Pillow Method

Do children apologize to each other? Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse ZOHAR KAMPF and SHOSHANA BLUM-KULKA Abstract Children’s apologies are greatly under-researched. Though there is wealth of information available on the pragmatics of apologies generally, we know much less about whether and how children apologize. Our study explores modes of remedial work by Israeli children in peer discourse. The data were collected through ethnographic observation of Israeli preschool and preadolescents, and consist of 57 (taped and transcribed) apology events identified in natural peer interactions.

The analysis of children’s apology events revealed a rich range of apology strategies used by 4 6 year old children, indicating the acquisition of remedial competencies for face management at a relatively early age and showed that with age, a richer range of potential violations is identified, and more elaborate forms of repair are being used, indicating a growing sensitivity to the other’s face needs. Furthermore, we found that adult intervention in children’s conflictual situations serves to model remedial strategies, but is not necessarily effective for conflict resolution.

Importantly, peer talk apology events index the centrality of friendship in young children’s social world: breaches from expected behavior in play are taken as face threatening to the core of friendship, namely the children’s shared face as friends, and hence can function to end (even if temporarily) the friendship. Consequently, in such cases, the restoration of friendship becomes a necessary precondition for the felicitous realization of an apology. Keywords: apology, remedial work, remedial competencies, pragmatic development, peer talk, social norms 1. Introduction

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The apology as a speech act has recently received a great deal of attention in a variety of disciplines philosophy, sociology, psychology, law, Journal of Politeness Research 3 (2007), 11 37 DOI 10. 1515/PR. 2007. 002 1612-5681/07/003 0011 Walter de Gruyter 12 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka political science, international relations, communication and discourse studies and through diverse methodologies. Nevertheless, there are still surprising lacunae in this field, such as the lack of knowledge on the pragmatic development of children’s apologies in natural discourse.

The pragmatic study of apologies to date has been mainly adult-usage oriented, whether conducted within the framework of gender differences (Holmes 1989, 1993; Tannen 1994), cross-cultural (for example, Olshtain 1989, Suszczynska 1999; Rieter 2000) or interlanguage pragmatics ? (Trosberg 1987; Garcia 1989; Bergman and Kasper 1993). Children’s apologies have been most frequently studied from the standpoint of social psychology, using mainly experimental methodologies.

In this approach the experiments conducted focused primarily on judgments of the perception and effectiveness of apologies (Meier 2004). As Meier stresses in her brief but exhaustive review, the study of children’s apologies has been “developmental in nature, precipitated by an interest in the overall socialization process. Focuses have thus been on apology production as it relates to cognitive maturation and concomitant changes in perceptions of responsibility, intentionality and self. ” (Meier 2004: 5).

However, as far as we are aware, no study to date has examined the speech act realization of apologies in natural child discourse (in both peer and adult-child interactions). Thus, research is needed to address questions such as strategy choice in relation to contextual and social factors; the types of violations triggering apologetic behavior in children’s social worlds; and face-management as related to face-threat and remedial work in the sequence of interaction. The dearth of research concerning children is puzzling, particularly in view of the importance of apologies from a developmental perspective.

Mastering the ability to apologize indicates the maturation of the child as an independent agent (Hickson 1986), who is accountable for his/her deeds. This development also implies the emergence of the awareness of negative face wants (Brown and Levinson 1987). The realization of apologies further indicates the emergence of positive face wants, since by its realization the child manifests his/her ability for appropriate behavior in the social world, complying with basic norms.

In fact, the familiarity with the apology script, in its narrow sense as remedial work for a misdeed (Goffman 1971), demonstrates familiarity with two different norms: the norm violated which threatened the face of the offended party, and the norm by which it is appropriate to apologize in such circumstances (Tavuchis 1991). Thus, by using the appropriate form in the appropriate settings, abiding by the basic felicity conditions, the child is manifesting his/her acquired competence to restore equilibrium to social relations, utilizing an efficient tool for conflict resolution, and Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 3 thereby fulfilling the main social function of the speech act of apology (Edmondson 1981; Leech 1983). Beyond acquiring the basic features of the apologetic script, children also need to learn a multiplicity of forms and functions for the speech act in order to achieve full pragmatic competence. Apology forms can be used as a means to save the face of the other or that of the self as well as to threaten them (see Lakoff 2001 for a review on the forms and functions of the speech act), and, as such, they index children’s competencies of face management in interactions with peers andor adults.

In this paper we closely examine apologies observed during natural peer interaction of Israeli children with the following issues in mind: What is the scope of strategies used by children for apologizing? Is there a developmental line in apologetic behavior over the years? What types of offenses trigger an apology? What can they tell us about the norms of the social world of Israeli children? And lastly, what are the roles of adult mediators both in socializing children in the practice of apology and to the practice of conflict management and resolution? . Method The apologies analyzed here were detected in child discourse during ethnographic observations of peer interactions in Israeli preschool children in the preschool and at home, and Israeli young adolescents at home and at a diner1. These observations are part of a larger longitudinal project aimed at tracking the development of genres of extended discourse2. Within the overall framework of the project, we followed two cohorts of 20 Israeli children each young preschoolers and fourth graders for duration of three years (2001 2003).

The children were observed and taped in three types of speech events: natural peer interactions; family mealtimes; and semi-structured adult child interviews. The data for this paper come from the transcripts of natural peer interaction of both preschoolers and fourth graders in free play during the first and the third year of the project, when the mean age of the younger group was 5 and 7 respectively, and that of the older group 9 and 11. We analyzed 1362 minutes (22 hours and 42 minutes) of transcribed interaction, using two different methods.

