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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies

“Because I Said So”: How National Leaders Use Rhetoric To Frame The Issues Of National Security And The War On Drugs, Saul Valle Jan 2024

“Because I Said So”: How National Leaders Use Rhetoric To Frame The Issues Of National Security And The War On Drugs, Saul Valle

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

In the preamble of the 2024 presidential election seasons in both the United States and Mexico, there has been an increase in aggressive outspoken expression by national leaders regarding how to best handle the issue of drugs and drug use across the Western hemisphere. These types of sweeping policies are often credited to President Richard Nixon, who on June 18th, 1971, initiated his “War on Drugs,” a global policy campaign intended to address the production, distribution, and consumption of the illicit drug trade. Existing scholarship on this topic has extensively analyzed the early years of the American war on drugs …


Grassroots Diplomacy And Vernacular Law: The Discourse Of Food Sovereignty In Maine, John Welton May 2017

Grassroots Diplomacy And Vernacular Law: The Discourse Of Food Sovereignty In Maine, John Welton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine, a coalition of small-scale farmers, consumers, and citizens building an alternative food system based on a distributed form of production, processing, selling, purchasing, and consumption. This distribution occurs at the municipal level through the enactment of ordinances. Using critical-rhetorical field methods, I argue that the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine develops a ‘constitutive’ rhetoric that composes rural society through affective relationships. Advocates engage the industrial food system to both expose its systemic bias against small-scale farming and construct their own discourse of belonging. Based upon agrarian values such as …


The Making Of A Virtual Monster: Ideological Criticism On The Isis Hate And Extremism, Md Shah Jahan Jan 2017

The Making Of A Virtual Monster: Ideological Criticism On The Isis Hate And Extremism, Md Shah Jahan

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The 9/11 incident and its subsequent terrorism specifically the rise of radical Islamist groups like ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), and al-Qaeda astounds the world. ISIS’s propaganda technique using digital media helps the terrorist group motivate and recruit a large group of people from around the world. Terrorist incidents like the Dhaka café in 2016 and France soccer game attack in 2015 provide a glimpse of ISIS ferocity and barbarism with its subsequent series of attacks. This research examines the kind of rhetorical language that ISIS leaders and followers use to support their ideologies. And, how the internet …


The State House And The White House: Gubernatorial Rhetoric During The Obama Administration, Austin Peyton Trantham Jan 2017

The State House And The White House: Gubernatorial Rhetoric During The Obama Administration, Austin Peyton Trantham

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

What is the importance of political speechmaking? Do state governors discuss presidential priorities? This study addresses these questions by analyzing the contents of annual State of the State addresses given by governors from 2012 to 2014 during the presidency of Barack Obama. A descriptive paper provides evidence that governors primarily discuss employment and economic issues in their addresses, are discussing greater number of policy issues than in previous decades, and are delivering their address before the presidential State of the Union message. Examining health care and immigration policy in separate empirical papers, I theorize that contextual factors, including legislative partisanship, …


How Communication Design Motivates Voter Participation: Comparing Instrumental Vs. Social Rhetoric, Lindsay Pryor Apr 2014

How Communication Design Motivates Voter Participation: Comparing Instrumental Vs. Social Rhetoric, Lindsay Pryor

MAIS Projects and Theses

This written defense of my degree project describes how l used contemporary communication design theory to develop postcards for the Office of the Washington Secretary of State urging voter registration before the 2013 General Election deadline. In addition to measuring the overall effectiveness of the postcards, this project evaluated the registration and turnout differences between two treatments in a study funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The aim of the study was to add to the small but growing body of interdisciplinary research concerning communication design and voter participation. To determine which communication design techniques motivate more postcard recipients to …