Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons^™

President Reagan's Rhetorical War Against Nicaraugua, 1981-1987, Donald Morton

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The Reagan administration launched a two term campaign to win support for the Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua. The rhetorical war began in secrecy and ended in scandal. With Reagan's reputation as a "great communicator" and the priority he assigned to the Contra cause it seemed surprising to find virtually nothing on the topic in a search of the communication journals through mid 1992.

The central research question of this thesis is whether President Reagan used rhetorical strategies and similar depictions to other presidents in his prowar rhetoric against Nicaragua. A common theme of war rhetoric is the dehumanizing of the …

The Rhetoric Of Rescue, Mary Blakeman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis examines the television reporters' verbal depictions of two rescue events, the rescue of Jessica McClure in 1987 and the rescue of three whales at Pt. Barrow, Alaska in 1988, in order to discover what rhetorical techniques were used to appeal to the public interest. Analog criticism, metaphorical analysis and pentadic analysis were used to discover the dominant language reporters chose. Three main conclusions were drawn from this analysis: (1) use of the dramatistic pentad showed how reporters focused public attention away from the purpose,(2) verbal and visual depictions cannot be separated when studying television news stories and (3) …