First, by using a key word search, we located all the explicit apologies that contained IFID’s (Illocutionary Force Indicating Device) in our data. We considered all expressions containing variants of the conventional forms of apologies in Hebrew: hitnatclut (apology), slixa (literally forgiveness, or pardon, can function as ‘excuse me’), and ca’ar (sorry or regret). For each occurrence, we analyzed the full interactional sequence of the apology event from the initial violation through the realization of the apology and later reac- 14 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka tions to it in order to characterize the pragmatic strategies and social ontexts in which they were uttered. After ensuring through these procedures that we did not miss any conventional form of apology in our data, we reviewed the transcripts to locate conversational sequences that were likely to invite remedial work and analyzed the instances of the indirect apologies identified. The children’s apology events were analyzed with several goals in mind. First, in terms of their form, namely the main strategies used by the speaker: type of IFID, admittingavoiding responsibility, types of accounts, the presence of a promise of forbearance, offers for repair, minimizations and maximizations (see Blum-Kulka et al. 989 for details). Second, in terms of their function, namely by noting the interactional goal of the apology (whether it functions apologetically or nonapologetically as in a challenging or sarcastic keying) and, more broadly, by noting the way it functions and develops in the specific context and co-text in which it appears. Close consideration of the local co-text and context also takes into account the violations that trigger apologies and the “keying” (Blum-Kulka et al. 004) of the apologies, namely whether the apology was sincere, casual, challenging or sarcastic (see Deutschmann 2003 for details), and whether realized within a pretend-play frame. Thirdly, we further explored the strategies and functions of apologies in Israeli children’s peer talk from a developmental perspective, looking for differences in the use of strategies with age. We also considered the role of mediators, mostly institutional figures, in the socialization of apologetic behavior. And lastly, we analyzed the preschool children’s sholem (lit. eace) ritual; a cultural alternative for apology manifested by signaling performatively the restoration of a “peace” state. Our most surprising finding was the richness of the range of apology strategies used by young children (4 6 years old); a finding that indicates the acquisition of remedial competencies for face management at a relatively early age. 3. Children’s remedial work How frequently do people apologize? Since most research on apologies has been carried out with the use of written questionnaires, role-play or anecdotal data collection during ethnographic observations (Butler 2001), the actual ate of apologies in natural talk remains a puzzle (Holmes 1990). Our observations of 22 hours and 42 minutes of children’s interactions yielded an apology event on average every 23. 9 minutes, (0. 042 apologies per minute, 57 apology events in 1362 minutes of talk: see Table 1). Apologies were the least frequent at the first observation of the younger cohort. When the children were age 4 to 6 years, the rate Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 15 Table 1. Mean of apology events per minute for each age group. Preschool year 1 (4 6) Number of apology events Length of transcription (minutes) ean of apology events per minute Preschool year 3 (6 8) preadolescents year 1 (9 10) preadolesN cents year 3 (11 12) 12 11 15 19 57 377. 5 235. 5 321 428 1362 0. 032 0. 046 0. 047 0. 44 0. 042 of apology events is one every 31. 5 minutes (12 events in 377 minutes. ). Two years later the rate goes up to one apology every 21. 4 minutes (235/ 11). This is also the rate for apologies in the talk of the older cohort: every 21. 4 minutes the first year (321/15), when the children were age 9 to 10, and every 22. 5 minutes two years later, when the children were age 11 to 12 (428/19).

The 57 apology events contained 82 occurrences of IFIDs (different Hebrew specific illocutionary force device expressions used for apologizing): an apology expression for every 16. 6 minutes of talk, 0. 06 per minute. The ratio of IFIDs per words is surprisingly similar to the rate found for British English spoken by people of varied ages and backgrounds. As calculated by Deutschmann (2003), the rate of IFIDs in British English was 59. 7 per 100,000 words, (3070 tokens in 5,139,083 running words), while in our small corpus of 157,666 running words (and 82 IFIDS) the rate found was 52 per 100,000 words3. . 1. Apology events: Types of violations and remedial work We defined an “apology event” as a conversational sequence including at least one remedial utterance indicating a violation. Further remedial actions with regard to the specified violation were considered as part of the same event. The event might further include complaints, a demand for an apology and negotiations over the acceptance of the apology and its meaning. 3. 1. 1. Violations By “violation” we mean an act or event that breaches a norm or a behavioral code; a breach the offender is expected to be accountable for to the offended party.

In politeness theory terms, a violation is a face-threatening act the offender is expected to repair, supporting the offended party’s 16 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka Table 2. Types of violations over age (N Preschool year 1 (4 6) A. Accidents B. Mistakes and misunderstandings C. Breach of expectation D. Lack of consideration E. Talk offences F. Social gaffs G. Requests H. Hearing offense I. Offense involving breach of consensus J. Unidentified N i 57)i. Preschool year 3 (6 8) 3 preadoles- preadoles- Adult N cents year 1 cents year 3 all groups (9 10) (11 12) 3 3 1 4 4 3 1 3 1 5 3 3 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 8 1 13 1 8 3 4 2 3 1 11 9 15 7 8 19 1 3 57 One violation was coded for each apology event. The distinction between child and adult violation is in the question “who is the violator? ”. face without a threat to his/her own (Chen 2001). Violations are at the core of the apology event. Exploring the types of violations children consider accountable allows us a glimpse of a child’s notion of what acts or words are considered face-threatening and how these notions change with time. In other words, it allows us to assess the children’s system of politeness from their own point of view.

