A critical exploration of the rhetoric of apologia as applied to the discourse of corporate social legitimacy

This dissertation performs a critical textual analysis of the rhetoric of apologia as a rhetorical genre using the cases of Lord & Taylor, a retailer owned by the May Department Stores Co. and Texaco, one of the world's most prominent oil companies, in their pursuit of corporate social legitimacy following crisis. This project is concerned with how apologia functions between the corporation and the public sphere. It highlights the fact that in its present state, apologia does not extend far enough in outlining concrete measures for how organizations re-establish social legitimacy in crisis situations. The analysis points to the limitation of apologia in its current use by researchers, pointing to a preoccupation with classifying the forms or strategies available to corporate entities in crisis, and calls for further study of the functions of the genre within the social/public domain. A critical rhetoric approach is used to study the rhetoric of apologia in relation to the larger social forces that cause the discourse to change in order to meet the demands of a more sophisticated and politicized public sphere.;The textual analysis reveals three stages that become apparent in contemporary organizational crises: (1) Corporate apologia; (2) Negotiation; and (3) Restitution. These stages demonstrate a process that organizations undergo with members of the public sphere in order to right wrongs and re-establish corporate social legitimacy. The project calls for a reconceptualization of the notion of "text" to include the rhetorical actions of organizational entities as a basis for textual analysis. Finally, this project reveals that the continued heuristic value of apologia lies in its ability to contribute to a greater understanding of organizations and their pursuit of corporate social legitimacy through the use of apologiae discourse. Implication for the use of apologia as a tool for analyzing the contemporary organizational crises is discussed. Directions for future study in this area are discussed, particularly as organizations consider their function in the social world.