Pseudo-apologies in the news
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M. Catherine Gruber
Abstract
This paper examines two pseudo-apologies in the news. Apologies have been defined as involving acceptance of responsibility for an offense and an acknowledgment of its wrongfulness. In contrast, pseudo-apologies index a stance lacking in remorse. This examination of a deviant type of apology reveals some of the limits that mediation imposes on more prototypical apologies: the more a speaker is viewed as attending to the interests of parties other than the offended party/ies, the greater the detriment to the apology. We propose that the polysemy of I’m sorry (and, via association, I apologize), which can serve as both apology and expression of sympathy, provides the functional structure for the pseudo-apologies examined here.
Abstract
This paper examines two pseudo-apologies in the news. Apologies have been defined as involving acceptance of responsibility for an offense and an acknowledgment of its wrongfulness. In contrast, pseudo-apologies index a stance lacking in remorse. This examination of a deviant type of apology reveals some of the limits that mediation imposes on more prototypical apologies: the more a speaker is viewed as attending to the interests of parties other than the offended party/ies, the greater the detriment to the apology. We propose that the polysemy of I’m sorry (and, via association, I apologize), which can serve as both apology and expression of sympathy, provides the functional structure for the pseudo-apologies examined here.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
