<p> This dissertation explores how the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and the Occupy Movement (OM) <i>writ large</i> generated new forms of rhetorical invention through its emergence in geographical places and virtual spaces across the world. The genesis and development of Occupy on these &ldquo;radical&rdquo; grounds provide an empirical grounding to theory on the <i>chora,</i> rhetorical invention, and the vernacular, where the word occupy and the tactic occupation designate vital sites <i>(topoi)</i> of rhetorical activity: seats/sources of local meaning(s) that occupiers used to bring new lines of thought to life. The radical uptake of &ldquo;occupy&rdquo; would create what Edward Schiappa calls a definitional rupture: a disruption of the &ldquo;natural attitude&rdquo; around the meaning or usage of a word. To suture this gap, I acknowledge the ethical and normative ramifications that accompany the act of definition as a political act and then conduct a philological analysis on &lsquo;occupy&rsquo; and &lsquo;occupation&rsquo; by tracing these words to their earliest or &ldquo;radical&rdquo; roots. I then attend to the emergence of OWS in the place of Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza, followed by its first call to action and popular uptake in virtual streams and media, where both places produced new vernacular modalities and media. In gesturing to the disaster sociology literature on emergent citizen groups (ECGS) and emergent phenomena, this assembly of Occupy in time, place, and space, radically reconceives &lsquo;what it means&rsquo; to &ldquo;occupy&rdquo; common places and spaces towards the creation of new socio-economic realities in response to crisis.</p>

<p> New Jersey governor Chris Christie has gained widespread media attention for his aggressive public persona, his involvement in the Bridgegate scandal, and for weighing almost 400 pounds at the beginning of his political career. In this thesis, I conduct a metaphor analysis on political cartoons featuring Christie. By alternately focusing on his weight and his Italian heritage, cartoons utilize body-centric attacks to transform Christie into monsters, inanimate objects, manual laborers, women, and other entities, inextricably tying Christie's politics to his physicality. I argue that Christie's body is heavily gendered throughout the cartoons, reinforcing the conservative masculinist script and hegemonic masculinity. Thus, I end this thesis by exploring how the denigration of Christie's body could prove damaging to Christie's career and aid in the construction of non-normative bodies in the public sphere.</p>

<p> Scientists and scholars should be trusted allies in the effort to shield the public from the consequences of the current post-truth existence. However, decades of declining trust in the formal institutions that verify what is 'true' has left the public particularly vulnerable to new, less vetted "truth tellers". These "truth tellers" cunningly weave their messages with existing public attitudes that "feel" right versus empirically verifiable facts and figures. The manipulation of affect has become a powerful tool in these battles for truth, especially in the arena of scientific controversies where the public has strong feelings yet minimal technical knowledge on the subject. With consideration to the role of affect in public deliberation, this project investigates the primary strategies employed in popular anti-GMO and anti-vaccine rhetorical texts with a focus on identifying their construction of 'truth'. Ultimately, I argue that these rhetorical texts employ two main strategies: 1) they exploit emotion in order to gain the audience's empathy, and 2) they induce recruitment to their cause by articulating and echoing existing political beliefs held by the public within the context of their own movement.</p><p>

Although there has been an outpouring of scholarship on the "rhetorical body" in the last two decades, nearly all analyzes and critiques discourses about the body. Very little work in contemporary rhetorical studies addresses the ways in which rhetoric affects and alters the central nervous system, and thereby exerts influence at a level of subjective experience prior to cognitive and linguistic apprehension. Recent neuroscientific research into affect, identity, and decision-making echoes many of the claims made by ancient rhetoricians: namely, that rhetorical activity is corporeally transformative, and that the material transformations wrought by rhetoric have profound implications for subjects' capacity to engage in critical thought and agential judgment. This study demonstrates that emotional political rhetoric is physiologically addictive, that the brain and body can make decisions independently of the will of the thinking subject, and that symbolic violence can physically reconfigure the neural networks that make critical cognition possible. As public culture and discourse becomes increasingly imagistic, non-rational, and emotionally charged, critics must develop theoretical resources capable of recognizing and responding to new varieties of constitutive phenomena. Neuroscience can supplement traditional rhetorical criticism by offering insight into the physiological processes by which destructive ideas become self-sustaining, and it can help critics devise more sophisticated rhetorical approaches to the task of promoting social healing. To advance this conversation, this dissertation outlines a critical neurorhetorical theory that is attuned to the Sophistic and Burkean rhetorical tradition, informed by contemporary neuroscience, and responsive to the unique cultural and social conditions of the 21st century.

