Rhetoric Commons^™

"Deadly Imports": Populism, Demagoguery, And The Contemporary Rhetoric Of U.S. Immigration, Summer N. Wolfe

Communication Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project examines former CNN and Fox Business anchor Lou Dobbs’s meteoric success to understand his rhetorical choices and appeals surrounding immigration discourse in the United States. As the first rhetorical assessment of Dobbs’s immigration rhetoric, this project centers him as a key figure who defined how U.S. culture operates within immigration discourses. The project relies on Michael Calvin McGee's work on ideographs to perform a close textual analysis of news programs featuring Dobbs to understand how ideologies about immigrants and immigration are built, circulated, and maintained in the Right’s media ecology. The project advances three arguments about Dobbs’s anti-immigration …

“Women Vs. Perfection:” A Pentadic Analysis Of Toxicity In Online Gaming, Niyayesh Arshadnia

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

This thesis utilizes a mixed-methods approach to examine an online video game player community as a case study to diagnose the underlying reason for widespread hostile behavior, especially towards women, among players in the online gaming sphere. The application of dramatism, a rhetorical theory that breaks down human behavior into elements of drama, reveals that the gaming industry and gaming culture are the likely perpetuators of this issue due to the environments they create and the behaviors they reward. This project is a diagnostic step towards rhetorically alleviating the exclusionary attitude of users in online gaming spaces through further research.

Designing Rhetorical Education For Online Audiences, Nicholas Dixon

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This project demonstrates a multimodal education for online audiences through the creation of a YouTube video, What is Rhetoric?   The literature from composition, education, and media asserts that online multimodal media is useful for idea production, civic discussion, and learning. This project follows the idea that online multimodal digital media are valuable forms for meeting audiences with access to rhetorical knowledge, both within academic institutions and in the education of public audiences. In Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, Henry Jenkins highlights the challenge online participants face in recognizing the ways media shapes perceptions of the world (xii). Rhetoric is …

Incarcerated Women: Gendered Rhetoric From The Outside And Reality Inside Prison Walls., Taylor Riley Geiser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how formerly incarcerated women navigate and resist gendered media portrayals through digital platforms, focusing on the “mad” and “bad” woman tropes that shape public perceptions. Drawing on feminist rhetorical theory—particularly Royster and Kirsch’s methodological practices and Ratcliffe’s concept of rhetorical listening—this study combines Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of mainstream headlines with Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) of TikTok content. CDA of media coverage surrounding Lori Vallow Daybell, Casey Anthony, and Andrea Yates reveals how language, imagery, and cultural logics sustain harmful binaries that portray women who commit crimes either as depraved or as excused by madness, obscuring the …

Kenneth Burke's Epideictic Rhetoric Of Science, Andri Kosasih

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses Kenneth Burke’s challenges, notions, and perspectives on modern science and how we should view, utilize, and apply science to our lives. This project argues that we need more than the rhetoric of science; we need an epideictic rhetoric of science. The term epideictic is important because the encounter between science and society creates a tension between maintaining and changing beliefs. Because science involves belief and is itself a belief, every time we engage with science, it demands a verdict from us: to believe or to reject it. On the other hand, as we seek to maintain our …

A Case For Homiletical Aesthetics: The Adorned Rhetoric Of Martin Luther King Jr., Timothy Y. Rhee

Sermon Studies

Despite the growing support of aesthetics within the field of homiletics, undercurrents of suspicion remain, particularly in Western evangelical settings. The reasons for this suspicion are far-reaching, ranging from theological concerns to unmerited fears regarding the handling of Scripture. Given this background, the adorned rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr. provides a compelling case study for the indispensability of homiletical aesthetics. This study briefly overviews King’s use of artful rhetoric, exploring its origins and sociotheological factors that compelled beauty and adornment in the pulpit. This paper will argue that aesthetics in Christian preaching should be considered essential, especially when addressing …

Introduction: Black Preaching And The Black Sermon As A Rhetorical Artifact, Andre E. Johnson

Sermon Studies

In this introductory essay for this special issue, I encourage scholars in the fields of homiletics and rhetoric to expand our understanding of homiletical and rhetorical theory by specifically concentrating on the unique rhetoric present in Black sermons. By examining the sermon as a rich rhetorical artifact, we can explore the nuanced elements of persuasion embedded within these messages. This analysis would highlight speakers' persuasive techniques and enhance the broader discourse on preaching and communication across various religious contexts. Engaging deeply with the rhetoric of Black sermons provides valuable insights that can improve our understanding of the dynamic interaction between …

A Taste Of Rhetoric: Moves & Practices In The Decolonization & Restoration Of Historic Foodways, Abby A. Laforest

