This thesis provides a rhetorical analysis of the Western representation of the Kosovo conflict and its resolution in the year 1999. By reviewing political, scholarly and media rhetoric, the thesis examines how the dominant narrative of "genocide in Kosovo" was created in Western discourse, arguing that it gained its persuasive force from the legacy of the collective memory of the Holocaust. Using the framework of Kenneth Burke's theory of Dramatism and Walter Fisher's theory of the narrative paradigm, this thesis aims to understand how language, analogy and collective memory function in rhetoric to shape audience perceptions and guide political and military action. The study illustrates the mechanics of the operating rhetoric by analyzing two primary sources, the rhetoric of U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. / by Tajana Bjellos. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This research project seeks to explore aspects of the post-reporting phase of the public inquiry process. Central to the public inquiry process is the concept of legitimacy and the idea that a public inquiry provides and opportunity to re-legitimate the credibility of failed public institutions. The current literature asserts that public inquiries re-legitimise through the production of authoritative narratives. As such, most of this scholarship has focused on the production of inquiry reports and, more recently, the reports themselves. However, in an era of accountability, and in the aftermath of such a poignant attack upon society, the production of a report may represent an apogee, but by no means an end, of the re-legitimation process. Appropriately, this thesis examines the post-reporting phase of the 9/11 Commission’s public inquiry process. The 9/11 Commission provides a useful research vehicle due to the bounded, and relatively linear, implementation process of the Commission’s recommendations. In little more than four months a majority of the Commission’s recommendations were passed into law. Within this implementation phase the dominant discursive process took place in the United States Congress. It is the legislative reform debates in the House of Representatives and the Senate that is the focus of this research project. The central research question is: what rhetorical legitimation strategies were employed in the legislative reform debates of the post-reporting phase of the 9/11 Commission’s public inquiry process? This study uses a grounded theory approach to the analysis of the legislative transcripts of the Congressional reform debates. This analysis revealed that proponents employed rhetorical strategies to legitimise a legislative ‘Call to Action’ narrative. Also, they employed rhetorical legitimation strategies that emphasised themes of bipartisanship, hard work and expertise in order to strengthen the standing of the legislation. Opponents of the legislation focused rhetorical de-legitimation strategies on the theme of ‘flawed process’. Finally, nearly all legislators, regardless of their view of the legislation, sought to appropriate the authoritative legitimacy of the Commission, by employing rhetorical strategies that presented their interests and motives as in line with the actions and wishes of the Commission.

Many researchers argue the increasing reliance on sit/lie ordinances to regulate homeless people's use of public space is one in a suite of neoliberal policies that shape the geographies of public space in cities to serve the needs of global capital. However, these policies are developed at the local, not global, level as specific actors make claims in the public sphere that communicatively shape policy formation. Through comparative case study, this research asks, how do different actors, situated in specific local and global contexts, influence the adoption of sit/lie ordinances? I examine two cases of policymaking in Portland and San Francisco. I use discourse analytic strategies and thematic coding of newspapers, archival documents, and key informant interviews to look at policy-making processes as they occur in their political, social, and economic contexts. I focus especially on the role of language in policy-making, policy-making arenas, and actions of grassroots actors, drawing from three interdisciplinary literatures to develop an explanatory theory of policy-making. I find the four interrelated explanatory factors in policy-making were: the actors (neoliberal and right-to-the-city); the tactics they use; the policy talk they use; and the policy arenas. First, political processes provide windows of opportunity and determine arenas for political activities. The different policy arenas (citizen election, committee, council led, litigation, etc.) influence the audience that the actors care about, and thus the policy talk. Additionally, elected officials have a determining effect on which arenas they use, which in turns structures the opportunities for policy talk. Second, the arena influences the depth to which resisters can discuss the issues with the wider public and decision-makers. This may explain why the right-to-the-city frame may not have been used as much as the academic literature might suggest. Resisters find it much harder to use this framing with the general public or elected officials because it takes too much time to explain to those unfamiliar. Instead, they rely more on concepts that may be more familiar like the dependent poor and unequal impact of the law on minority groups. Third, I find local actors have different positions in the global economy, however on the local level their different avenues and strategies of involvement are due to local conditions rather than global ones. The location in the global political economy seems to be less important than local political decision making contexts and the actions of individuals who are locally powerful due to their economic status and political connections. This suggests room for resisters to use local politics to resist these ordinances, without having to take on the entire global economy. Finally, actors use different narratives to influence decision makers and each other, responding and shifting to competing frames over time. The change over time is important, as it shows how policy debates change based on influences from different actors. My findings suggest the framing of the original necessity for the policy can influence the policy trajectory, but actors can and do respond and successfully shift policy talks over time. The dissertation concludes with additional implications for grassroots practice based on these theoretical findings.

