This study aims to discuss the speech acts of requesting and apologizing cross-culturally and cross-linguistically. At a more specific level, the study investigates the connection between politeness and indirectness. In the present study, multiple choice discourse completion tasks (MDCT) are used to collect data. MDCT is a method of data collection which provides fully comparable data in different languages, making it possible to draw conclusions about culture specific politeness norms. The data is based on requests elicited from Bosnian and Turkish university students. The study focuses on a qualitative analysis of data. However, a quantitative analysis is provided for cross-cultural comparison. Th
Keywords: apology, cross-cultural pragmatics, discourse strategy, politeness, request
