Rhetoric Commons^™

The Rhetorical Criteria Of Kennedy's Camelot, Stacy Fawn Wilder

Online Theses and Dissertations

John F. Kennedy's presidential rhetoric reflects key criteria necessary for creating and sustaining the American Camelot myth. That myth was successfully ingrained within the American psyche through the use of visual rhetoric, campaign speech rhetoric, and crisis time rhetoric. Moreover, the collective memory of cultural trauma following Kennedy's assassination suggests a promising continuation of the Camelot myth. Because the four rhetorical categories (visual, campaign, crisis, and collective memory) worked in tandem, all were essential for creating Kennedy's legacy.

Silence And Self-Making: Black Lung Rhetoric And The Ken Hechler Letters, Jennifer De Pompei

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis combines history, rhetoric, and feminist identity studies to discuss the subject of black lung disease and the Appalachian coal miner. The first chapter examines the "evolution of mentalities" in historical and popular discourse surrounding the miner, which reflects James V. Catano's subversive form of the self-making identity in Ragged Dicks. The second chapter uses the feminist theory of silence as a form of control and power to understand the absence of black lung disease from the literature of coal. The final chapter is a case study of the correspondence between Congressional Representative Ken Hechler of West Virginia and …

Reading Between The Numbers: The Colonial Rhetorics Of Fantasy Football And The Illusion Of Control, Robert Kyle Kellam

Wayne State University Dissertations

In this project, I build on existing research in the critical intersection of media, sport, gaming and race to explore how fantasy football, an entertainment byproduct of the National Football League (NFL), rearticulates and recontexualizes the colonial ideology already prolific in the NFL and other products of American media culture. I investigate how fantasy football may represent an innocuous, yet exigent place to study the commodification and consumption of bodies in our contemporary media landscape because of the way that the increasingly popular game operates in a capitalistic logic, where NFL players are almost exclusively valued for their statistical production …

Musical Rhetoric And Sonic Composing Processes, Kyle D. Stedman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is a study of musical rhetoric and music composition processes. It asks the questions, "How does the nature of music as sound-in-time affect its rhetorical functions, production, and delivery?" and "How do composers approach the task of communicating with audiences through instrumental music?" I answer these questions by turning to the history of musical rhetoric as practiced in the field of musicology and by interviewing composers themselves about their composition practices--approaches that are both underused in the rhetoric and composition community.

I frame my research participants' responses with a discussion of the different degrees to which composers try …

The Abjection Of The Pythia, Alaina Dyann Tackitt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent academic research has garnered considerable popular interest on the matter of whether the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, was high. Current findings aim to prove that vapors emitted from beneath the tripod on which the Pythia prophesied were intoxicating, thereby causing her frenzied state and statements. Contemporary scientists’ intense interest in proving that the Pythia was not prophetic evokes the question of why the once widely accepted, now generally rejected, idea that a female body can serve as a vessel for the words of the immortal deity holds such significance for modern science. When this curiosity is considered in …

Narratives Of Architectural Revolution In Online Christian Rhetoric, Quentin David Vieregge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how online Christian communities reconcile the democratizing, anti-hegemonic effects of dialogic web tools, such as wikis, blogs, and video-sharing sites with the authoritarian characteristics of some organized religions. In the first chapter, I discuss technodeterminism and what I call the theme of "revolutionary architectures" in digital humanities scholarship. This theme occurs in narratives that assume that a new interface, Internet tool, or type of coding will redefine the rhetorical relationship between writers, readers, and site administrators, usually in a benevolent way. I argue that scholars within the field of Computers and Composition use narratives of architectural revolution …

Saved By The (Alexander Graham) Bell: An Analysis Of Synchronous Communication And Student Satisfaction / Retention Rates In The First Year Online Composition Classroom, Jennifer Jane Lynch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Online first-year writing courses, with all of their promise, still maintain alarmingly low retention and student satisfaction rates, driving online curriculum designers to take another look at ways to increase both retention and satisfaction. To replicate the high rates of face-to-face classes, we must revisit and revise our approach to communication in the first-year writing online classroom. Think about it: The online classroom has abandoned a mainstay in education for thousands of years - synchronous communication. Why have we been so quick to dispose of it? Are we now paying the price?

