Email from Richard Kingston points out something interesting in Mel Gibson's recent apology for his drunk driving and antisemitic tirades. Gibson has blamed loss of control due to alcohol -- normally he keeps his opinions better disguised -- but he spoke about his loss of control in a doubly indirect way. He might have said "I was completely out of control", or he might have moved back a step from acknowledging his responsibility for his loss of responsibility and said "I acted like I was completely out of control". But in fact he moved back two steps, and said "I acted like a person completely out of control."
Well, he's an actor, after all. I suppose he hopes, like all of us, to be judged by the depersonalized principles that Angelo explains in Measure for Measure:
Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it,
Why euery fault's condemnd ere it be done:
Mine were the verie Cipher of a Function
To fine the faults, whose fine stands in record,
And let goe by the Actor.
Richard (citing Shakespeare) wrote:
The psychological motivation for inserting the extra words is easy to see. But does it have a name (alteregofication?). And are there other examples?
It seems like a familiar rhetorical move, but none of the immediately-obvious search strings turn up many excuses besides Mel's.
Posted by Mark Liberman at August 2, 2006 08:06 AM