Download or read book Accounts, Excuses, and Apologies written by William L. Benoit and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1994-12-05 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because responding to complaints is such an important part of human relations, this type of discourse has been studied in various disciplines. However, these studies tend to take a narrow focus. For example, some scholars study apologies and excuses in everyday talk. Others look at public apologies in speeches. Accounts, Excuses, and Apologies integrates and extends existing work on this concept into a general theory. The resulting theory of image restoration is then tested through application to several instances of defensive discourse.