Column: The meaning of ‘sorry’ needs to be reclaimed
I read an article in a national newspaper which said that the most overused expression in the UK was ‘Thank you’ – one reader responded by saying British people tend to say ‘Sorry’ more frequently.
Many of us will have found ourselves being bumped into by a passer-by and automatically saying ‘Sorry’. Or we will have prefaced a perfectly reasonable request with ‘Sorry but…’, as a sort of softener or hedge. Psychologists suggest that a tendency to over-apologise is an indicator of low self-esteem.
I spent nearly forty years teaching teenagers. If a student had upset a classmate, I would demand an apology to the injured party. What I got was a barely audible ‘Sorry’ with eyes downcast. Teenagers are in the process of discovering their identity and have a precarious sense of self. I realised the pointlessness of my tactics.
Instead, I tried to get the student to stand in the shoes of the person they upset and to imagine how they would feel if treated that way.
Empathy is a pre-requisite for a genuine apology.
Someone caused a friend of mine great distress. When, rather late in the day, they received an emailed apology, they told me it began: ‘I’m sorry if you were upset.’
This cannot be considered genuine regret as the writer had taken no responsibility for the hurt caused.
Another example of what I call a ‘sorry-not sorry’ involves Sir Jim Ratcliffe, billionaire owner of chemicals company INEOS and part-owner of Manchester United football team.
He was called upon to apologise by the prime minister for expressing the view that the UK had been ‘colonised by immigrants’. He responded by saying he was sorry for the language used;
presumably he still meant what he said.
Perhaps living in a tax haven in Monaco made it slip his mind that our NHS and care system would collapse without the contribution of immigrants and also that the Manchester United team is very ethnically diverse.
Many readers will share my outrage at the way post office operators were treated in the Horizon scandal. They suffered anxiety, bankruptcy, false imprisonment, family breakdown
and some people took their lives. At the inquiry Paula Vennells, CEO of the Post Office, who amassed over £5.1 million over her tenure, gave a tokenistic apology.
She sobbed copiously and you felt the main person she felt sorry for was herself.
Heads of institutions who cause significant suffering to members of the general public should be made accountable and, in some cases, should face the full force of the law.
The meaning of ‘sorry’ needs to be reclaimed, but sometimes the word can never be enough.