M. Catherine Gruber's ‘I'm sorry for what I've done’: The language of courtroom apologies investigates the apology speech act within the context of federal sentencing hearings. Gruber analyses a corpus of fifty-two allocutions presented by defendants in three US district courtrooms between 2004 and 2006, looking at how defendants code various statements as a defensive strategy during sentencing. In Chapter 1 Gruber briefly frames the project, discussing the history of apologia in ancient Greece, where defendants gave a speech at a trial involving a request for forgiveness, and the corresponding modern act of allocution in courtrooms. This chapter outlines the structure of the book and provides socioeconomic backgrounds for the defendants whose allocutions are analysed.

Chapter 2 discusses the apology speech act, setting it apart from the apologies produced at sentencing hearings by defining the features of a tripartite speech act: misdeed, apology, and response. Gruber discusses the importance of perceived sincerity and emotion when apologising. This chapter also includes an overview of other studies that investigate naturally occurring apologies and discusses features of apologies in the sentencing hearing context. Chapter 3 expands on the federal sentencing hearing context, discussing the structure and function of a sentencing hearing as the final step of a defendant's journey through the criminal justice system. A historical account of allocution practices is also given in this chapter. Gruber states that giving defendants an opportunity to speak was historically important in common law because all crimes were considered felonies, carrying the mandatory punishment of death. Allocution allowed defendants to provide legal reasons from a prescribed list to prevent the sentence being carried out. This chapter concludes with a summary of the three district courts and judges investigated in this study.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 analyse the fifty-two allocutions in Gruber's corpus. Chapter 4 focuses on how defendants respond to their offences. Gruber looks at assessment-coded utterances where defendants criticise what they've done, responsibility-coded utterances where they accept responsibility for their actions, and harm-coded utterances where defendants acknowledge how their actions have hurt others. Gruber analyses the use of I'm sorry and I apologise looking at the frequency, specificity, and quantifying statements that accompany the speech act.

Chapter 5 discusses how defendants talk about the past, present, and future to mitigate their actions and comment upon their sentence. This chapter also comments upon defendants trying to present their true character and show themselves as more than their criminal acts. Chapter 6 presents an analysis of allocution features external to the offence and sentence of the defendant. This chapter discusses the use of politeness markers, restrictive markers like just, and the structure of the allocution. In the final chapter, Gruber presents her conclusions based on the analysis of this corpus, stating that an ideal allocution is one in which the defendant accepts responsibility for their actions. One important conclusion that Gruber makes is that allocution is most beneficial for first time offenders, as the sincerity of repeat offenders is questionable. For forensic linguists, this text provides a framework by which allocutions can be analysed to assess a defendant's sincerity.