Digital Commons Network^™

It’S Britney, Bitch, Mary Hyepock

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation engages public rhetorics surrounding pop princess Britney Spears as a case study for examining the rhetoricity of bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is commonly understood as the legal right to control what happens to one’s body without external influence or coercion. However, one’s legal access to bodily autonomy is produced, negotiated, and maintained through discourse. In other words, one’s access to so-called “ownership” over their body and agency to make decisions about it is deeply tied to the gendered and racialized symbolic production of citizenship in the United States. Utilizing a reproductive justice framework, I investigate how Britney Spears’ …

Of Language And Thought: American Political Discourse, Normative Reason, And Essentially Contested Concepts, Riley Clare Valentine

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes progressive liberalism and neoliberalism as forms of normative reason that redefine specific political concepts, which are central to American liberalism – equality, liberty, the role of the State, and the pursuit of happiness. I contend that language is an important expression of normative reason. Language is how political reason and the norms accompanying it are expressed. I move through Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Barack Obama, exploring shifts in language and interpretations of political concepts through progressive liberal and neoliberal forms of normative reason. I argue that a tension emerges between progressive liberalism and neoliberalism, and a …

Literacy's Levels: An Analysis Of Neoliberal Literacy Sponsorship In The U.S., Misty Dawn Fuller

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While much scholarship has considered Deborah Brandt’s concept of sponsors of literacy, there remains a need to consider relationships between literacy sponsors and larger implications of literacy sponsorship at national and institutional levels. Utilizing academic theories, U.S. federal government budgets and financed reports, and discoursal analysis, this dissertation investigates literacy sponsorship at the federal, postsecondary institutional, postsecondary institutional writing programmatic, and individual levels to tease out how, and in what ways, through “enabling” and “supporting” literacy these sponsors also” regulate, suppress, and withhold literacy” (Brandt 166). Rhetorical analysis determines that, at the U.S. federal level, literacy is promoted as a …

Intimate Rhetorics Of Networked Motherhood, Katie Nelson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Fundamentally pregnant bodies are understood, similarly to women’s bodies, as necessitating discipline. However, new networked forums have emerged where pregnancy is understood as affirming and having the capacity to challenge a silenced subject position. Using three case studies, the #IHadAMiscarriage Instagram page, the #TakeBackPostpartum Instagram page, and mediatized discourses surrounding Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy, this dissertation writes intimate publicity into these mediatized transgressions of pregnancy and postpartum. I argue discourses about pregnancy and postpartum in these networked spaces constitute intimate publics through the cultivation of shared affected investments and divestments in embodied experiences. These investments in the embodied experiences are crafted …

"Will God Forgive Us?": Christianity And The Climate Crisis In Auteur Cinema, Margaret Alice Parson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Climate change is an unavoidable and real catastrophic threat to the future of Planet Earth. This dissertation is interested in how contemporary auteur cinema draws on Christian forms to give expression to the ineffability of environmental collapse. In this rhetorical generic criticism, I discuss three recent auteur films: First Reformed (2017, directed by Paul Schrader), Interstellar (2014, directed by Christopher Nolan), and mother! (2017, directed by Darren Aronofsky). In order to best rhetorically analyze these films, I perform a generic criticism which utilizes aspects of psychoanalysis and affect theory as per the work of Gunn. Each film is …

The Rhetoric Of Sickle Cell Anemia, Raquel Mcfarland Robvais

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation examines the rhetorical treatment of sickle cell anemia as synecdoche, representing a preoccupation with racialized discourses of disease and the affective registers manifested in public life. From its inception SCA has taken on cultural meanings to satisfy ideological arguments about the nature of black bodies.

It has been appropriated to create “categories of difference and belonging” (Schramm et al). I examine how SCA is gathered by rhetors to serve varying ideological purposes and cultural communities. It is utilized to invite different readings that conceptualize the black body as an object of scientific experimentation, as an agent for resistance …

Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics Of Victorian Education Reform, Vicki Jean Davis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics of Victorian Education Reform arose from my observation that, historically speaking, Anglo-American schools have always been “in crisis.” I argue that the crisis of the “failing school” is a rhetorical problem rather than an economic problem as most scholarship suggests. Much like the cultural myth of “the One True Love,” education reform debates tend to position the school as an institution that can rescue the nation from all perceived social ills. Not only is this unrealistic, the patterns of language are inconsistent as ideas about the purpose of school are translated into policy. This causes further …