The distribution of types of violation identified (following Deutschmann’s 2003 classification) is presented in Table 2. Despite the small numbers, some tentative patterns emerge: the most salient type of violation is lack of consideration (13), followed by mistakes and misunderstandings (8), breach of expectations (8), talk offenses (8) and accidents (7). Except for accidents (which mainly have to do with unintentionally physically hurting another child), these categories all relate to children’s social worlds, and testify to children’s norms and expectations from their peers.

Interestingly, the categories are not evenly distributed: while children in the younger cohort realized apologies with regard to only four types of violations, the children in the older cohort realized apologies with regard to seven types at the age of 9 to 10, and nine types at the age of 11 to 12. Hence as children develop, they seem Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 17 to identify a richer range of potential violations, refining their sensitivity to the positive and negative face needs of the other, while concurrently developing more elaborate forms of repair4.

Lack of consideration is the most salient type of violation attended to. Example 1 illustrates how the style of directives in play may become an issue of face-threat and trigger an indirect demand for an apology. The two girls, Liat and Nofar are enacting the roles of salesgirls in a dress shop scenario of pretend play. Liat, who takes on the leading role, issues a series of detailed direct instructions to Nofar in a machine gun style, which apparently Nofar finds irritating. Example 1: Annoying instructions5 Participants: Liat, f, (9;5); Nofar, f, (9). Date: 2. . 2000 Place: Liat’s room. Situation: The girls play free-play, “clothing store”. The first indication for considering the instructions as a threat to Nofar’s face is her refusal to cooperate (turn 131). The second indication is more explicit: following yet another instruction in 134, she repeats her refusal in an angry voice, adding a tag for emphasis (turn 135). This time her companion begins her turn overlapping Nofar immediately after the first two words “I can’t” beginning yet another directive but cutting herself 18 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka ff to insert a repair “ok sorry”, thereby indicating that she must have sensed the angry tone in Nofar’s mid-turn. Yet she continues with still another attempt to pull Nofar back into her “instruction taking” role by the use of “but” (“but look, let’s say you finished. ”) The attempt fails, and Nofar continues to protest (turn 137). It is noteworthy that while all of Liat’s turns are uttered within the pretend play frame, it is not clear whether Nofar’s turns (except for 133) are uttered within that frame, testifying to the salesgirl’s state of mind, or are uttered outside the frame, indicating real annoyance.

Other types of salient violations, with 8 occurrences each, were mistakes and misunderstandings, talk offenses and breach of expectations. The first type, mistakes and misunderstandings, happened mainly during play, and only in the preadolescent’s talk. The explicit apology uttered referred to violations such as mistakes in operating a toy cashier or not putting an item in its place during a “clothing store” play (see example 1). Talk offenses, attended to through self repairs, occurred in our data first at the age of 6.

Conversely, breach of expectations was attended to mainly in the young cohort6. Another salient type of violation was accidents (7), which were mainly violent acts against a member of the peer group, and occurred chiefly between boys. 3. 1. 2. Remedial strategies Do remedial strategies correspond to types of violation? We found no indication in our peer talk data that, as argued by Darby and Schlenker (1982), the nature and severity of the violation affects the form of the apology. The distribution of IFIDs (Illocutionary Force Indicators) and apology strategies is presented in Tables 3 and 4.

Of the three forms, only mitnacel (apologize) is a uni-functional IFID used for apologies only; both micta’er (sorry) and slixa (forgive, excuse, pardon) are pragmatically multi-functional and can be used with other speech acts, with varying force of the apology function (e. g. , sorry, you have to clean the room now). The results confirm previous findings with regard to young children’s basic understanding of the notions of culpability and responsibility (Weiner and Handel, 1985) and their capability for providing violation targeted accounts (Much and Shweder, 1978).

The lexeme slixa (literally ‘pardon’ derived from the verb ‘to forgive’, lisloa’x, often used for ‘excuse me’) is the most frequent item in all ages, followed by micta’er (I’m sorry) and finally by ‘apologize’, which is more formal and appeared only once in our corpus and was realized by an adult. From among the various strategies identified in adult discourse (Olshtain, 1989; Deutschmann, 2003), three did not show up in the children’s Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 19 Table 3. Distribution of Common Hebrew apology IFID types across age groups (N 82).

Preschool year 1 (4 6) A. Apologize or apology (mitnacel ) B. Sorry (micta’er) C. Forgive, Excuse, Pardon (slixa) N Preschool year 3 (6 8) preadoles- preadoles- Adult N cents year 1 cents year 3 all groups (9 10) (11 12) 1 1 5 2 3 4 4 16 20 7 14 15 9 65 17 (18 with 19 adult realizations) 14 82 25 (32 with 7 (13 with adults readult realizations) alizations) Table 4. Distribution of Israeli children’s apology strategies across age groups (N Preschool year 1 (4 6) Responsibility Excuses Justification Promise for forbearance Repair Minimization Maximization 4 N 9 Preschool year 3 (6 8) 28). preadolespreadolesN cents year 1 cents year 3 (9 10) (11 12) 2 1 1 8 9 2 8 1 1 4 2 1 9 14 3 28 discourse: promise for forbearance; repair; and minimization. Taking on responsibility by naming the offense (I’m sorry for what I did ) occurred in both age cohorts, as did excuses. Contrary to the claim made in the literature (Graybill 1990; Schadler and Ayers Nachamkin 1983), preschool children did externalize causes for wrong doing via the use of excuses (by mistake/not because of me/I didn’t mean to/I don’t hear so well ).

