You could certainly say, “I’m sorry your mother died,” and mean it, even if you did nothing to cause their mother’s death. It’s a way of expressing sympathy with the other person’s emotions, without neccesarily taking responsibility for causing those emotions.
Of course saying “I’m sorry your mother died,” is a different sort of thing that saying “I’m sorry I killed your mother.” If you killed the other person’s mother, then the first apology is no apology at all. But if you didn’t kill the other person’s mother, then the second apology is improper as well.
I guess what I don’t see is why two wrongs in this instance make a right, or at the least make the situation any better. If you’re correct about people being needlessly offended (and i’ll admit I take an alternative view on that), by apologising for the sake of politeness or whatever it just perpetuates that system. Saying sorry and doing the whole polite, i’m-actually-the-one-in-the-wrong business to someone’s face, but believing in private (or saying, to uninvolved people) that actually you think a lot of it is pointless isn’t going to change anything.
In a sense, the problem doesn’t lie with those who are offended. After all, from their perspective, and assuming they buy your apology, they have no reason at all to know that something is up. So far as they are concerned, you did something offensive, you apologised, all is right with the world. Their expectations have been met, and will be considered natural the next time around, too. It’s not they who have the blame for the situation, but those who consider themselves blameless, but who pretend to be sorry about the situation who should be considered responsible. They’re the ones with the better view of the situation.
It just seems a bit odd to me to speak of weariness with a situation on one hand while actually going out of your way to continue it when actually confronted with that situation. It’s your decision; if you choose to say sorry, even a false apology, then you’ve taken the decision that you prefer the temporary politeness or betterment of the situation over the alternative. To speak of it as the *other *person’s fault seems weird.
For the record, I personally promote the idea that taking offense is a waste of time and emotional energy, that we should assume that people who are not our enemies mean us no harm and people who are our enemies dont’ deserve the satisfaction of successfully disrupting our peace, so the only purpose served by being offended is supporting our desire for drama.
As for the way I conduct myself, it depends. What’s interesting to me, if I understand what you’re saying - and I’m not sure I do completely - is how you have found a different way to arrive at the same bottom line: holding other people responsible for the feelings of the offended, with the twist that it’s the responsibility of the “offender” to school the offended about the error inherent in taking offense, by making an issue of not apologizing.
In other words, you seem to be determined to blame.
It’s getting sliiightly touched on in some posts, but doesn’t seem to be addressed directly. (I may have missed detail in a post or two, though.)
“I’m sorry I offended you.” Sincere. Regardless of what caused the offense, I’m actively acknowledging that I caused said offense and I regret it. It doesn’t acknowledge any wrongness in whatever caused the offense, but it’s still sincere in regretting doing so.
“I’m sorry you were offended.” Non-apology. The passive voice removes me from the situation; whatever offended you, it was your own fault you were offended, I had nothing to do with it. It’s the same kind of bullshit evasion of responsibility that “Mistakes were made” gets mocked for.
I haven’t read the whole thread, but for mine the modest ambiguity resolves in favour of a real apology.
If a person said “I am sorry you took offence”, that is an expression of regret at your reaction. No apology here.
But saying “I am sorry I offended you” is, for mine, taking ownership of the causal nexus between their actions and the offence. It resolves to: - (1) I offended you (ie, an admission that I caused your feeling of offence). (2) I am sorry for causing that feeling of offence. (3) I accept that my actions, in causing that feeling of offence, are therefore the subject of the apology.
There is room for qualification here which is context dependant. If someone said this orally, I would accept this as an apology. Not everyone drafts every word spoken like a lawyer. If, however, you asked for them to apologise for their actions directly, and they came up with this formulation, then them’s weasel words and I would not consider this a genuine apology. Any smug faces pulled when apology given to cue the proposition that it was an attempt at weaseling?
Is the context here a dispute about whether the person actually did the action which triggered your offence, or is there an acceptance of that fact and the dispute is about whether they were thoughtlessly negligent in undertaking the action when they should have known it would give offence?
It might make a difference, but in either case, and in the absence of further detail, I lean in favour of treating the wording of the apology as sufficiently complete that there is no need to go to pistols at dawn.
The thing is, quite often there really is nothing to apologise for (or it really is the other’s person’s fault for being such a delicate snowflake) and it’s a lot easier to invoke something that sounds like an apology but isn’t than get into an actual fight over the incident.
