Rhetoric Commons^™

The Rhetoric Of Jimmy Carter: Renewing America’S Confidence In Civic Leadership Through Speech And Political Education, Christopher Bondi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

July 15, 2019 marked the fortieth anniversary of President Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech, a catalyst for what became an often overlooked yet significant turning point in the nation’s history. Carter’s words were both poignant and pointed as he calmly, yet directly, addressed the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and engagement in narcissistic practices that led to a coveting of material goods. In an examination of the events that shaped this historical moment, this dissertation contends that, despite President Carter’s attempt to steer America in a more environmentally and socially conscious direction, the nation instead acquiesced to Ronald Reagan’s …

A Catholic Ethic For Smartphones In Tanzania, Faustine Tarimo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project is a synthesis of Church documents and papal encyclicals to form a Catholic ethic for the smartphone use in Tanzania. The research question for this project is how a Catholic communication ethic shapes the use of smartphones for human communication in Tanzania. The problem I want to address is the perceived danger of losing connectivity or ‘real’ face-to-face encounters between people in “let’s talk culture” in Tanzania. The goal of this project is to appreciate the use of smartphones, at the same time to attend to a Catholic ethic to integrate into a “let’s talk culture” some digital …

#Metoo: Why Twitter Doesn't Do Enough, Tara Mann

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

In 2017 actress Alyssa Milano sparked the #MeToo movement as most people know it today. Unbeknownst to many, however, a black woman named Tarana Burke began the Me Too movement a decade earlier after working with survivors of sexual assault. As more and more injustice through discrimination comes to light, it is important to recognize privilege where it exists and what it allows to happen. This project is an analysis of the rhetoric of the #MeToo movement that aims to prove that this privilege is the problem with the movement. I intend to demonstrate how the use of Twitter to …

Climate Change Games As Boundary Objects: Fostering Dialogic Communication Within Stakeholder Engagement, Megan L. Mckittrick

English Theses & Dissertations

Rising waters and the increasing devastation of flood events make coastal resilience a significant issue in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, particularly in the city of Norfolk. Enhancing resilience requires ongoing stakeholder engagement designed to invite dialogue while encouraging cross-jurisdictional collaboration and comprehensive problem-solving. Climate change games have been employed to support these endeavors. This dissertation provides a response to the following research questions: 1) What is the origin of the climate change game genre? 2) Why are key stakeholders in coastal resilience using climate change games? And 3) how do these games operate for these key stakeholders? To …

Exploring The Rhetorical Power Of Speculative Fiction Through Jewelle Gomez’S The Gilda Stories And Octavia Butler’S Fledgling, Monique Dixon

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

There are apparent similarities between Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories and Octavia Butler’s Fledgling. However, this thesis will demonstrate that they share more than similar subject matter and yet differ in substantial ways. Utilizing Black feminist theory and alternative rhetoric this thesis examines how Gomez and Butler harness the potential of speculative fiction to critique the world around them and imagine an alternative world for those who are intersectionally marginalized.

The Power Of Non-Compliant Logos: A New Materialist Approach To Comic Studies, Stephanie N. Phillips

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to understand how an image becomes a meaning-making actant. By tracing the lifecycle of an image starting with its production, I analyze how the image changes and transforms as it circulates and enters into new and sometimes unexpected relationships. Specifically, I look at the NC logo, an image found in the popular comic book Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine de Landro. The NC logo, which stands for “non-compliant,” is a fictitious symbol used on prisoner uniforms in the science-fiction comic series, and marks women who have failed to conform to societal guidelines set by …

Chicanx Murals: Decolonizing Place And (Re)Writing The Terms Of Composition, Nora K. Rivera

English Faculty Articles and Research

Drawing from an interpretive decolonial framework that understands multimodal writing as the act of creating co-composed knowledge, this article analyzes Chicanx murals as multimodal compositions that exemplify the continuation of the Aztec tlacuilolitztli practice of writing with images. This work also invites rhetoric and composition scholars to reexamine Western understandings of history, particularly the history of writing.

