How's things? (aka 'sorry')

This isn't an apology - or is it?

I am sorry that this post is one week late but – no, scratch that: sometimes ‘but’ means ‘it wasn’t my fault’; at other times the explanation can be the apology. I am still sorry that I broke my promise to publish a post on the first Saturday of the month.

Here comes the ‘but’ (or ‘account for the offence’): I was re-working a paper on apologies and remedial behaviour (an excuse not of the same league as ‘the dog ate my homework’), which should have been done a long time ago. My co-author apologized for not doing it in time and for not keeping me informed, but the long and the short of it was that the whole thing had to go back to the drawing board to take new research into account. But this blip came in handy for this post, so all’s well. I said sorry; gave an account; now I will go on to make it up to you by focusing on apologies.

I hope you will forgive me (there I go again) for mentioning the Iranians again, but (!) my journey into intercultural communication started with them. Well, Iranians sprinkle ritual apologies liberally: bebakhshid (‘forgive’) is a passe-par-tout word serving as excuse me, thank you, I need to go now, please make way, I beg to differ, or simply I am here, uh uhmm. But when it comes to ‘real’ or prototypical apologies (i.e. really saying sorry), things get rather complicated.

Here’s how life has fed into research: after a family disagreement in Iran, I expected an apology or at least an acknowledgment of fault from a senior, male family member. He employed at least two of the strategies I detailed above: he invited all the family for dinner and recalled funny anecdotes from a well-loved ancestor, avoiding any mention of the incident. Everybody had a good time, while I wondered whether he was trying to ‘butter me up’. When I asked others about it, they were fine with his ‘atonement’, and quite happy to move on.

But I wasn’t, so I conceived the idea of researching apologies. A postgraduate student and I hypothesized that Iranians are reluctant to offer genuine or prototypical apologies because apologies are seen as admission of fault and therefore are face-threatening. On the other hand, personal relationships must be smoothed out, so Iranians employ apology avoidance strategies - that’s what I called them then - as in my anecdote above. Our small-scale qualitative research showed that Iranians do any of the following in place of a ‘real’ apology:

• Ask a question of give an explanation: ‘You are not upset with me, are you?’ or ‘I was really angry’;

• Offer a comment that usually focuses on common ground: ‘Look how nice these flowers look!’ for example among colleagues;

• Make an offer or issue an invitation: ‘Shall we go on an outing?’ or ‘Would you like some ice-cream?’ for example from parent to child;

• Show interest in the other’s concerns: ‘Well, what news from uni?’ for example between between spouses;

• Try to compensate through other acts of consideration and help towards the offended party such as smiling and showing special attentiveness; do household chores; offer presents or flowers.

Here comes the interesting part.

Most Iranian informants we interviewed agreed that:

• prototypical apologies (‘I am (really) sorry’ or ‘please forgive me’) are generally evaluated as face-damaging (first part of our hypothesis confirmed);

• the alternative strategies listed above are not generally evaluated as apology avoidance, as we assumed, but rather as adequate apology substitutes; therefore they are understood as successful repairs of the damaged relationship, at least among Iranians (second part of our hypothesis refuted);  

• only a few informants said they would expect or offer a prototypical apology.

This is all very well when conversational partners are familiar with each other’s cultural practices. Problems set in when speakers bring their own conceptualisations and assumptions to the conversation and the relationship, and/or - here comes the confessional part - they insist, as I did (rather stubbornly I may add) to accept anything else and refuse to see things from the other’s perspective. I ended up writing up the family dispute and its aftermath as a conference presentation in which I laid out the methodological and ethical dilemmas of my dual vantage point as analyst and a semi-insider. (So much for writing on intercultural understanding for so long: “I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.”)

But it’s not only the apology format that may be different across cultures. One step before apologies lie understandings of what actually constitutes an offence. This very important topic warrants its own space, so I intend to return to it in a future post.  

Oh, and I forgot to mention another very important element in an effective apology: the promise of forbearance, ie ‘I won’t do it again’. In my case, this means that monthly posts will be published on time from now on – in fact, to put the frequency back in order, I will aim for the second Saturday of the month from now on.

Keep the comments coming!

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Came across

• Apologies in business, from Argentina to the USA:

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/12004-apologies-around-the-world.html

• A thought-provoking two-part podcast on: good and bad apologies and what they do to relationships; how to accept apologies; parenting and apologies; apologies in couple relationships; essential elements in apologies; defensiveness; and many more.

https://brenebrown.com/podcast/harriet-lerner-and-brene-im-sorry-how-to-apologize-why-it-matters/

Postcard

Please accept my apologies - no postcard this month!

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