Most of the ways we apologize in English are pretty insincere if you really look at them:
1. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
2. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
3. “I can’t express how sorry I am.”
4. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
5. “Will you forgive me?”
1. I refuse to commit to the fault of my action.
2. Your faulty perception is the source of your sorrow.
3. I’m not going to apologize because it is hard.
4. I’m clearly not thinking hard about this because I’m quoting a saying [“oh my God”]
5. I’m only saying this because I expect you to get over it [it’s a meaningless ritual].
My question: does this mean we should start apologizing more actively [“I’m sorry for what I did. It was bad because…”] or is the entire premise of an apology un-fixable? Is an apology some kind of Catholic confession, where if you say what you did and then add the magic words [“I’m sorry”] the guilt and drama will just go away? [Which means that an apology will always be ritualistic and goal-oriented].
Perhaps we should re-orient to a new model of accountability, free of “I’m sorry” and “it’s okay,” where we try to figure out the effects our actions have had on others and try to understand why we did not predict or consider them originally.
8 comments:
Here's the book I was talking about earlier. Nick Smith's "I was Wrong"
I'm sorry that I haven't read Prof. Smith's book.
Does it at all happen to mention that maybe the issue is that these phrases hardly have meaning until they are analyzed at a pragmatic level and trying to parse them below that is almost useless?
ha ha.
oh words. I agree with you, Justin. It might indeed be pretty useless to speak about what things mean in any general sense.
Well, I just mean in this case, really. I'm certainly not going to object to analyzing language in general.
But specific to this. While there are certainly times where you might use one of these phrases in a way that fits with the basic semantic meaning of it--for example when you are strategically trying to manage a non-apology--most of the time I'd probably just think of them as being sort of idiomatic?
So, I suppose that it is formal in a way, but I'm not sure that's quite the same as what you'd call ritualistic. And as far as goal oriented? ...
Well, anyway.
Sorry to have to come out and say this, Justin, but you're wrong in your first comment. The intro to Smith's book parses why, at any level, examples like the ones Storm wrote are unacceptable. For the reasons Storm described (primarily because any of the hedging used destroys even the ritualistic aspect of a "true" apology), plus all of those legal entendres someone like Nicky can pull off with his I-was-a-NY-lawyer thing.
-Drunk
Oh, don't worry. I didn't actually think Nick Smith would agree with my ideas on it. Honestly, my assumption would be that his thoughts went more along with what 'Storm' here posted.
I just think he's wrong.
Not to say that some of these phrases aren't utterly useless (#2 is more or less code for bullshit), but I really think most of the time when these phrases are being used both parties understand it to mean the same thing as it would mean if it were actively phrased. Party A admits wrong doing and asks understanding of Party B. I don't think there is any significant difference in this whether Party A is saying "I'm sorry that X" vs. "I'm sorry for X" during most uses. The fact that they could be understood differently does not mean that they generally are.
I hate to say this, but i think you and I would agree more than you think. I'm not nit-picking over words. As I wrote in the original post, I totally agree with you that apologies are idiomatic short-hand. That's the whole point.
That's also the reason i think we should be wary about using them quickly (without questioning why we want to use short-hand instead of long-hand in the first place). It's like buying the hallmark card with the apology already written in it (a personal favorite of mine).
peace.
I'm absolutely sure we would.
I mean I certainly agree with you that anytime you try to shorthand anything you run the risk of speaking hollow words.
But using that idiomatic shorthand, as far as I can tell, does not necessarily imply thoughtlessness. And using a longer more active looking phrase does not imply thoughtfulness. Any speech act could be hollow parroting.
And in addition.
To me.
An apology is such an essentially situational dependent speech act that looking at the actual form it takes generally fails to tell us much of anything.
Though I'll admit that that in itself probably makes an apology an act with a greater than usual risk of being hollow.
So there we are.
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