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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies
Citizen Havel And The Construction Of Czech Presidentiality, Timothy Barney
Citizen Havel And The Construction Of Czech Presidentiality, Timothy Barney
Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications
Václav Havel had two eventful terms as the first democratic president of the Czech Republic. The documentary Citizen Havel is one rhetorical artifact that captures the way a new democracy and its attendant executive power is constructed consciously in real time in a political culture where such a tradition has largely not existed. Culled from ten years of fly-on-the-wall-style footage, Citizen Havel captures the tensions between the constitutional expectations of the Czech presidency and Havel's own extraconstitutional interpretations of executive power. Ultimately, this essay argues that Citizen Havel is one influential representation of how Czech “presidentiality” during the post-communist transition …
From The Gay Bar To The Search Bar: Promiscuity, Identity, And Queer Mobility On Grindr, Chase Aunspach
From The Gay Bar To The Search Bar: Promiscuity, Identity, And Queer Mobility On Grindr, Chase Aunspach
Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis is a critical exploration into the mobile application Grindr and how it rhetorically constitutes its users and their experience of queer spaces. Recently, researchers from a variety of disciplines have displayed increased scholarly interest in Grindr. Despite this much needed attention, few studies before this thesis have examined Grindr’s material structure—its interface, scripts, and other design features—as rhetorical and worthy of analysis. I document and interrogate my own experiences as a user of the application, adding a humanistic perspective to current conversations about Grindr to demonstrate one potential approach to critiquing mobile media that extends the “field” of …
Living Proof: Autobiographical Political Argument In We Are The 99 Percent And We Are The 53 Percent, Doron Taussig
Living Proof: Autobiographical Political Argument In We Are The 99 Percent And We Are The 53 Percent, Doron Taussig
Media and Communication Studies Faculty Publications
People often cite life experiences as evidence in political arguments, though personal experience is far from generalizable. How do these arguments work? In this paper, I consider the rhetorical dynamics of “autobiographical political argument” by examining We are the 99 Percent and We are the 53 Percent, two blogs that use autobiographical stories to make discursive points. I argue that these autobiographical appeals efficiently use all three of Aristotle’s persuasive “proofs”—logos (logic), ethos (credibility), and pathos (emotion). Then I show that many of the blogs’ stories focus on “redemption,” a theme personality psychologists have found emphasized in the narrative …
Shaved Or Saved? Disciplining Women’S Bodies, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl
Shaved Or Saved? Disciplining Women’S Bodies, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl
Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication
Proponents of sexual liberation and abstinence-until-marriage advocates appear to be on opposing ends of the sociopolitical spectrum; however, both are invested in the regulation of women’s vaginas. We argue that the rhetoric of both communities produces the same disciplinary configuration for the control of women’s bodies. Both communities instruct women that the appearance of a prepubescent and pure vagina is essential to sexual appeal and self-care. Whether sex positive or sex negative, both communities articulate a model of sexual health that negates women’s status as active, desiring subjects. Ultimately, we argue that public scrutiny of women’s vaginas implicitly and overtly …