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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Pathetic Politics: An Analysis Of Emotion And Embodiment In First Lady Rhetoric, Stephanie Lynn Wideman Jan 2017

Pathetic Politics: An Analysis Of Emotion And Embodiment In First Lady Rhetoric, Stephanie Lynn Wideman

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation explores the theoretical and practical relationship between our understandings of emotion’s role in political decision-making. In this pursuit I seek a resurrection for pathos’s legitimacy in persuasive studies through the pursuit of the pathetic political realm. This work has three primary concerns: how may pathetic power be accessed, from where does this power originate, and how might political actors enact this power for their own political goals. I draw primarily from theories related to visual rhetoric and the body in order to provide perspective on how the body is politicized through the pathetic realm. Theoretical perspectives are drawn …


This Is Us Saying Who We Are: Speaking The Rhetoric Of Mental Disability, Renuka Uthappa Jan 2017

This Is Us Saying Who We Are: Speaking The Rhetoric Of Mental Disability, Renuka Uthappa

Wayne State University Dissertations

People with mental disabilities, or what are sometimes referred to as “mental illnesses,” face stigma when they interact with the public. To fight this stigma, the members of a small, grassroots, advocacy organization known as the Speakers Bureau travel to high school and college classrooms narrating their experiences with mental disability. They do so to replace culturally circulating stereotypes regarding such disability with more accurate and positive images. This dissertation is an auto-ethnographic exploration of the rhetoric of the Speakers Bureau. Through rhetorical analysis of members’ classroom speeches, of interviews with each speaker, and of the speaker’s self- assessment of …