Non-apologies: The reception of public apologies in mediated interaction in the era of #MeToo
The purpose of this project is to identify and analyze discursive practices of rejecting public apologies in the wake of the #MeToo movement, in journalistic mediated interaction and informal social media interaction. These practices are analyzed in terms of how the discourse participants practice a form of folk linguistics , negotiating notions of what constitutes a real apology. Further, the practices are analyzed as a way of doing everyday political participation in the social media context. Surrounding #MeToo, multiple prominent public figures were accused of sexual harassment or assault, and in response made public statements. These statements were often received by a lay public as inadequate plays at apologizing – as non-apologies. Through case studies employing methods from ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) and digital discourse analysis (DDA), the project will examine, firstly, how the original public statements are designed and delivered, and, secondly, how the reception of these statements as non-apologies is articulated in traditional journalistic discourse as well as lay social media discourse. Empirical findings will be disseminated as international journal publications, as well as in a book project and through popular scientific venues. The findings are expected to shed new light on the intersection of language and politics at a moment in time when both discursive and political norms are being renegotiated in mediated settings.
Final report
SCIENTIFIC REPORT
Non-apologies: The reception of public apologies in mediated interaction in the era of #MeToo
RJ reg no P-19:0213
Peter Wikström, Associate Professor of English, Karlstad University (principal investigator)
Erica Sandlund, Professor of English, Karlstad University (project researcher)
The project “Non-apologies” sheds light on public apologies and their reception in mediated discourse in the context of #MeToo. The project was initiated on January 1, 2020, and formally concluded on 31 December, 2023. However, publication and dissemination of research findings are continuing in subsequent years. With a linguistic and discourse analytic approach, the project was conducted with the specific aim of accounting for how metadiscursive conceptualizations of public apologies as “non-apologies” are used by discourse participants to make linguistic, moral, and political evaluations and positionings in mediated discourse. The project was conducted through case studies which in various ways have addressed the following research question:
RQ: In high-profile cases where a public person has been accused of sexual misconduct, issued a statement publicly recognized as an apology, and had this statement broadly criticized as a “non-apology”,
1) How was the statement itself mediated, designed, and delivered as a publicly accountable act?
2) How was the reception of the statement as a non-apology articulated in journalistic mediated discourse?
3) How was the reception of the statement as a non-apology articulated in informal social media discourse?
This being a living object of study, new potential cases and new public statements of relevance for the project have appeared continuously throughout the project period. In practice, the project case studies have comprised cases ranging from the fall of 2016 (about one year before the popular breakthrough of the #MeToo movement) until the spring of 2021, with a principal focus on cases from a North American context, but also from a Swedish context. Throughout the project, 11 specific cases have been analyzed (seven from an American context and four from a Swedish context), with a more in-depth focus on a sub-selection of these. The analyses were conducted inter alia with a focus on how apology design in relation accounting and accountability, linguistic constructions of apology recipients and victims or complainants, and the precise design of apology formulations. Further, analyses have addressed how reception practices recruit gendered categories as a resource for actualizing the #MeToo context. Contrastive comparisons between non-apologies and a deviant case of a #MeToo-related apology broadly considered to be exceptionally successful have also been conducted. The findings from this analytical work have primarily been disseminated through both academic and popular research presentations, while the project team has continuously worked on authoring scientific articles and developing a monograph.
The main findings, all of which have contributed to answering the project’s research questions, may be summarized as follows:
1) Folk-linguistic criticism of #MeToo-apologies is employed as a resource for accomplishing positionings:
Participants in both journalistic and social media discourse responding to #MeToo-related apologies often conduct a lay linguistic analysis of these apologies. This analysis may comprise, for instance, comparisons to other well-known apologies, commentary on specific word choices or rhetorical strategies, the quotation of selected parts of the apology for criticism or problematization, and paraphrases that serve to satirize the apology. When discourse participants direct their attention to the linguistic form of the #MeToo apologies, they often reproduce popular folk-linguistic beliefs that are not necessarily supported by linguistic analysis of apology speech acts (for example, prescriptive beliefs that apologies must or must not be formulated in specific ways). On the other hand, discourse participants often also accomplish insightful analysis of how the apologies are linguistically designed to be manipulative, tendentious, or selective. However, discourse participants’ analyses are never systematic or objective, but rather in their own right selective and tendentious: The reception of these apologies consistently serves to support the doing of evaluation or positioning (for instance, moral or political).
