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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies

Prisoner Of Context: The Truman Doctrine Speech And J. Edgar Hoover’S Rhetorical Realism, Stephen Underhill Oct 2019

Prisoner Of Context: The Truman Doctrine Speech And J. Edgar Hoover’S Rhetorical Realism, Stephen Underhill

Stephen M. Underhill

In this project, I argue that J. Edgar Hoover’s style of political realism should be studied by critics because it long preceded that of President Harry S. Truman. Thestyle belonged to a stockpile of anti-Communist imagery that helped to shape how the Truman Doctrine speech was drafted and how audiences interpreted its meanings in more local domestic politics. When Truman fınally announced that the Soviet Union had challenged international protocol, I argue that he confırmed the vision that his Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director and other detractors had developed throughout the New Deal to discredit reformers who challenged issues …


Shaved Or Saved? Disciplining Women’S Bodies, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl Jul 2015

Shaved Or Saved? Disciplining Women’S Bodies, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl

Casey R. Kelly

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 …


Shaved Or Saved? Disciplining Women’S Bodies, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl Jun 2015

Shaved Or Saved? Disciplining Women’S Bodies, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl

Kristen Hoerl

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 …


Show Me Your Desire: Critical Discourses Of Legislating Voter Identification, Right To Work, And Sb 1070., Michelle Kearl Dec 2013

Show Me Your Desire: Critical Discourses Of Legislating Voter Identification, Right To Work, And Sb 1070., Michelle Kearl

Michelle Kelsey Kearl

While popular and political discourses seeking to shore up the mobility of bodies ‘to be’ in public is nothing new, the recent convergence of a host of legislating is worth noting. The rhetoric surrounding voter identification and right to work laws, as well as Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 underscore xenophobic compulsions to reconstitute the appropriate public body. In this manuscript I am specifically interested in the intersection of race and class as they emerge in the political discourses of these cultural and legislative debates. In these three cases several tropes emerge including traditional arguments to preserve the American Dream for …


Gendered Social Movements: A Critical Comparison Of The Suffrage And Gay Marriage Movements., Michelle Kearl Dec 2009

Gendered Social Movements: A Critical Comparison Of The Suffrage And Gay Marriage Movements., Michelle Kearl

Michelle Kelsey Kearl

The elections of 2008 saw the passage of several overwhelming and expansive condemnations of gay rights across the nation. Most damaging to the gay marriage movement was the successful passage of Proposition 8 in California, the first time that the right gay marriage was repealed. I argue that the continued modeling of the civil rights framework defers an analysis of the argumentative strategies of historically gendered movements such as the suffrage movement and is a disservice to the strategic potential of the marriage equality movement. The critical comparison mad where between suffrage and marriage equality opens the potential for our …


Conceptualizing And Measuring White House Staff Influence On Presidential Rhetoric, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos Dec 2005

Conceptualizing And Measuring White House Staff Influence On Presidential Rhetoric, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos

José D. Villalobos

Scholars have debated extensively the impact of presidential rhetoric on public opinion and congressional behavior, but have largely ignored the determinants of what the president actually says. This inattention is partly the result of the difficulty of acquiring systematic observations of presidential speech crafting. We devise a method of quantifying White House staff influence over the composition of rhetoric that captures the multistage negotiations between the president's speechwriters and his policy advisors and provides a framework for future studies on the determinants of presidential rhetoric. We employ our method to study influence over the writing of President George H. W. …