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2003

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Communications and the arts

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Uncovering The Storytelling Power Of Communication: Applying Walter Fisher's Narrative Theory To Three Presidential Crisis Speeches, Sharon Dowell Dec 2003

Uncovering The Storytelling Power Of Communication: Applying Walter Fisher's Narrative Theory To Three Presidential Crisis Speeches, Sharon Dowell

Student Work

This study applies Walter Fisher’s narrative theory of communication to a rhetorical analysis of three presidential crisis speeches: President George W. Bush’s speech on September 20, 2001 after the terrorist attacks, President Franklin Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor speech on December 8, 1941 and President Bill Clinton’s Oklahoma City bombing speech on April 23, 1995. The speeches were analyzed to discover the accuracy of the theory, why the speeches were successful and if they supported the case for a presidential crisis communication genre. Three main conclusions resulted from this rhetorical analysis. First, the theory was verified as accurate because it defined the …