Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons^™

Reflections On Writer's Block, Hilary Rasmussen

Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal

When I finished the MA program at Northern Illinois University in 2010, I initially had no intention of returning for a PhD. I felt burned out on academics and was itching to get into my own classroom to teach. Despite the intense pressures of a tightening job market, I was fortunate. I found a permanent, full-time faculty position at a small, rural university in the southwest corner of Minnesota. Deciding to leave that wonderful and supportive community was difficult, but after three years there, I realized that I had more to say (and more to learn) and I wanted to …

My Interdisciplinary Perspective On Climate Change [Natural Sciences], Richa Gupta, Tuli Chatterji, Tao Chen, Rebecca Schwartz

Open Educational Resources

This assignment titled “My Interdisciplinary Perspective on Climate Change” was developed in Fall 2020 as the signature assignment of the STEM Learning Community LC50 for students enrolled in the Biology program of the Natural Sciences department, at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. The assignment targets Integrative Learning and Global Learning Core Competencies, and Digital/Oral Communication Abilities.

For this STEM Cluster, “Climate Change” is the shared theme that connects learning from the different disciplines and helps build students’ overall knowledge on an imperative issue that our planet currently faces. Work on this assignment entails a narrated digital student presentation on the various …

Critical Thinking As A Pedagogical Approach: Using Critical/Cultural Studies To Analyze Music Videos, Lukas John Pelliccio, Timothy Brown

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Teaching undergraduate students how to critically analyze a text is an important experience. However, it is not easy to do this because readings are often dense, and the process of writing and presenting a critique can be challenging for some students. In light of this, we have developed an assignment where students critically analyze music videos for their ideologies. In the assignment, students select three specific overt or latent content pieces from a music video and explain how those manifestations influence a particular ideology in a paper. Then they are asked to show the music video to their peers and …

The Grid: A Long-Form Exercise In Forensic Peer Coaching, C. Austin Mcdonald Ii, Andrew Boge

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

As directors of forensics grapple with thoughts of burnout or exiting the activity (Carmack & Holm, 2013), peer coaching practices may offer ways of relieving the well-documented coaching burden (Gill, 1990; Keefe, 1991; McDonald, 2001; Rogers & Rennels, 2008). We offer a long-form individual events team exercise called “The Grid” which aims to foster a culture of peer coaching, to reduce the need for coaches, and to encourage students to take ownership of their forensic event development.




The authors give full credit of The Grid's core ideas to the Gustavus Adolphus College forensics teams under the direction of Cadi Kadlecek …

Imaginative Rhetorical Invention In The 21st Century: An Analysis Of Afrofuturism And Black Utopian Thought In A Black Lady Sketch Show As An Avenue Toward Black Liberation, Natalie Weathers

Theses - ALL

Inspired by recent events following the deaths of unarmed Black bodies killed at the hands of police officers and white vigilante citizens (Griffith, 2020; Oppel, 2020; BBC, 2020) this thesis seeks to validate the seemingly impossible aspirations of Black struggle and liberation in attempt to dismantle white supremacist ideology and oppression. Grounded in rhetorical theory emphasizing the imagination and canon of invention alongside critical perspectives of Afrofuturism and Black utopian thought, this thesis demonstrates the liberatory power of the Black American imagination within the United States in the 21st century through an analysis of A Black Lady Sketch Show (2019).

Antichrist In The Oval Office: The Rhetoric Of 'Antichrist' In Online Discourse Surrounding Donald Trump, Meagan Bojarski

Theses - ALL

This thesis examines how people compare the president to the Antichrist online, specifically during the Trump administration. Looking at digital Antichrist comparisons as distinct communicative practices, I argue that the digital affordances and logics that allow for the rapid spread of ideas online work synergistically with the historical weight of the Antichrist as a concept, helping the comparisons to spread further and faster than they could have through other mediums while simultaneously being more impactful than other digitally-spread content due to the wealth of sources, both within religion and pop culture, which can be drawn on. In examining a Twitter …

Where The Sea Meets The Sky: A Fantasy-Theme Analysis Of H.P. Lovecraft's Celephaïs, Spencer J. Burke

Quest

Application of Rhetorical Methodologies

Research in progress for SPCH 1311: Introduction to Speech Communication

Faculty Mentor: Jennifer Warren

The following essay is a rhetorical criticism written as the final project for the Collin College Honors Introduction to Speech Communication course. This student’s essay utilizes Fantasy Theme Analysis to explore the rhetorical choices of H.P. Lovecraft in his short story Celephaïs. By examining the characters, settings, and actions within the narrative, both in isolation and in relation to each other, Lovecraft’s rhetorical vision is elucidated. Moreover, this essay analyzes if and how group cohesiveness is achieved via a process coined …

Propaganda Or Persuasion: A Multisite Case Study Analysis Of The Impact Of Museum Communications On American Public Trust, Devon Anna Mancini

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer (2021), public trust in information sources has drastically decreased in America, except for museums. Since museums have historically spread propaganda through their communications, this multisite case study analysis of three American museums, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Creation Museum, investigated how museum propaganda impacts public trust. After examining Twitter posts and responses to the three cases, findings showed that even when museums did not intentionally spread propaganda, audience interpretations still led to a fracturing of trust. Recommendations for the field were …

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, …

Presidential Rhetoric And Media's Contribution To The Subjective Nature Of Truth In American Democracy, Bianca Miccolis

English Honors Theses

This thesis examines the role of media on the subjectivity of truth in presidential rhetoric and its ethical implications. In my three case studies, I find that there is some form of deception by each president in their chosen form of media. I analyze Roosevelt’s use of the radio, which he uses to hide his disability and gain more executive power to combat the Great Depression. I examine Reagan’s use of television and how he fabricates an intimate relationship with the American people to enact tax reform. Finally, I investigate Trump’s use of Twitter to deflect negative publicity as he …

