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Slavica Perović: YOU WANT AN APOLOGY? WELL, I AM SORRY!
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concern behind excuse me is “I have broken or I am in danger of breaking a social
rule”, and the basic concern behind I’m sorry is “You are or you may be hurt”
(1978: 61).
Ritualistic apologies – apologies from the “fuzzy” zone
In this paper we have identified several modes of ritualistic apology that
Montenegrins use in everyday communication. The division among them is
not entirely clear-cut, so we can place this category under the fuzzy heading
(Radovanović 2009), being scalar, nuanced, graduated and somewhat opaque. In
an attempt to identify some of these types we devised something like a semanticpragmatic
formula of apology which is based upon two cultural scripts. The substantive
one that we developed earlier (Perović 2009) is now complemented with
the ritualistic script that we created for the purpose of this paper.
Substantive script
[people think like this]:
When I feel I am doing something that threatens the face of another,
it is good for people to know what to expect;
it is good for people to not expect me to do something
which will threaten my face even more.
Ritualistic script
[people think like this]:
When I do something that violates the social rule,
it is good for people to know what to expect;
it is good for people to expect me to do something
which will redress the (virtual) harm.
The pragmatic components resulting from these scripts may be summed up in the
formula given in Table 1.
Table 1. Semantic-pragmatic formula of ritualistic apology
1. IFID +/–
2. FTA (distance, power, imposition) +/–
3. IF ----
4. Preferred/dispreferred first +/–
5. Mortification +/–
6. In one’s own/someone else’s name +/–