Sorry to trouble you
This morning whilst scrolling through a social media platform aimed at business people, I came across a post advising readers against the use of the word “Sorry”. The gist being, I think, that you should tell someone what you want to do without apologising. “Sorry, I need to reschedule…” “Sorry, I can’t make that meeting…” And I’m sorry that the post whizzed by and was gone before I could quote it directly or attribute it properly. However, the poster was wrong and I suggest you think about it before you cut “Sorry” from your vocabulary.
I feel I’m qualified to talk about this because, as a playwright who has been working at my craft for over fifty years now, I have had to learn a thing or two about how people interact and talk to each other. When I started out my dialogue was poor and didn’t come across as authentic either to the character or in the way people speak in the real world. So I set out to listen and make note to conversations I overheard at bus stops, in cafes and pubs and in domestic situations. I listened.
What I learnt is that there are two components to a conversation. One is the intended meaning, and the other is the way in which that meaning may be conveyed in words. Seldom do those two elements converge or even coincide. The meaning is made up of the emotional content and what is in the speaker’s heart. The way in which these are conveyed is often in apparently meaningless small-talk. Little, apparently harmless words, phrases and tropes. These are what we refer to in the trade as “phatics”. I could go on about how phatics work and so on for pages, but let’s just say that phatics are the roller bearings that enable the conversation to be conveyed smoothly above. Good conversationalists can listen to the phatics and understand what deeper, heavier meaning is intended behind “Good morning,” or “how’s things?”
In this social media post, the writer has misunderstood the function of the word “Sorry”. It is not a humbling apology unsuited to business people. It is, in fact a phatic engagement that enables a conversation to begin smoothly. It is a form of courtesy (something else under fire) and acknowledgement of the other person’s state of mind. Quite often this simple word conveys “I don’t know how to begin this conversation but I have something to say that may discommode you for a short while. Please don’t punch me on the nose.”
So, I think we should use the word “Sorry” as much and as often as we like and listen carefully to what our associates mean when they say it.