<p> On June 30, 2014, the Supreme Court of the United States decided in favor of Hobby Lobby, Inc. in the landmark decision of <i>Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc.</i> This decision established a significant new legal principle, substantially changing the interpretation of the Affordable Care Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and for-profit business rights. This thesis uses hermeneutic rhetorical theory to study the majority and dissenting opinions of the <i>Hobby Lobby, Inc.</i> decision to explicate the inherent paternalistic function within the rhetorical arguments of protection, corporate personhood, choice, sincerity, and the burden versus entitlement binary. Beyond the <i>Hobby Lobby, Inc.</i> decision, I argue that paternalism lies at the heart of many of the differences in feminist hermeneutics on abortion. This thesis promotes a more tolerant and respectful examination of the abortion debate with the higher goal of reaching a greater understanding of our social condition.</p>

<p> This project seeks to understand the relationship between visual rhetoric and power structure between FEMA&rsquo;s Earthquake publications and their audience. Research shows images leave a longer impression on readers than text, causing more studies to focus on visuals rather than just text in technical communication. Author uses Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze the images in relation to text, design, and intended audience to determine what information is being privileged. It is determined that homeowners are being privileged with information over non-homeowners, established through a collection of images and image types. The lack of information for non-homeowners could result in injury or death of potential disaster victims, making it crucial for technical document revision.</p>

<p> This project arose from the desire to minister in the dominantly multicultural community of Renton, Washington. The project utilized interviews to reveal common factors that would enable gospel communication across several cultures: Filipino, Caucasian, African American, and Chinese. The scale used to develop the common factors included disquieting experiences, amorphous cultural zones, conception of &ldquo;beyondness,&rdquo; phenomenological triggers, soteriological metaphors, second faith, thickness of the cultural border, and the Hofstede cultural typology. </p><p> A variety of techniques were used to conceptualize the research such as cultural analysis, sociological and psychological approaches, and human resource theory in order to drive a multi-disciplinary understanding of the topic. Additionally, Meyer&rsquo;s Culture Map provided a business perspective on communicating, evaluating, persuading, leading, deciding, trusting, disagreeing and scheduling. The combination of the data gathered from the interview transcripts and the models allowed for a variety of conclusions, including that multicultural gospel communication is possible so long as the gospel communicator remains sensitive to differences among people. The project also yielded a set of eight best practices for effective multicultural gospel communication.</p><p>

