Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies
Civil Religion And The Second Amendment, Shivaun Corry
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, …
Mapping Meaning At The Crossroads Of Crisis: Narratives Of Renewal In The Midst Of The Opioid Epidemic, Preston Carmack
Mapping Meaning At The Crossroads Of Crisis: Narratives Of Renewal In The Midst Of The Opioid Epidemic, Preston Carmack
Graduate Student Research Symposium
This study explores the role of meaning in a crisis situation by using Viktor Frankl’s tripod of meaning and Matthew Seeger and Timothy Sellnow’s narratives of renewal. Drawing from focus groups conducted in a large mid-Atlantic city where community members are embedded in the middle of the opioid crisis, the findings suggest that resiliency in the face of crisis can be encouraged to take root through a mapping of meaning that highlights gratitude and responsibility.