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"Our Kind Of Communication": Rhetorical Discoveries Of A Resonant Communicative Philosophy On Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Olivia Marilee Warfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project investigates what Mr. Fred Rogers referred to as "our kind of communication" in a 1969 Senate testimony wherein he was awarded twenty million dollars to fund continuation of his children's educational television program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. I ask how "our kind of communication" manifests throughout the series' thirty-three year run and then contextualize the communicative mode's significance in the present day. I position this study as a communicative, philosophical inquiry which connects issues of pedagogy, rhetoric, epistemology, and ontology. First, I ground the study in relevant literature regarding mass media and (public) television, rhetorical televisual framing, an amended …