The purpose of this study is to examine the 1960 presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy and the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy in order to analyze the similarities and differences that exist in their campaigns and their rhetoric. Specifically, the study examines the primary campaign rhetoric of the candidates and determines the rhetorical vision and fantasy themes that are created in three speeches from each campaign. The following research questions are proposed: What are the differences and similarities between John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, in terms of their presidential rhetoric, their presidential campaigns, and their rhetorical visions? Does Robert Kennedy's rhetoric seem to be an extension of his brother's rhetoric or does it stand as his own?The study selects three speeches from each campaign as artifacts. The first speech by each candidate was the announcement of his candidacy. The second followed soon thereafter, before primary election results were a factor. The last speech reviewed in each campaign occurred after primary election results were announced, and the candidates had achieved success and failure in their campaigns.Fantasy theme analysis is employed to determine the fantasies that exist in the rhetoric and the rhetorical vision that is presented in each campaign. The analysis finds that each vision is comprised of four fantasy themes. The findings reveal that Robert Kennedy's rhetoric and rhetorical vision act as an entity separate from John Kennedy's, with unique goals and a different focus. / Department of Speech Communication

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Linguistics, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 210-223. / General introduction -- A multimodal analysis of the 2006 Mexican presidential campaign billboards -- Study 2: Discourses of obligation and prohibition within an institutional setting -- Study 3: Gatekeeping practices at the LEMO: a multimodal analysis -- General conculsions. / This is a thesis composed of three studies linked by a common critical multimodal approach to the analysis of the data. Fairclough's (1992, 1995) three-dimensional framework was drawn on in order to explore the social practice, discursive practice and text dimensions of the discourses in question. The first two studies focus on printed texts in Mexican Spanish, whereas the third study addresses spoken interaction in English with occasional code switching to Spanish. -- Study 1: A Multimodal Analysis of the 2006 Mexican Presidential Campaign Billboards - This is a joint study (with my colleague Michael Witten and approved by my supervisor and the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie) which analyzes the political discourse of the multimodal and multisemiotic texts that the three major political parties involved in the 2006 Mexican presidential elections produced and extensively distributed through the medium of public billboards. We investigate how these parties express their particular ideologies, construct and convey social identities and relationships, and construct relations of power between themselves and the readers/viewers of these texts, through the medium of billboards. As indicated in the preamble, the methodological framework addresses these issues drawing on Fairclough's (1992, 1995) three-dimensional model of analysis while employing a variety of qualitative techniques, tools, and approaches. -- Study 2: Discourses of obligation and prohibition within an institutional setting - Following the theme of multimodal critical discourse analysis, this study examines the institutionalized discourses of obligation and prohibition at the Library of the Language Faculty (LEMO)*of a public university in Mexico. Six different texts pertaining to various genres ranging from a protocol to notices were examined. Multiple qualitative methodologies and tools such as those drawn from ethnography, critical discourse analysis, and systemic functional linguistics are utilized in the analysis of the data. Power relations between the institution and the library users are examined as well as the conditions of text production and reception, the latter through an ethnographic component. An emphasis is placed on the linguistic text. -- Study 3: Gatekeeping practices at the LEMO - This study investigates one of the gatekeeping practices at the Language Faculty of a public university in Mexico (see above). The particular practice concerned consists of the professional examinations (vivas) that students have to take in order to obtain their degrees of 'Licenciatura en Lenguas Modernas' (BEd in Modern Languages) in the English Teaching section of the university. This study focuses on the professional discourse(s) utilized by both candidates and examiners by means of analyzing the texts of four recorded professional examinations. This study chiefly draws on Goffman's (1959) dramaturgical concepts of 'frontstage' and 'backstage', where the analysis of the frontstage work addresses the Question-and-Answer section of the examinations, and the analysis of the backstage work addresses the subsequent deliberations among the examiners concerning the performance of the candidates. Multiple qualitative methodologies and tools are again drawn upon, such as ethnographic analysis, interactional sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. (* Facultad de Lenguas) / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xii, 233 p. : ill. (some col.)