This research will provide additional value to the …

Recovering Brande : Freewriting And Sustainable (Procedural) Expression, Richard Bower

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Dorothea Brande is rarely known in rhetoric and composition yet continues to hold popular influence over writers attracted to Cartesian beliefs. The aim of this project is to recover Brande's contributions in order to rethink composition's trajectories. Chiefly, Dorothea Brande's legacy has been in creative writing through Becoming a Writer. In this bestseller, she establishes a program for putting the Cartesian divide to work. "Writing with the unconscious mind in the ascent," as Brande explains about what Ken Macrorie and Peter Elbow later call freewriting, harnesses the bifurcated consciousness of writers and begins a journey of unification.

Introduction To A New History Of The Sermon : The Nineteenth Century, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the introduction to A New History of the Sermon:The Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays I edited for Brill Academic Publishers. It discusses the concept and history of "rhetorical criticism," and seeks to lay a foundation for the rhetorical study of the Anglo-American pulpit.

Threatening Bodies Resisting Containment: Enemy Combatants, War Protestors And Same-Sex Couples, Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo, Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The U.S.-launched "War on Terror" has been a major driving force in political discourses during the last few years, including presidential discourse. Since September 11, 2001, presidential rhetoric has systematically entangled international efforts, such as "the War on Terror" and the War in Iraq, with domestic issues, such as same-sex marriages and civil unions. In so doing, international and domestic threats have been effectively merged into one, and in the process, specific bodies have been constructed as "terrorist" agents in need of strict containment (for example, enemy combatant bodies, war protestor bodies, and the bodies of same-sex couples). This paper …

Handling And Preventing Journalistic Fraud: Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Kenneth Munson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Fraud is a growing concern in the news business, especially in recent years where numerous journalism scandals rock its foundation. This paper examines the most prominent cases: Stephen Glass, the reporter for The New Republic newsmagazine who completely or partially fabricated 27 stories in the late ‘90s; Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who was found to have plagiarized or made up his supposedly on-thescene reporting in 2003; and Janet Cooke, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for her Washington Post story about a child heroin addict who, in actuality, did not exist. This paper will examine flaws …

Movie In Search Of America: The Rhetoric Of Myth In Easy Rider, Hayley Susan Raynes

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis is a rhetorical analysis of the movie Easy Rider. It explores how auteurs Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern's use of road, regional, and cowboy mythology creates a text that simultaneously exposes and is dominated by the ironies inherent in American culture and breathes new life into the cowboy myth, reaffirming the cowboy's place as one of America's most enduring cultural icons.

A Certain Comfort: Betty Ford As First Lady, Nichola D. Gutgold, Linda B. Hobgood

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Her White House stay was short-lived, but the lessons of Betty Ford's experience remain vividly instructive. By accident of a national political crisis which catapulted her to the rank of the first lady in 1974, Mrs. Ford's tenure lasted a brief two years until her husband, Gerald R. Ford lost his bid for reelection. During that time, she developed a relationship of candor with the press and public. She spoke her mind on social and moral issues that were at the forefront of public debate. The positions she took were not always popular with the majority of Americans, many of …

Internal Dialogues: Construction Of The Self In The Woman Warrior, Ann Shirley Modzelewski

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis considers past autobiographical theory and questions whether it addresses the autobiography of the female writer. Autobiographies of Harriet Jacobs, Margaret Sanger, and Maxine Hong Kingston are examined to reveal their polyvocality, use of the autobiographical "I", and rhetorical strategies maintained in order to create a close relationship with the reader. Particular attention is paid to Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism and Sidonie Smith's autobiographical "I."

Seeking The Chameleon: The Influence Of Native Rhetoric And The Oral Tradition On Native American Literature, Christine S. Brown

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

This project seeks to explore the impact of rhetoric and the oral tradition on Native American literature by demonstrating that unique features are evident as a direct result of this influence. Characteristics which have functioned to preserve their culture (e.g.; the morphogenetic nature of Native mythology, the reverence for the Storyteller, and the "Chinese box" structure of organization in storytelling itself, etc.) are illustrated by the works of such Native authors as Leslie Marmon Silko and Paula Allen Gunn. The manner in which Native authors have utilized modem technology and the "rhetorical or dialogic style" of writing is emphasized to …

Debate, Social Criticism And Rhetoric In The Left Hand Of Darkness: An Analysis Of Strategy, Ellen Irene Elfstrom

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

The Rhetorical Effectiveness Of Black Like Me, Hugh Rank

English Faculty Publications

In 1959, John Howard Griffin, a white Southern novelist, disguised himself as a Negro and traveled through the South to experience "what it is like to be a Negro in a land where we keep the Negro down." The brief narrative account of this experience is recorded in Black Like Me, a book which wom the Saturday Review's Anisfield-Wolf award in 1962 for its contribution toward race relations. In brief, why is Black Like Me rhetorically effective?