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Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies

Bureaucratic Modernity And The Erosion Of Practical Reason: A Rhetorical Education As An Antidote, David Impellizzeri Dec 2019

Bureaucratic Modernity And The Erosion Of Practical Reason: A Rhetorical Education As An Antidote, David Impellizzeri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To what extent and in what ways does modernity reveal itself through the bureaucratic? This project aims at an interpretive understanding of bureaucratic modernity. The rationalization of society and action in the (late) modern world requires that an increasing number of human activities and domains be explained in allegedly neutral, ‘rational’ terms and without reference to morally substantive ends. Ultimately, this entails a form of epistemic reductionism that elevates instrumental rationality to the exclusion of practical reason and probabilistic ways of knowing. Bureaucratic modernity signifies a decrease in choices that can be legitimized in public on some basis other …


Rhetsec_ | Rhetorical Security, Jennifer Mead Dec 2019

Rhetsec_ | Rhetorical Security, Jennifer Mead

Culminating Projects in English

Rhetsec_ examines the rhetorical situation, the rhetorical appeals, and how phishing emails simulate "real" emails in five categories of phishing emails. While the first focus of cybersecurity is security, you must also understand the language of computers to know how to secure them. Phishing is one way to compromise security using computers, and so the computer becomes a tool for malicious language (phishing emails and malware) to be transmitted. Therefore to be concerned with securing computers, then you must also be concerned with language. Language is rhetoric's domain, and the various rhetorical elements which create an identity of the phisher …


A New Materialist Rhetoric: Theorizing Movement From A Rhetorical Ethnography Of Hiking, Bryan Picciotto Aug 2019

A New Materialist Rhetoric: Theorizing Movement From A Rhetorical Ethnography Of Hiking, Bryan Picciotto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the field of rhetoric, conventional concepts of movement depend on dialectical theories of materiality that posit matter is not rhetorical until acted upon by human sign or symbol systems. New materialist philosophy, which considers the dynamism of matter without situating materiality in dialectical relationship to language, provides a theoretical context for reconceptualizing the rhetoricity of movement. Working from a nondialectical approach to materiality, this dissertation theorizes how movement functions rhetorically, specifically within cultural practices of hiking. For this project, I participated in 15+ hikes at state and national parks in Maine, and generated a multimodal archive of 1,000+ audio, …


Rhetoric’S Demagogue | Demagoguery’S Rhetoric: An Introduction, Ryan Skinnell Jun 2019

Rhetoric’S Demagogue | Demagoguery’S Rhetoric: An Introduction, Ryan Skinnell

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

Despite varying understandings of who or what a demagogue is or what a demagogue does, it is little surprise that demagoguery has long occupied rhetoricians, who are of course also interested in persuasion, argument, politics, public speech, affect, emotion, ethics, deliberative discourse, and essentially all the other realms of rhetorical action touched by the demagogue. Still, after more than two and a half millennia of deliberation on the matter, rhetoricians are still grappling with demagoguery—how to define it, how to identify who engages in it, how to explain its rhetorical character and effects, how to resist it, and how to …


When Humanity Meets Technology: Contemplating Neil Postman's Critique Of Advertising, Yingwen Wang May 2019

When Humanity Meets Technology: Contemplating Neil Postman's Critique Of Advertising, Yingwen Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to contemplate Postman’s critique of advertising and offer insights to understand Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) in today’s mediated environment. As an essential component of IMC, the history of advertising demonstrates and documents that the medium of communication has an extensive influence on IMC practices. The concern about how communication media affect human perception, understanding, and behavior, resides within the central claim of the study of media ecology. Thus, this project investigates IMC through the lens of Postman’s media ecology perspectives, and argues that Postman’s prescient ideas provide both hope and constructive insights. Moreover, Postman’s thermostatic perspective, rooted …


The Ethics Of Occultic Communication: An Invocation Of Joshua Gunn And Sissela Bok, James Thomas Begley Jr. May 2019

The Ethics Of Occultic Communication: An Invocation Of Joshua Gunn And Sissela Bok, James Thomas Begley Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Occultic rhetoric, according to Joshua Gunn, is a genre of discourse concerned with the study and practice of secret communications. The strategic sharing of secret messages involves a host of methods and conventions designed for the selective disclosure of hidden knowledge, thus controlling the boundaries of (and accessibility to power between) insider and outsider groups. Occultic rhetoric has its uses in everyday encounters, but the abuse of such manipulative strategies, especially by those in the academy and other positions of power and trust, calls for an ethical response. This dissertation submits occultic rhetoric to moral investigation by incorporating the works …


A Rhetorical Analysis Of Opening Statements In Trial: Reconsidering The Classical Canon Of Invention, Andrew Chandler May 2019

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Opening Statements In Trial: Reconsidering The Classical Canon Of Invention, Andrew Chandler

Undergraduate Theses

This analysis of 21 opening statements probes at current persuasive practices employed by trial attorneys through the lens of mainstream legal advice and an expanded definition of rhetorical invention – one which includes both discovery and creation. An evaluation of such practice reveals the utility, and furthermore the duty of the advocate, to draw upon an expanded realm of available arguments.


Using From The Heartland In The First-Year Writing Classroom: Measuring Instructor Reception Of The Customized Textbook, Sarah Cohen Mar 2019

Using From The Heartland In The First-Year Writing Classroom: Measuring Instructor Reception Of The Customized Textbook, Sarah Cohen

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The aim of the first-year writing program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) is to equip students with critical reading and writing tools and strategies to advance effective written communication well into their future. This study examines and measures attitudes of UNO composition instructors – who come from a variety of pedagogical and theoretical backgrounds – toward the efficacy of UNO’s self-published Composition I textbook, From the Heartland: Critical Reading and Writing at UNO. In many ways, From the Heartland embraces what Richard Fulkerson refers to as “a critical cultural pedagogy” which encourages students to consider personal …


Ua12/2/28 Forensics Team, Wku Archives Jan 2019

Ua12/2/28 Forensics Team, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about the forensics / debate team.