The Banality Of The Social: A Philosophy Of Communication Of Social Media Influencer Marketing, Kati Sudnick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project engages in a philosophy of communication approach in order to understand the role of social media influencer marketing within a historical moment defined via Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the social. Social media influencer marketing emerges as a new form of celebrity endorsement in which those finding fame on the Internet engage in word-of-mouth marketing for brands and organizations on their own personal social media pages, blurring the line between organic and sponsored content. According to Arnett (2010), philosophy of communication acts as a background road map for understanding foreground public action. Utilizing a myriad of metaphorical coordinates as …

Communication In The Ruins: Walker Percy And The Art Of Symbolic Mediation, Justin Bonanno

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes to explore the mediating function of the symbol through the work of Walker Percy. In the first chapter, I provide the necessary background for undertaking this project. First, I situate Percy in his historical moment and review key events in his life that helped to shape his philosophy of communication. Second, I sketch out some of the primary coordinates in Percy’s thought. Percy’s hermeneutic of the self requires an understanding of the difference between sign and symbol, dyadic and triadic events, environment and world, and immanence and transcendence. Third, I review some of the key intersections with …

Powerful Men: An Evaluation Of Successful Rhetoric, Rachel Hollenbeck

Undergraduate Research Journal

This study examines the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill and why it was so successful. Both men are famous for their rhetoric, but this study is a more in-depth look at how they spoke well and influenced people. Through the lens of Lloyd F. Bitzer’s “The Rhetorical Situation” and the classical rhetorical appeals, multiple details of Hitler and Churchill’s speeches are brought to attention and analyzed, especially how their responses fit the situations they were facing, how they connected with their audiences, and how their wording matched the goals they were trying to achieve. One of the purposes …

A Pedagogy Of Access Advocacy, Molly E. Ubbesen

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

A PEDAGOGY OF ACCESS ADVOCACY

by

Molly E. Ubbesen

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2020

Under the Supervision of Professor Shevaun Watson

I propose “a pedagogy of access advocacy” for students and teachers based on practices developed in the first-year composition classroom. A pedagogy of access advocacy aims to destigmatize the access needs of students and teachers by inviting them to share and support each other’s needs and to center and celebrate the creation of collective access. This dissertation brings together theories and methodologies from composition, rhetoric, disability studies, teacher action research, and critical discourse analysis to examine student reflections …

Resisting ‘Raid-And-Rescue’: Capturing The Ideograph Of Victimhood In Nevada Law A.B. 166, Samantha Thies

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Critical rhetoricians and legal communication studies scholars have long recognized that rhetoric and ideology are inherent to legal structures, shaping legislation and impacting the lives of those such laws are meant to address. Fewer look to, not just civic discourses, but also the vernacular discourse surrounding such institutions, shaping the ideologies that support it. There is a need, however, for the study of outlaw discourses to both help define ideographs and challenge their very existence through contrasting outlaw and hegemonic logics. Thus, this thesis examines debates over A.B. 166, a Nevada state law meant to alleviate sex trafficking, by establishing …

'Would You Say You Had Sex If...' Rhetorical Meaning-Making Within Intimate Encounters And Their Discourses At The Macro, Meso, And Micro Levels, Megan Orcholski

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advances a deeper understanding of the rhetoric of intimate encounters by analyzing meaning-making practices at the intersections of sex, sexuality, and sexualized violence at the macro, meso, and micro levels. The object of my analysis is discourse about sex, sexuality, and sexualized violence, but this analysis also has implications on understandings of how corporeal rhetorics, or communicative meaning within bodies, are operating in moments of intimate encounters. Throughout my chapters, I interrogate how normative scripts around sex are constructed, disseminated, and perpetuated, how these normative assumptions impact intimate encounters and their connected public discourses, and how these normative …

Murmurs Of Revolution: Mythical Subversion In Dostoevsky, Connor Guetersloh

English (MA) Theses

Throughout history, revolutions have been plagued by unpredictability; it is all but impossible to know when cultural systems will be turned on their heads. Is there a common motivator, to predict social unrest bubbling beneath the surface of society? I suggest the development of this motivator is detectable by deconstructing Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiotic patterns within the field of rhetorical mythology. “Mythology,” in the rhetorical and linguistic sense developed by Roland Barthes, is the study of a collective system of thinking we subconsciously subscribe to when interpreting meaning, perpetuated by greater society. The struggle for meaning is split into the …

A Maker's Perspective Of Materiality: Observing Material Change Through Legacy Craftsmanship, Maker Intent, And Contemporary Manifestation, Adam Swift

Masters Theses

Simple handmade objects have important stories to tell about the hands that made them and the environments they pass through. This project observes the thinking, materials, and process involved in craft work through the lens of materiality. I wrestle with materiality by presenting a personal making project, in front of L.C. King Mfg. Co., a Tennessee workwear company that maintains century-old manufacturing practices and values. With the interactive – and interdisciplinary – perspective of cultural rhetoric as the guiding theoretical framework, this display of both freshly created (the leather bag project) and progressively experienced (the chore coat) material realities aims …

Critical Language Awareness Pedagogy In First-Year Composition: A Design-Based Research Study, Megan Michelle Weaver