2) The reception of #MeToo-apologies reflects the complex nature of the apology speech act:
In the reception, the discourse participants focus not only the verbal content of the apologies, but also – and often exclusively – on other rhetorical, medial, or contextual factors. For instance, in evaluating apology statements, discourse participants often recruit or make reference to social categorizations, beliefs about the moral character or trustworthiness of (alleged) perpetrators and victims, speculation about the legal situation of or potential legal consequences for the apologizer, criticism of the selection of medium or the mediated presentation of the apology, evaluations of the apologizer’s body language or comportment, and, not least, evaluations of the (supposed) nature of the transgression being apologized for. Such factors are employed as a resource for interpreting the apology or for questioning its authenticity, for instance, as support for arguing that the apologizer has a hidden agenda, that the apology is politically coerced, that the transgression is of an unforgivable nature, or that the apologizer is unable to admit or make himself accountable for his actual transgressions due to the risk of legal repercussions. Non-verbal, paralinguistic, medial, and contextual factors – or socially shared beliefs about such factors – are thus central to how discourse participants assess public apologies.
3) The #MeToo context itself is central:
The cases examined in this project may be seen as comprising part of a canon of well-known #MeToo cases. The #MeToo movement itself is never directly named or addressed in these apologies, but as a rule, the apologies are designed in a way that reflects and indexes #MeToo as a social context. Several apologizers explicitly topicalize power relations between men and women and the issue of men’s sexual violence toward women, generally in service of denying their own culpability in this regard, or to place such culpability in the past. Other apologies are systematically designed to evade the issue of gender, for instance by only employing gender neutral categories in mentioning potential or actual accusers or victims. A recurring pattern is that apologizers make gender relevant to representations of their own morally innocent or improved character, while avoiding gender in accounts of the offense and in the actual apology formulation. In the reception, discourse participants often devote critical attention to the aspect of gender, and the apologies are often treated by participants themselves as case studies of how men respond to #MeToo. Regardless of whether the apologizer claims to respect women and emphasizes their good relationship to women close to them, or, conversely, systematically design their apologies to ignore gender, many recipients construct these choices as strategies meant to handle (or escape) the gender implications of the situation. Additionally, discourse participants often position themselves in relation to #MeToo or to feminism in conjunction with formulating their assessments. A tendency, especially in social media, is the discourse participants, through their criticism of these apologies, manifest solidarity with the #MeToo movement.
Through close qualitative analysis of linguistic and discursive negotiations in the reception of public apologies, the project findings contribute to both empirical and theoretical understanding of apologies in linguistic scholarship. Through this focus, the project also makes a unique contribution to the still emerging body of scholarship on #MeToo specifically, and the research are of language and gender mora broadly.
The project was not conducted with any formal collaboration, but has during the project period been developed through informal and ad hoc collaboration locally and regionally. For instance, during the project period, the research team joined the Center for gender studies at Karlstad University as affiliated researchers, and contributed to the event “Sanning, lögn och språk” (“Truth, lies, and language”) in September, 2020, which was a collaborative project between Region Värmland and AGERA Värmland.
Non-apologies: The reception of public apologies in mediated interaction in the era of #MeToo
RJ reg no P-19:0213
Peter Wikström, Associate Professor of English, Karlstad University (principal investigator)
Erica Sandlund, Professor of English, Karlstad University (project researcher)
The project “Non-apologies” sheds light on public apologies and their reception in mediated discourse in the context of #MeToo. The project was initiated on January 1, 2020, and formally concluded on 31 December, 2023. However, publication and dissemination of research findings are continuing in subsequent years. With a linguistic and discourse analytic approach, the project was conducted with the specific aim of accounting for how metadiscursive conceptualizations of public apologies as “non-apologies” are used by discourse participants to make linguistic, moral, and political evaluations and positionings in mediated discourse. The project was conducted through case studies which in various ways have addressed the following research question:
RQ: In high-profile cases where a public person has been accused of sexual misconduct, issued a statement publicly recognized as an apology, and had this statement broadly criticized as a “non-apology”,
1) How was the statement itself mediated, designed, and delivered as a publicly accountable act?
2) How was the reception of the statement as a non-apology articulated in journalistic mediated discourse?
3) How was the reception of the statement as a non-apology articulated in informal social media discourse?
This being a living object of study, new potential cases and new public statements of relevance for the project have appeared continuously throughout the project period. In practice, the project case studies have comprised cases ranging from the fall of 2016 (about one year before the popular breakthrough of the #MeToo movement) until the spring of 2021, with a principal focus on cases from a North American context, but also from a Swedish context. Throughout the project, 11 specific cases have been analyzed (seven from an American context and four from a Swedish context), with a more in-depth focus on a sub-selection of these. The analyses were conducted inter alia with a focus on how apology design in relation accounting and accountability, linguistic constructions of apology recipients and victims or complainants, and the precise design of apology formulations. Further, analyses have addressed how reception practices recruit gendered categories as a resource for actualizing the #MeToo context. Contrastive comparisons between non-apologies and a deviant case of a #MeToo-related apology broadly considered to be exceptionally successful have also been conducted. The findings from this analytical work have primarily been disseminated through both academic and popular research presentations, while the project team has continuously worked on authoring scientific articles and developing a monograph.
