Rhetorical Emancipation: Apologia and Transcendence on Death Row

Abstract

The last statement of a condemned prisoner is a compelling rhetorical moment. Rhetors are given the opportunity to answer for charges knowing they cannot alleviate their circumstances. The statements analyzed here suggests that in such cases rhetors rely on transcendence as their preferred form of apologia. These statements show how the rhetorically malleable and strategically vital qualities of the situation may be manipulated to the rhetors’ advantage. This analysis of the last statements of condemned prisoners shows how the purposeful enactment of transcendence may be used as a means of rhetorical emancipation through terminological control. Transcendence allows rhetors to align their interpretation of the situation with a broader communal value and escape answering the details of the charges against them.

Keywords:

• Apologia
• Burke
• Execution
• Image Repair
• Transcendence

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the reviewers and the editors for their insights in refining this essay. He would also like to thank Dan Malone of Tarleton State University for sharing his database.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The statements were retrieved from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in December, 2017. Other statements have been added as prisoners are executed. The information is available at http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.html.

2. The statements are collected from a number of sources around the nation including the New York Times, the Clark County, Indiana, prosecutor’s office, and the Georgia Department of Corrections, among others. The information is available at http://www.tarleton.edu/scripts/deathrow/default.asp. The Clark County database can be accessed here: http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/usexecute.htm. Some statements that showed discrepancies between the databases were checked against Murderpedia, a searchable database of executed murderers in the U.S.

3. I did not include complete statements because of length, though if interested readers wish to see them they may check the cited databases. Instead, I highlighted selected portions of the statements that exemplify the ways transcendence was applied.

4. It should be noted that a number of prisoners declined the opportunity to speak, and while there is certainly strategic value in silence, see Brummett (1980) and Anderson (2003) for example, those concerns were beyond the scope of this project.