Apologizing to the Nation

What counts as an apology has been of some interest to speech act theorists. Thus, Thomas (1995:99ff) has applied Searle's (1969:67) conditions for thanking to apologizing, but only to question them:

Propositional act: S expresses regret for a past act A of S
Preparatory condition: S believes that A was not in H's best interest
Sincerity condition: Speaker regrets act A
Essential condition: Counts as an apology for act A

Thomas first questions Searle's underlying assumption of a one-to-one between performative verbs and speech acts; 'I apologize', she implies, might effect different speech acts -- or, again, 'I'm sorry' or some other form of words or acts might serve the same purpose as 'I apologize'. She then criticizes the 'circularity' of some of the terms in Searle's conditions; thus, how to define 'commendation' (in his conditions for 'to compliment')? Or for that matter, 'regret' or 'apology' in Thomas's conditions for 'to apologize'? Third, is it really possible in principle to model all the nuances of a speech act? Thus, one may 'apologize' for others in some cultures, and even for agents for which one is palpably not responsible, such as the weather; or there are expressions that have the potential to effect an apology but only do so when the hearer chooses to take them as such; and, tellingly for the case of the Clinton apologies, the effect of 'I apologize' is paradoxical: As a 'metalinguistic performative', it is self-referential, self-verifying and non-falsifiable (Thomas 33), yet at the same time -- and maybe ipso facto -- it is liable to come across as more formal and less sincere than 'I'm sorry'. The upshot is that speaker and hearer may collude to overlook the sincerity condition or not, depending possibly on some definable circumstances.

I wish to raise some further theoretical questions about apologies, which can be applied to the Clinton statement under discussion. First, do American-English apologies involve a commitment to subsequent action, in the same way as promises? My impression as a native speaker of English is that they do not, and that apologies are more subjective than promises: A promise is tested by subsequent behavior (and, promptly, can be retroactively ruled unfelicitous), whereas an apology is not. One talks of breaking or reneging on a promise but not of breaking an apology. Not surprisingly, then, apologies are liable to be reinforced or weakened by the textual context and the cues it supplies of the speaker's beliefs and attitudes. The problem for pragmatic theory, however, is how to assess these cues.

Another possible parameter of the apology, which Thomas did not address and may have wished to exclude, is the attitude of speaker to hearer: Can apologizing be effected in a hostile or critical vein or must it ipso facto involve ingratiation? May power be expressed in an apology or is it at least temporarily suspended?

Finally, what of the apology as a fully-blown genre? What is the structure of letters of apology? Do they, for instance, typically open and conclude with conventionalized expressions of contrition?

President Clinton's televised statement of August 17, 1998 opens with a rhetorical paradox: He presents what is ordinarily a straightforward duty, to tell the truth, as a severe and virtually immoral imposition that would tax any right-minded American. He promptly indicates that he has resolved this conflict in favor of the telling the truth, but implies that the conflict still stands. The second paragraph reinforces the rhetorical paradox, subtly and artfully exploiting the ambiguity of the modal 'must': 'I must take complete responsibility' can denote a moral ought or an external coercion. The third paragraph then proceeds to apply this criticism of the investigation, by implication, to the Paula Jones deposition: he was right to resist that interrogation by any legal means. We thus have a rhetorical parallel between the first two paragraphs and the third. The overall effect of a degree of self-justification creates a crucial setting for the 'apologies' that are to follow.

The third paragraph, and perhaps the fifth, also express 'apologies'. Let me first consider them in and of themselves. The expressions of regret and moral self-criticism in paragraph 3 are, by Thomas's broad pragmatic criteria set out above, a clear apology. The absence of the phrase 'I apologize' or the term 'apology' is immaterial. If we assess apologies in terms of implied or overt attitudes and beliefs, this is a fairly strong apology: He wishes that the relationship with Miss Lewinsky had not occurred, and he deferentially criticizes himself for his personal qualities and for one of the key qualities by which he is judged professionally: his "judgement". Note that he does not specify the relationship, leaving it to the hearer to decide whether this is for reasons of delicacy or sheer obfuscation.

The apology effected in paragraph 5 is, by design or chance, vague to the point that it need not technically be construed as such. 'I deeply regret that', taken out of context, need only be a wish that an event had not occurred, rather than a moral statement. Similarly, the terms 'misleading' and 'giving a false impression' are in principle crucially vague as to whether they were by design or accident, lies or not. The foregoing context, however, tends to suggest by association that here too there was a justification if the truth was not told, and that the regret has a moral force, i.e. is apologetic.

However, the entire force of these 'apologies' is thrown into question by the global structure of this text. Assessed by the yardstick of 'apologetics', it appears to have a decidedly non-apologetic force: We have already considered the opening rhetorical paradox. The remainder of the text, accounting for more than half its length, is a ringing, climactic self-justification. Rhetorically, it is in fact a projection of the everyday 'I'm sorry, but (you can't come in)", in which "I'm sorry" has none of the force of an apology but rather serves to reduce the threat to the addressee's negative face. Most tellingly, the text does not end with any form of apology. It is probable that several speech act genres, such as the message of thanks, the apology and the congratulation, typically open and conclude with conventionalized mirror-image performative expressions. The absence of any expression of contrition at the climax of Clinton's address counteracts the strongly apologetic force of the third and fifth paragraphs and renders this text a non-apology.

The Clinton text illustrates some of the problems that face a pragmatic theory of speech acts, in terms of assessing conditions of performance, breadth of textual focus and interaction of the elements in the picture.

Notes

Other studies of the apology are Owen (1983), Olshtain (1989), Abadi (1990) and Holmes (1990) .

References

Abadi, Adina. 'The Speech Act of Apology in Political Life'. Journal of Pragmatics 14(3); 467-471, 1990.

Holmes, J. 'Apologies in New Zealand English', Language in Society 19:155-199, 1990.

Olshtain, Elite. 'Apologies across Languages.' In Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, House, Juliane, Kasper, Gabriele, Freedle, Roy O. (eds.). Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1989, p. 155-173.

Owen, Marion. Apologies &;Remedial Interchanges: A Study of Language Use in Social Interaction. The Hague: Mouton, 1983.

Searle, John. Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Thomas, Jenny. Meaning in Interaction. London: Longman, 1995.