All NMU Master's Theses

Language and rhetoric are foundational influences on cultural practices, including culinary ones. The subdiscipline of food rhetoric studies communication about the processes of eating, cooking, transporting, and trading food, especially within the cultures of historically marginalized peoples. The past decades have seen a profusion of academic food research, but the role of language in understanding food, especially in a multicultural, globalized world, remains understudied. This paper examines how three rhetorical theories foundational to identity formation and layered understandings of meaning – (a) Dr. Karen Barad’s (they/them) theory of posthumanist performativity, (b) Dr. Maurice Charland’s theory of constitutive rhetoric, and (c) …

Moonstorm In The Mainstream Or On The Margins?: Constellating St. Louis Lesbian Rhetorics From The Archives, Aurora Blanchard

Theses

Combining rhetorical analysis, oral history collection, and archival study, this multi-genre research project explores lesbian feminist organizing in the 1970s. Moonstorm was a St. Louis lesbian feminist magazine that operated in the 1970s and 1980s. The sample in this research project focuses on the issues of Moonstorm published between 1973 and 1977. Issues of Moonstorm are available for viewing in the archives of the State Historical Society of Missouri. Building on V. Jo Hsu’s theory of constellating, the poems and stories found in Moonstorm serve as sites of both contested and unconditional belonging for modern LGBTQ+ activists. Constellating, specifically in …

Queer Advocacy For Palestinian Liberation, Andrew J. Joseph

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This paper is an examination of the ways that queer individuals have advocated for the decolonization of Palestine, and the ways in which tensions have arisen as a result of the intersection of the movements.

Crisis, Controversy, And Credibility: Rhetorical Appeals In Governor Desantis’ State Of The State Addresses, Victoria E. Laird

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This paper examines how Governor DeSantis has used rhetoric to advance his political identity and policy during the Florida legislative sessions from 2019 to 2025. Using rhetorical analysis, the study identifies linguistic techniques and persuasive devices that help shape DeSantis’s policy agenda and drive legislation. This study is important as it explores the ability of political figures to ground themselves in language and push political ideologies. The findings reveal a consistent emphasis on ethos while simultaneously appealing to unity, strengthen, and moral clarity. Over time, DeSantis’s rhetoric evolves from defensive to assertive leadership framed by appeals to national policy and …

African Restorative Justice Philosophy: Practicing The Ubuntu Paradigm In The Composition Classroom, Francis Hamza Issah

Wayne State University Dissertations

As the field of rhetoric and composition studies grapples with problematic institutional paradigms militating against its growth, changes taking place in the field mean that opportunity is created for a more equitable, inclusive, and diversified composition classroom. Questions of diversity, equity and inclusion have led me to investigate the composition classroom to identify and decenter structural systems of white mainstream literacy and language practices as a way of encouraging and building on the prior literacy practices of not just minority students, but all categories of students. In my dissertation research, I propose the practice of ubuntu as a way of …

Lineation To Liberation: The Transformative Power Of Poetic Rhetoric, Amber Rae Alvarez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project explores the transformative power of poetic rhetoric and examines how poetry as a form of expressive art serves as a means of reclamation in the aftermath of encounters with the American criminal justice system. I contend that poetry provides a space where folks can reimagine (and reclaim) their identities, asserting their agency in empowering and authentic ways. Taking a Cultural Studies and Critical Prison Studies informed approach, this project engages the concept of lineation to liberation to conduct a close reading analysis of artist (Reginald) Dwayne Betts’ poetry. Betts’ work not only provides a powerful example of how …

Documenting Sensation: Reimagining Urban Data For Equity And Sustainability, Nathan R. Johnson, Meredith A. Johnson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper explores the historical and contemporary practices of documenting urban planning in Tampa Bay, emphasizing the role of sensory experiences in fostering sustainable and equitable development. Using the 1989 Future of Hillsborough Transportation Concepts white paper as a case study, the research critiques the dominance of efficiency-focused documentation in urban policy. This study highlights how such frameworks often neglect cultural and sensory dimensions critical to community well-being. The research calls for a shift towards documenting sensory experiences, drawing on the concept of the sensorium, to bridge the gap between technical data and lived urban experiences. The paper argues that …

The Rhetorical Interlude In Alfonso Cuarón’S Gravity: Suggesting A Model For Examining Rhetorical Discourse In Film, Brent Yergensen, Scott Church

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay advances the concept of the “rhetorical interlude,” a means by which scholars and teachers may examine how rhetorical messages are embedded in films. To illustrate, this study includes an examination of the rhetorical interlude in the film Gravity (Cuarón, 2013) as the film’s protagonist, Ryan Stone, is visited by the apparition of her dead colleague, Matt Kowalski, who instructs her on survival in space and on the significance of moving on from personal tragedy. In a pattern of ghostly apparitions appearing in perplexing outer space situations, Gravity situates scientific complexity as capable of being transcended with the help …

