This dissertation applies a mixed-methods model across three cases of climate risk in order to examine the rhetorical dynamics of uncertainties. I argue that a rhetorical approach to uncertainties can effectively scaffold civic agency in risk communication by translating conflicting interests and creating sites of public participation. By tracing the networks of scientists and their artifacts through cases of climate risk, I demonstrate how the performances of scientific ethos and their material-discursive technologies facilitate the personalization of risk as a form of scientific prudence, and thus a channel to feasible political action. I support these claims through a rhetorical model of translation, which hybridizes methods from discourse analysis and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in order assemble a data-driven and corpus-based approach to rhetorical analysis. From this rhetorical perspective uncertainties expand on our notions of risk because they reveal associations between scientific inquiries, probability assessments, and the facilitation of political dialogues. In each case, the particular insight of the model reveals a range of rhetorical potentials in climate risk that can be confronted through uncertainties.

Despite longstanding attention to rhetorical form and structuring logics that give discourse its persuasive power (metaphor, genre, narrative, definitional frames, ideology, etc.), the relative amount of publication attending to international rhetoric remains slight. As the composition of audience(s) has stretched to global proportions the challenges of apprehending the manifold cross-cultural complexities for presidential address have expanded. Spanning five decades and three presidencies (Kennedy, H.W. Bush and Clinton), this dissertation takes presidential public address at the United Nations as its object of study in an effort to help remedy this shortcoming, while also aiming to provide a richer theoretical underpinning for accounts of globalization and its impact on the modern presidency. The analysis grapples with three particular problems: conceptualizing increasingly pluralized audiences, the matter of ascertaining how non-American institutions (like the United Nations) shape and are shaped by American rhetorical productions, and the difficulties in gauging presidential rhetorical efficacy. Two main arguments are advanced. First, the dissertation argues that presidential rhetoric at the United Nations traffics in a particular brand of cosmopolitanism, which helps presidents to constitute a universal audience nonetheless ideologically sympathetic to American goals. The terrain and implications of this cosmopolitanism rhetoric are mapped and unpacked. Second, it is argued that when crafting rhetoric for the specific audience of the United Nations General Assembly, the President is obligated to work within the confines of the rhetorical institution that is the United Nations. The project seeks to understand the limits and possibilities of presidential rhetoric based on existing international institutional constraints. Taken together, the resulting scene of presidential cosmopolitan address, rather than culminating in efforts primarily concentrated on persuasion, end up mainly interpellating a global audience supportive of a cosmopolitan agenda which in turn is pre-structured to support the interests of the United States.

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.

This study offers a Lacanian-informed analysis of the rhetorical shifts, significant absences and elisions in the Bush administration’s justificatory war rhetoric prior to, during, and after the 2003 Iraq War. Lacan’s conception of the Subject, I suggest, is indispensable for the study of how ideology succeeds and fails rhetorically to avoid traumatic kernels, inconvenient facts, unspeakable historical truths, voids, etc. This project presents an opportunity to re-examine rhetorical studies’ assumptions about the emergence of subjectivity, including the process of interpellation, in ways that allow us to theorize not only the constitution but also the failure of identity. In so doing, it revisits the question of agency and calls for an increased focus on desire in matters rhetorical. Finally, the study invites reconsideration of the relation between rhetoric and time by suggesting that a psychoanalytic understanding of temporality can enrich and expand the existing scholarship.

This essay examines Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom in a liminal space between disciplinary lines of inquiry. In imagining his work within this space, I utilize Kenneth Burke’s notion of identification and cooperation as a means of understanding how Douglass enacts rhetoric and for what end. The rhetorical situation Douglass faces is highly fraught: other people’s lives are at stake, and the institution of slavery forces him to make legible the atrocities being done to African American bodies. My conceptualization of Douglass’s text as rhetorical theory in practice proffers a new way of understanding what shape and form rhetoric and narrative can take, especially for Douglass. Rhetorical theory in practice builds upon Barbara Christian’s understanding of what theory and theorization looks like within African American communities of practice. She argues that African American theory “is often in narrative forms, in the stories [they] create, in riddles and proverbs, in the play with language” (68). In My Bondage and My Freedom, I examine the ways in which Douglass locates rhetorical theory in the lived experiences of enslaved people. While doing this, he pays homage to four narrative forms: the captivity narrative, the criminal confession, the travel narrative, and the picaresque novel. He borrows from these forms to display his literary dexterity but also to enact a sort of rhetorical theory. His descriptions, sequence of events, and the way in which he orchestrates his text enact a rhetorical framework for advocating for the humanity of enslaved African Americans. Subsequently, he develops a rhetorical theory in practice that emerges out of his lived experiences.

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A crisis is a pivotal moment for a company, and having prepared communicators can impact the reputation and financial state of a company. But there is currently a gap in learning how to manage a crisis and performing in the workplace. To explore this problem, I analyzed the four most popular textbooks in crisis communications and analyzed how they used theory to help students craft a fitting response to a crisis. My thesis recommends incorporating rhetorical theory, specifically the theory of the rhetorical situation, to bridge theory and practice and provide students with flexible theory to learn how to respond in a crisis.

The intent of this thesis is to create a new heuristic for processes of identification. Currently, Burke's identification theory only accounts for his definition of successful identification. This thesis explores how Burke's initial identification theory interacts with other theories that contribute to identity formation. Specifically, Fernheimer's identification half-steps, Reynold's ethos as location theory, and Kerschbaum's commodification of difference will be used to build on Burke's theory and develop a new heuristic. The new heuristic will be applied to the San Quentin State Prison's inmate-run newspaper, the San Quentin News, to explore how inmates are utilizing rhetorical identification strategies to change the dominant conversations surrounding their identity.

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