“I’m Sorry” vs. “My Bad”: A Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Analysis of Apology Strategies in British and American English

The manner in which people apologize differs widely among different cultures because these differences stem from societal pragmatic standards. The research investigates pragmatic differences within British and American English speaking populations regarding their apology expressions through analysis of "I'm sorry" and "My bad." The research analyzes apology expressions through Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of Politeness and Leech’s (2014) Politeness principles within various social environments. A quantitative design was selected to gauge confirming 200 participants from Britain and America through questionnaire surveys with additional corpus investigation of 100,000-word British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English collections. The research used descriptive statistics analysis together with chi-square inferential tests and t-tests and corpus linguistic analysis to identify frequency counts and contextual patterns and perceptions of politeness. Research evidence shows British subjects prefer "I'm sorry" across all social circumstances yet American subjects prefer "My bad" when speaking informally. The research demonstrates how globalization together with media contact influences the development of apology methods. The educational system should establish a focus on developing multicultural pragmatic sensitivity for language learners. Future investigation needs to enlarge the current research by analyzing how geographical dialects influence apology expressions as well as studying the effects of digital communication on them.