This study of the rhetoric in the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Campaign, 1963 to 1967 seeks to determine the decisive strategies in the success of the campaign. Criteria for examining the rhetoric are adapted from the fields of rhetoric and sociology. This analysis examines preconditions of this conservation campaign, its leaders, membership, strategies, and audience-speaker relationships, The campaign's turning point came when the club used public audiences to pressure Control into capitulating to Agitation's demands, Other factors in the campaign's success were the Sierra Club's purity of belief, suppression action by Control, and incomplete purity of belief in the leader of Control.

Using the framework set up by rhetorical critic Thomas M. Lessl in his article "Heresy, Orthodoxy, And The Politics Of Science", this study examines the ways in which heretical discourse defines community boundaries and shapes perceptions of right belief. Specifically, this study analyzes the historic conflict in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod which produced the doctrinal statement "A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles". Comparison is made between this event and other "heretical" conflicts in other discourse communities. This study concludes that community boundaries must be drawn, and that a doctrinal or policy statement is a useful rhetorical tool to accomplish such a task. Rhetorical critics may assist in this by examining heretical conflicts as historical trends, rather than emotional dissonance.