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.

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This dissertation is a rhetorical study of the critical reception of the French film Hiroshima mon amour (1959; dir.: Alain Resnais; screenplay: Marguerite Duras). My main argument is that the themes of love and technology followed a dialectical progression in the critical reception of Hiroshima mon amour. They were important and politically charged in the first essays on the film at the turn of the Sixties. But they lost momentum and became more neutral due to the academization of Film Studies and to the rise of semiology that privileged linguistic abstractions. The return of the themes of love and technology in the Eighties signals the search for renewed forms of commitment. However, this commitment "through abstraction" is also predicated on forgetting. In fact, a different understanding of commitment does not allow remembering that Hiroshima mon amour was also a protest against the first French atomic test in Algeria and its colonial implications. My dissertation examines the limits of what can be said through different paradigms of criticism and commitment through the careful study of the rhetorical situation of each critical act. Jacques Derrida's twin concepts of aimance and of the peut-être guide my research. I examine how we can think Hiroshima mon amour on the background of the paradoxical communities that invented new forms of political participation in postwar France. The early debate on the representation of "mad love" in Resnais' film signaled a concern for the way in which modern technology undermined the binary oppositions between war/peace, civilian/military, and friend/enemy. The paradoxical communities that originated from this realization opened to rhetorical articulations that united people with no communal party membership. Derrida's politics of aimance carries on this reflection on the peut-être by targeting the traditional view that envisions the political as limited to the public sphere and tend to exclude women. By contrast, Hiroshima mon amour empowered women because it tapped into the dark territories of the private in order to show that modern technology had colonized the intimate and daily life. Hence, women critics could acquire a strong political voice from the oppression of the private.

This essay examines the epideictic genre by using qualitative method to analyze acceptance speeches from the Swedish Grammy awards. These speeches and their speakers are often described as rhetorically mediocre and there seems to be a notion within the music community that an acceptance speech is personal and without deeper meaning. From a functionalistic perspective on genre, these speeches can be seen as working together with other genres that carry information about the winners. Why would skilled performers who know how to entertain an audience choose to repeat rhetorical mistakes? This essay uses different perspectives on rhetorical situation and genre as well as multimodal analysis of verbal- and nonverbal communication, to argue that these particular speeches in this particular situation come with their own set of expectations and values that the speakers have to acknowledge if they are to meet the epideictic purpose: To unite the audience around common values and create an enjoyable collective memory. The results show that most of the winners do so by multimodal activity where verbal and nonverbal communication work together to highlight values that are part of each winner’s persona as well as values that are celebrated within the music community as a whole.

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In this dissertation, I analyze the organizational and political constraints that technical writers encounter when dealing with complex rhetorical situations, particularly within risk-management discourse. I ground my research in case studies of safety briefings that airlines provide to their passengers because these important documents have long been regarded as ineffective, yet they ve gone largely unchanged in the last 20 years. Airlines are required to produce these safety briefings, which must satisfy multiple audiences, such as corporate executives, federal safety inspectors, flight attendants, and passengers. Because space and time are limited when presenting safety information to passengers, the technical writers must negotiate constraints related to issues such as format, budget, audience education and language, passenger perceptions/fears, reproducibility, and corporate image/branding to name a few. The writers have to negotiate these constraints while presenting important (and potentially alarming) information in a way that s as informative, realistic, and tasteful as possible. But such constraints aren t unique to the airline industry. Once they enter the profession, many writing students will experience complex rhetorical situations that constrain their abilities to produce effective documentation; therefore, I am looking at the theories and skills that we re teaching our future technical communicators for coping with such situations. By applying writing-style and visual-cultural analyses to a set of documents, I demonstrate a methodology for analyzing complex rhetorical situations. I conclude by proposing a pedagogy that teachers of technical communication can employ for helping students assess and work within complex rhetorical situations, and I offer suggestions for implementing such practices in the classroom.

