<p>The media&rsquo;s ability to frame a news story, or to slant it in a particular direction and thereby shape public perceptions, is a powerful tool with implications for material effects in society. In this thesis, a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of the words and photographic images used in the framing of <i>Life</i> magazine&rsquo;s September 14, 1953 article, &ldquo;The Lonely Men of Short Creek,&rdquo; is combined with contextualization of the story within the historical, sociological, and regional settings that may have affected its ideological content. This provides insights into <i> Life</i>&rsquo;s editorial perspectives and potential audience response. &ldquo;The Lonely Men of Short Creek&rdquo; is an account that some writers have suggested contributed to a laissez-faire attitude towards the polygamist community of Short Creek, Arizona, in which a failure to enforce state laws allowed child sexual abuse to continue unhindered there for the next half century. This analysis of <i>Life</i>&rsquo;s account demonstrates its overall sympathetic framing of Short Creek in 1953, particularly of male community members, and the construction of a narrative with significant absences and misrepresentations that obscured or concealed darker themes. <i> Life</i>&rsquo;s construct has in certain aspects been replicated today in what some consider to be the &ldquo;definitive&rdquo; account of the story, which repeats a persistent tale of religious persecution, compromised constitutional rights, and an overbearing state&rsquo;s &ldquo;kidnap&rdquo; of the children of an apparently innocent and harmless rural polygamist community. Such a narrative has deflected attention from an alternative frame&mdash;that of a community charged with multiple crimes, including the statutory rape of children manipulated by adults within a religious ideology that demanded plural &ldquo;wives.&rdquo; This thesis contends that in 1953, these children were overlooked, or ignored in a fog of often taken-for-granted US national ideologies and editorial perspectives relating to religious freedom and the &ldquo;sacred&rdquo; nature of the family in the post-Korean War and Cold War era. Such findings raise questions about the ethics of partisan framing of news stories in which alleged victims are implicated, acceptable limits of religious and family rights, and the often un-interrogated national ideologies sometimes used to justify harmful or criminal behaviors. </p>

<p> My dissertation, <i>The Rhetorical Work of Soft Power: The U.S.-India 123 Agreement and a Relationship Transformed</i>, broadens and deepens our understanding of soft power diplomacy as a creation of constitutive rhetoric. I perform a rhetorical critique of discourses generated during three years' debate on the U.S.-India 123 Agreement, a watershed moment in bilateral relations. In Chapter 1, I introduce the frames of reference that guided my research, set my project within the literature stream, and lay foundations for my argument. </p><p> In Chapter 2, I explore how soft power discourse facilitated India's diplomatic move from outside to inside the nonproliferation regime. I introduce identification and courtship as constructs to explain soft power attraction, presenting narratives of exceptionalism, deliverance and kinship that emerged from discourse. In Chapter 3, I explain the bilateral movement from estranged to engaged as deepened identification and consubstantiation, the achievement of a permanent union. I trace the development of "democracy," "pluralism," and "creativity" as terms of ideological commitment and mutual obligation. I also present two additional narratives, the sojourner narrative, which reconstituted the Indian Diaspora's political identity, and the convergence narrative, which constituted the United States and India as bilateral partners and transformed the U.S.-India 123 Agreement from an idea about nuclear cooperation into the embodiment of a resilient, enduring, and comprehensive partnership. Each narrative drew in substances of identification that reduced recalcitrance, changed perspectives, overcame estrangement, and motivated concerted action. </p><p> Chapter 4 outlines benefits of my research for rhetoricians, soft power proponents, and diplomacy specialists. For rhetoricians, I enrich our limited study of diplomatic discourse and generate insight into dramatistic theory and criticism. For soft power theorists, my project as a whole gives explanatory force to soft power as a creation of constitutive rhetoric. The consequent reinterpretation of the telos, processes, and resources of soft power makes soft power attraction more transparent. For the diplomatic corps, I encourage new ways of conceptualizing and talking about diplomatic aims and achievements. Chapter 4 thus frames longer-term objectives to further develop the rhetoric of diplomacy, to undertake theory-building in soft power diplomacy, and to integrate soft power diplomacy with diplomatic tradecraft.</p>

<p> Martin Heidegger is a key philosophical thinker who has influenced contemporary scholarship in rhetorical theory. His concept of disclosure has become particularly significant because it is uniquely situated to explain the nuances of contemporary public political address. Yet the meaning and applicability of Heidegger's rhetoric of disclosure to explain new forms of political speech have been contested by two contemporary philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, who advance different interpretations of the nature of a rhetoric of disclosure--one highlighting rhetoric as immanence, the other transcendence. This thesis, then, examines the philosophical and rhetorical debate about the rhetoric of disclosure by focusing on Derrida's transcendent interpretation and Deleuze's immanent interpretation in an effort to clarify Heidegger's rhetoric of disclosure and its usefulness for rhetorical studies. These divergent perspectives will then be applied to the political case study of President Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech to assess how each contributes to our understanding of rhetorical theory and criticism.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2005. / (UnM)AAI3193704. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-11, Section: A, page: 4010. Adviser: Alberto Gonzalez.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Lehigh University, 2008. / Adviser: Barry Kroll.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 24, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4187. Adviser: Robert L. Ivie.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4320. Adviser: Gail E. Hawisher. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 282-300) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Instructional System Technology, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Dec. 1, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-10, Section: A, page: 3786. Adviser: Theodore W. Frick.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-06, Section: A, page: 2200. Chair: Patricia Hayes Andrews. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Nov. 27, 2006)."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2562. Adviser: Gail E. Hawisher. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-299) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.