“This apology doesn't seem sincere at all” (Meta)discourses around Will Smith's apology in English and Japanese YouTube comments

Abstract

This study investigates cultural variation in the reception and evaluation of the same apology event. More specifically, it looks at how Will Smith's apology for slapping Chris Rock has been metadiscursively constructed in two sets of YouTube comments (310,998 tokens): the English comments to the original apology video and the Japanese comments to a second video, which is addressed to a Japanese audience and reports and translates the apology. Corpus(-assisted) methods are employed to examine the Meta-Illocutionary Expressions (MIEs) apolog∗ and 謝罪 shazai ‘apology’/謝∗ ayama∗ ‘apologise’ in context and, more specifically: (1) their function; (2) the underlying evaluations they convey; and (3) the moral orders they appeal to.

The reading of concordances showed that the MIEs are used to problematise or endorse the apology and that negative evaluations of Smith and his apology are more prominent in English. A closer look at the collocates revealed that apolog∗ typically co-occurs with sincere to challenge the sincerity of the act. Conversely, shazai/ayama∗ is associated with お互いに (o-)tagai (ni) ‘reciprocal(ly)’ to indicate that a reciprocal apology from Rock would be appropriate. This suggests that culture-specific moral orders play a role in the negotiation of what is (im)polite.