Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt inspired the Allies with memorable speeches in their fight against the Axis Powers during World War II. These speeches resulted from their personalities, preparation, and correspondence; and the speeches directed Allied conduct and challenged Axis aggression. The speeches examined here pertain to Lend-Lease in November, 1940-March, 1941. The author consulted the collections of Churchill's and Roosevelt's speeches and correspondence and drew from memoirs and newspapers. The first two chapters examine Churchill and Roosevelt's rhetorical abilities; the third chapter looks at how their correspondence shaped their speeches; and the fourth chapter looks at the Lend-Lease rhetoric. Roosevelt and Churchill's speeches contributed to the success of the Lend-Lease bill and strengthened the Anglo-American alliance. Their words and actions led to the emergence of America as the leader in the alliance and affected Hitler's perception of the Anglo-American relationship and policy.

The United States of America emerged from the dissolution of bipolar Cold War order as the sole superpower, able to pursue its foreign policy goals uncontested. Even though war is generally considered negative practice in American ideational context, American presidencies are able to garner public support for their military adventures. Use of rhetoric is deemed central in the process of convincing the public of legitimacy and necessity of war. The thesis therefore aims at exploration of the language American presidencies use to justify military involvements in war-affirmative speech acts, represented by public presidential addresses. For each respective conflict, one address has been singled out, while in total eight addresses, four by Republican and four by Democratic Presidents have been examined. These selected speeches represent a data set. The matter is then explored in several contexts throughout the period of 1989-2011. Methodically, the Qualitative Content Analysis framework is being used, in order to find evidence in form of defined set of codes. Principally the thesis assesses the employment of just war theory frame by American presidencies in the examined period as a mean of legitimating a conflict. Second, the thesis explores usage of polarizing imagery throughout selected speech acts....