Dissertations / Theses: 'Rhetoric'

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Hardesty, Kathleen Sandell. "An(other) Rhetoric: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Rhetorical Tradition." Scholar Commons, 2013. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4898.

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Rhetoric as a discipline is still touched by the shadow of ancient Greece. Rhetoric was defined famously by Aristotle as the "available means of persuasion," codified into five canons in classical Rome, and has since been a central part of Western education to train speakers and writers to effectively move their audiences. However, particularly beginning in the mid-20th Century, the discipline's understanding of rhetoric as a means of persuasion (or even manipulation) passed down from our ancient roots began to shift to a sense of rhetoric as matters of ethics and a concern for the other. It begs the question: As a discipline, how did we get to a point where ethical concerns have increasingly entered the rhetorical conversation? With a theoretical focus, this study traces and examines how rhetoric's relation to ethics has transformed over the past 60 years from our discipline's Aristotelian/Platonic/Socratic inheritance to the introduction of multiple new perspectives and voices. In suggesting that the goal of rhetoric is more than persuasion--a major focus of the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition dominant in the field of rhetoric and composition in the early 20th Century--this study traces a "turn" within our discipline from "confrontational" rhetoric to "invitational" rhetoric. It suggests that invitational rhetoric challenges a strict definition of rhetoric as persuasion seeks instead to understand rather than convert, support camaraderie and mutuality (if not unity) instead of reinforcing dominant power relationships, challenge the speaker as much as the audience, and privilege listening and invitation over persuasion when appropriate. Rhetorical ethics is defined as the ethical decisions made in the everyday interactions that constantly invite us to make rhetorical choices that inevitably have consequences in the world. The study examines kairos/sophistic rhetoric, identification, and responsibility to establish a potential framework for rhetorical ethics, as well as listening and acknowledgement as methods for enacting this model. The ambition is a rhetoric of ethics that attends to everyday situations; accommodates different, often "silenced," voices; and offers the possibility of an ethical encounter with others. The study offers several possible conclusions about the nature of rhetorical ethics. Significant areas of continued study include issues of voice, agency, and marginalization--even invitational rhetoric does not guarantee that quieter or disadvantaged voices will be heard. In all, an(other) rhetoric is both a ripe topic for continued disciplinary attention, as well as a necessary component of everyday interactions with others that long to display love over hate, listening over silencing, inclusion over exclusion, and acceptance over rejection.

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Tinajero, Roberto Jose. "Hip hop rhetoric relandscaping the rhetorical tradition /." To access this resource online via ProQuest Dissertations and Theses @ UTEP, 2009. http://0-proquest.umi.com.lib.utep.edu/login?COPT=REJTPTU0YmImSU5UPTAmVkVSPTI=&clientId=2515.

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Rushford-Spence, Shawna L. "Women’s Rhetorical Interventions in the Economic Rhetoric of Neurasthenia." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1291684623.

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Gayle, John Kurtis. "A feminist rhetorical translating of the Rhetoric of Aristotle." Fort Worth, Tex. : Texas Christian University, 2008. http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-12182008-164144/unrestricted/Gayle.pdf.

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Hobson, Theo. "Rhetorical word : Protestant theology and the rhetoric of authority /." Aldershot (U.K.) : Ashgate, 2002. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb39016689h.

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Hong, Maggie Ngar Dik. "Public Environmental Rhetoric: The Rhetorical Fashioning of Civic Responsibility." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2009. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2823.pdf.

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Adsanatham, Chanon. ""Civilized" Manners and Bloody Splashing: Recovering Conduct Rhetoric in the Thai Rhetorical Tradition." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1402075842.

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Hoke, Joni Lea. "Homegrown rhetoric rhetorical vision in states' marketing of local foods /." Connect to this title online, 2009. http://etd.lib.clemson.edu/documents/1247508821/.

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Jiao, Yang. "VISUALIZE THE UNTRANSLATABLE: APPLYING VISUAL RHETORIC TO COMPARATIVE RHETORIC." Oxford, Ohio : Miami University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=miami1250174880.

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Stewart, John. "A Burkean Method for Analyzing Environmental Rhetoric." Master's thesis, University of Central Florida, 2009. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/2291.

