Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration

PDF

Institution
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type

Articles 1 - 30 of 77

Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies

“Because I Said So”: How National Leaders Use Rhetoric To Frame The Issues Of National Security And The War On Drugs, Saul Valle Jan 2024

“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 …


Identifying Youth Appeals In Alcohol Alternative Social Media Content Through Framing, Melina Oneal Jan 2024

Identifying Youth Appeals In Alcohol Alternative Social Media Content Through Framing, Melina Oneal

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Proposed regulations for alcohol advertising prevent beverage companies from targeting people under the legal drinking age. However, similar regulations for alcohol alternative beverages are less explored, which could allow alcohol alternative products to create awareness for alcoholic beverages among youth. Alcohol alternatives beverages, including no-alcohol and low-alcohol products, are increasing in popularity and can function as compliments to alcoholic products to decrease the total alcohol volume consumed or as substitutes for alcoholic products. Framing theory can be operationalized through the Content Appealing to Youth Index, an index of content elements found in research literature to be appealing to youth, to …


The Reluctant Feminist: Angela Merkel’S Cautious Leadership, Ls Gaiek, Marlyn Garcia Jul 2023

The Reluctant Feminist: Angela Merkel’S Cautious Leadership, Ls Gaiek, Marlyn Garcia

The Scholarship Without Borders Journal

Abstract: What does it mean to be a modern feminist global leader today? Global leadership research is growing, but less research focuses on female leaders, even though the 21st century thus far contains a significant rise of female leaders. Angela Merkel’s infamously historic reticence and aversion, concerning speaking about feminism, irrevocably dissolves in an interview in January of 2019. This interview offers a glimpse into Angela Merkel’s cageyness, and provides an intimate insight into her circumspect perspective concerning feminism. This article aims to explore barriers and challenges to Angela Merkel’s rise as a global leader, how crisis forged and …


Presidents And Media During Initial Federal-Level Hurricane Relief: A Study Of Presidential Crisis Communication Efforts, Emily A. Ball Jan 2023

Presidents And Media During Initial Federal-Level Hurricane Relief: A Study Of Presidential Crisis Communication Efforts, Emily A. Ball

Honors College Theses

Public relations serves a huge role in almost every sector, including politics. Crisis communication, a subset of public relations, is very important in a setting that constantly undergoes crises. The response to these crises matters a great deal on the federal level because the outcomes can affect such a wide variety of policies and even elections. Because of this, I wanted to focus on one type of crisis that every president is almost guaranteed to face: hurricanes. To examine the effectiveness of federal-level crisis communication, I look at Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden’s responses to the worst hurricane during their …


Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen Aug 2022

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …


Because Potato, Candice Evers May 2022

Because Potato, Candice Evers

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This thesis project explores the phenomenological qualities of the internet; asking, since the internet is difficult to grasp, what other modes of investigation might we have available? Using an investigative framework set forth by Jack Halberstam, this thesis declines to come to knowledge solely through understanding the formal, the structural, the highly visible and mainstream. The literature that I have gathered provides a range of modes for interrogating the simultaneously central and inconsequential subject of my thesis itself: the potato. Juxtaposing the physical, political and material conditions of the potato the internet’s least academic mode of knowing: the meme. Analyzing …


Civil Religion And The Second Amendment, Shivaun Corry May 2021

Civil Religion And The Second Amendment, Shivaun Corry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The American approach to legal hermeneutics emerged from the covenant theology of the Puritans. American civil religion understands the Constitution to be based in natural laws: a secularized conception of God-given rights. To change the text would collapse the epistemological framework of the nation. When a nation sees its constitution as a sacred text, then the answer to contemporary problems cannot be to change that text; rather, it must be to return to the text with an even more fundamentalist hermeneutic. Both gun rights advocate Charlton Heston, and gun control advocate Barak Obama, argued their cases using a fundamentalist hermeneutic, …


Terrorism, Trauma, And Memory: Constructing National Identity At The 9/11 Museum And The Oklahoma City National Memorial And Museum, Caroline L. Whittenburg May 2021

Terrorism, Trauma, And Memory: Constructing National Identity At The 9/11 Museum And The Oklahoma City National Memorial And Museum, Caroline L. Whittenburg

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis undertakes an analysis of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the 9/11 Museum in New York City, New York, focusing on the construction of an idealized citizen that is mobilized as a defense against terrorist threats. Employing rhetorical field methods, I focus on how these spaces work symbolically and materially to shape visitors’ sense of national identity. I pay careful attention to how message construction relates to whether the terrorist threat is framed as internal or external, and how that influences what it means to be American. This argument is grounded through …


