The Pragmatics of Public Apologies on Social Media within the Sociolinguistic Framework of Cancel Culture

Abstract

The advent of cancel culture in the digital world has changed the entire notion of social responsibility, particularly in the light of the increased number of social media apologies made on social media. This paper will look at how these apologies are compiled and their pragmatic and sociolinguistic perceptions. The research will address the problem of the role of linguistic strategies in the perceived sincerity and efficacy of apologies in the situations of the public backlash. The overall aim is to analyze practical aspects and discourse patterns of apology messages on various social media such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. This paper adopts a discourse-analytic approach to qualitative study, supported by corpus-based observations, which are biased, to examine a corpus of publicly available apologies. The findings indicate that there are routine patterns that are recurrent, such as the responsibility acceptance strategy, deflection strategy, intensifiers, and image repair strategies such as the mortification strategy and corrective action. The study concludes that the effectiveness of the apologies by the government depends on the agreement between the linguistic selection and expectations of the audience. The following are just some of the lessons that can be extended to the field of sociolinguistics and digital communication to demonstrate how the role of language in identity, accountability, and social norms negotiation in the online setting alters.