Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons^™

Analysis Of Political Language Manipulation: Changing Public Perceptions Of The Poor Through The War On Poverty And Popular Literary Fiction, Sarah Mcguire

Honors Program Theses and Projects

I propose to explore the rhetoric and language surrounding poor people of color both through common culture in literature and political speeches and documents of contemporary politicians between the years 1965 and 1992. I am particularly interested in the evolution of the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty between the 1970s and 1990s. Additionally, the Reagan administration’s tear down of the welfare system in the 1980s is another area of interest. I will specifically be examining how images of the poor have been manipulated in order to preserve the power of the elite and how portrayals of poverty shift in the …