On the other hand, maximization (by intensifiers like very much, really) occurred only in the speech of the older cohort, and might indicate a growing recognition with age of the importance of sincerity in the realization of apologies. This finding is in line with Darby and Schlen- 20 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka ker’s (1982) argument that older children (9 12 years) perceive elaborated apologies as expressing deeper regret, and are also more able than younger children (5 6 years) to realize such apologies. 3. 2. The keying repertoire of children’s apologies

One aspect of children’s growing sophistication in mastering the forms and functions of apologies is expressed through variations in “key”, the interpretative frame of the utterance marked often through tone of voice in terms of its “color” or mood, such as ironic, sincere, playful or subversive (Blum-Kulka et al. 2004). A somewhat similar notion is proposed by Deutschmann (2003) in marking apologies on a scale for sincerity, such as casual, sincere, challenging or sarcastic. Adding the category of “pretend” we adopted Deutschmann’s terms to classify all the apologies used by type of keying.

As can be seen in Table 5 the major cutting line between the two cohorts is in the absence of the sarcastic and the scarcity of challenging keying from the younger children’s discourse. All other keyings are realized by all age groups. Casual keying (such as in sorry after stepping on somebody’s foot) appears in the younger children’s talk during joint activities, like drawing (Silver? Silver? Sorry, I don’t have silver color ) and is used by the preadolescents on various occasions, including for having made an error of speech.

Marking apologies as sincere (lexically by repetition as in I’m really really sorry or by tone of voice) is common practice for all children. These two keyings are linked to apologies proper, namely with utterances that carry the illocutionary force of the ‘apology’ speech act. On the other hand, the use of the challenging and sarcastic keying (both less common) can be associated with a range of speech acts, sometimes mitigating the challenging key of the upcoming act, and sometimes underscoring it.

Thus such forms can be used to pre-empt an FTA (as in directives excuse me, could you …), indicating the speaker’s Table 5. Distribution of apologies by keying over age (N Type of Keying Casual Sincere Challenging Sarcastic Pretend Preschool and Grade 1 Preadolescent 8 13 2 1 8 (2 challenging; 6 (all sincere) 6 sincere) Adults 3 8 19 29 57). 3 4 N 11 25 2 (4) 1 14 (2 challenging; 12 sincere) 57 Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 21 reluctance to impinge on the hearer’s negative face and thereby redressing that impingement (Brown and Levinson 1987).

Deutschmann (2003) argues that in adult discourse, when such use of apology forms occurs in response to violations having to do with deviations from the consensus and in an aggressive tone, usually during heated debates, it is hard to see how they can be considered a mitigating device. Similarly, in situations of behavior control, the apology forms used by adults in interaction with the preschoolers serve a different purpose (Teacher: Excuse me?! You take your bag and you go in, no going wild. Please, don’t put chairs here).

Such apology forms act in fact as directives to control behavior, and are in concert with and actually underscore the challenging key of the main control act. We found no instances of such use among the preschoolers, but it does appear in the talk of the preadolescents. On one occasion, when Ronen (9. 9) and Sa’ar (10) are playing with nylon bubbles, Ronen reacts to Sa’ar snatching the nylon with an indignant, excuse me sir, sir sir. Here again the apology form is used in the service of another function, namely to express an indignant objection.

On the whole, the sarcastic keying is quite common in the talk of preadolescents, and is used with a variety of speech acts (Blum-Kulka et al. 2004), yet appeared only once with apologies. Example 2: ‘Sorry for Sa’ar’s momentary insanity’ Participants: Sa’ar, m, (10); Ronen, m, (9;9) Orly (9;9). Date: 22. 2. 00. Place: Sa’ar’s room. Situation: The children are talking to the microphone. In pretend play children learn to abide by rules and regulations, and their behavior in the play frame includes attending to minor and major 22 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka violations.

Minor violations might be an error in naming one of the characters in play, or mistakes in the ways in which toys are operated. Major violations have to do with acting out of character in play, as in a case of a fight between two Pokemon characters, in which one of the children is offended by what seems to him as undue force having been used towards him by the other. The category of ‘pretend’ keying encompasses instances which are doubly keyed: first, for being uttered within the play frame; and second, for their specific function within play as sincere, sarcastic or challenging.

Interestingly, apology forms associated with a challenging key appeared only in the third observation period for the preschoolers, when the children were 6 to 8, and only within the play frame. The following example illustrates such a case of slixa (sorry) uttered within the pretend play frame, in which Idit is enacting a dissatisfied pupil complaining to her ‘teacher’. The use of slixa here can be seen to function both to express indignation in response to the content of the previous turn (with no trace of its apology meaning), as well as to apologize for and thus mitigate in advance the upcoming FTA (you are a bad teacher ).

Although she is ostensibly using the voice of a child, the style and adversarial tone of her delivery seems to echo adult parlance, perhaps that of a dissatisfied parent or teacher. Thus the play activity, by bringing in multiple roles and voices, allows for the development of pragmatic competencies by widening the repertoire of apology forms and functions. Example 3: ‘Excuse me teacher. Don’t speak with me about them’ Participants: Idit, f, (6;8); Shirley, f, (5;10). Date: 14. 3. 02 Place: Idit’s living room. Situation: The children are playing with dolls. Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 3 4. Resolution: Adult mediation vs. child negotiation Adult intervention in children’s conflicts may provide potentially important socializing input to the development of the pragmatics of apologizing. One adult strategy observed in the preschool is to attend to both parties in a conflict in the same breath, admonishing the offender on the one hand and stressing the need to accept his or her apology on the other (You have to accept his apology). Adult interventions in the children’s conflict may also function to model behavior, and to achieve conciliation through mediation (Tavuchis 1991: 64 68).

