Kodansha Metier 821 Gokai wo maneitatoshitara moushiwakenai (Sorry If I Caused a Misunderstanding - Language of Politics and Politics of Language)

“Once I’ve said it, I have to do it.”
 
This line, spoken by the protagonist of Battles Without Honor and Humanity after declaring he will cut off his fingers, captures a simple fact: utterances carry responsibility. However, not everyone is as forthright as the protagonist. In reality, the opposite is quite common. The world is full of attempts to dodge responsibility for one’s words. “That’s not what I meant” and “I’m sorry if I caused any misunderstanding” are stock phrases used for this purpose. Many of us are weary of hearing people in positions of responsibility resort to such expressions.
 
The complication is that these expressions are not merely tools for slyly dodging responsibility; they also have legitimate uses. The question, then, is how to distinguish sly excuses from legitimate ones.
 
This book addresses this question through the notion of the deniability of meaning. Suppose a speaker says something, thereby meaning something, and later denies having meant it. Sometimes the denial is accepted; other times it is not. Where then is the line drawn? One aim of this book is to demonstrate that the criteria are diverse. An important criterion is whether the hearer knows that the speaker genuinely meant what was said. However, even this criterion varies with contextually shifting standards of knowledge. Moreover, for various reasons, entirely different criteria from “whether the hearer knows that the speaker has genuinely meant that” may come into play. This multiplicity complicates the deniability of meaning.
 
This complexity enables both the evasive denial and the flexibility of human communication. If we adopt oversimplified, generalized prescriptions for dealing with such dodgy uses—for example, automatically treating “I’m sorry if I caused any misunderstanding” as a pseudo-apology and never accepting it as a genuine apology—we risk stripping communication of its needed flexibility. Then, what should we do? We must examine factors that shape the acceptability of denial in each communicative situation. This book provides the framework for that purpose.
 
Phrases designed to dodge responsibility are beginning to threaten the foundations of social interaction. People say, “I have absolutely no intention of discriminating against foreigners” as if offering moral indulgences, all while making xenophobic remarks. Dog whistles, coded language, and insinuation are used to agitate and manipulate audiences. This book will interest anyone seeking to understand the mechanisms behind the dark side of language.
 

(Written by FUJIKAWA Naoya, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2025)