I am sorry, we are sorry: A critical analysis of discursive strategies in contemporary public apologies

Abstract

In the current ‘Age of Apology’, public apologies have become everyday occurrences; from corporate CEOs to Hollywood celebrities to political figures, the adage of ‘never apologize, never explain’ has been eschewed in favour of ‘always apologize, always explain’. In a society where news travels at the speed of the internet, and content can go ‘viral’ in hours, there are new pressures for all public figures to apologize when things go wrong. These public apologies are available for public consumption almost immediately after an offense, released through mainstream media (e.g. broadcast news, physical/online newspapers) or, as is becoming more frequent, over social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram). Some researchers (e.g. Kampf, 2009; Thaler, 2012) have suggested that public apologies are not true apologies as defined by Speech Act theory – that they may serve another social function, but not to apologize. Such ‘fauxpologies’ are made without meeting the traditional felicity conditions for the speech act of apology (Ogiermann, 2009). If this is the case, what makes a public apology (in)felicitous? The aim of this thesis is to describe what makes a public apology felicitous. I present a critical analysis of the discourse strategies used in three types of public apologies – corporate, celebrity, and historical political – examining how these discursive strategies are used according to varying contextual factors using Critical Discourse Analysis and Speech Act theory as a framework. To counter the claim that the discourse strategies used in public apology do not meet the felicity conditions for the speech act of apology, I present evidence that, despite using some non-apology strategies, many public apologies are felicitous. However, I argue for the adoption of a revised set of felicity conditions as laid out by Murphy (2014, 2015), which can properly encompass public apology as a performative speech act. This study also extends the framework of semantic formulae previously used in apology analysis (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984; Olshtain & Cohen, 1983) to include ‘fauxpology’ strategies particularly useful in examining public apologies, which provides a more robust description of how public apologies are performed.