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The work of Kenneth Burke provides a method of rhetorical analysis that is useful in terms of bringing features of texts to the surface that are not readily apparent, such as how they produce identification in their audiences, and in revealing rhetorical factors related to but outside the text, for example the authors' motives. Burke's work is wide-ranging and open to many interpretations, so it can be difficult to apply. This study condenses some of his more important concepts into a simplified method which has several practical applications; it focuses on how Burke's theories can be applied to analyzing environmental texts, and helps reveal how those texts are rhetorically effective. This method is also shown to be useful for rhetoricians and other students of language in analyzing the motives and meanings behind complicated texts. An example analysis is developed in detail to demonstrate the utility of this approach for analyzing environmental rhetoric and help clarify how to apply it to other texts. A publication by the Center for Ecoliteracy (CEL), a nonprofit organization engaged in environmental education, provides the basis for a concrete example of applying this method to a current work of environmental rhetoric. The CEL serves as an example of current environmental organizations and their rhetoric, and a Burkean analysis of its publications begins by revealing some of the principles operating in the texts that make them rhetorically effective. This analysis also goes beyond basic dialectics to question how the texts function as "symbolic action" and how they fit into Burke's hierarchic system of language. The method developed in this study not only determines how the text produces identification in an audience, but also the motives behind producing the text. The CEL's publications are good representative examples of current environmental writing, so the conclusions drawn from an analysis of the CEL's texts can be applied to other environmental rhetoric.
M.A.
Department of English
Arts and Humanities
English MA

11

Ring, Magnus. "New classical rhetoric : Tony Blair's rhetorical strategies and features of discourse." Thesis, University West, Department of Social and Behavioural Studies, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hv:diva-1185.

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Orators have throughout history used strategies to communicate as effectively as possible with their listeners. The ex-British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Tony Blair both engaged their people in war and hence gave account for the serious situations in broadcast speeches to the public. The purpose of this paper is to detect the features of Blair's discourse in a speech from 2003 and point out what rhetorical strategies he uses. I contrast my findings with a speech given by Churchill in 1940 to show to which extent Blair builds on tradition, and how different political circumstances might affect a speech. The conclusion shows that Blair's inclusive approach, deriving from the New Labour discourse "The Third Way", is apparent in e.g. the frequent use of vaguely defined pronouns as "we". Blair's speech is in line with the demands of a classical speech, and he uses the same persuasive devices as Churchill. Nevertheless the two ex-Prime Ministers' different political situations do affect the way in which they communicate their messages' which result in both differences and similarities.

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Murray, Savannah Paige. "The Dam Fighters: Commons Environmental Rhetoric, Rhetorical Citizenship, and Local Ethos." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/100838.

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In this dissertation project, I examine the ways in which a grassroots environmental organization, the Upper French Broad Defense Association (UFBDA), was able to contribute knowledge and voice concerns regarding a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) proposal between 1961 and 1972. The TVA proposal included a plan for comprehensive water resource development in western North Carolina which would have required in the implementation of 14 dams, flooding of more than 18,000 fertile agricultural acres and displacing 600 families from their ancestral homes. Employing archival research methods, in this dissertation I analyze the UFBDA's everyday rhetorical tactics which contributed to their overall success in preventing the implementation of the TVA project. I situate archival sources alongside contemporary scholarship in democratic practice, environmental rhetoric, rhetorical citizenship, and ethos, as discussed in rhetoric and writing studies. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the ways in which the UFBDA case study offers a generative model for future environmental controversies, providing specific techniques which can contribute to the success of grassroots organizations mired in environmental controversies and contentious decisions.
Doctor of Philosophy
In this dissertation project, I examine the ways in which a grassroots environmental organization, the Upper French Broad Defense Association (UFBDA), was able to contribute knowledge and voice concerns regarding a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) proposal between 1961 and 1972. The TVA proposal included a plan for comprehensive water resource development in western North Carolina which would have required in the implementation of 14 dams, flooding of more than 18,000 fertile agricultural acres and displacing 600 families from their ancestral homes. In order to complete this dissertation project, I explored two archival collections pertaining to the UFBDA. Based on my findings in the archives, I provide new understandings of how grassroots environmentalism works, particularly in terms of how environmentalists use language in order to participate in decisions about the environment. More specifically, this dissertation documents how members of the UFBDA were able to describe the western North Carolina landscape as a commons and not a wilderness, work together across counties to create new opportunities to share their concerns over the TVA project, and establish their own credibility as knowledgeable citizens about their local environment. By highlighting specific components of the UFBDA's work, this dissertation provides examples that can be used by future grassroots environmental organization facing similar challenges regarding environmental controversies.

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Hjort, Eve M. "Homeless Rhetoric: A Rhetorical Criticism of the Street Newspaper, “The Homeless Grapevine”." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1277380293.

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Paul, Carly Kay. "The Rhetoric of the Frontier and the Frontier of Rhetoric." Diss., CLICK HERE FOR ONLINE ACCESS, 2004. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/u?/MormonThesesP-Q,6398.

