“The apology seemed (in)sincere”: Variability in perceptions of (im)politeness Michael Haugh * , Wei-Lin Melody Chang School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland, Gordon Greenwood Building, Union Road, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Apology Perception Variability (im)politeness (Australian) English Experimental pragmatics Metapragmatics abstract It is widely acknowledged that perceptions of (im)politeness vary across different cultural groups. However, the emphasis on cross-cultural or cross-linguistic variation has resulted in individual variability in perceptions of (im)politeness being relatively neglected in (im) politeness research. In this paper, we move to examine more closely the extent to which the individual variability in evaluations of the relative (im)politeness of an apology that emerged amongst the twenty-five Australian in a previous study (Chang and Haugh 2011) could be attested across a larger sample of eighty respondents. Our analysis confirms that there is indeed significant variability in elicited perceptions of (im)politeness with respect to the apology in question, and that the rationales that individuals draw upon to warrant their classifications of (im)politeness also vary significantly. We argue that this kind of variability amongst individual speakers in their perceptions of (im)politeness of the same discourse event has significant implications for the way in which we go about studying and theorising (im)politeness. However, we caution that while further experimental studies are clearly needed in (im)politeness research, it is important that they be grounded in studies of contextualised, naturally occurring discourse rather than being based on con- structed or decontextualised instances of language use. © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction It has long been accepted that (im)politeness does not inhere in particular (linguistic) forms or strategies (Fraser and Nolen, 1981; Eelen, 2001; Mills, 2003; Watts, 2003). For the most part it is assumed that particular forms and strategies engender different evaluations of (im)politeness depending on the context, including the persons involved. While there are important differences depending on the theoretical apparatus being employed by the analyst, work in the field of (im) politeness research has been largely dominated by attempts to trace those differences to particular social, cultural or discursive parameters. These range from studies that highlight cross-cultural differences in how particular forms and stra- tegies are evaluated vis- a-vis (im)politeness, to studies that trace them to particular sociological variables, such as gender, age, region and so on, through to studies that locate differences in particular communities of practice or genres. 1 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: michael.haugh@uq.edu.au (M. Haugh), melody.chang@uq.edu.au (W.-L. Melody Chang). 1 See chapters in Part III of Culpeper et al. (2017) for useful summaries of variation in (im)politeness between different social groups and in different contexts. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Pragmatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.11.022 0378-2166/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Journal of Pragmatics xxx (xxxx) xxx Please cite this article as: Haugh, M., Melody Chang, W.-L., “The apology seemed (in)sincere”: Variability in perceptions of (im) politeness, Journal of Pragmatics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.11.022