L’objet de cette thèse est d’engager une discussion concernant l’épistémologie de la discipline rhétorique et de formuler des propositions visant à la refonder. En partie spéculative, la réflexion que je mène à partir des travaux de Chaïm Perelman notamment, rattache cette antique discipline à la « raison pratique ». Une raison agissante qui donne l’occasion d’assumer et d’affronter l’indétermination du monde – sans pour autant faire de cette indétermination un chaos, ni en prendre ombrage pour sombrer dans le relativisme. Dans cette perspective, la rhétorique se trouve conçue comme un dispositif propre à accompagner les hommes dans le difficile exercice d’une liberté citoyenne. Une liberté au sens fort, ancrée dans la pratique du politique, telle que l’entendaient les Anciens.<p><p>Je m’efforce tout d’abord de montrer que, dès l’origine, la rhétorique a représenté une compétence nouvelle, mais aussi une occasion unique de dire, d’habiter et de séculariser le monde. Ma démarche consiste donc à réfléchir l’émergence de la rhétorique dans la Grèce ancienne. À ce titre, j’analyse la fonction politique, sociale, symbolique, attribuée à la parole dans cette Cité démocratique dont elle a accompagné l’invention. Parole qui s’est vue accorder une place inégalée :comme support et comme condition de l’action citoyenne. Pourtant, force est de constater que, malgré ce succès, la rhétorique a très vite été dénoncée comme un art de tromper, de mentir, de dissimuler ses lacunes. Des générations de philosophes, d’hommes d’Église ou de scientifiques se sont attachés à démonter son fonctionnement, sa dynamique, à décrier son enseignement et, finalement, à souhaiter son évincement. C’est pourquoi, je m’intéresse aux critiques qui ont été adressées à la parole rhétorique depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’au XIXe siècle. Par là, j’entends donner une vision nouvelle de cette antique « fonction » du langage, par-delà la synthèse de ses caricatures.<p><p>En outre, mon propos s’attache à mettre en lumière les lieux communs sur lesquels se fonde notre relation au discours. Dans une optique qui va d’Aristote à Perelman, je défends l’idée selon laquelle la rhétorique ne constitue pas (comme on pourrait le penser) une méthode pour apprendre à vivre ensemble dans la paix des mots, mais, avant tout, une façon de pratiquer la critique avec et contre l’autre :l’adversaire. Et ceci afin de prendre des décisions dans le monde contingent des affaires humaines. Or, c’est justement au titre de sa fonction agonistique que la rhétorique a perdu sa place et son sens dans nos démocraties. Face à cela, l’enjeu de mon travail est de mettre en évidence, après Perelman, l’existence d’une raison tout à la fois une et plurielle. En effet, la multiplicité des voies possibles, leur antagonisme, n’est pas le signe d’une raison anarchique et inconséquente, le signe d’une raison hantée par la déraison. Il s’agit, au contraire, d’une chance offerte à la raison de se mettre à l’épreuve et de risquer la liberté. Du reste, perdre cette dimension agonistique, la dénoncer, la condamner comme irrationnelle, ainsi que le font les théories normatives de l’argumentation, revient à manifester la coupure entre le langage et les ressources critiques de la rhétoriques qui permettent de faire de nos prises de parole un moyen et une ressource de l’émancipation.<p> / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Le constat évoqué à propos des peuples arabes, acteurs passifs d’un contexte de paupérisation, est centré sur ses orientations futures à travers l'impact déterminant des discours idéologiques.<p><p>L’entrée du monde arabe dans l’ère moderne a tourné au désastre, entravant son accès à la modernité en l'éloignant peu à peu d’une idée de progrès. L’effort de dépassement d'une logique de crise perpétuelle s'orientera inévitablement vers la recherche d’un idéal commun en mesure de conférer une stabilité vitale pour cette région soumise à des siècles d’instabilité. <p><p>Parmi les choix futurs des populations arabes, l'une des alternatives pourrait être l'éradication du contexte de misère via l’instauration d’un mode de production démocratique. / Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation philosophie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In this thesis I explore the rhetoric behind the assessment push nation-wide and, particularly, in California. I take a close look at what politicians, educators, and citizens say about public education and their views of the current educational reform: whether they are speaking in support of or opposition to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. I look specifically at the finances of public education in California, the impact and current outcome of NCLB, and propose new reforms as suggested by those intimately involved in education.