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Largey, Zachary L. "The Rhetoric of Persecution: Mormon Crisis Rhetoric from 1838-1871." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2006. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd1249.pdf.

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Leithner, Anika Cornelia. "Rhetoric of responsibility: German war rhetoric in the 21st century." Diss., Connect to online resource, 2006. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3207748.

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Griffin, Joseph. "Congruent Affinities: Reconsidering the Epideictic." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/22706.

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Aristotle's division of the "species" of rhetoric (deliberative, forensic, and epideictic) has served as a helpful taxonomy in historical accounts of rhetoric, but it has also produced undesirable effects. One such effect is that epideictic rhetoric has been interpreted historically as deficient, unimportant or merely ostentatious, while political or legal discourse retained a favored status in authentic civic life. This analysis argues that such an interpretation reduces contemporary attention to the crucial role that epideixis plays in modern discourse. As often interpreted, epideictic rhetoric contains at its heart a striving toward communal values and utopic ideals. Taking as its province the good/bad, the praiseworthy/derisible, it is a rhetorical form supremely attentive to what counts for audiences, cultures, and subcultures. As such, it has direct entailments for all forms of rhetorical practice, however categorized, for in its essence is not simply a suggestion of timeliness or appropriate context for its delivery, but also method: a focus on identification and affinity is at the heart of epideixis. Taking an expanded definition of epideixis, I argue that Aristotle's classification be read as provisional (that he allowed for and expected overlap with his divisions), and further, that criticism be seen as a form of contemporary epideixis. I claim that contemporary norms are more fractured than in classical times, and that as citizens no longer at the behest of formerly more unified cultural ideals it is through acts of criticism and aesthetic consensus that we often form emergent communities, gathering around objects of appraisal, around that which offers us pleasure (even the popular). I attempt to account for the mechanics of how, as Dave Hickey argues, “beautiful objects reorganize society, sometimes radically" (Invisible Dragon 81). The vectors through which this reorganization occurs are via popular discourse involving “comparisons, advocacy, analysis, and dissent” (Hickey Invisible Dragon 70), be it at the level of the interpersonal or in a more widely-sanctioned public forum such as professional criticism. I hope to show that epideixis is not a moribund rhetorical category, but a key discursive mode and way of forming community in our times.

18

Graves, Robert Christopher. "The Art of Heterotopian Rhetoric: A Theory of Science Fiction as Rhetorical Discourse." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245638686.

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Watt, Alan Norman. "Nietzsche and rhetoric." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1992. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4327/.

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The thesis maintained here is that Nietzsche belongs to and revitalizes a rhetorical tradition which has competed with philosophy for cultural and educational dominance. The general strategy of the thesis is to draw comparisons between Nietzsche and those aspects of the Sophists' activity that were attacked by Plato, in order to challenge philosophy's claim to moral and intellectual superiority over rhetoric. The first chapter considers the allegation that philosophy is demonstrably superior to rhetoric because it has a proper method and can achieve positive results. Against this, it is argued that philosophy is distinguished from rhetoric by its values, not its methodological purity; the remaining chapters probe this conflict of values. Chapter two explores the charge that rhetoric is both manipulative and open to manipulation, notes how Nietzsche's texts have been subject to these two criticisms, and counters them by challenging philosophy's models of manipulation and education. Chapter three examines the rival educational ideals of philosophy and rhetoric, arguing that the key differentiating feature is rhetoric's pragmatism. It shows how this feature has been used to disparage rhetoric, and argues that Nietzsche develops a form of pragmatism that meets the philosophical attack effectively. Chapter four considers the suggestion that rhetoric is less rational than philosophy because it employs looser argumentation, and argues that, at least as manifested by Nietzsche, rhetorical argumentation produces a superior rationality - according to an alternative perspective on reason and science. Chapter five considers the claim that the eloquence of rhetoric is to be condemned for seducing and confusing the seeker after truth; this is countered by developing the Nietzschean dictum that art is worth more than truth. The main conclusion is that, through Nietzsche's development of the ancient tradition, rhetoric emerges as a real alternative "love of wisdom".

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Grewell, Greg. "Rhetoric of Ridicule." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/312568.