We do not know of course the extent to which the use of apologies by the children is the direct outcome of adult modeling, but echoes of adult usage in peer talk, as when quoting the speech of one’s mother to a disruptive child visitor at home (she said to him Nadav, sorry, you are exaggerating! ), show that children can be highly attentive to adult speech. Children’s acknowledgement of the role of adult as mediator and conciliator finds its expression in the preschool in situations of conflict through quite frequent threats ‘to tell’ (ani agid otxa (lit. I’ll tell on you)).

Yet children’s conflict management does not necessarily benefit from adult intervention. In the following examples we shall consider cases when a) children locally solve a conflict by themselves (example 4); b) cases when adult intervention is partly successful in modeling apology behavior, yet does not solve the conflict (example 5a and 5b); and c) cases when adult intervention is non-felicitous the adult imposes collective punishment without going to the root of the matter, while the children find sophisticated ways to negotiate a conciliation (example 6).

In the episode below, the children have been enacting Pokemon characters in pretend play, and Dani, playing the good Pokemon, declares having killed the bad Pokemon played by Oren, apparently enacting the “killing” with undue force and hurting Oren physically. Oren shows he is hurt by emphatically opting out of play (32: I’ m simply not playing with you, really, I won’t play with you at all, Dani ). Dani reacts first by countering Oren, but seems to cut himself off to apologize briefly (34: sorry)7.

Oren obliquely refuses to accept the apology by declaring his intention to hurt the offending party, using third person singular to mark re-entry to the pretend frame (35: I’ll hit him). The elaborate apology proffered by Dani next, containing both an IFID and the taking on of responsibility, (36: I’m sorry for what I did. Sorry) seems to satisfy Oren, who concedes that the hitting was done ‘gently’.

The repair sequence lasts 4 turns, and includes repair, threat, elaboration of the repair, and acceptance of the repair through re-framing of the violation as non-grave. The full success of the repair sequence is evident 24 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka Example 4: ‘It was done gently’ Participants: Oren, m, (6;1); Dani, m, (5;11); Alon, m (5). Date: 6. 4. 00. Place: “Einit” preschool, Jerusalem. Situation: The children are playing Pokemon. n the next two turns (39 and 40), in which the two children resume cooperation in enacting in play different Pokemon characters, and Oren proceeds to tell Dani, (with Dani’s willing cooperation as active audience), a complicated tale which serves to explain why he even shouldn’t have been considered the enemy and been hit in the former stage of the pretend play (see Blum-Kulka 2005, for a fuller transcript and analysis of this interaction).

This episode, which follows immediately the previous one, lasts over 76 turns, and illustrates how adult mediation might enhance the learning of strategies of conflict management, but does not necessarily lead to conflict resolution. The event builds up to a crisis when more children join Dani and Alon in the Pokemon based pretend play, with the children enacting various Pokemon characters (wearing imaginary space suits) having a fight. At some point Erez kicks a sand ball which hits Dani’s face; Dani is physically hit, spits and sneezes, and calls out Erez’s name.

Erez apologizes briefly (slixa (lit. ‘forgive’)) but his apology is emphatically rejected by Dani (No, I’m not forgiving you, turns 321 324). Next, Dani uses the opportunity of the student-teacher addressing him on another matter (Daniele, did you have a drink) to try and register a complaint (YES BUT EREZ, shouting in anger) and is cut off by Erez apologizing again (also shouting, turn 327). The student-teacher, apparently inferring from this Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 25

Example 5a: “You have to accept his apology”: The role of the mediator Participants: Erez, m, (5;11); Dani, m, (5;11); Alon, m (5); Student (Assistant). Date: 6. 4. 00. Place: “Einit preschool, Jerusalem. Situation: The children are playing Pokemon. 26 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka Example 5a: (continued) brief exchange that there must have been a fight and that Dani is the offended party, attempts to appease Dani by convincing him to accept Erez’s apology (328: What happened? , uttered as a rhetorical question, He is apologizing).

But Dani won’t have any of it and continues to recount the details of the incident in a shouting voice that indicates his emotional stress (329 335), ignoring Erez’s attempt for finding an excuse (but I didn’t see). At turn 334, the student takes on the role of the mediator in earnest. She allocates turns, (using explicit meta-pragmatic comments) as in a political debate, allowing each of the parties to present his side. First ensuring Dani’s speaking space (Let him speak and then you tell me) and then allocating speaking rights to Erez (Let’s hear what Erez has to say).

Dani uses his speaking rights to complete the description of the violation (the act of kicking the sand in his face) and its consequences (I have sand in my mouth ) (335 336). Erez uses his space to provide a confused account of the happenings that led to the incident (including reference to previous unclear violation, when someone threw something on him)8 and goes on to minimize his responsibility for the incident through a series of excuses that embed the offense in the pretend play frame: accusing the other party (they shot at me first ), describing the unintended consequence of an action (I wanted to shoot and it flew the sand ).

