The pragmatics of Indian political apologies: Sorry, but not sorry

Abstract

While there is a considerable body of research on the pragmatics of apology across the globe, the Indian apology discourse has received hardly any attention from scholars. Political apologies particularly, have been neglected as an important area of research in India. The act of tendering public political apologies, which was almost absent from the Indian repertoire, is an emerging trend in India. This article aims to identify the salient characteristics of Indian political apologies by contextual analysis of the apology texts and is a first of its kind as far as known to the authors. Indian political leaders use evasion and manipulation in apology utterances to avoid an explicit apology. The graver the transgression, the greater the hesitation to offer an explicit apology. We suggest that the categorization of political apologies should take into consideration the stature of the political apologizer also and not just the magnitude of the offence, as this can have a significant impact on the apology behaviour.