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Ridicule is a means of affecting change. Issuing an interpretation of a subject's relation to an ideological formation or social norm as an argument to change behavior, language-use, belief, or the like, ridicule can be used both to affirm and to contest prevailing hierarchies. As a discursive function, this dissertation theorizes, ridicule can be either monological or dialogical. Monological ridicule often takes the form of a demand or directive and usually commands its subject to comply with some ideological formation or social norm. Used in this way, it is a norming tool. In contrast, dialogical ridicule generally invites or encourages negotiation or mediation. As such, it is often used to contest or challenge prevailing hierarchies, with the ultimate aim of creating conditions that can allow for transformation. In six chapters, this dissertation offers a theory of ridicule, traces conceptions of it through western history, examines both monological and dialogical applications of it, and, lastly, explores its use on the Internet, where it has flourished. If the aim of rhetoric is to please, to instruct, or to entertain, then ridicule may be the master rhetorical trope as it can achieve all three simultaneously.

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Clayton, Kathleen. "A just rhetoric." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289911.

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This dissertation examines the pedagogical practices and written texts of The New York Association for Working Girls between 1890 and 1894 in order to identify elements that are useful in constructing a just rhetoric for teaching business communication today. The late 1890s were a period of economic pressure In the face of cultural, physical, and industrial expansion for the United States much like the late 1990s--early 2000s mark a time of economic pressure in the context of cultural, physical, and technological expansion for the university. The older New York women aimed to uplift the souls of the newly arrived immigrant working girls by defining and identifying for them appropriate ways of speaking, writing, dressing, and living. They were concerned with the exterior identity and conscious identifications among all females. However, an identification of the pedagogical unconscious, that is those sites of conflict, ambiguity, or contradiction in the works of the New York Association for Working Girls serves as a foundation for using the past to examine current definitions and identities in teaching business communications. Most research on business communications within a technological age identifies theoretical links between composition and computers, business communications and rhetoric, but few if any identify practical pedagogy within the context of links between electronic business, rhetoric, and composition within an integrated curriculum of a business college. In using the tools to uncover the unexamined differences within the New York Association for Working Girls, I define the pedagogical unconscious of a team-taught MBA course that integrates business communications. I use the elements I identify to construct a new pedagogy that I believe is just and inclusive to all when used to teach business communications in a technological age.

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Morales, Alexander W. "The Rhetoric of Scientific Authority: A Rhetorical Examination of _An Inconvenient Truth_." Scholar Commons, 2017. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6910.

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This thesis project examines how scientific authority is produced through rhetorical practices instead of the “information deficit” model of science communication. By conducting a rhetorical analysis of the science documentary An Inconvenient Truth, this project demonstrates how the documentary format itself and the film’s leading agent, former United States Vice President Al Gore, attempt to persuade audiences through building degrees of scientific authority by employing multiple rhetorics or narrative themes of science to bolster the scientific facts supporting anthropogenic climate change. Additionally, I demonstrate how these narrative themes parallel three scholarly themes within the rhetoric of science literature: science as a story of perpetual discovery, science as reference, and science as an agent of moral prosperity. I argue that scientific authority is best understood through these multiple rhetorics of science which, in the dramatic case of An Inconvenient Truth, require Gore to overcome certain social and cultural obstacles by appealing to the values and sensibilities of his audience. Successful scientific persuasion, therefore, depends more on the elements of rhetoric rather than solely relying on accurate and verifiable scientific information as the crux of successful persuasion.

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Lim, Elvin T. "Rhetoric and the American presidency : pandering and leadership in a rhetorical republic." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.417604.

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Atkinson, Mark D. "The impact of classical rhetoric in an English-speaking international context." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN) Access this title online, 2005. http://www.tren.com.

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Vinson, Jenna Elizabeth. "Teenage Mothers as Rhetors and Rhetoric: An Analysis of Embodied Exigence and Constrained Agency." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/293424.

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This dissertation examines the rhetorical function and social implications of the "dominant narrative of teenage pregnancy"--that is, the popular depiction of young motherhood as the tragic downfall of a woman's life. I employ feminist poststructuralist and visual rhetorical critique to analyze historical and contemporary teenage pregnancy prevention materials as well as journalistic representations of young mothers. Building from this analysis, I argue that the dominant narrative pathologizes teenage mothers, prevents a focus on structures of inequality and poverty, sustains racialized gender ideologies, and encourages practices that perpetuate disparities for pregnant/mothering young women. In addition, this project explores strategies for resisting this discourse. Specifically, I review scholarship that has contested the dominant narrative and identify counter-rhetorical practices that some young mothers use in their published first-person narratives. Finally, drawing on focus groups I conducted with 27 young mothers, I illustrate that visibly young pregnant and parenting women are often publically confronted by strangers because they embody an urgent and much-debated social issue. I offer the concept of "embodied exigence" as a way to understand how discursive and material realities of the body may construct rhetorical situations and how the body may function as a site of constrained agency. Building from rhetorical theories of agency, exigence, and feminist work on the visibility of motherhood, I assert that in moments of embodied exigence, marginalized young mothers may seize the opportunity to resist dominant rhetoric and act as rhetors in their own right.

