber. It is found that, among the eleven instances of apologies collected from the novel, four variables together determine one’s choices of apology strategies, i.e. the social distance between the apologizer and the apologizee, their power relationship, the seriousness of the offence which leads to the apology, and the degree of the right the apologizer is assumed to have in apologizing. The lower-status apologizers typically adopted the self-degeneration and other-elevation strategies and spoke up to the higher-status victims, while the higher-status apologizers typically gave priority to protecting their own faces and spoke down to the lower-status victims in combining different strategies. The apologies from the lower-status servant apologizers were rarely accepted while those from the higher-status apologizers were often accepted on the spot. On the whole, the higher-status participants enjoyed more freedom in choosing which apology strategy to adopt than the lower-status participants.