Murphy2016
| Murphy2016 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Murphy2016 |
| Author(s) | James Murphy |
| Title | Apologies made at the Leveson Inquiry: Triggers and responses |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, Apologies, Courtroom, Political communication, remedial work, Leveson Inquiry, action chains, conversation analysis, political language, public inquiries |
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| Year | 2016 |
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| Journal | Pragmatics and Society |
| Volume | 7 |
| Number | 4 |
| Pages | 595-617 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1075/ps.7.4.04mur |
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Abstract
This paper discusses apologies made by politicians at a recent UK public inquiry, The Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press. I use the freely available data from the Inquiry to explore how politicians apologise in this interactional setting, contrasting it with more usual monologic political apologies. Firstly, I identify the sorts of actions which may be seen as apologisable. I then take a conversation analytic approach to explore how the apologies can come as a result of an overt complaint and how the apologies are reacted to by counsel and the Inquiry chair. I show that, unlike in everyday conversation, apologies are not the first pair parts of adjacency pairs (cf. Robinson, 2004), but rather form action chains (Pomerantz, 1978) where the absence of a response is unmarked. I conclude with some observations on how apology tokens may be losing their apologetic meaning.
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