The Rhetoric of Apology, ENGL 400-50

Our instructor, Heather Lettner-Rust believes in consistently creating new content and investigating new perspectives with every Honors class that she teaches. When talking to upperclassman, you will find that no ENGL 400-50 course is taught the same; This course was no different.

While still based in writing and class discourse, our class focused in all of the pieces and parts that go into making public (or otherwise) apologies effective. As such, we evaluated public apologies that were presented  by each student through the lenses of things such as timing (kairos), ethos, pathos, whether they included all parts of an effective apology, and more. Every week, a student would be responsible for researching and presenting about a public apology, and whether or not the apology was successful. For example, I presented about Paula Deen, and an apology made about previous comments, and how it effected her career.

In addition to papers written on historical or current public apologies, we also wrote a number of papers about apologies we, ourselves, have made or been involved with in the past; I fount it unexpected that we were focusing on our own actions, ans applying what we were learning directly to our own actions, rather than writing strictly professional essays.

Not only this, as we learned and read about in Farmville and Longwood’s history in the civil rights movement, our class had three panels in which we got to questions and hear from President Reveley, and people that were members of the community that were involved in the civil rights movement here in Farmville. Inspired by this, we created our own panel that would be presented on research

Below, I have provided an outline that we have each of our panelists (a nursing professor, a business professor, a political science students, and a Liberal Studies student) to prepare for the panel; as the presenter, I would ask these questions throughout

• 5-7 minute introduction speech regarding your experience with apologies

• • How/why should apologies happen?
  • How do apologies affect you?
  • If you have the four parts of an apology, how effective will the apology be? Are there other factors that would make it more effective?
  • How is the rhetoric of apology relative to your field of work?
  • What is more important to you in the forming of apology? i.e. word choice, timing, ethos, pathos, ect.
  • Is there an apology that has made a significant impact on your life?
  • Would an apology be crafted differently if its personal vs professional? How would you make these different?

During our class, we have studied Aaron Lazare’s 4 parts of an apology.  They will be covered in the documentary, but here is a very condensed explanation of what is necessary for a successful apology.

4 parts of apology:

• Acknowledging the offense
• Explanation of the situation that led up to the apology
• Show of remorse/ guilt
• Reparations (payment) and restitutions for the offense