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Segal, Judith Zelda. "Reading medical prose as rhetoric : A study in the rhetoric of science." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29387.

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Rhetoric, as the theory and practice of the discursive means of human influence, and science, as the observational study of the physical world, have traditionally been considered to exist in separate realms. In the past thirty years, however, theoretical convergences in the philosophy of rhetoric and the philosophy of science have yielded a discipline in the rhetoric of science—a discipline concerned with the discursive aspects of knowledge production and reproduction in the sciences. Rhetorical theory has argued convincingly in this century that all language in use is language for use and is therefore, to varying degrees, persuasive. The rhetoric of science begins from the assumption that persuasion is a factor in the construction of scientific knowledge, and from the belief that members of scientific communities (rhetorical communities in every sense) advocate versions of reality which are based in theory, formed in language, and dependent on the agreement of other scientists for their validation. This present project contributes to literature in the applied study of rhetoric of science by analyzing, from a rhetorical perspective, thirty-five scientific articles published in the last six years in major medical journals. (All of the articles are on the subject of primary—or functional—headache.) The project uses a methodology based on classical and contemporary theories of rhetoric to discover persuasive strategies in these scientific texts. It poses questions about how authorial intentions are actualized in scientific texts, how scientific texts have effects on readers, and how the texts affect the situations into which they are introduced. While scientific texts, like literary texts, could be analyzed from a variety of theoretical perspectives, rhetorical theory provides a particularly appropriate heuristic model for analyzing "real world" texts. The rhetorical analysis (which includes both an overview of the complete sample and three case studies) begins by questioning the extent to which the conventions of scientific prose (for example, use of the passive, of nominal iz at ions, of complex sentence structure; use of statistical reasoning and arguments from authority) actually produce a prose that is objective and disinterested in keeping with traditional ideals of science. The analysis shows that medical authors in fact use a variety of persuasive strategies in their articles (strategies which may be classified according to the classical canons of rhetoric), and that the writing in medical journals, is not simply objective and disinterested, although on initial reading, because of its impersonal style, it may appear to be so. The rhetorical analysis demonstrates that the use of textual features promoting an appearance of neutrality is itself a rhetorical strategy which argues for the acceptance of particular claims in scientific articles. The rhetorical analysis is significant for the theory and practice of science, for the discipline of rhetoric of science, and for the discipline of rhetoric itself. The analysis describes the complex rhetoric of scientific writing as a genre, probes the assumptions that underlie its conventions, and argues that scientific texts must be read critically, as rhetoric. To read scientific texts as rhetoric is to locate their arguments, scrutinize their forms, judge their authors, and evaluate their effects. The role of the rhetorician is to urge such reading, and everywhere to promote discussion of the ways of influence exerted especially by texts which appear at first not to be rhetorical.
Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate

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Goncalves, Teixeira Ligia Alexandra. "Rhetoric for philosophers : an examination of the place of rhetoric in philosophy." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2007. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/2936/.

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The debate between rhetoricians and philosophers goes back to the origins of the understanding of what philosophy is, which we can trace to Plato and the immediate Platonic tradition. I suggest that this tradition was not a disinterested one. Its concern was to carve out and develop a particular kind of discourse (i.e., what it takes to be the philosophical enterprise) for its own purposes (i.e., to marginalise its competitors). It did this in a particularly successful way, to the extent that it is difficult for us even to consider what the alternatives might have been. However, there are residual problems in the way that it conceives of the philosophical project, and this question is related to the widespread tendency of contemporary thinkers to view rhetoric as pompous vacuousness or mere trickery. Despite the theoretical questions posed, this thesis focuses primarily on concrete works, especially those of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Renaissance thinkers, Hobbes, and Locke. I analyse the rhetorical discourse in some of rhetoric's staunchest opponents, and some of its most well-known advocates for a very specific purpose. First, I am trying to show that all these philosophers, whether pro or against the art of rhetoric, recognise the danger of 'sophistic tricks', and acknowledge (more or less reluctantly) that rhetoric potentially represents a dangerous threat to the moral basis of political life, but follow different paths. Next, and this is a fundamental part of my argument, that in the works of philosophers who are widely regarded as some of rhetoric's staunchest opponents, we can find clear evidence, not only of the use of rhetoric to fight rhetoric, but allusions to what they see as a 'true' or legitimate rhetoric. In other words, echoing Plato, two forms of persuasion are alluded to in their works: (i) a rhetoric that produces persuasion for belief in the absence of knowledge, and (ii) a genuine or 'true' art of rhetoric, the sort of that produces knowledge (episteme) in the privileged sense. So in the Phaedrus, Plato suggests that the philosopher is the true rhetorician; for Hobbes the only 'true' rhetorician is, of course, the sovereign; and for Locke, any truly free and rational individual can, at least in theory, be a good rhetorician. At a more general level, and this constitutes the underlying theme of the thesis, I hope to show that philosophy itself, like all discourses, does not exist in a linguistic vacuum. Philosophy, like rhetoric and history, is deeply implicated in the social and political order that produces it.

