On apology and its pragmatics

[iad58]

The youth who was standing by my side barged into me. Then he half-turned towards me, and I prepared for the routine apology and the equally routine nod. It wasn't his fault—he had merely submitted to momentum when our trolley bus took a sharp turn, as moving vehicles occasionally do. I was neither angry nor offended. But etiquette has it that an apology is in order when you've hurt (even inadvertently, and even only apparently) someone's body or honour or feelings.

I nodded in the same instant in which he said “Съжалявам”. (Lit. ‘I regret’, an obvious loan translation of ‘[I'm] sorry’.)

And then I was angry. Not so much with him as with myself. Why did I take that for an apology? In my native language apology should have the form of the imperative of one of several verbs meaning ‘excuse, forgive, pardon’; a statement of regret has no such pragmatic effect. In fact, if the purpose of apology is to regain status, this trendy but non-canonical (to me) utterance achieves (with me) the exact opposite.

Here's another story—one of quite some time ago, maybe a decade:

I was in a bookshop, browsing, and as I was on my way out without having bought anything, a saleswoman came up and wished to see what I had under my loose longish jacket. I thought no ill of that—I'd been standing there for a fair while, with my back towards her. However, the word “Съжалявам” at the end of the inspection (uttered with a mien that was anything but apologetic) did annoy me. In my understanding of Bulgarian this couldn't possibly mean ‘I regret having troubled you’; it could only mean ‘I regret not having caught you shoplifting’ (у них тоже план давай, хоть удавись).

… I know that it wasn't this chap's fault—he had merely submitted to momentum when the language took a sharp turn, as living tongues occasionally do. But he did hurt my linguistic feeling. What is to make up for that?