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The author employs Hoffman and Ford’s method for analyzing organizational rhetoric to examine the discourse of Google, Inc. Employing a hybrid method, built on rhetorical criticism which incorporates elements of organizational communication theory, the analysis examines identity rhetoric present in Google’s discourse regarding its operations in China. Using this approach, the author leverages the method to critically examine hegemonic aspects of the discourse in order to examine how Google constructs its Western consumer based audience regarding online privacy and free speech.

Established in 2003, the Kimberley Process (KP) is a binding agreement; backed by the United Nations, that unites civil societies, state actors and the diamond industry to safeguard ‘conflict' diamonds from entering legitimate rough diamond trade around the world. The unique international tripartite organization is voluntary but mandates state participants to abide by the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) minimum requirements in order to stem the financing or wars against legitimate governments. This study represents the first to explore the communications within the KP. The linguistic turn relies on Classical rhetoric theory with an emphasis on Aristotle's three appeals of persuasion (“pisteis”): ethos, logos and pathos of elite actors in the KP. As for the precise nature of the contribution to rhetorical analysis, this project is best characterised as an application of Classical principals of rhetorical analysis, rather than as a development of theory. A comprehensive literature review of the KP and KPCS is another distinctive contribution. Furthermore, this academic endeavour offers a unique method as shown in the observation of a KP Intersessional meeting. Supplementing the qualitative inquiry, semi-structured interviews were conducted with all of the KP groups and included a wide sample of civil society international and national non-government organizations, state actors and industry members otherwise not represented in previous empirical efforts on the subject. The data chapters achieve the primary aim to add to the understanding of the KP. Firstly, the civil societies engage in boycott rhetoric using ethos and negative pathos. As for state actors, the KP Chair exhibits charismatic leadership rhetoric, while ‘recognized' established states use logical reasoning, the ‘outlier' states evoke positive pathos. Lastly, the diamond industry experts appeal to negative emotions, the World Diamond Council to logos, and De Beers to positive emotional appeals. Combined, the rhetoric shows (a) how KP rhētors use different rhetorical strategies; (b) which in turn shape distinct discourses; (c) and contain dissimilar claims; (d) points to different motivations; (e) highlight different identities; (f) reveal key characteristics, and; (g) the nature of relationships within the KP. The organization rhetorical analysis also entails how the multiple KP leaders view the KP and KPCS and change. While the rhetoric helps demonstrate the constraints surrounding the KP and KPCS it also underlines the primary human rights and human security in which they all share. This thesis provides an extended critical view of the rhetoric by connecting Aristotelian pisteis with different conceptions of power outlined by French and Raven (1959) and Lukes (2005/1974). Combined, the rhetoric helps to explain the ways the KP attempts to achieve their specific political and economic goals while also building relationships with their stakeholders. Rhetoric is a worthwhile theory and methodological approach in order to explore organizations. The KP, and other international organizations provide an opportune arena for further rhetorical attention.