The main findings, all of which have contributed to answering the project’s research questions, may be summarized as follows:
1) Folk-linguistic criticism of #MeToo-apologies is employed as a resource for accomplishing positionings:
Participants in both journalistic and social media discourse responding to #MeToo-related apologies often conduct a lay linguistic analysis of these apologies. This analysis may comprise, for instance, comparisons to other well-known apologies, commentary on specific word choices or rhetorical strategies, the quotation of selected parts of the apology for criticism or problematization, and paraphrases that serve to satirize the apology. When discourse participants direct their attention to the linguistic form of the #MeToo apologies, they often reproduce popular folk-linguistic beliefs that are not necessarily supported by linguistic analysis of apology speech acts (for example, prescriptive beliefs that apologies must or must not be formulated in specific ways). On the other hand, discourse participants often also accomplish insightful analysis of how the apologies are linguistically designed to be manipulative, tendentious, or selective. However, discourse participants’ analyses are never systematic or objective, but rather in their own right selective and tendentious: The reception of these apologies consistently serves to support the doing of evaluation or positioning (for instance, moral or political).
2) The reception of #MeToo-apologies reflects the complex nature of the apology speech act:
In the reception, the discourse participants focus not only the verbal content of the apologies, but also – and often exclusively – on other rhetorical, medial, or contextual factors. For instance, in evaluating apology statements, discourse participants often recruit or make reference to social categorizations, beliefs about the moral character or trustworthiness of (alleged) perpetrators and victims, speculation about the legal situation of or potential legal consequences for the apologizer, criticism of the selection of medium or the mediated presentation of the apology, evaluations of the apologizer’s body language or comportment, and, not least, evaluations of the (supposed) nature of the transgression being apologized for. Such factors are employed as a resource for interpreting the apology or for questioning its authenticity, for instance, as support for arguing that the apologizer has a hidden agenda, that the apology is politically coerced, that the transgression is of an unforgivable nature, or that the apologizer is unable to admit or make himself accountable for his actual transgressions due to the risk of legal repercussions. Non-verbal, paralinguistic, medial, and contextual factors – or socially shared beliefs about such factors – are thus central to how discourse participants assess public apologies.
3) The #MeToo context itself is central:
The cases examined in this project may be seen as comprising part of a canon of well-known #MeToo cases. The #MeToo movement itself is never directly named or addressed in these apologies, but as a rule, the apologies are designed in a way that reflects and indexes #MeToo as a social context. Several apologizers explicitly topicalize power relations between men and women and the issue of men’s sexual violence toward women, generally in service of denying their own culpability in this regard, or to place such culpability in the past. Other apologies are systematically designed to evade the issue of gender, for instance by only employing gender neutral categories in mentioning potential or actual accusers or victims. A recurring pattern is that apologizers make gender relevant to representations of their own morally innocent or improved character, while avoiding gender in accounts of the offense and in the actual apology formulation. In the reception, discourse participants often devote critical attention to the aspect of gender, and the apologies are often treated by participants themselves as case studies of how men respond to #MeToo. Regardless of whether the apologizer claims to respect women and emphasizes their good relationship to women close to them, or, conversely, systematically design their apologies to ignore gender, many recipients construct these choices as strategies meant to handle (or escape) the gender implications of the situation. Additionally, discourse participants often position themselves in relation to #MeToo or to feminism in conjunction with formulating their assessments. A tendency, especially in social media, is the discourse participants, through their criticism of these apologies, manifest solidarity with the #MeToo movement.
Through close qualitative analysis of linguistic and discursive negotiations in the reception of public apologies, the project findings contribute to both empirical and theoretical understanding of apologies in linguistic scholarship. Through this focus, the project also makes a unique contribution to the still emerging body of scholarship on #MeToo specifically, and the research are of language and gender mora broadly.
The project was not conducted with any formal collaboration, but has during the project period been developed through informal and ad hoc collaboration locally and regionally. For instance, during the project period, the research team joined the Center for gender studies at Karlstad University as affiliated researchers, and contributed to the event “Sanning, lögn och språk” (“Truth, lies, and language”) in September, 2020, which was a collaborative project between Region Värmland and AGERA Värmland.