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Zhu, Hua. "Forging Inter/connectivity: Enacting the Rhetoric of According-with." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1593716546006958.

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Herman, Mark A. "A historical-rhetorical analysis of the 1980/1984 campaign rhetoric of Ronald Reagan /." View online, 1990. http://repository.eiu.edu/theses/docs/32211998880613.pdf.

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Simons, Robert C. "Rhetoric and Luke 1-2 : a rhetorical study of an extended narrative passage." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1983/1d961368-e83a-46e8-a04a-11b0701ee54c.

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Graves, Robert Christopher Jason. "The art of heterotopian rhetoric a theory of science fiction as rhetorical discourse /." Bowling Green, Ohio : Bowling Green State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=bgsu1245638686.

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Srinivasan, Ragini Tharoor. "The Rhetoric of Return." University of California eScholarship, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/626136.

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Diasporic Homecoming and the New Indian City “We set out, [my father] and my mother and I, for Karol Bagh. ‘15/64 Western Extension Area, Ajmal Khan Road,’ he chanted momentously in the back of the car. We drove through the wide, fluid streets of the bureaucratic area…the entire area was bursting at the seams: shops and warehouses extended out onto the streets, apartments had grown upwards and outwards into every possible gap, and parked cars filled in the rest. We missed our turn and had to do a U-turn, a mistake that cost us half an hour…My father became increasingly upset as we penetrated deeper and deeper into the end-of-day clamour. ‘Karol Bagh used to be a bagh,’ he said, ‘a garden. I used to ride my bike on these streets. What happened?’”—Rana Dasgupta

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Adams, Peter James. "A Rhetoric of mysticism." Thesis, University of Auckland, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2021.

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Research into mystical experience has to date relied primarily on retrospective self reports of mystical states. Analysis of such reports assumes a direct correspondence between their content and the content of the experiences. But experiencers themselves often express dissatisfaction with the capacity of language to convey these states, and the language they do choose to use is typically vague and ambiguous. The current dissertation argues that vagueness is not an accidental nor an unfortunate feature of mystical communications. Because of difficulties in direct expression, mystical communicators rely on the active and imaginative participation of the listener/reader to complete the expression. A theory of provocative gaps is developed to explain how this operates. A "gap" is conceived of as an open receptacle in linguistic space. It provides a site within a discourse upon which receptive listeners/readers can insert content from their own experience. Gaps can be created by blatant omissions of content, but in written descriptions are more likely to occur in indirect forms by exploiting subtleties in grammar and meaning. A simple diagrammatic system is developed for explaining the gap-provoking potential of several major rhetorical strategies. Three studies were designed to explore whether and at what frequency written testimonials of mystical experience exploit a selection of 31 of these gap-provoking strategies: the first study exposed their high frequency in extracts by well-known published mystics; the second indicated similarly high frequencies for the average person's description; and the third found significantly higher rates in mystical testimonials than in descriptions by the same participants of dream or travel experiences. A similar use of vagueness can be found in the language of hypnotic trance induction, and as an adjunct to the second study, the hypnotic susceptibility of 81 subjects was assessed and results indicated that subjects with mystical inclinations were more susceptible to hypnosis than those without. The general support of the studies for a theory of provocative gaps suggests that the notion of intentional vagueness could have useful application in the study of other types of communication, including: the media, art criticism, teaching, psychotherapy and academic discourse.
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Perell, Paul M. "The case for rhetoric." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0033/NQ27315.pdf.

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Church, Farrell Mary Joanne. "The rhetoric of silence." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0021/NQ55328.pdf.

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Huck, Erin. "Nike, feminism and rhetoric." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/MQ54264.pdf.

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Steel, C. E. W. "Cicero, rhetoric, and empire." Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2001. http://www.myilibrary.com?id=44675.

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Abstract:

Originally presented as the author's D. Phil thesis, Corpus Christi College Oxford, 1995-1998.
Title from e-book title screen (viewed July 27, 2006). Available through MyiLibrary. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [234]-245) and index.