This sequence includes ‘positive excuses’ (Weiner et al. 1987) indicating that the skills needed for engaging in image restoration (Benoit 1995) and self facesaving (Chen 2001) are already activated by children in the preschool. In turn 338, the student tries to clarify if there has been any bad intention behind the offense. We can see her efforts as an attempt to socialize the children to the conventional norm for assigning blame; full responsibility applies only if the deed was fully intentional.

After clarifying with Erez (in courtroom highly coercive interrogative ‘yes/no questions’ style) that the acts were not intentional, she announces her verdict as mediator, carefully attending to both parties, asking Erez to be more careful next time, and urging Dani to accept the apology (turn 342)9. Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 27 Example 5b: ‘I don’t forgive you and I’m not your friend’ Participants: Erez, m, (5;11); Dani, m, (5;11); Alon, m (5); Date: 6. . 00. Place: “Einit preschool, Jerusalem. ((22 turns omitted) Does Dani accept the mediation? Though there is no verbal indication that he does, the resumption of normal communication between the two children (Erez declares that he is going, Dani asks him to bring him his Pokadur) seems to suggest that the incident has been resolved. But actually, as the next extract shows, this is not the case at all. In the part omitted, Dani and Alon continue playing without Erez.

When Erez returns, Daniel does not mince words to tell him not only that his apology has been in vain, but also that he has drawn the necessary conclusions: ‘Erez, Erez, Erez, I, I don’t forgive you and I’m not your friend anymore’ (368). We can see that despite all her efforts, the adult’s attempts at mediation and conciliation had no visible impact on the offended party, and the conflict remains unresolved. It is interesting to note the supportive part played in the conflict by Alon, Dani’s younger friend.

First, Alon is the one who stays to play with Dani, after Erez leaves; second, he aligns himself with Dani by offering a moral to the incident that supports Dani (369: The one who is bad goes to hell, the one who is good goes to Heaven); third, he continues in his efforts to appease Dani and make him feel better for several minutes after the play is over by making new suggestions for a joint activity (would you like to continue with me the picture my dad drew for me of Pikachu? ). All to no avail, until he finally manages to make him join in laughter around a funny speech error10.

In the next episode, the children are playing in a wooden structure in the yard called “the boys’ structure”. The structure contains an old cupboard, some tools and several big pillows. Preceding the episode quoted here they prepare an “insects cake” from sand (and ants) for one of the children’s imaginary birthday, present it to the birthday child who 28 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka pretends to taste it, and then pour its content into the sand box at the other end of the yard and run back to the “boys’ structure”.

The confrontational event begins when Ariel asks Yoav to hand him the stick Yoav is holding, claiming it as his, and when Yoav refuses, tries to grab it by force. During the fight that develops, Yoav receives a blow from Ariel. At first one of the children justifies the act (38: Golan: Because you didn’t give me the stick’) but as they realize the seriousness of the blow and Naor threatens to tell the staff (43: ‘I’m going to tell on you Ariel ’) both Ariel and Golan begin to apologize profusely with Ariel repeating ‘sorry’ (slixa) no less than 14 times.

This intensity, as suggested by Darby and Schlenker (1982), is possibly motivated by the threat to involve an institutional figure in the conflict. The male Teacher-Aid who appears on the scene makes no attempt to mediate for reconciliation. Instead, he threatens to impose collective punishment, I’ll take (it) apart, because, there is too much violence there (turns 60, 62), and indeed proceeds to take the stick from Ariel and dismantle the structure. When a few minutes later Ariel approaches Yoav with a new idea for play and Yoav concedes (77 78: Ariel: Let’s have a picnic; Yoav: Let’s have a party).

At first the previous incident seems to have been completely forgotten, but Ariel’s reference to the unpleasant incident in turns 81 and 83 I didn’t mean to do it to you and I didn’t mean at all to do it to you (meaning, to hurt you) sheds a new light on the whole exchange, turning it into a carefully planned remedial action, performed in stages. The first stage consists of an attempt to re-establish mutual trust as friends by proposing a joint play, using solidarity politeness markers (‘let’s’) that suggest common ground.

It is only after the offer is fully embraced by the other child, and a shared commitment to renewed friendship is firmly established, that reference is made to the previous incident. The renewal of friendship, which is expressed verbally through each child echoing the other’s ‘let’s’ utterance, underscoring their new togetherness, seems to work here to build the trust needed for allowing for the apology to come forward in a context that enhances its chances for being accepted as sincere.

In this mutually supportive context, Ariel’s repeated denial of intent (see turns 81 and 83) stands a better chance of being accepted than in the confrontational context preceding it, and we can indeed witness its success through the two children’s full collaboration in the new play frame11. The renewal of friendship between Ariel and Yoav stands in sharp contrast to the outcome of the previous incident, in which Dani refuses point blank to renew his friendship with Erez.

What we can see here is that the children’s norms for face threat and remedial action are driven by local, child world specific concerns: friendship is the central motivating force for interpersonal relations, and there are (mostly) unspoken norms governing appropriate behavior between Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 29 Example 6: ‘Let’s do a picnic party’ Yoav, m, (4;8); TEACHER-AID, Teacher Assistant (m); Golan, m, (5;6); Ariel, m, (4;11); Amichay, m, (4;10); Amit, m, (4;11); Naor; Date: 05-06-00, Place: “Einit” kindergarden, Jerusalem.

Situation: The children are playing in the recycled junkyard consisting of small structures; they are in the “boys’ play structure”. 30 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka Example 6: (continued) ((continued: the boys are playing peacefully and keep on planning their picnic. )) friends. Breaches of this behavior (like causing physical damage to your friend) are taken as face threatening not only to the offended party, but also to their shared face as friends.

