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The Rhetoric Of The American Dream: Freedom, Democracy And American Exceptionalism, Donna Knudsen

USF St. Petersburg campus Master's Theses (Graduate)

What is the American Dream? The American Dream, significant for its connection to American national identity, has eluded concise definition for more than two centuries. In spite of numerous failed attempts to encapsulate varied and diverse individual dreams within a singular definition, the notion of a common American Dream that rests within assumptions of shared experience endures. This study examines the rhetoric of U.S. Presidential inaugural addresses – George Washington through Barack Obama – combining word frequency searches with a contextual analysis that uncovers common principles associated with the American Dream that have been perpetuated by the nation’s leaders. Discussions …