Thought about paper #2...

After last Tuesday's class, I feel somewhat compelled to write about the patterns of discourse in relation to human responsibility. I found Lakoff's writing about patterns in apologies very interesting and I want to go further into that. Also, I would like to use some of her arguments to discuss one major argument that we discussed in class as well. I want to talk about the act of apologies, themselves, and then I want to try to relate that back to certain degrees of accountability we should/ should not have for issues of the past. A rhetorical analysis of metaphors and references will be key in my paper. I want to find out why we feel guilty or ashamed to apologize for acts of the past that we were not present for, yet still affect us day to day. I also want to figure out why it seems it's harder to apologize for something when it is evident that we are wrong in a certain situation. The art of skirting apologies with generic half-assed "I'm sorry"s is another area that I would like to look firther into.