'Why Do They Make Her Wear That?': A Rhetorical Analysis Of Ramy Youssef: Feelings, Rania Zaied

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Muslims have often been portrayed in the media, as violent, barbaric, terrorists, and powerless victims, along with many other misconceptions of negative and stereotypical images. Ramy Youssef: Feelings (2019), is an hour-long stand-up comedy special presented by comic Ramy Youssef, who is a Muslim millennial Egyptian-American man. By conducting a rhetorical analysis of the special, this research combines the method of Critical Rhetoric with two of Lowery and Renegar’s (2016) three frameworks, those being Bicultural Otherness and Self and Culture Deprecating Humor, to analyze Youssef’s comedy special Feelings (2019). This research delineates how the media influences the rhetoric of Muslim …

Youth As Coalitional Possibility In The Youth Climate Movement: An Analysis Of The Climate Justice Rhetoric Of Hilda Nakabuye, Autumn Peltier, & Greta Thunberg, Kristopher Samuel

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In 2019, Greta Thunberg delivered her “How Dare You” speech that captivated the social and political world. Throughout her speech she tethered ideas of extinction, future generations, and coalitional movements. These topics encouraged the Political and Social world to contemplate the reality of climate crisis and generated support for the Youth Climate Movement. However, Thunberg garnered a lot of attention that ultimately overshadowed the worksof other youth activists, particularly BIPOC activists. I analyze the rhetoric of fellow climate activists Hilda Nakabuye and Autumn Peltier utilizing psychoanalytic terms and analysis. Nakabuye and Peltier advocate for climate justice through a lens of …

Ecofascist “Snakeoil” And The Imperative Of Racializing Environmental Justice For The 21st Century: A Burkean Rhetorical Criticism Of Contemporary Ecofascist Manifestos, Lantz Shifflett

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Ecofascism of the 21^st century is a revival of centuries-old white nationalist fascism integrated with a concern for environmental issues from the last few decades. Designated by their writers as “manifestos,” three ecofascists have widely disseminated their documents online just before committing acts of racially motivated terrorism in three different countries. Furthermore, these manifestos provide a lens into contemporary ecofascist conspiracies as well as their own concocted “snakeoils” that present their ecofascist agendas in the form of rhetorical “curatives” to environmental issues of pollution. These “cures” are grounded in a new “green nationalism” that attempts to disguise the white …

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 …

Ancestral Pursuits: A Multicultural Celebration Of Identity & Race, Charlotte Cates Castro

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using critical historical rhetorical methods along with critical race and decolonial theory, this project situates ancestral pursuits as a communication-centered discursive formation by investigating the rhetorical strategies modern biotech and genealogy companies utilize to influence contemporary discourse around identity and belonging and narrate ethnicity and genealogy as acts of consumption. Through direct-to-consumer DNA testing and complimentary services, modern day biotech and genealogy companies like Ancestry and 23andMe market personalized insights into ancestry, genealogy, inherited traits, and health data that promise to connect users to their past, as well as to situate them in present-day society, through a deeper understanding of …

Self-Deceive And Conquer: A Rhetoric Of Cunning, David Manuel Cajias

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this investigation is to determine the role that self-deception plays in helping demagogues deceive or manipulate their audiences while remaining unaccountable. I will examine the ways in which self-deception aids demagogues and other unethical rhetoricians compellingly present their deceptive belief systems. This is done in a way that their beliefs are only unconsciously known to be false, inaccurate, or incomplete. As this knowledge is subconsciously stored and concealed from the demagogue’s conscience, I will argue that self-deception is the missing piece in the puzzle that is demagoguery.

Demagogic rhetoric has recently experienced a revival due to the …

Reframing Law's Domain: Narrative, Rhetoric, And The Forms Of Legal Rules, Stephen Paskey

Journal Articles

Legal scholars typically understand law as a system of determinate rules grounded in logic. And in the public sphere, textualist judges and others often claim that judges should not "make" law, arguing instead that a judge's role is simply to find the meaning inherent in law's language. This essay offers a different understanding of both the structure of legal rules and the role of judges. Building on Caroline Levine's claim that texts have multiple ordering principles, the essay argues that legal rules simultaneously have three overlapping forms, none of which is dominant: not only the form of conditional, "if-then" logic, …

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

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

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 …

Reading Memory: A Dual Heuristic Method For Interpreting Rhetorical Architectural Memory Texts, Diane Quaglia Beltran

All Dissertations

Memorials operate rhetorically, architecturally, and spatially as a written mode of remembrance. The rhetorical potential of memory texts has been discussed in rhetorical theory and includes the idea that the monuments and memorials are conveying something to someone for the purpose of influencing memory and remembrance of a place, person, or event. Still what makes them public, rhetorical, and architectural is not as clearly defined, so understanding only what the objects are saying and to whom misses the opportunity to more fully understand the ways in which they are rhetorical and architectural: rhetorical in their epideictic functions and kairotic possibilities, …

Memory And Rememory: Critically Cultivating An Appropriate Response Through A Storied Approach To Listening, Katie W. Powell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues for a storied approach to listening from the perspective of a white Southern woman. To do this, I carefully followed the work of two community groups. One, the Washington County Community Remembrance Project, is working to install a marker venerating Aaron, Anthony, and Randall, three enslaved people who were lynched in our area in 1856. The other, the James H. Berry United Daughters of the Confederacy, is responsible for installing a Confederate statue on the Bentonville Square in 1908 that was removed in 2020. As illustrated by the use of archival research and embedded participation in interracial …