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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies

Priming In Leadership: Applying Communication Theory To The Speeches Of Ronald Reagan, Katherine Sakai May 2021

Priming In Leadership: Applying Communication Theory To The Speeches Of Ronald Reagan, Katherine Sakai

Senior Honors Theses

The study of priming gained traction in the 1990s when researchers such as John Bargh demonstrated the nonconscious activation of ideas, often through repeated related words or activated schema. Since then, researchers have studied the effects of priming on self-view, achievement, and teamwork. While the concept of priming has just recently begun to be applied to leadership in the workplace, no research has yet been done in finding examples of priming theory in the speeches of well-known leaders. In this study, Ronald Reagan’s persuasive tactics were analyzed and found to use similar methods of repetition and schema used in priming …


Walmart's Opioid Stewardship Initiative Rhetorically Constructed As An Act Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Rachel Kaplan Jul 2020

Walmart's Opioid Stewardship Initiative Rhetorically Constructed As An Act Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Rachel Kaplan

Speaker & Gavel

Walmart is the largest publicly owned retailer in the world (Fishman, 2008). Walmart operates in a contested rhetorical environment because of an aggressive pricing strategy, low-paying wages, and discrimination claims made by women. This paper argues Walmart created several Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs to help improve corporate image and reputation. CSR encourages companies to consider a triple bottom line: people, the environment and profit. Consumers who practice socially responsible consumption choose to support companies they perceive give back to the community, participate in CSR initiatives to help people, and incorporate sustainable practices into the lifecycle of their products. This …


A Rhetorical Analysis Of President Bill Clinton's First Term Presidential Rhetoric, Ireland Hill Jan 2019

A Rhetorical Analysis Of President Bill Clinton's First Term Presidential Rhetoric, Ireland Hill

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Bill Clinton was the United States of America’s (U.S.) 42nd President, and his rhetoric set the tone of U.S. political climate for years following his presidency. Due to the power that a president possesses, a president’s presence and statements are frequently analyzed. It is clear, however, that there is a lack of research completed on presidential rhetoric. Upon this realization, I reflected on my previous areas of research; one of those areas was the first term presidential rhetoric of Clinton. As a result, I decided that a rhetorical analysis of some of the major rhetoric that contributed to Clinton’s first …


Budweiser In The 2017 Super Bowl: Dialectic Values Advocacy And The Rhetorical Stakeholder, Benjamin P. Windholz Jan 2018

Budweiser In The 2017 Super Bowl: Dialectic Values Advocacy And The Rhetorical Stakeholder, Benjamin P. Windholz

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Organizational-public relations discourse is changing given the advent of social media, and corporate statements are evaluated under different criteria in the digital age. Grounding Budweiser’s response to controversy over their 2017 Super Bowl advertisement in terms of consumer expectations for corporate social responsibility provides a new perspective for approaching Bostdorff and Vibbert’s (1994) conceptualization of values advocacy. This study recognizes the power of the rhetorical stakeholder, a discursively created public, and demands re-evaluation of the values common to society from a co-creational OPR perspective. Conceptualizing dialectic values advocacy outlines the changing values among contemporary, common stakeholders as well as the …