English Theses & Dissertations

In this design-based research (DBR) study, I collaborated with two first-year composition (FYC) instructors in designing and implementing Critical Language Awareness (CLA) pedagogy to promote students’ linguistic consciousness while strengthening and enhancing their postsecondary writing skills. I designed and implemented this study by drawing on a critical theory of language, informed by literature on language ideologies (Silverstein, 1979; Irvine & Gal, 2000; Kroskrity, 2010) and raciolinguistics (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Alim, 2016), and a critical theory of pedagogy, informed by literature on critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970, 1973; Giroux, 2011) and critical race pedagogy (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Lynn, 1999). After …

Collaboration In The Technical Communication Classroom: Negotiating Team Contracts In A Pwi, Alyssa Herman

Theses and Dissertations

As TPC teacher-scholars, we must acknowledge the overwhelming Whiteness of our field and the racism, ableism, and sexism inherent in our institutions. We must actively work toward inclusivity and socially just collaborations in our classrooms by encouraging dominant-identified students to confront their privileges and implicit biases in order to better engage with historically marginalized students. With that said, this thesis examines how teacher-scholars might take up a cultural-rhetorical approach to teaching TPC and how we might negotiate team contracts in PWIs. Firmly situated within the social justice turn, Herman draws from both feminist disability theory and critical race theory to …

“When Two Elephants Fight, It’S The Ground That Suffers ”: A Neo- Marxist Rhetorical Deconstruction Of The United States’ Rhetoric Of Power In Resistance To United Nations Treaties, Divine Narkotey Aboagye

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I present a Gramscian rhetorical reading of American antagonism to the International Criminal Court, a crucial agency of the UN. I probed the rhetoric of power in resistance concerning the discourse of international treaties by showing how both the United States and the United Nations have become global hegemons. From the foregoing, I uncover American resistance to the constitutive force of United Nations treaties by paying attention to post-Cold War American presidents. By using a neo-Marxist lens and analyzing a key foreign policy accord – the International Criminal Court – that spans the presidencies of Clinton, Bush, …

Rhetorical Roundhouse Kicks: Tae Kwon Do Pumsae Practice And Non-Western Embodied Topoi, Spencer Todd Bennington

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines Tae Kwon Do practitioner manuals as sites for better understanding the way diverse rhetorics can become embodied through technique. This dissertation understands martial arts in a Foucauldian sense as rhetorical institutions which discipline practitioners both physically and ideologically. A theory of “embodied topoi,” a term coined here to describe the process by which cultural commonplaces are incorporated into a material, carnal, or performed identity is presented alongside a review of how athletic or martial bodies have been previously studied. Seven popular Tae Kwon Do technical manuals are analyzed for moments when 1. Commonplaces are described, 2. “Daoist …

“The Speechmaking Of A Girl-Orator”: Reason, Gender, And Authority In Dorothy Hunter’S Free Trade Oratory, Erinn Elizabeth Campbell

Honors Projects

Dorothy M. Hunter (1881-1977) rose to prominence during the 1906 United Kingdom general election as a markedly “girlish” yet widely respected free trade orator. While men on the Edwardian public political platform typically built a reputation for oratorical prowess through theatrical displays of “heroic” masculinity, Hunter established her authority as a speaker through two very different (and apparently contradictory) strategies. Her performance of “charming” middle-class femininity helped demonstrate her right to speak on free trade as a “women’s question,” extending women’s traditional authority over matters of domestic consumption to include questions of political economy. Trusting in the power of education …

Where Do You Place Your Argument?, Christina Pontoppidan

OSSA Conference Archive

Toulmin’s logical approach to argumentation affects the purpose and design of his argument model. The author argues that, even though the model has proven useful and influential in the rhetorical tradition, it misses the most central aspects of persuasive argumentation and the rhetorical role of the topics. The author outlines a rhetorical argument model that takes the metaphor of places seriously and shows the process of building a persuasive argument guided by different types of topical places.

What Do Students Say About Writing? How Student Experiences Can Inform Canadian Writing Studies Pedagogy, Christopher Eaton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation focuses on Canadian Writing Studies by working with students as co-constructors of knowledge. It stems from my pedagogical and personal desire to understand how students built their knowledge of writing in my first-year writing classroom. By working closely with ten former students, the study explored how their experiences in my writing course at Conestoga College (otherwise known as COMM1085) could inform writing pedagogy. To accomplish this, the study combined Academic Literacies theory with Rhetorical Genre Theory as part of a larger Critical Narrative Inquiry into the students’ narratives of experience. Simply put, these theoretical and methodological frameworks enabled …

“Identity-Based” And “Diversity-Based” Evidence Between Linear And Fractal Rationality, Maurizio Manzin

OSSA Conference Archive

I identify two types of evidence: one based on “linear” rationality (LR) and the other based on “fractal” rationality (FR). For LR, evidence depends only on systematic coherence, and all other sources of knowledge (intuitive, perceptive, symbolic, poetic, moral, etc.) are marginalized. For FR, evidence requires an approach more adherent to the “irregularities” of life. LR philosophically entails a Neoplatonist and Cartesian account on identity, whereas FR entails Plato’s account on identity and diversity as coessential.