John Dewey once wrote: Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful. For him communication is the highest of the arts of life, for it is in communication that society is born and nurtured. It is by communication that we discover the possibilities of nature. And it is through communication that we make our shared experience meaningful. It is no wonder, then, that Dewey would conclude The Public and Its Problems with this provocative statement: Democracy will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication. Dewey, however, does not adequately explain what he understands by the art of full and moving communication and never tells us how communication functions in the varied contexts of practical life. Despite, then, his obvious affection for communication, he leaves many questions about it unanswered. For instance, what makes communication possible? In what kind of situations is communication called for and why? How does an inchoate feeling or idea find concrete embodiment in language? What are the connections among language, communication, thought, feeling, and action? Most importantly, what is the process by which one employs the art of communication to influence the beliefs and behaviors of others? This dissertation addresses these questions by approaching Deweys thinking on communication from a distinctly rhetorical perspective. Even though Dewey almost never mentions rhetoric in his entire corpus, I argue that it is precisely the absence of the term from his writings that makes a rhetorical reading of his work all the more imperative. Such a reading permits us to understand the practical importance of the art of communication in the larger context of his social thought. If, then, the problem with Deweys writing on communication is that it often drifts into abstractions, one remedy is take those abstractions and place them into concrete situations, where communication is required to transform some part of the environment through transaction with human thought and action. Because this kind of activity has been the specific domain of rhetoric since the time of the sophists, it is only appropriate to read Deweys work through that tradition. In effect, the goal of this dissertation is to explicate Deweys theory of communication in the terms of a rhetorical theory. But insofar as his thought went through three distinct periods in his lifetime, beginning with his Idealistic period in 1880, moving into his Experimental period in 1903, and culminating in his Naturalistic period in 1925, Dewey can be said to have had three implicit rhetorical theories. To articulate and explain each of these theories, I trace Deweys theoretical development through time and construct, through published works, private correspondence, and biographical material. I show that the first theory envisioned rhetoric as a form of eros that helps us grow towards Absolute self consciousness. The second theory views rhetoric as a form of critical inquiry whose goal is the development of phronçsis, or practical wisdom. The third theory treats rhetoric as a productive technç, or a naturalistic form of art that has the power to transform experience, nature, and society through its transactional character. By tracing Deweys theoretical development and explicating three implicit theories of rhetoric in his writings, this dissertation not only provides a unique perspective on Deweys changing views on language, ontology, and social practice, but also demonstrates how each theory can still be effectively used to interpret and guide the art of rhetoric. This kind of work enables us to grasp different facets of this diverse and vibrant art. At the same time, it shows how Deweys work remains an important resource for those who wish to promote and sustain a democratic way of life by educating citizens in the art of full and moving communication.

This dissertation analyzes the rhetorical situation of the peasant-driven land reform struggle in the country of Paraguay. While the term Campesinos Sin Tierra unites the many different groups participating in the struggle, this work specifically identifies the character of many peasant organizations at local and national levels of participation as well as exploring the attitudes and contributions of individual peasants. The struggle is situated within both historical and rhetorical contexts. The historical importance of land tenure practices is recognized and traced from pre-Columbian civilization to the present. The concept of land as a socio-political instrument as well as an economic resource is explored and related to the present politics of land reform. In addition, the nature of peasant organization, protest strategies, argumentation and success are thoroughly investigated and elucidated in this work. Through on-site research, interviews and translation of newspaper accounts and academic students of Paraguayan peasants, the dissertation develops a thick description of peasant perspectives in the struggle. Particular attention is devoted to unearthing argument strategies and the specific language employed by individual peasant protestors, peasant organizations and other groups. An analysis of these argument strategies constitutes the basis for evaluating the struggle as a new social movement in the context of social movement theory. Finally, the dissertation proposes that rhetoripolitical practices structure and constrain the argumentative and protest strategies employed in the struggle and serve to explain its failure as a new social movement. Rhetoripolitics functions as a hegemonic process of argumentative cooptation that both limits protest innovation and safeguards the social order from social protest activity. Rhetoripolitics is discussed as a historical and cultural phenomenon situated within the cultural milieu of Paraguay and the Paraguayan land reform struggle. The dissertation concludes by suggesting that rhetoripolitics could structure the nature of social struggles in other developing nations and place constraints upon the nature of social protest as it has in the Paraguayan case. Rhetoripolitics may function as an important limit to the ability of nations in the developing world to participate in the new social movement phenomenon.

This dissertation rethinks some of the core arguments of the Western theories of the masses. By demonstrating the inapplicability of these theories in the situation of the Twentieth Century totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia, this study argues for a replacement of the dominant paradigms with new theories of the masses relevant to the specific historical and social conditions. History of the masses in communist Czechoslovakia shows that the masses were not viewed as an inherently destructive social element. Instead, the masses functioned as supportive social structures for the oppressive regime, but also as the expressions of the nascent democratic civic interaction that later challenged this regime.