This dissertation tells a new story about the way poets responded to the clichés of public speech in the four decades following the start of World War II. During the period, many public intellectuals lamented that political discourse had become saturated with abstract stock phrases like “the fight for freedom,” “revenue enhancement,” or “service the target” that are bureaucratic in origin, designed for the mass media, and used to euphemize, obfuscate, and evade. This diagnosis, which was shared by such prominent critics as George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Lionel Trilling, and Herbert Marcuse, led to a unique response in the field of poetry. Instead of ridding their verse of such language, poets developed a distinctive approach I call “echo and critique,” whereby they would echo the clichés of political discourse and then examine their implications and study their effects. Poetry, with its attentiveness to linguistic particulars, was especially suited to this mode of close listening. At the same time, postwar poets were deeply conscious of their susceptibility to doublespeak, so that taking on political clichés obliged them to subject their own writing to scrutiny and admit to the inevitability of cant while pushing against it. Each chapter in the dissertation pairs a poet with a different form of public discourse he or she was especially drawn to: Robert Lowell and political speeches, Randall Jarrell and military propaganda, Elizabeth Bishop and news reports, and Seamus Heaney and everyday talk on political events. Crucially, these four writers were interested in specific genres for the traits they recognized in their own work. By taking apart various types of cant, therefore, they were also trying to understand where their language stood in relation to that of the politician, the propagandist, the reporter, or the ordinary citizen, and to push back against their own rhetorical tendencies. / 2020-12-11T00:00:00Z

This dissertation’s thesis is that the marital rhetoric and gendered imagery of late classical, Christian political discourse appear in narrative, conciliar, and legal texts produced in Visigothic Spain between 579 and 654 A.D. for the purpose of expressing conflict, rather than “unity.” This thesis opposes views of the Visigothic kingdom as a model of successful Christian unification by showing how the male-authored, Spanish sources - far from being silent on religio-political conflicts - use marriage, women, and wealth as metaphors in disputes over orthodoxy and status. These early medieval texts suggest a new paradigm of Christian “unity” in which Jews function as the “enemy,” and in so doing, establish a political model decidedly different from that of late antiquity. Examples of this political model appear in the Third and Fourth Councils of Toledo (589 and 633 A.D.), which are published here for the first time in Latin-English translation. Despite the historical significance of the Visigothic sources in the Spanish and broader contexts, little attention has been paid to late classical marital rhetoric and gendered imagery in them as evidence of conflicts. Understanding the purpose of these rhetorical strategies helps us to perceive how the paradigm of Christian “unity” masked deep conflicts over status, orthodoxy, and wealth - conflicts that persisted until a new invading force appeared to challenge Visigothic power in 711 A.D. / text

This dissertation addresses the intersection of rhetoric and material exchange in the construction of political alliance and conflict between the Waraos indigenous population and the non-indigenous institutions and political actors in the Orinoco Delta, Venezuela. It deals with the discursive and material strategies used to construct political reality at the moment of the emergence of one of the so-called new South American left wing populist governments (Hugo Chavez presidency since 1998). These historical circumstances present an opportunity to open a discussion bringing together the recent developments of discourse-centered approaches to culture, language ideologies, and the most classical theories on material exchange. This research's aim is to understand how multiple sign systems (in this case language and material gifts) interact, contradict, and support each other. In sum, this dissertation uses the advances of discourse-centered approaches to culture and the anthropological theories of exchange to understand how language and gift giving has shaped history and political imagination in the Orinoco Delta and Venezuela.

This dissertation is a study of political realignment from a rhetorical perspective. Specifically, I use the lens of doxa to rhetorically explore how basic assumptions regarding the role of government shift over time, and how crisis narratives are used to usher in these doxastic transformations. I explore the elections of Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama as markers of such shifts. In chapter one, I provide a statement of purpose and justification for my study, along with a description of the historical contexts of the 1932, 1980, and 2008 presidential elections. Chapter two includes a literature review, in which I discuss scholarship related to political realignment, the rhetorical situation, doxa, and crisis rhetoric. I also provide a description of my method of rhetorical criticism, and an explanation of how the analysis chapters are structured. Chapter three is my first analysis chapter. Using 55 news and opinion articles, I construct a doxa of the Roosevelt era, a doxa of the Reagan era, and a doxa of the Obama era. Creating these doxai provides a context for understanding how each respective candidate challenged the doxa of his time, and sought to usher in a transformation of the role of government. In chapter four, I explore five speeches delivered by each respective candidate to examine how these doxastic transformations are rhetorically manifest. I also investigate how crisis narratives are employed in the service of ushering in a doxastic transformation. In chapter five, I explore the implications of my analysis, and reflect upon limitations of this study and possibilities for future research. In sum, this study provides insight into the ways in which basic assumptions regarding the role of government change over time, and the implications of these shifts.