Survivor: An Analysis Of The Term From India, Pravin Patkar Dec 2020

Survivor: An Analysis Of The Term From India, Pravin Patkar

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article discusses the need for greater conceptual clarity of the term survivor. It raises questions about the propriety of the term to refer to the victims of sex trafficking. It points out that in the Indian context, the term victim is legally and operationally defined. It cautions against the hasty incorporation of the term survivor into public policies addressing the trafficked victims' problems. Different social platforms use the term survivor differently, and the difference is not nominal. The use of the term survivor is both casual as well as intentional. The term survivor trivializes the exploitation and makes invisible …


The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein Jul 2020

The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk. On one level, I …


Ascriptive Nationalism, Demagoguery, And The Modern Presidency: A Case Study In Constitutional Decay, Christopher J. Putney Jun 2020

Ascriptive Nationalism, Demagoguery, And The Modern Presidency: A Case Study In Constitutional Decay, Christopher J. Putney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study is an account of the modern presidency as a source––and under Donald Trump, an accelerant––of systemic problems in American politics. Against the prevailing scholarly view of the Trump presidency as an unqualified aberration, I argue that the signal features of his efforts at governance are actually the product of converging patterns of political and institutional order. Building on seminal (but previously disjointed) work on ascriptive Americanism and the rhetorical presidency, I show that Trump represents the political synthesis of America’s ascriptive tradition and a form of presidential leadership inaugurated more than a century ago by Woodrow Wilson. Moreover, …


Rhetoric And Race - Background And Assignment - Shu Mlk Symposium 2020, Jon Radwan Jan 2020

Rhetoric And Race - Background And Assignment - Shu Mlk Symposium 2020, Jon Radwan

CHDCM Publications

Provides an overview of Rhetoric and describes the historical development of Race as a rhetorical construct. Offers two associated assignment options: a digital audio interview plus video debrief on contemporary racism, and/or an essay on 21st century abolitionist rhetoric. - Jon Radwan and Angela Kariotis


Challenging Public Rhetoric Justifying Immigrants As ‘Indecent', Aaron Martin, Lisette Lemerise, Riya Chhabra, Sudharshana P. Kanduri, Julia Beleshi Jan 2020

Challenging Public Rhetoric Justifying Immigrants As ‘Indecent', Aaron Martin, Lisette Lemerise, Riya Chhabra, Sudharshana P. Kanduri, Julia Beleshi

Honors Scholarly Publications

Elites employ various rhetorical strategies in public discourse, including on the topic of immigration. As such, those with influence rely on storytelling to shape views about the narratives related to immigrants as a minority out-group. This has significant consequences, particularly in areas of policy development. Policy shapers have isolated immigrant groups by creating certain ideologically derived criteria well beyond citizenship for them to eventually receive “full American” status. Further, such status first has required immigrants to unduly prove their “worthiness” as exceptional—like being extra hardworking and very law abiding. Our essay seeks to show how foundational rhetoric is often intentionally …


Sorry Is Not Enough: Apology As A Crisis Management Tactic, Amiso M. George Jan 2020

Sorry Is Not Enough: Apology As A Crisis Management Tactic, Amiso M. George

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Public admissions of personal or professional misdeeds, followed by apologies by high profile individuals and organizations are strategies and tactics of image restoration when a reputation is damaged. Although the ritual of an apology is an expected societal norm sometimes, they can make matters worse. Apology is effective depending on the offense, the place, time, language, tone of apology and if the recipient of the apology is willing to accept it. Another important element is the cultural factor. Apology that does not adhere to perceived cultural norms may not be received positively; thereby worsening the crisis situation. In 2018 and …


Fossil-Fueled Discourse, Henry Walter Mar 2019

Fossil-Fueled Discourse, Henry Walter

Crossing Borders: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

As industrial civilization confronts the realities of devastating global climate change and the local environmental catastrophes precipitated by coal, oil, and natural gas extraction, this paper moves away from mainstream analyses of demand-side choices and instead considers how miners and rig workers make decisions surrounding the ethicality of their work. This article considers corporate publications including investor and sustainability reports and company-sponsored employee magazines, industry magazines, and news sources in top-producing fossil fuel producing localities in the United States. A discursive analysis of this set of publications uncovers a dense rhetorical lattice of misinformation and disinformation surrounding fossil fuel workers. …


Understanding Discourse Transition, Taylor Weeks Aug 2017

Understanding Discourse Transition, Taylor Weeks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work is intended to explore and analyze the process of transition from one discourse to another different discourse.


Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman May 2017

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …


Grassroots Diplomacy And Vernacular Law: The Discourse Of Food Sovereignty In Maine, John Welton May 2017

Grassroots Diplomacy And Vernacular Law: The Discourse Of Food Sovereignty In Maine, John Welton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine, a coalition of small-scale farmers, consumers, and citizens building an alternative food system based on a distributed form of production, processing, selling, purchasing, and consumption. This distribution occurs at the municipal level through the enactment of ordinances. Using critical-rhetorical field methods, I argue that the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine develops a ‘constitutive’ rhetoric that composes rural society through affective relationships. Advocates engage the industrial food system to both expose its systemic bias against small-scale farming and construct their own discourse of belonging. Based upon agrarian values such as …


Inside The Coal Industry’S Rhetorical Playbook, Steve Schwarze, Jennifer Peeples, Jen Schneider, Pete Bsumek Jan 2017

Inside The Coal Industry’S Rhetorical Playbook, Steve Schwarze, Jennifer Peeples, Jen Schneider, Pete Bsumek

Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

If citizens have heard anything about the upheaval in the U.S. coal industry, it is probably the insistence that President Obama and the EPA have waged a “war on coal.” This phrase is written into President-elect Donald Trump’s energy platform, which promises to “end the war on coal.”


On Making A Difference: How Photography And Narrative Produce The Short-Term Missions Experience, Joshua Kerby Jennings Jan 2017

On Making A Difference: How Photography And Narrative Produce The Short-Term Missions Experience, Joshua Kerby Jennings

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

Short-term missions participants encounter difference in purportedly captivating ways. Current research, however, indicates the practice does not lead to long-lasting, positive change. Brian M. Howell (2012) argues the short-term missions experience is confined to the limitations of the short-term missions narrative. People who engage in short-term missions build assumptions, seek experiences, understand difference, and convey meaning, as a result of this narrative. The process of telling and retelling travel stories is integral to the short-term missions experience. Drawing upon literature on tourism, narrative, development, and photography, this study intends to evaluate the inefficacy of short-term missions through the stories which …


The Making Of A Virtual Monster: Ideological Criticism On The Isis Hate And Extremism, Md Shah Jahan Jan 2017

The Making Of A Virtual Monster: Ideological Criticism On The Isis Hate And Extremism, Md Shah Jahan

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The 9/11 incident and its subsequent terrorism specifically the rise of radical Islamist groups like ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), and al-Qaeda astounds the world. ISIS’s propaganda technique using digital media helps the terrorist group motivate and recruit a large group of people from around the world. Terrorist incidents like the Dhaka café in 2016 and France soccer game attack in 2015 provide a glimpse of ISIS ferocity and barbarism with its subsequent series of attacks. This research examines the kind of rhetorical language that ISIS leaders and followers use to support their ideologies. And, how the internet …


The State House And The White House: Gubernatorial Rhetoric During The Obama Administration, Austin Peyton Trantham Jan 2017

The State House And The White House: Gubernatorial Rhetoric During The Obama Administration, Austin Peyton Trantham

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

What is the importance of political speechmaking? Do state governors discuss presidential priorities? This study addresses these questions by analyzing the contents of annual State of the State addresses given by governors from 2012 to 2014 during the presidency of Barack Obama. A descriptive paper provides evidence that governors primarily discuss employment and economic issues in their addresses, are discussing greater number of policy issues than in previous decades, and are delivering their address before the presidential State of the Union message. Examining health care and immigration policy in separate empirical papers, I theorize that contextual factors, including legislative partisanship, …


You Have Atomic Bombs, We Have The Martyrdom-Seekers: Ayman Al-Zawahiri’S Narrative Arc Of The Martyr, Tim Huffman Mar 2016

You Have Atomic Bombs, We Have The Martyrdom-Seekers: Ayman Al-Zawahiri’S Narrative Arc Of The Martyr, Tim Huffman

Peace and Conflict Studies

Martyrdom has an undeniable rhetorical dimension, and part of a martyr’s voice is the manner of his or her death. However, martyrdom does not stand alone. It is contextualized and constructed by the voice of ideologues. This project looks at the spoken and written rhetoric of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, leader of al-Qaeda, and seeks to understand his descriptions, attributions, and stories about martyrs and martyrdom. An analysis of 93 statements by Zawahiri was performed to identify his overarching martyr narrative and archetype. Major findings include a taxonomy of martyr attributes and a narrative trajectory of martyrdom. While pro-USA rhetoric constructs al-Qaeda’s …


Bloggers And Their Impact On Contemporary Social Movements: A Phenomenological Examination Of The Role Of Blogs And Their Creators In The Lgbt Social Movements In Modern United States, Bobby K. Huen Jan 2015

