Apologies and Accounts

Apology is an action in which one admits the wrongfulness of an act and one’s responsibility for it in dealing with some type of problematic situation, such as interactional offenses in conversation, rule-breaking behaviors, embarrassment, violations of expectations, and social predicaments that can damage relationships. Account is another action in which one tries to explain such a situation so that one can transform the problematic quality of it. Apologies and accounts are both communication practices used to deal with problematic situations, and they can therefore be dealt with together. These two actions are ubiquitous in everyday lives, and studies on them, therefore, especially on apologies, abound across many disciplines. The concepts of apologies and accounts are important for three reasons. First, they help us understand the way in which society is maintained through individual conduct. By apologizing, one claims that one’s act was an exception to the rule, and, as a result, the original rule is sustained. Second, the concepts of apologies and accounts help us understand the way in which one restores one’s preferred image of self, or “face,” and the other’s face, as well as the relationship with the other. Third, these concepts help us explore culturally appropriate communication conduct. By engaging in apologies and accounts, one’s taken-for-granted views of what is wrong and what is acceptable can be revealed. Apologies have been studied in a variety of contexts (e.g., interpersonal, organizational, political, mediated, cultural) and in various fields, including philosophy, sociology, social psychology, sociolinguistics, cross-cultural pragmatics, applied linguistics, rhetoric, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interpersonal communication, and intercultural communication. Because there has been far more research on the topic than could be covered in one article, this piece focuses on apologies and accounts mainly in interpersonal face-to-face settings, with an emphasis on literature in communication. It also touches on apologies made by political figures. For apologies in other public arenas (e.g., media and online apologies; corporate apologies in crisis communication; apologies in judicial, medical, religious, and international conflicts), see other sources, such as the separate Oxford Bibliographies article “Image Repair Theory.”