 The views of forgiveness canvassed thus far have, by and large, focused on forgiveness as a private phenomenon, involving, for example, a change in emotion. But another strand of thinking attends to our social and linguistic practices related to forgiveness, most notably, our practice of saying “I forgive you” or some cognate expression. Joram Haber argued that the question “What is forgiveness?” is best answered, “in the context of what speakers mean when they employ the term” (1991: 53), even if there are other ways to forgive besides uttering “‘I forgive you’” (1991: 40). According to Haber, understanding forgiveness requires discovering what one does when one performs the linguistic act of expressing forgiveness, typically by way of the utterance, “I forgive you” (1991: 29).