This paper investigates the various aspects of the Syrian refugees’ exclusion in Lebanon which contradicts with the basic standards of human rights. Additionally, it investigates the stated motives of the Lebanese politicians that have legitimized the exclusion of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. This paper uses the social exclusion-inclusion theory in order to analyse the aspects of Syrian refugees’ exclusion in Lebanon. Further, this paper uses qualitative research methods of semi-structured interviews and content analysis. The findings of this paper show that the Syrian refugees are experiencing social, economic and political exclusion. More specifically, the exclusion consists of unemployment, the lack of social security system, healthcare system, education and housing. Furthermore, this paper concludes that Lebanese politicians have legitimized and justified the aspects of the Syrian refugees’ exclusion from various angles which led to deprive them of basic refugees’ rights.

This study proposes a model for the deconstruction of nationalism. Nationalism is a discursive construct. This construct manifests in ideologies and formalizes order. Individuals should question these institutions in order to achieve legitimate societal participation. This criticism can be accomplished through self-reflection. The model demonstrates that sanctioned individual(s) provide interpretations of events. These interpretations recycle authority. The hermeneutic obscures an individual's understanding of the originating fact. Self-reflection allows an individual, such as Malcolm X in the Nation of Islam, to come closer to discovering the original fact. Critiquing the hermeneutic can reveal the imperfections of the message(s). Revealing the imperfections of an ideology is the first step to the liberation of the individual and society.

This study analyzes the reporting and editorializing in several major American newspapers during the height of the Citizen Genêt Affair in July and August, 1793. A hybrid form of sociological moral panic theory, focused predominantly on the "iteration" of moral panics and the language used to communicate them, is used to understand the dynamics of the information landscape of 1793. Specific attention is paid to the effects of time and space, personal and political bias, and incendiary historical rhetoric on reporting of and reactions to Genêt's actions. In doing so, this study highlights possible flaws or blind spots in both moral panic theory and historiography, and brings new understanding to the media environment in which America's political traditions gestated. Brief connections are drawn between this historical information landscape and series of events and contemporary concerns with regards to social media and incendiary political rhetoric. / Master of Arts

The Adam and Eve myth has long captured the attention of Christian and non-Christian minds alike. Tropes of paradise, serpents, fruit, and fallenness appear in works such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Emily Dickenson’s “Awake ye Muses Nine,” Walt Whitman’s “Great are the Myths” and Joyce Kilmer’s “The Snowman in the Yard.” Religious commentary on Adam and Eve is equally pervasive; most notably the theology of St. Augustine whose work may well be considered the most influential in Western Christianity. Even though a story as old as this one may not seem relevant in a first-world culture where newness is both expected and valued, the legacy of the Adam and Eve myth has not diminished. Linda Shearing writes, “Whether they realize it or not, Americans spend a great deal of time negotiating their world with Adam and Eve” (Schearing 3). To test Shearing’s assertion, this essay seeks to illuminate the ways in which Americans negotiate Adam, Eve, and Eden in political rhetoric and how assumptions of marriage, family, labor, sacrifice, fallenness, redemption and morality are used by political leaders as a persuasive appeal to encourage their audiences to join with them in recovering a state of purity and innocence.

No description available.

As presidential candidates rhetorically articulate their beliefs during presidential debates, they reveal a lot about their underlying ideological beliefs. These beliefs were examined through the lens of an established methodology called the Operational Code, which uses a program to decipher a candidate's beliefs through what they say in debate transcripts. In this study, the belief trends of the Operational Codes of all presidential candidates from 1976-2012 were examined through a rhetorical lens, and it was found that rhetoric was indeed the driving force for the apparent changes in Operational Code beliefs. These changes were examined on a greater level of detail through four case studies, which illustrated the changes in Operational Code beliefs and rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the incumbent presidential candidates, the 2004 election, and lastly, with the independent presidential candidates.