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Pritchard, Mala Penelope. "Defoe, rhetoric and nonconformity." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.426883.

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Boehm, Beth Ann. "A rhetoric of metafiction." The Ohio State University, 1987. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1258655494.

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Rallin, Aneil. "Rhetoric(s) of rupture." The Ohio State University, 1999. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1287411614.

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Wrightson, Jody House. "Intrapersonal Characteristics of Rhetoric /." The Ohio State University, 1995. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487929230740438.

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Rallin, Aneil. "Rhetoric(s) of rupture /." The Ohio State University, 2000. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1488192119262334.

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Gifford, David Pharis. "Roasted: Coffee, Insult, Rhetoric." TopSCHOLAR®, 2017. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1951.

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Abstract:

While insult has been a frequent topic for rhetorical study in the past, little if any work has gone toward the formation of a systematic theory of insult. Karina Korostelina has proposed a theory of intergroup identity insults, which appears promising from a socio-cultural perspective. However, her theory does not address the particularly rhetorical characteristics of insults, preferring instead to analyze them with reference to their socio-historic context. While her theory proves sound under scrutiny, it does little to shed light on pejorative rhetoric as rhetoric. In what follows, I would like to propose certain characteristics of pejorative rhetoric that may prove useful in developing a rhetorical understanding of insult. I will be using Korostelina’s theory as a starting place to ground my discussion of insult, but I will go beyond the socio-historic contexts to suggest a purely rhetorical aspect of insults that creates new meanings and associations independent of larger cultural contexts. While independent of cultural contexts, these new associations are still informed by cultural contexts. As such, I will be using coffee, a cultural artifact with a variety of social and culture meanings, as a lens from which to examine pejorative rhetoric. Ultimately, I propose that insult functions by drawing from the associations inherent in cultural artifacts in order to transform those associations into purely rhetorical associations, that is, associations that could not exist without the influence of pejorative rhetoric, thereby creating a rhetorical context independent of large cultural contexts.

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Gunter, James Christiansen. "The Rhetoric of Violence." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2008. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2468.pdf.

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Henderson, Ian H. "Jesus, rhetoric and law /." Leiden ; New York ; Köln : E. J. Brill, 1996. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb37203562b.

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Steel, Catherine Elizabeth Wannan. "Cicero, rhetoric and Empire /." Oxford : Oxford university press, 2001. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb38845630g.

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Lyon, Tess Emily. "Fear and Political Rhetoric." Thesis, Department of Philosophy, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/16133.

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In 2016, the resurgence of Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party to the Senate has dominated Australian political discourse. Speciﬁcally, her statements about Islam and Muslims have sparked discussion about the role of political speech in our democracy. In this thesis, I seek to address the question at the heart of this tension: should politicians’ fear-mongering rhetoric be defended, or does it inﬂict serious trauma on our societies? I do so by focusing on the nature of fear as a political emotion; its structure, its effects on individuals and democratic society, and its costs. Fear, I argue, is at the heart of our problem with fear-mongering rhetoric. In the ﬁrst section of this thesis, I contextualise this thesis as a contribution to the recent turn to ethics within liberalism, and as an extension on Martha Nussbaum’s extensive philosophical treatment of political emotions in liberal democracy. In the second section, I set up the cognitive account of political fear that I will use throughout this thesis. I demonstrate its role in perpetuating a range of phenomena incompatible with a pluralist society, including signiﬁcant epistemic harms. In the third section, I turn to the effects speciﬁc to fear-mongering political rhetoric, and in the fourth, I weigh up the effects of fear against our commitment to freedom of speech. My unique contribution to this ﬁeld is to point out that fear as an emotion is at the root of why fear-mongering speech is objectionable in a liberal democracy. If we do not acknowledge the emotional root and carrying force of this kind of speech, we fail to see what is at stake in debate over fear-mongering political rhetoric: it critically compromises citizens’ capacity to engage in political discourse. I make the following disclaimer at the outset: for much of this thesis, Senator Hanson serves as a token for politicians and political candidates who say discriminatory, fear-mongering things about Islam and Muslims. She is not alone, but she is the most visible. It is for this reason that I tend to use her as a signpost for the broader array of fear-mongering political rhetoric to take place in Australian political discourse of the last few years.

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Blakeman, Mary. "The Rhetoric of Rescue." TopSCHOLAR®, 1990. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2142.

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This thesis examines the television reporters' verbal depictions of two rescue events, the rescue of Jessica McClure in 1987 and the rescue of three whales at Pt. Barrow, Alaska in 1988, in order to discover what rhetorical techniques were used to appeal to the public interest. Analog criticism, metaphorical analysis and pentadic analysis were used to discover the dominant language reporters chose. Three main conclusions were drawn from this analysis: (1) use of the dramatistic pentad showed how reporters focused public attention away from the purpose,(2) verbal and visual depictions cannot be separated when studying television news stories and (3) two different styles of depiction were used to portray two very similar events.

