Oh baby, it's hard for me to say I'm sorry: Public apologetic speech and cultural rhetorical resources

The current study deals with public apologetic speech in the context of political rhetoric. The main argument of this paper is that different cultures support their members with different cultural rhetorical resources for a public apologetic speech event, and that one must pay close attention to the way an apologizer draws on historical, social and political contexts. This argument is illustrated by two rhetorical case studies. More specifically, we conduct an in-depth analysis of two public apologetic speeches given by two political leaders of two different cultures: the former American president Clinton, and the former Israeli Prime Minister Barak. By analyzing these two speeches, we aim to illustrate the way in which cultural rhetorical resources frame and transform the rhetorical situation.