In which case the active voice is still better. The passive voice option is about as transparently unsincere as you can get, and in most cases it’d have about as much effect in smoothing over ruffled feathers than “Fine, whatever.”
If I’m not apologising to someone, I’ve got no interest in sounding sincere. “Fine, whatever” is un-necessarily brusque and rude. “I’m sorry you’re offended” at least sounds like I’m making the effort to observe social niceties.
I think i’d disagree, at least so far as it always being a waste of time and emotional energy. Being offended provides drive and motivation for things to change. If you aren’t emotionally invested in a situation, it’s more difficult for you to be interested in attempting to change another person’s mind. I mean, it would be nice if we were generally as interested in things we weren’t personally affected by, but in practical terms, we’re pretty much not.
It’s really only an odd opinion if we’re taking for granted that the question of whether someone is offended is solely a matter of choice of the offended person. I’d say the most important part is the lack of information. The offending person knows their own opinions and intent to offend better than the offended person, so really the ball seems to be pretty much in their court. The offended person doesn’t think there’s anything more complicated to the situation other than that there was an apology.
Well, i’d phrase it differently; i’d say my thinking means my opinion is that there is someone to blame, rather than going into the situation determined that someone is at fault and must be blamed for the situation. I don’t feel a need to prove someone’s at fault; I just think it’s so. I’m open to being persuaded otherwise too.
I think I’m just reiterating majority opinion, but… I think it depends. It can mean, “I really didn’t intend to offend you and I’m sorry that it had that effect.” It can mean, “I did/said whatever clumsily, I didn’t intend the impact that it had.” So, yeah, I think it can be a legit apology.
On the other hand, it can mean “I’m not sorry about what I did but I’m unhappy that you’re upset, so I’ll be polite because there’s no point making a fuss about this.” That’s social politeness, and, BTW, there’s nothing necessarily WRONG with that. We have lots of social conventions to smooth things over, we couldn’t get along without them. The underlying effect may be: “Look, I think this is a minor issue but you think it’s a major issue. I’m not about to do penance or seek absolution for what I said/did, I’m not about to grovel to you over it, but OTOH I don’t want you upset over it either. I don’t think it’s a big deal; you do. So, I’m sorry that what I said offended you. Let’s play the social game and make the disagreeable situation go away.”
What if you sincerely did not mean to offend and there is some question in your mind whether the other party is truly offended or feigning offense for some other reason?
It depends on what you said, but this sounds like blaming the victim. Or, as Miss Manners once said, “It’s as if you said, ‘I’m sorry that you felt insulted when I insulted you.’”
Actually I thin an even bigger distinction is between, “I’m sorry I offended you” versus “I’m sorry you were offended” because the former is you apologizing for your actions, intentional or not, which is what an apology is. The latter seems to put the onus on the one who was offended, which makes it not much of an apology.
“I’m sorry that I offended you” is a real apology. It’s not always a sincere apology, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish. It fulfills both acknowledgment of wrongdoing and regret at causing hurt, so it counts as a valid apology.
Whether or not “I’m sorry you were offended” is a real apology kind of depends on how you define a “real” apology. If you think admission of wrongdoing is necessary to make an apology real, then that phrasing really doesn’t fit the bill. If expressing regret at hurting someone is what makes an apology real, then yeah, I think it counts. And it’s more likely to be sincere, if that factors into the evaluation.
It’s quite possible to be simultaneously sorry that you’ve upset someone by saying something and not at all sorry you said it, either because their reaction is unreasonable or because even though it could reasonably be considered offensive, it needed to be said. In the latter case, I’d go with the apology that acknowledges I did something wrong. But in the former case, that just seems…I don’t know, somehow more boorish than just not apologizing at all. Like you’re transparently humoring the crazy person, I guess.
ETA that the king daddy of non-apologies is “I’m sorry if you took something I said the wrong way” when what the person said was objectively and unambiguously insulting.
Its like a golf club, I might use it if I have to apologize under duress or its simply a face saving maneuver if other parties are within hearing range. There are times when you dont care if the other party is sincerely offended, it may have been the point but as I said, others might be in hearing range and not get the context. Spin that sorry/offended card and people mentally check boxes that the niceties have been observed.