"I Listen To Their Story, They Listen To My Comments, And Then I Pocket My Fee:" Sherlock Holmes As Rhetorical Equipment For Living, Andrew Cessna Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study argues that Sherlock Holmes serves as rhetorical equipment for living. Using Kenneth Burke’s theory of symbolic appeal and the critical tool proposed in the essay “Literature as Equipment for Living,” I explore how Holmes responds to the rhetorical situation of early nineteenth century England and consider why the Holmes symbol continues to appeal to audiences. I conclude that rhetoric is a necessary component of the Sherlock Holmes symbol and suggest that Holmes’s famous method is rhetorical rather than syllogistic.

Rhetoric And Food: The Rise Of The Food Truck Movement, Bryan W. Moe

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This analysis is an attempt to study the rise of a new mobile food medium the food truck. I examine the movement of rhetorical actors, the situation, the audiences, and discourses created and sustained through rhetorical practices. These include looking into contemporary controversies, the history and storytelling that helps to convey identity, a new aesthetic experience created by the medium, and specifically their sophistic character and rhetoric helping them speak on issues of social justice and change. To understand these texts, I examine each of them in light of their rhetorical situation and the convergence of a multitude of kairotic …

Screening Ted: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Intersections Of Rhetoric, Digital Media, And Pedagogy, Joseph Alan Watson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The presence of expertise resonates across our daily lives. Experts are called upon to consult us about which candidate is ideal for office, which type of wood is the best choice for a carpentry project, which scientist has optimal data on the effects of air pollution, which speech teacher is the best one to take for proper credit hours, and more. An expert is typically conceived as an individual who knows more about a given topic and can create stronger identification than an average person. The struggle to achieve expert status is one that is fundamentally tied to power and …

Precarious Positions: Toward A Theory And Analysis Of Rhetorical Vulnerability, David Riche

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I develop a framework for treating rhetoric as a system for managing vulnerabilities to and through discourse. I contend that, through rhetoric, we are all put into a fundamentally precarious position, an unavoidable state of exposure to material, social, institutional, and rhetorical forces that work to condition us as both agents and audiences. Rhetoric is not simply something we use; it is also something that we respond to, something to which we are continuously exposed, whether we like it or not. There is, in other words, a necessary concern for vulnerability at the heart of rhetorical theory …

Raptivism: The Act Of Hip Hop’S Counterpublic Sphere Forming Into A Social Movement To Seize Its Political Opportunities, Matthew C. Maddex

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores recent attempts by the hip hop community to be recognized in the mainstream political sphere and to have its concerns acknowledged and addressed. This project examines how the scholarship of hip hop (musicology), rhetoric (counterpublic spheres), politics and social movement theory intertwine, and to demonstrate how hip hop’s community can emerge as a counterpublic sphere that could become a social movement capable of altering the current cultural and political landscape in the United States. Although hip hop as a culture consists of four major elements: breakdancing, graffiti art, deejaying, and rapping, this study focuses on rappers and …

Minding The Gap : A Rhetorical History Of The Achievement Gap, Laura Elizabeth Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Minding the Gap: A Rhetorical History of the Achievement Gap arose as an inquiry into the rhetorical congestion around the phrase achievement gap in public discourse. Having been used in support of multiple, often competing, education agendas, the phrase seems versatile almost to the point of emptiness, and yet it seemingly retains its persuasive power. Examining the history of the phrase, I reveal that the notion of the achievement gap is rooted in the logic of segregation and the rhetoric of disability, and serves to construct students in ways that paradoxically undermine efforts to expand access to educational opportunity. Although …

The Rhetorical Strategies Of Don Quixote And Sancho Panza, David T. Tarvin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the rhetorical components of the famous novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes’ novel continues to be celebrated around the world four hundred years later. His two main protagonists epitomize opposite virtues, but their love for one another, and the promise of an ínsula, creates a bond that overcomes their differences. Don Quixote, the mad knight, values lofty ideas idealized in chivalric romance. Conversely, Sancho, the simple squire, values tangible materials he can see and touch in his own life. While the two characters first appear to be contrary in nature, by the journey’s end, as …

In Spite Of Yourself : The Asignifying Force Of Humor And Laughter, Kevin Michael Casper