Afrosurrealism, Aristotle, And Racial Presence In Netflix’S Luke Cage, Angela D. Mack

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay examines Netflix’s Luke Cage as a rhetorical reading of racial embodiment and productions of the cultural identity of Blackness and People of Color, and the tensions they produce to help audiences understand the current climatic flux between racial hostility and American idealism. With only two seasons in the small-screen version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Cheo Hodari Coker’s adaptation of the 1970s Blaxploitation Power Man comic foregrounded the recent wave of superhero narratives that expanded minority/gender representation from both major comic houses (MCU and DC Extended Universe [DCEU]). This examination employs the lens of Afrosurrealism, a conceptual …

Relandscaping The Rhetorical Tradition Through Hip Hop, Robert Tinajero

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The field of rhetorical studies is rich and complex but has, in many ways, ignored or marginalized the study of rap music and hip hop culture. This article analyzes ways in which hip hop rhetoric adds to the terrain of rhetorical studies and posits ways that it can shift perspectives, subjects of study, practice, and theoretical frameworks within the discipline. There are also reasons hypothesized for why hip hop has been marginalized in pedagogy and academic writing within the rhetorical tradition and why it should not be ignored.

Pity The Poor Reader, Charles H. Haddad

School of Communication and Journalism Faculty Publications

I conceived my book “Pity the Poor Reader” as an un-textbook, an irreverent “Elements of style.” Like Elements, it’s designed to complement textbooks. Pity is concise, memorable and portable. Under 300 pages, Pity serves as an aspiring writer’s keepsake. Concision lies at the heart of Pity. The key concepts of writing well are distilled into irreverent, memorable lines and axioms. Many of them are organized as lists that are easily printed and taped to a wall or a computer. Indeed, in testing the book with my university students, I’ve found that many of them did print out its list of …

Recuperative Rhetorics: A Novel Framework For Rhetorical Analysis, Nicolas Palumbo

Masters Theses (Archived)

This thesis details the creation of the Recuperative Rhetorics analytical framework, which is a scalable, transdisciplinary framework for analyzing rhetorical texts, from individual speeches to societal understandings of legacy and history. It discusses the framework’s theoretical underpinnings, explains how to utilize it in analyzing rhetoric and rhetorical works, and provides examples of the framework in action across multiple mediums. The framework takes inspiration from the theories and praxes of Situationist International, primarily those of the spectacle, ready-made objects, détournement, and recuperation. The framework uses these ideas, and then builds upon more established analytical frameworks to establish a base from which …

Progressive Paradox In Political Rhetoric: The Hart-Celler Immigration Act Of 1965, Amanda Rolston Henderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the interplay between U.S. norms for inclusion, the embedded role of religion within these norms, and how political rhetoric challenges or sustains them. Using a historical lens, I outline key moments in U.S. history, unravel central ideologies entrenched in U.S. narratives, and illuminate the ideographic function of the key concepts land, family, and work. These terms serve as conduits for conveying complex systems of meaning, which are entrenched in societal assumptions and concretized through political discourse and action.

These dynamics are demonstrated in a case study of the discourse surrounding the Hart-Celler Immigration Act …

It’S Britney, Bitch, Mary Hyepock

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation engages public rhetorics surrounding pop princess Britney Spears as a case study for examining the rhetoricity of bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is commonly understood as the legal right to control what happens to one’s body without external influence or coercion. However, one’s legal access to bodily autonomy is produced, negotiated, and maintained through discourse. In other words, one’s access to so-called “ownership” over their body and agency to make decisions about it is deeply tied to the gendered and racialized symbolic production of citizenship in the United States. Utilizing a reproductive justice framework, I investigate how Britney Spears’ …

Decoding Democracy: Ideographic Analyses Of 2024 Republican Presidential Nominees' Rhetoric, Allyson Havenridge

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The following rhetorical analysis identifies the rhetoric that was used by 2024 Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Donald Trump. Rhetoric can be thought of as the means and ways that we, as social beings, use language to create meaning and exchange symbols to better understand the world around us. This rhetorical analysis aims to identify the ways in which certain words are being used and the reasoning behind why they were used by the rhetor, or the speaker in a rhetorical situation. The ultimate focus of the following rhetorical criticism is to examine how ideographs, or words that encase …

A Rhetorical-Sociological Understanding Of Emotion, Amy Boone

All Dissertations

This project presents a rhetorical-sociological understanding of emotion while foregrounding the place and role of language. Born from Sara Ahmed’s work in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, it presents a simplified equation (contact + orientation = emotion) as both a prescriptive and descriptive formula for making sense of human emotional experience. Starting with an exploration of the difficult-to-understand affect system, this dissertation identifies both rhetoric and affect as energies which cannot be understood apart from their traces, the things they move, produce, and become. As a way to get at these often-invisible forces, two trace studies are conducted which explore …

