Laura’s research

I often get asked, “Why apologies?”

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a really bad apology? One that made you feel worse than before the ‘apology’?

As a linguistics grad student, I was already interested in pragmatics and interpersonal communication, but when I settled into the topic of public apology, it changed the way I look at the world around me.

I wrote my thesis on contemporary public apologies: looking at corporate, celebrity and political apologies and analyzing them using aspects of both critical discourse analysis and speech act theory. I developed a novel framework that allows a reader or listener to critically evaluate apologies, and better understand just why an apology is good or bad.

[Insert shameless plug encouraging you to download my thesis — just click the button below!]