Agency and affect: Reduced responsibility as a gendered stance in apologising
Miriam Meyerhoff
University of Edinburgh
It is well-known that a successful apology has several felicity conditions. One requirement is for the apologiser to acknowledge the fact that a transgression, or something bad, has taken place. Then the apologiser must take responsibility for the bad thing that has happened, and finally the apologiser must offer some compensation or reparation (cf. Goffman 1971). Thus, there is affective work and some acknowledgement of agency. In previous work, I have found it useful to distinguish between transgressive apologies and empathetic apologies (Meyerhoff 2000). Empathetic apologies differ from transgressive apologies in not requiring the person saying 'sorry' to actually take responsibility, nor to offer reparation. That is, they focus entirely on affect. Tavuchis (1991) argues that in Anglo-Western culture, it is increasingly the case that even transgressive apologies may be bleached of agency. This is commonly seen in speakers' attributions of the transgression to some disembodied, or agent-less force. Moreover, this reduction in agency appears to spill over into the reparation, such that the speech event of the apology is itself seen to 'make good'. There has been little work done examining precisely how speakers manage to reduce agency in such apologies and how this plays off linguistically against other ideologies.
In this paper, I examine the way Cherie Blair (wife of the British Prime Minister) manages to minimise agency in a length statement she made on public television in December 2002. I show how Blair invokes ideologies of gender throughout in such a way that the statement can be construed as an apology, and I argue that these ideologies play an important role in allowing her to successfully say 'sorry' in a very modern, non-agentive way. Comments on her apology in the media support this analysis, showing the perceived importance of gender roles, especially the maternal role, in having her statement understood as an apology.