Institutional apologies in UK higher education: Getting back into the black before going into the red

A small corpus of student e-mail apologies to academic staff was collected in order to investigate the nature and structure of the apology act. The event apologized for can vary in two independent dimensions: whether it is internal to the discourse or not, and whether it concerns a past, present, or predicated future act. Much of the data consisted of apologies occurring alongside other acts: the apology was often not the main business. Why, then, do students apologize to staff, particularly when apology is a minor function? The concepts of equity and equilibrium are used to explicate this usage: apologies are employed to pay debts/gain credit within this institutional relationship. A previously undescribed apology strategy which is focused on improving the writer's standing as a “good student” or “good person” (and thus their credit balance) is also identified. This strategy – which we have termed but-justification – is used to show that although an offence may have been committed, such behaviour is not indicative of the student's “right relationship” and “pious attitude” (Goffman 1971:118) to their institutional role qua student.