Since it is friendship that is jeopardized, such confrontational episodes can have either of two outcomes: (temporary) end of friendship or successful remedial action that leads to its full resumption. Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 31 5. Other means of reconciliation In this section we discuss the sholem (literally ‘peace’) ritual as one salient indirect way of negotiating reconciliation in the children’s world12.

The sholem ritual is an important cultural practice of appeasement in Israeli children’s peer world. The word sholem denotes being in a friendly state, and its antonym brogez, (in anger) denotes being in antagonistic state. The terms can be used both to denote being ‘in peace’ (sholem) or the opposite (brogez, ‘in anger’) as well as performatively, to bring such states into being (Katriel 1985). Through the sholem event children declare and mark performatively the end of conflict; sholem events put an end to a period of brogez.

They provide speakers with indirect means for appeasement, circumventing the need to apologize explicitly and thereby minimizing the threat to the self’s negative face. Similar to apologies, sholem rituals presuppose that a violation has taken place, has led to a state of brogez (a severance of relationship), a situation which is being remedied through the performance of the ritual which allows for the resumption of relations and reestablishment of the normal social matrix. The initiation for a sholem ritual can be rejected, which is face-threatening for the initiator.

Our next example illustrates one way to minimize the threat to negative self face. By engaging in a pre-sholem-ritual move, querying the state of the relationship (are you brogez/sholem with ...? ) rather than attempting to change it, the speaker can find out if the necessary preparatory condition for the ritual holds without actually risking its performance. In the following extract, the three boys are talking about their forthcoming lunch, and Ben expresses concern that one of the boys (Eitan) will not share his bagels with his friends.

Apparently bagels are a coveted item, but to have them shared necessitates that both receiver (s) and donor are in a friendly relationship. But Eitan (the potential donor) is considered a ‘non-friend’ throughout the exchange, in which the other boys keep telling him that they are in a state of brogez with him. Ben’s question to Eli (turn 92) refers to Eitan (the potential donor) in the third person, suggesting that he is an unratified participant; one with whom the others are in a state of ‘not friends right now’ (brogez).

This is a state Eli’s proposes to remedy through the sholem ritual of peace making. But instead of following up this suggestion, Ben, speaking on behalf of the group, minimizes the threat to Eitan’s positive face caused by his exclusion by claiming that it was not in earnest (94: we teased you, teased you, okay? ), and then goes on to query rather than state the collective wish to make peace. In the next example the pre-sholem-ritual query is used as a sophisticated indirect strategy for gaining play entry (Blum-Kulka, in press). 2 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka Example 7: ‘Make now sholem’ Participants: Ben, m, (4;9); Eli, m, (4;6); Eitan, m (4;11); Date: 2. 2. 2000. Place: “Dganit” kindergarden, Ashdod. Situation: The children are talking about their forthcoming lunch. This extract is a small part of a long episode in which Dalit and Adi, best friends, engage in pretend play based on Pokemon characters, while a third girl, Shirley, makes repeated failed attempts to join in.

This extract represents a failed attempt at appeasement. Shirley’s preritual-query in turn 22 (are you (plural) sholem with me? ) queries the status of her friendship with the two other girls in an attempt to establish the necessary precondition for play entry. As noted by Corsaro (1985), children in this age group use ‘claims of friendship in an attempt to gain access, and the denial of friendship as a basis for exclusion’ (p. 168). Example 8: The ‘sholem-brogez’ incident

Participants: Dalit, f, (5;0); Adi, f, (4;7); Shirly, f, (4;0). Date: 4. 5. 2000. Place: “Dganit” kindergarden, Ashdod. Situation: The children are playing freely outside. Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 33 Shirley’s indirect request to join in systematically rejected by Dalit (see turns 25 for an indirect denial of friendship and 28 for reference to arbitrary rules as a way for denial), while her friend, Adi, acts as the gobetween, speaking up for Shirley while also placating Dalit.

The failure to reach reconciliation is encapsulated in Shirley’s move in turn 26: she declares a new state of personal dispute, singling Dalit brogez itax (singular ‘you’), thereby countering Dalit’s move of exclusion by reclaiming the initiative for herself. In principle, this should rule out any further attempts by her to join the game, but in practice she does continue with her efforts to negotiate entry, efforts met every time with direct yet grounded refusals on the part of Dalit13. Several points about children’s concept of apologies that we saw earlier are illustrated here: first, the centrality of friendship as a necessary recondition for all social relationships (be it for sharing food or joint play); second, the vulnerability of ‘friendship’ as a shared face construct; and third, physical damage as well as acts of exclusion constitute grave face-threats that sever friendships and hence need to be remedied in ways that ensure the re-institution of the relationship in full. 6. Summary The analysis of apology events in peer interaction as presented here suggests that the children’s system of politeness for apologies contains a rich repertoire of verbal formulae and apology functions, and is largely driven by the deep interests of childhood peer culture.

The verbal formulae manifest in the children’s talk echo adult usage: both the young and the older cohort used the formulaic slixa (literally, ‘forgive’, used as ‘excuse me’) and ani micta’er (‘I’m sorry’), for a number of functions and in different keyings. Thus ‘I’m sorry’ is being used formulaically (I’m sorry, I don’t have ... ) and sarcastically (I’m sorry for his momentary insanity … by 10 year old boy), and ‘forgive’ is used both in a challenging key (excuse me teacher, don’t speak ... ) and in earnest (I’m sorry for what I did, excuse me).

