Sponsored by the College of Communication, UT Austin

Monday, Feb. 20, 3 p.m., CMA 5.160

Confessions and apologies are the kind of interactional business that usually is conducted in a private space, where it serves to reestablish the relationship of trust that existed before the transgression became known to the apology’s recipient. This presentation focuses on recent trends to go public with apologies and confessions, when people not only use words but also use bodily means in front of the camera. In my analysis of these performances I focus particularly on the way ‘story telling’ has entered them, usually in pursuit of ‘identity repair.’ I will argue that ‘story telling’ is the genre par excellence for identity work, and in particular for identity repair; and will show — with a more detailed analysis of two televised apologies of former Senator John Edwards (North Carolina) and former Governor Mark Sanford (South Carolina) — how it can backfire.

MICHAEL BAMBERG is Professor of Psychology at Clark University. He received an MPhil degree in Linguistics from the University of York, UK, and his PhD in Psychology from the University of California, Bekeley. He is the editor of the book series Studies in Narrative and co-editor of the Journal Narrative Inquiry. For the last 26 years, he teaches as Professor in the Psychology and the English department at Clark University, where 1909 Freud, Jung and others imported what later became the Therapeutic Ethos. Currently, he is working on a monograph in which he uses positioning analysis to micro- analyze Liane Brandon’s documentary film, Betty Tells Her Story. ADDRESS: Department of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610, USA. [email: mbamberg@clarku.edu]