The word "sorry"

[vyvyanx]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6241411.stm

I suppose it's nice that the BBC runs an article on language at all which isn't a lament about apostrophes or some such waffle, but it would be even nicer if they were less credulous of linguistic research carried out by car insurance companies!

Comments

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Prediction: I haven't read the article yet (I'm about to do so), but nevertheless I predict that someone on the Language Log will be complaining about it within a week.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, yes.

I didn't read all of that, I got too cross :) But I'm puzzled. I assumed, when I heard "insurance company" it was going to be something about admitting liability and culpability. I often use sorry to express regret for something, both something I precipitated (when standing on someone's toe), and something I didn't (if someone suffers a loss), as well for something which I did wrong and should have done differently. If I were in court and saying "sorry" was considered evidence of culpability, I'd be in deep trouble.

And I mean, it seems better to say sorry than, eg. "Fuck you, you asshole, it was all your fault" :) We can normally tell the difference between a mild regret "oh, sorry" and a heartfelt apology, "Oh, god, I'm really sorry".

I admit, it is possible that we do apologise more, and if it were the case, it could be indicative of something in the national psyche. That's interesting to me because I certainly over-apologise :) However, I've no idea if that might be the case.

I wonder -- *is* it the case that people didn't used to use "sorry" in this way? For that matter, does it make a difference if it's "Sorry" or "I beg your pardon"? That sounds literally like an apology, but I thought was used in all sorts of ways too.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I wonder -- *is* it the case that people didn't used to use "sorry" in this way?

My main objection to the article is that it presents no evidence at all that there has been a signficant recent change in the use of this word. If Esure had followed normal sociolinguistic practice (which I find highly unlikely) they would have recorded usage according to social variables like the age, sex and class of the speakers. If there is a significant difference in the frequency of "sorry" - or in the frequency of non-apologetic "sorry" - for, say, lower-middle-class female speakers in their teens and twenties, compared with speakers in their fifties and sixties, this could indicate a change in progress (though age-grading is another possibility). One could also look back to earlier evidence for usage - I've just run a search on the Brown corpus from 1961 (Standard American English, published works only, unfortunately - but that's the earliest modern-style corpus available), which gives hardly any examples of "sorry" being used "to express sorrow for a misdemeanour", as the BBC article claims was traditional usage. Only 2 or 3 of 48 concordance results looked like serious apologies for wrongdoing; most were people being sorry to hear about something unfortunate happening, feeling sorry for other people/animals, apologising for things that weren't their fault - "Sorry, we don't have that book in stock" in a library, or "Sorry, I didn't see you there at first" i.e. the kind of "gratuitous" apology the BBC article seems to imagine is so novel.

Also, if we look further back, with the OED's record of the history of the word back to Old English, the apologetic (and sympathetic) meaning of "sorry" is not the original one; the OED describes this as a later, weakened sense of the meaning "Pained at heart; distressed, sad; full of grief or sorrow". An amusing earlyish example of this "weakened" sense is:

1769 Junius Lett. iii. (1788) 47, I am sorry to tell you..that, in this article, your first fact is false.

The elliptical use of "Sorry" as a stand-alone expression of apology or regret is illustrated with examples from the early twentieth century e.g.

1914 G. B. SHAW Fanny's First Play 167 Sorry. Never heard of him.
1923 Radio Times 28 Sept. 19/2 No! sorry, I thought you were Cardiff.

- and the use of "Sorry?" to ask someone to repeat themself is illustrated from the 70s.

So I'm entirely unconvinced that any notable change has been demonstrated in recent (last 20 years?) British English use of "sorry". Also, if the word has been "weakened" in the suggested way, why does this mean that Britain is a nation of apologisers, full of feigned contrition? If the word has changed its meaning, and is not generally used to indicate regret for personal misdemeanour any more (if it ever was!), then in what sense are we constantly trying to apologise? Perhaps the article's writer would also feel that by endlessly saying "Goodbye" (a contraction of "God be with you") modern English speakers are revealing Christian beliefs, or a deceitful desire to be perceived as Christian?!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, sorry, I didn't mean to rub in the annoyingness of that article :) I just always assume there's no convincing evidence in such claims, and am generally right. (The pattern of "some factual evidence" and "some assumptions based on that" to "broad conclusion" seems common.)

Unlike the author I assumed in the absence of evidence there hadn't, rather than that there had, but it felt polite to wonder if it could be the case; I don't know that it hasn't, and if someone feels something is true, it's not proof, but it might be worth checking. Thank you for looking things up! -- it seems we were right in assuming the current usages used to be normal, at any rate.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Tell badscience.net about it - he's got a running thing about PR companies making up some half-arsed light-hearted science story, hiring any old passing academic to put their name to it, and submitting a load of press releases - all of which run with the company's name attached, since science editors are (evidently) not too discriminating in such matters.

[kiaransalyn.livejournal.com]

The Dutch use 'sorry' and 'het spijt mij' in much the same way as the English - as a general term of politeness to indicate minor regret or minor inconvenience.

The article seems to ignore the stress that people apply to the word as well. For example, 'I'm sorry I forgot to feed the cat,' is likely to have more stress placed on 'sorry' then in 'I'm sorry, I've got to catch the bus to work.'

What is most surprising about this article is that compared to most bbc.co.uk articles a typo, or other such error hasn't leapt out at me. Perhaps this is because I didn't read all the way to the end.