Persuading And Convincing, Adelino Cattani

OSSA Conference Archive

I’ll propose a distinction based on historical, theoretical, and linguistic considerations between:

- two different ways of inducing a change of mind, that is persuading and convincing.

- two different ways of proving, that is rhetorical argumentation and logical-experimental demonstration.

There is a tendency to keep a distance from persuasion in favor of conviction. In everyday language, the difference between the two terms appears clear, and it is a distinction developed theoretically by many authors from Plato and Kant to Perelman. In particular:

1. Persuasion is centered chiefly on the speaker: it enhances one’s will and ability to modify …

Developing Critical Thinking With Rhetorical Pedagogy, Elizabeth Ismail

OSSA Conference Archive

The development of critical thinking skills is emphasized as a fundamental attribute of successful graduates (Ritchhart & Perkins, 2005; Willingham, 2008). Some critical thinking textbooks inform students to “see beyond the rhetoric to the core idea being stated” (Moore and Parker, 2009, p. 21); however, other scholars have begun to suggest that rhetoric is intrinsically interrelated to critical thinking and plays a pivotal role in everyday interactions (Saki, 2016). This paper explores the later.

Civil Procedure As A Critical Discussion, Susan Provenzano, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

This Article develops a model for analyzing legal dispute resolution systems as systems for argumentation. Our model meshes two theories of argument conceived centuries apart: contemporary argumentation theory and classical stasis theory. In this Article, we apply the model to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as a proof of concept. Specifically, the model analyzes how the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure function as a staged argumentative critical discussion designed to permit judge and jury to rationally resolve litigants’ differences in a reasonable manner. At a high level, this critical discussion has three phases: a confrontation, an (extended) opening, and …

Death Positivity: A New Genre Of Death And The Genre Function Of Memento Mori, Melony Elsie Del Real

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This article explores Caitlin Doughty’s “death positivity” as an evolved form of the medieval memento mori, and how this medieval genre serves as a genre function for current day thanatophobic audiences. This is specifically done by analyzing Doughty’s book titled Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, as well as some of her other death positivity mediums. By modeling her rhetoric of death positivity after memento mori, Doughty can effectively deliver her anti-death fearing message to the very audiences that fear death.

Furthermore, analyzing Doughty’s rhetoric as operating within the genre function, a concept put forth by Anis Bawarshi, …

Fighting For 504: Negotiating Hegemonic Ability Through Verbal Advocacy And Disabled Embodiment, Drew Finney

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In my thesis, I look at San Francisco’s 504 sit-in for disability rights. I argue that both the verbal advocacy and the embodied actions of protestors demonstrate that dis/ability is constructed through a hegemonic process. I contend that combating hegemonic understandings of disability creates a tension between being a counter hegemonic movement and desiring the benefits of hegemonic legibility. To make these arguments, my thesis draws several conclusions. I argue that activists enacted a civil- rights framework to communicate the need for Section 504 to the public. I explain that activists adopted the role of educator to address problematic ideas …

Providing Clear Directions And Explanations, Carol Damgen, Carol L. Damgen

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

Giving students an opportunity to do group work in a Public Speaking course allows for an exchange of ideas from various points of view. This activity based on Persuasive Speech can further the students understanding of the assignment in a safe collective.

Working as a team develops strong foundations from which to build a powerful argument based not only on value but factual claims. The outcome of this group activity encourages the steps of building a problem/solution organizational pattern presentation.

The hope of this assessment is to scaffold into a solo presentation building from what the learner has employed from …

Purposefully Forgetting: Surveying San Diego’S Founding Narrative During The City’S Bicentennial Celebrations Of 1969, Noah Pallmeyer

Keck Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows

The city of San Diego owes much its success and prosperity to the “victories associated with colonization.” This quote comes directly from the current National Park Service description of the San Diego Presidio. This project turns to the 1969 bicentennial celebrations of San Diego’s founding. This was a rhetorically powerful period in San Diego’s historical remembrance. This project argues that native and other marginalized populations were not properly considered in the narrative of San Diego’s founding during these celebrations. To understand why and how these populations failed to be properly considered, this project turns to the narratives of colonial monuments …