Bloggers And Their Impact On Contemporary Social Movements: A Phenomenological Examination Of The Role Of Blogs And Their Creators In The Lgbt Social Movements In Modern United States, Bobby K. Huen

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The Internet is a ubiquitous feature in everyday life, but its application to social movements has yet to be completely understood. This phenomenological study examines the lived experiences of bloggers who focused on the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement in the United States to understand the impact bloggers and their work as online activists have on existing LGBT social movement organization and operation. Data collection is gathered from semi-structured and open-ended interviews with four social movement bloggers using web-conference software over the course of three months. The results of this study indicated that internet has empowered individual activists, …


Going Solo: A Study Into The Framing And Salience Of International Terrorism, Arianne Gouveia Jan 2015

Going Solo: A Study Into The Framing And Salience Of International Terrorism, Arianne Gouveia

Masters Theses

In order to explore presidential rhetoric, media coverage and its contribution to public opinion, this thesis will examine these facets in the matters of international terrorism. More specifically, terrorism in India, Syria, and Afghanistan will be assessed and compared during two time periods: 2003-2004, and 2011-2012. This thesis will predominately attempt to evaluate the relationship between the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) and actual coverage. By searching for key words in presidential speeches from President Obama and President Bush, evaluating the news coverage of terrorist activity in all three countries, this thesis will attempt to show the impact of presidential speeches …


Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent Aug 2014

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …


Cold War Ii: Those Evil Russkie He-Men Are Making Us Frack Ourselves,, Michael I. Niman Ph.D. Apr 2014

Cold War Ii: Those Evil Russkie He-Men Are Making Us Frack Ourselves,, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

You have to admit, the timing is convenient, both for us handsome free Americans and for the cursed Russians. If you’re Russian, forget about the regular jailing of protesters and musicians, your he-man government and its bizarre hatred of gay folks, the degradation of your environment and rape of your natural resources, and the rise of a billionaire mafioso class. You now have rude hubristic Americans to monopolize your hate and fear. Ditto for Americans. Forget every issue we were fretting about the day before masked, Russian-speaking troops swarmed over the border and “did not invade” Crimea, annexing it and …


How Communication Design Motivates Voter Participation: Comparing Instrumental Vs. Social Rhetoric, Lindsay Pryor Apr 2014

How Communication Design Motivates Voter Participation: Comparing Instrumental Vs. Social Rhetoric, Lindsay Pryor

MAIS Projects and Theses

This written defense of my degree project describes how l used contemporary communication design theory to develop postcards for the Office of the Washington Secretary of State urging voter registration before the 2013 General Election deadline. In addition to measuring the overall effectiveness of the postcards, this project evaluated the registration and turnout differences between two treatments in a study funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The aim of the study was to add to the small but growing body of interdisciplinary research concerning communication design and voter participation. To determine which communication design techniques motivate more postcard recipients to …


Corporate Ventriloquism: Corporate Advocacy, The Coal Industry, And The Appropriation Of Voice, Peter K. Bsumek, Jen Schneider, Steve Schwarze, Jennifer Peeples Jan 2014

Corporate Ventriloquism: Corporate Advocacy, The Coal Industry, And The Appropriation Of Voice, Peter K. Bsumek, Jen Schneider, Steve Schwarze, Jennifer Peeples

Jen Schneider

In the second decade of the 21st century, the U.S. coal industry is facing unprecedented challenges. While for many years coal provided nearly half of the U.S. electricity, in the spring of 2012 that share dropped to below 40% and is expected to continue falling (Energy Information Administration, 2012).1 Coal production is increasing not in Appalachia, the primary U.S. source for coal historically, but in Wyoming's Powder River Basin (Goodell, 2006). Market competition from the natural gas industry combined with well organized climate and anti-nountaintop removal (MTR) campagins have significantly curtailed the production of new coal-fired power plants in …


A Convergence-Building Model Of Superfund Site Communication: Building On Lessons From The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Anna G. Hoover, Lindell Ormsbee Nov 2013

A Convergence-Building Model Of Superfund Site Communication: Building On Lessons From The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Anna G. Hoover, Lindell Ormsbee

Anna G. Hoover

Best practices approaches have guided governmental risk communication efforts at Superfund and other chronic risk sites for more than two decades, playing an important role in the ways in which those most affected by contamination make sense of risk. Such approaches can affect the information environment in two separate but related ways: 1) directly, through the explicit sharing of information, and 2) indirectly, through ongoing stakeholder interpretations of the processes by which that information is shared. To date, the indirect, process-related effects have not been addressed in assessments of communicative efficacy at Superfund sites. Thus, it increasingly is necessary to …