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KEY CONCEPTS Image restoration, corporate apoligy, rhetorical theory, social leviathans
I view the essay by Burns and Bruner as generally sympathetic to my work. They offer a number of important and thought-provoking insights. They appropriately note that I acknowledged that I have not written the final word on this topic. Indeed, I now tend to prefer image "repair" to image "restoration" because "restoration" might imply that one's image has been restored to its prior state. Sometimes one has to settle for repairs (or "patches;" and of course image restoration/ repair may not work at all). Nor do I assume my writing is always as clear as I might hope. When one works on a variety of topics with multiple co-authors, one's focus necessarily varies. Still, I want to point out a few places where I have anticipated some of authors' concerns or disagree with their analysis.
Burns and Bruner reveal that their goal is "to emphasize and develop a more audience(s)-oriented point of view, to ameliorate the constraints of the theory's apparent focus on what seems to be a discrete source, a typology of the source's strategies, and an understanding of 'text as something developed and delivered by the source" (p. #). I do present a menu of options for those who feel the need to engage in image repair (and I am trying to develop some guidelines for how sources can choose from those options). Thus, my work inevitably focuses on the source, on the source's options, and on discourse (texts) from sources. However, I do acknowledge the importance of the audience in several ways.
First, I have always considered audience perceptions to be important In discussing the two components of a persuasive attack (offensive act, blame for that act), I observed (1995) that "The key point here, of course, is not whether in fact the actor caused the damage, but whether the relevant audience believes the actor to be the source of the reprehensible act" (p. 72, emphasis original). I have defined "image" as "the perception of a person (or group, or organization) held by the audience, shaped by the words and actions of that person, as well as by the discourse and behavior of other relevant actors" (1997a, p. 251, emphasis...