We also saw that the pragmatic repertoire for apologies includes the ability to detect a complaint realized indirectly, to use various excuses to minimize responsibility and to deny intent Comparing the two cohorts, we saw that with age, the range of forms and functions increases, as does the repertoire of acts considered as violations requiring an apology14. Thus, while apologies made by younger children are often conventional in nature and focus mostly on ‘breach of expectation’ type of violation, (as in Silver? Silver? Sorry, I don’t have silver color’, in response to a request for a silver color from a 6 year old girl).

Preadolescents vary their use of forms and keyings to address di- 34 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka verse types of offenses (as in the case of Iris, 10, personifying the microphone by ‘eh forgive me, don’t be offended, don’t be offended ’). Concurrently, the need to apologize often arises in situations of play, in cases when a momentary violent act by one of the children threatens what Corsaro (1985) calls “the fragile interactive space” shared by a group of playmates. Corsaro argues that the concept of friendship in the preschool years is mainly built on the concept of collaboration in play.

Your friends are the children you play with, and since peer interactive spaces are difficult to enter yet easily disrupted, ‘children develop relation with several playmates as a way to maximize the probability of successful entry’ (Corsaro 1985: 186). Our observations suggest a broader concept of friendship in the preschool years. Friendship as such seems to be conceived as the major precondition for gaining access to play: being ‘in peace’ (sholem) indexes being friends, and declaring a state of ‘in anger’ (brogez) indexes a grave threat to face because it means the denial of friendship.

Hence disruptive acts during play are interpreted as threatening the very foundation which makes play possible, namely presupposed friendship. The negotiation over the remedial action that follows, successful or not, has to do with re-instating the relationship. Interestingly, when adults intervene, the focus shifts to the clarification of intent (TA: you have to accept his apology because he did not do it on purpose) whereas among the children, intent gets mentioned only after mutual trust and solidarity have been re-established through the acceptance of a new play frame (Yonatan: I didn’t mean to).

The study of children’s apologies, as undertaken here, is exploratory in nature and does not claim to represent the full pragmatic system for children’s notions of face threat and remedial action at different ages. Yet because it is based entirely on natural discourse, it allows us a glimpse into the way that children’s politeness systems are being shaped in their daily interactions, and how they are driven by local immediate concerns of childhood culture, like friendship, while concurrently constantly adopting the forms and conventions of the adult world. Notes 1.

There are only few apology studies that have relied on transcribed natural discourse. The two recent studies that did rely on natural spoken data (Deutschmann, 2003 from a politeness theory perspective; Robinson, 2004 from a CA perspective), focused on adult usage only. 2. See Blum-Kulka et al. (2004) and Blum-Kulka (2005) for more information on the project. 3. Obviously, more research is needed for reaching any cross-cultural or age related conclusions from such comparisons. 4. The findings also indicate some gender differences in the types of offenses which precede apologies.

Whereas most of the boys’ apologies were realized after a vio- Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 35 lent conflict (which fall mainly to the accident category), girls apologized mainly after lack of consideration or talk offenses. See Sheldon (1993) and Sheldon and Johnson (1994) for the broader picture of gender differences in conflict talk. Transcription Conventions: word emphasis Wo::rd stretch WORD loud volume ?word? low volume AB pitch changes slow rhythm >words< fast rhythm #words# unique tone (0) pause [words] overlap word overlatch word- cut-off word) transcription doubt ((comment)) comments (…. ) unclear talk. Turn numbers reflect the original numbering in the full recorded session the excerpt is taken from. The English translation follows the Hebrew text closely; cases where Israeli norms or strategies are culture specific are commented on in the body of the paper. Deutschmann (2003) includes in this category offenses such declining offers or requests, forgetting agreements etc. For example, when Dafna (6;2) asks for the silver color during a joint drawing activity, Daniela (5;9) apologizes “Silver? Silver? Sorry, I don’t have silver color”).

It is not perfectly clear from the tape who is uttering the first “sorry” in this sequence. The second IFID realization in turn 36 is made by Danni, who is also the offender in this apology event. Because of technical problems the sequence was only partly transcribed, a matter which makes it difficult to characterize the violations in detail; thus we do not know what the TA is referring to when she talks about “falling”. This is the only occurrence of the word “apology” in the corpus. Nine turns later (382) the children started to play with an iron which warmed up in the sun, and later sat on it.

Prompted by the heated metal, they started a verbal play with a distortion of the utterance “my butt is boiling”, which made them both laugh and finally succeeded in cheering up Dani. Ariel’s moves seem to resemble the “confidence building measures” diplomats talk about in the context of international conflict resolution. We have also noted other indirect ways of appeasement, such as humor, narratives and explanations, but will not elaborate on these for lack of space. There were 32 “brogez” utterances and 17 “sholem” utterances in the young cohort’s data, and not a single occurrence in the older cohort’s talk.

We can see that the “sholem” ritual is replaced with age by the conventional apology formula of the adult world. A caveat is in order here. More data is needed to confirm our developmental observations, since some of them might be due to the different circumstances in which peer talk took place in the two cohorts: during free play in groups for the younger children, and during a meal in a fast food restaurant in pairs of two for the older cohorts. 36 Zohar Kampf and Shoshana Blum-Kulka References Benoit, W. L. (1995). Accounts, Excuses and Apologies: A Theory of Image Restoration Strategies.

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