Lakoff

When considering Lakoff, the most profound area that caught my attention focused on Apology.
This as a whole got me thinking that about our society and the society norm. When people apologize, do they really mean it or is it just something that we say when we technically want to end the issue or just say "I'm sorry" so no feelings are hurt. On the contrary, sometimes I apologize for things that I actually really meant at that time but just throw in the over used phrase just as a defense tactic.
Until this reading, I have never really thought about apologies or how they are used all the time, and probably not 100% sincere. But why do we say I'm sorry? Do we mean it? Do we just say it because it is what we are used too? I think it has become such a habit that we do not care what comes out of our mouths or think before we say something because we can always say "I'm sorry" for something that was not taken lightly.
When considering the situation with the cat, all phrases in some way or another, place blame on the owner of the cat, the cat itself, or the person who stepped on the cat. Just a slight shift in words can change the apology from a personal offense to putting blame on the other. With this in mind on such a trivial situation, we can see the larger picture as people changing a few words just to fit a right response, Thinking of the 'right response,' it brings me back to the word labs ( hahah I know I know) that we studied for our last paper. I drew connects between apology and word labs. If we consider apologies giving another person what they want to hear, are we or are we not using what Luntz demonstrated.
For me it is strange to think that the apology is in a sense giving another person what they want to hear, but how many times do we do it? How many times do we do something and apologize for it later, whether we really and honestly mean it?
This is just one notion that I find extremely interesting.
This is how we work and how words and phrases become a"language war."