While numerous studies on academic writers composing for non-academic audiences exist, few if any studies address academic writers composing biographies for children. This self-reflective case study of a Eudora Welty biography for children provides insight into how an academic writer can effectively write in a specific genre (biography) for a specific audience (children) and into practical rhetorical choices such as choosing photographs and designing page layouts. The study also offers triangulated data regarding essential criteria of quality children’s literature as identified by experts in the field (editors, publishers, award committee members, scholars, and authors). The author’s findings include sixty-eight of the most often cited criteria, such as accuracy and the use of documented evidence, that serve as guidelines and a means of evaluating biographies written for children.

The Authorities attitudes towards Gypsies have been characterized by prejudice for a long time. This has lead to the relief actions of the Authorities being formed by discriminating acts. In purpose of eliminating the discrimination of the Gypsies, the Delegation for Gypsy matters formulated a strategy for solving this problem in the report “Gypsy rights – a strategy for Gypsies in Sweden”. Despite the goodwill of the Authorities this report has been criticized by Gypsies in Sweden.   In the investigation of the derivation of this criticism the aim of this essay is to look at how the Authorities attitude towards Gypsies is shown in this report and how it affects the creation of their ethos. This analysis is made with a Critical Linguistic Analysis and the Stasis Theory.    The result showed that the Delegation for Gypsy matters dissociate themselves from the former attitudes that characterized the Authorities view of Gypsies. Through this move they try to show solidarity with them. Despite this equality aim it is possible to make note of an authoritative touch that imply a view of a society where the power is distributed from the top to the bottom. Even the picture of the Gypsies as a weak group can be noted. / Myndigheters attityder har länge varit präglade av fördomar när det gäller romer. Detta har medfört att deras hjälpinsatser för att förbättra romernas situation har präglats av diskriminerande åtgärder. I syfte att komma bort från den diskriminerande behandlingen av romerna utformade Delegationen för romska frågor en strategi för hur detta problem kunde lösas. Detta nya betänkande har dock fått kritik från romer i Sverige. För att undersöka vad denna kritik beror på är syftet med den här uppsatsen att undersöka hur myndigheters attityder gentemot romer kommer till uttryck i betänkandet samt hur detta påverkar skapandet av myndigheternas ethos. Detta görs genom en kritisk lingvistisk analys av textens verbprocesser, negationer och passivkonstruktioner. Detta resultat kopplas sedan till statusläran. Resultatet som framkommit ur analyserna är att Delegationen för romska frågor tydligt tar avstånd från myndigheternas tidigare attityder och förhållningssätt. Genom detta försöker de istället solidarisera sig med romerna. Trots denna strävan efter jämlikhet går det att uttyda auktoritära drag som antyder en samhällssyn där styrandet sker uppifrån och ned. Även drag av romer som en svag grupp går att utläsa.

A politician on the peak of his career suddenly sees himself in the middle of not one or two, but five different crisis, that demand a fitting response and a well planned crisis management strategy. While focusing on ethos and its development, the following paper analyses the communicative strategies used by Germany's ex-minister of defense, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Within his one and a half year tenure he had to handle continuing accusations against policy and character. Guttenberg, who in many eyes was seen as Germany's most popular politician and whose ethos, therefore, prior to the first crisis could be described as strong, is loosing his trustworthiness among the military and other politicians the longer each crisis continues. The purpose of this study is to identify the communicative pattern of Mr. Guttenberg, which in the end lead to his resignation, while his popularity continues to be strong. With theories like Benoits apologia strategies, Bitzers rhetorical situation and Ryans kategoria and apologia speechset, the analysis of articles of the German mass medium ”Bildzeitung”, clearly mirrors Guttenberg’s tendency to react offended to personal accusations. While being able to handle accusations against his policy, this continuing communicative mistake provides an opportunity for his critics.

The aim of this study is to contribute further to the study of rhetoric in science. The essay will work as additional justification for the significant role rhetoric has in the science field. Starting in the rhetoric of science and everything it has to offer, this essay then concentrates on a specific area of science: mathematics. Specifically mathematics taught in Sweden to students in 9th and 10th grade. With the help of Lloyd F. Bitzers conceptual apparatus and Kim-Erik Berts questions of proof, this work concludes that there has been a shift in the use of proof in mathematics and therefore a shift in the basic scientific view that is taught in school. The proof has lost its convincing role. This both speaks for the important part that rhetoric plays in scientific studies, as well as the shift away from factual proofs as the most convincing.