Holmes, J. (1990). Apologies in New Zealand English. Language in Society, 19 (2), 155-99.

Examines the syntactic, semantic, and sociolinguistic features of a corpus of 183 apologies in New Zealand English, within the context of an interaction model with 2 intersecting dimensions, affective and referential meaning, attempting to relate the relative "weightiness" of the offense to features of the apology. (53 references) (Author/CB)