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Friedenbach, James Walsh. "Modern rhetoric/ancient realities." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1988. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/346.

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Mkhaiel, Derek Tanios Imad. "BANKSY, RHETORIC, AND REVOLUTION." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2017. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/552.

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This thesis examines the projects outlined by the Situationist philosophers and their impact on revolutionizing consciousness. Alongside of this examination this thesis demonstrates how the appropriate rhetorical means in conjunction with street art—specifically the work of Banksy—may lead to the successful implementation and execution of the Situationist's projects. This thesis examines the concept of the spectacle as developed by the Situationists as its object of critique and the concepts of culture, unitary urbanism, psychogeography, détournement and dérive as the framework in which the spectacle can be successfully critiqued in order to foster a more critical consciousness. In addition to this framework my claim is that the aforementioned elements are accomplished by the work of Banksy and his ability to alter the material conditions of our reality through his rhetorical construction of material enactments by creating appropriate and kairotic works which provide life to the Situationist's projects and affords the potentiality of revolutionizing consciousness. In Figure 1. Banksy critiques the idea of spectacularization. There is a fear that technology will distract individuals’ from living and experiencing their lives to the fullest, that their desire to record moments will get in the way with actually living through experiences. In fact the concept of recording events, for many people, is bringing more life to those events than the event itself. We’re currently living in a society where the record of the thing itself is greater than the thing itself. Of course, whenever something is recorded it can be spectacularized--elevated to a greater degree of importance--and shared with many. At the same time, urban architectural achievements have become idols unto themselves. People visit the Eiffel Tower for the purposes of visiting the Eiffel Tower. Even in the act of being a tourist or a spectator we are being placed in positions of passivity. The goal is to absorb whatever man made phenomena has been constructed for the purposes of enjoying it intrinsically without understanding why. In their article "Rhetoric and Materiality in the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art" Kenneth Zagacki and Victoria Gallagher rhetorically analyze the complex and interwoven spaces of the North Carolina Museum of Art. Their research claims that "the move from symbolicity to materiality involves a shift from examining representations (what does a text mean/what are the persuader's goals) to examining enactments (what does a text or artifact do/what are the consequences beyond that of the persuader's goals) and, as Carole Blair suggests, to considering the significance a particular artifact or text's material existence: What does it do with or against other artifacts? And how does it act on persons?" (Zagacki and Gallagher 172). This move from the purely symbolic importance of a text or artifact to its materiality is exceptionally important when discussing how potential Situationist projects can be materialized into and implemented effectively in the real world. The Situationists were essentially radical realists—their critiques need to exist in the most material form possible in order to generate the conscious liberation that they desired. That being said Margaret LaWare and Victoria Gallagher "...suggest that material rhetorics contribute to discourses of public identity by inviting visitors to see and experience landscape (or physical context) around them in new, and very much embodied ways" (as cited in Zagacki and Gallagher 172). The recursive nature of material rhetorics allows us to analyze exactly how environment's are affecting individual's subjectivities and how they too can go about affecting their world in new ways. I turn to this article specifically for the methodology that Zagacki and Gallagher construct in order to discuss in a more concrete fashion the rhetorical complexity of these spaces and their potential affect on visitors: we argue, through two material enactments of the human/nature interface that we characterize as ‘‘inside/outside’’ and ‘‘regenerative/transformative.’’ By ‘‘inside/outside,’’ we refer to the experience of moving (1) between constructed spaces, such as a museum space or an urban landscape, to less constructed, more organic spaces such as the outdoor park or the rural landscape; and (2) between what we refer to as natural history and human history. By ‘‘regenerative/transformative,’’ we mean moving (1) from natural states to human-constructed states and back again to nature, and (2) from one state of understanding to another. The capacity to create spaces of attention that call forth particular experiences reveals the potential rhetorical impact and reach of the Museum Park’s material forms. (173) The framework established here is specifically most affective when discussing these specific spaces—not every material space will have an inside/outside which would lend itself to phenomenological observation. However, for the purposes of this project, I find it important to reflect on how the "static/dynamic" enactments produced by the space harboring Banksy's work functions as a method to produce the "concrete/utopia" enactment by détourning expectations of space via messages whose kairotic nature—its location in time and place—and content create a specific psychogeography which can revolutionize our expectations and engagement with the world.

Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Rhetoric'

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