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In Spite of Yourself: The Asignifying Force of Humor and Laughter calls upon the interruptive moments of uncontrollable laughter to challenge rhetoric’s historical treatment of humor and laughter. Anyone who has ever suffered a fit of hysterical laughter at precisely the wrong moment, or has begun to laugh spontaneously at an inappropriate joke before stopping short, can attest to laughter’s uniquely uncontrollable force. Beyond all reason and control, laughter interrupts us and reminds us of the limits of the human subject. Because laughter does not signify meaning in the traditional communicative sense, it exerts an asignifying force irreducible to the …

Reinhold Niebuhr's Ethics Of Rhetoric, Joseph E. Rhodes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the writings of the American public intellectual and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). My project is a unique contribution to Niebuhrian studies in that I approach these works from the perspective of a rhetorical theorist. My intention is to parse from Niebuhr’s editorial commentaries, his philosophical inquiries and lectures, his theological treatises, and his sermonic essays an specifically “Niebuhrian ethics of rhetoric.” In order to accomplish this task I investigate the rhetorical situation Niebuhr was embedded in and to which he was responding to at the turn of the twentieth century. Part of the analysis of his rhetorical …

China's 20th Century Sophist: Analysis Of Hu Shi's Ethics, Logic, And Pragmatism, Rya Butterfield

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This is a study of the theory of critical Sophistic logic that underwrote Hu Shi’s involvement in China’s 20th century reform period known as the Chinese Renaissance. Hu Shi was a radical liberal reformer who played a leading role in the New Culture Movement. He pursued a two-pronged project for cultural reform. One side of the reform was focused on developing a critical pragmatic logical theory. This side was aimed at the intellectual class and appealed to the heritage of the Confucian literati. The other side of the reform was focused on lifting the people’s vernacular language from vulgarity to …

Descriptive Study Of Korean E-Mail Discourse, Jaegu Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study is an examination of a corpus of computer mediated Korean discourse (i.e., e-mail), based on a folk-cultural category, nunch’i. Nunch’i is actively involved in linguistic feature use in terms of [+age] and [+distance] of human relationships. Many Koreans think that the world has an inherent hierarchy according to age. This idea has been reflected through nunch’i, a culture-specific system for maintaining harmonious social relationships especially between [+age] and [–age] people. Nunch’i has a function of foresight, in that it is part of the way that people read the situations and the faces of addressers and addressees. Like oral …

The Rhetorical Myth Of The Athlete As A Moral Hero: The Implications Of Steroids In Sport And The Threatened Myth, Karen L. Hartman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research analyzes changes in the rhetoric of a sustaining myth in order to better assess what happens when a myth is threatened. By examining American sport and its current struggle to withstand the widespread use of steroids, the author investigates how public discourse about the scandal turns athletes from mythical heroes to cheaters. The author begins by explicating the rhetorical construction of the athlete as a moral hero in America and how this myth is perpetuated today. The author then examines how steroids threaten the myth of the moral athlete and uses Major League Baseball as a case study …

A Conductor's Analysis Of Amaral Vieira's Stabat Mater, Op.240: An Approach Between Music And Rhetoric, Vladimir A. Pereira Silva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Choral music is one of the most common musical activities in Brazil. However, the lack of biographical studies, music publication, and theoretical works which discuss stylistic and interpretative aspects of choral performance creates problems for conductors. The primary goal of this study is to consider Amaral Vieira’s Stabat Mater, op. 240 specifically from a conductor’s point of view, focusing on biographical, analytical, stylistic, and interpretative issues. The document is divided into three chapters; chapter one discusses twentieth-century Brazilian choral music, Amaral Vieira’s life and music, history and overview of the Stabat Mater, op. 240, and textual aspects. Chapter two presents …

The Myth Of Charismatic Leadership And Fantasy Rhetoric Of Crypto-Charismatic Memberships, Shaun Robert Treat

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study will analyze the relationship between myth and the fantasy rhetoric of charismatic leadership by employing Fantasy Theme Analysis to examine the pervasive discourses invoking this enduring folk belief. Fantasies of the Charismatic Superhero are explored within the popular leadership treatises of successful “management gurus” and in our popular culture entertainments. The rhetorical visions of Stephen Covey’s “Principle-Centered Leadership,” Jim Collins’ “Level 5 Leadership,” and Manz and Sims' “SuperLeadership” are examined for their displacement of charismatic leadership in favor of the empowered crypto-charisma of self-leading memberships. Findings suggest “empowerment” rhetorics, like the rhetorical visions championed by many populist “gurus,” …