The course will raise various issues in relation to ethos management and image repair in the discourse of public figures in the public sphere. We will deal to a great extent with situations of crisis and scandal that harm the person’s good name and the ways he seeks to repair it. The course focuses on the presentation of the self in discourse, on the disposition in which it takes place, as well as on its relation with the constraints imposed by the genre. Our perspective is interdisciplinary: The tools are drawn from classical rhetoric, from discourse analysis and argumentation as well as from microsociology and communication. We will first learn key aspects of the Aristotelian ethos, and its modern developments. We then dedicate a few lessons to some issues affecting the ethos, such as cultural models, the audience, and the field in which the speaker operates. Also we will discuss image repair theories and applications in different genres (such as autobiography, hearing in Parliament, news interview, television debate, talk-show and so forth). We will examine the various rhetorical issues through examples of the discourse of public figures from a variety of fields (politics, entertainment and the business world).