A Rhetorical Criticism Of "Fleabag": Tragicomedy And What It Means To Be A Feminist, Morgan Ashley White

Communication Studies

This essay conducts a rhetorical criticism of the television series Fleabag, analyzing how creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge uses tragicomedy to dismantle the notion that there is one right way to be a feminist. After providing background on Waller-Bridge, the history of feminism, and the creation of Fleabag, the essay closely examines several key scenes from the show. It demonstrates how Waller-Bridge employs humor intertwined with serious subject matter to highlight the complexities and contradictions women face in navigating conflicting societal expectations around gender. Through the flawed yet honest portrayal of Fleabag herself and her interactions with other nuanced female …

“Because I Said So”: How National Leaders Use Rhetoric To Frame The Issues Of National Security And The War On Drugs, Saul Valle

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

In the preamble of the 2024 presidential election seasons in both the United States and Mexico, there has been an increase in aggressive outspoken expression by national leaders regarding how to best handle the issue of drugs and drug use across the Western hemisphere. These types of sweeping policies are often credited to President Richard Nixon, who on June 18th, 1971, initiated his “War on Drugs,” a global policy campaign intended to address the production, distribution, and consumption of the illicit drug trade. Existing scholarship on this topic has extensively analyzed the early years of the American war on drugs …

Confronting The Conflation: The Use Of Christian Nationalist Rhetoric At The Insurrection On January 6th, 2021, Sophia Barnes

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This project considers the rhetoric of Christian nationalism on display before, during, and after the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6^th, 2021. I will show how Christian nationalism on Jan 6^th can be framed using Jenny Edbauer’s ideas of rhetorical ecologies and Thomas Rickert’s ideas of rhetorical ambiance by considering the speakers at the insurrection and a pastor who has been publicly vocal about his motives. Next, I will consider the images used by major media outlets covering the insurrection and how they chose to frame the events visually by considering Kellie Sharp-Hoskins’s ideas …

Sure Imagination: Distinguishing Mnemotechnics From Spatial Mnemonics, Ian Goodrich

West Chester University Master’s Theses

The term “mnemotechnics” has been misinterpreted by scholars due to a lack of a clear and concise definition available for reference. Though there are contemporary scholarship references to mnemotechnics, these references avoid a definition and are often in a context that does not consider how ancient rhetoricians utilized the practice. Without a concise and unified definition, the term mnemotechnics takes on a variety of divergent meanings through different scholarship, preventing a similarity in terms to ideas and obscuring the practice of the rhetoricians who utilized mnemotechnics. In this thesis, the writings of Quintilian, Augustine of Hippo, and the anonymous author …

Rhetoric On Climate Change And The Effects On Public Perceptions, Hailey Mina Rose Dossey

Undergraduate Scholarship

One of the extraordinary challenges humans are facing today is climate change and over the past two decades, the majority of the world has moved from questioning its legitimacy to accepting it as fact. With most people having accepted climate change as a reality, the goal of climate communication has shifted from spreading awareness to motivating audiences to take action. Through this analytical discussion, we will look into effective and ineffective methods of rhetoric as it can help guide us to a better understanding of why certain rhetoric that has previously been successful in other fields may not be the …

Menopause In The Public Sphere: The Consciousness-Raising Practices Of Technical And Experiential Experts, Emma J. Murdock

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Menopause is frequently discussed through a biomedical lens, which stresses technical language and knowledge, yet emerging in popular culture is experiential experts sharing how they feel about menopause. This paper analyses Michelle Obama's podcast episode titled “What Your Mother Never Told You” (2022) featuring Dr. Sharon Malone, a medical doctor and menopause experiential expert. Using consciousness-raising and the spheres of argumentation, I analyze how the experiential and technical experts of the podcast address and speak about menopause. This paper aims to question how consciousness-raising can reconstruct the understanding of menopause through an experiential-centric lens by placing personal testimony and experiences …

Goostly Coumforte In God: The Rhetoric Of Mysticism In The Cloud Of Unknowing, Clinton M. Sensat

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this paper I analyze the rhetoric of the Cloud of Unknowing by an anonymous fourteenth-century English Catholic mystic. First, I situate the Cloud in its tradition, both spiritual and rhetorical. Then, after analyzing the linguistic arts employed, I engage in a sustained examination of the Cloud’s rhetorical technique. Ultimately, I conclude that the author of the Cloud succeeds in his rhetorical goals, even if some of his strategies are less successful than he perhaps believes, and that he does so through the use of concrete language and an appeal to the ethos of Christian monastic friendship.