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"Slash-and-burn" agriculture, or shifting cultivation, is perceived by many to be the leading cause of land degradation in tropical forests. Performed mainly by resource-poor farmers, shifting cultivation is the most widespread form of agriculture in the tropics. Concern over its environmental impacts has led to calls throughout the twentieth century for alternatives by policy-makers and development planners. This study employs a constructivist framework, post-colonial perspectives, and rhetorical methods to understand the images which support such assertions regarding shifting cultivation, primarily in policy-oriented depictions. Elements of Kenneth Burke's "dramatistic" method are used, including the analysis of hierarchies which structure discourse, and pentadic analysis. / Ph. D.

All around society, examples are found for how the debate for equality is being rhetorised, giving various suggestions for how the struggle should, or may, be fought, as well as suggestions for who and whom should be included within the term equality. Here a study is presented on the feminst equality campaign SheForHe and the debate article ”Men can – but you need our help”, in which a critique of malevolent norms of masculinity encourages women to free the man from the chains of patriarchy. The purpose is to investigate how, within the perspective of rhetorics, the article can be seen as to challenge the present discourse in the debate about equality through the following questions: Which motives are being constructed? Which rhetorical strategies are at play? Which ”men” and which ”women” as well as their internal relations are constructed? This is done based on Kenneth Burke’s theories on dramatism and the pentad as method of analysis for change of perspectives, as well as Karlyn Khors Campbell’s theories on the rhetoric of women’s liberation. The analysis is discussed drawing from Judith Butler’s terms performativity and the heterosexual matrix. The main conclusion is that the article can be seen as a rhetorical action in solidarity that through a societal critique aims to offer men new possibilties of identification. At the same time the article can be regarded as, within the scope of the equality debate, a rhetorical provocation that gives women actorship in the struggle for equality and highlights a male dominance within the debate. A further conclusion is that the article, although it may be viewed as an important act of resistance, is at risk of reproducing the view of ”men” and ”women” as homogenous collective identities, further constituting the gender system and contributing to the consolidation of a learned mandatory heterosexuality.

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Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and the United States in August of 2005. While an emerging literature base details the consequences and lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, a critical missing piece for understanding Hurricane Katrina American landfall is a rhetorical perspective. I argue a rhetorical perspective can significantly contribute to a better understanding of Hurricane Katrina’s implications for creating policy, community and identity. As a case study, I employ Kenneth Burke’s cluster analysis to examine the use of the label “Third World” to describe New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and the United States in the mass media coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Recent debates as to the place of Old South symbols and institutions in the South of the new millennium are evidence of a changing order in the South. I examine -- from a rhetorical perspective informed by Kenneth Burke's theory of identification and division -- four debates that have taken place in the South and/or about the South over roughly the past decade, 1995 to the present. In this decade, Southerners and interested others have debated such issues as 1) admitting women to the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel; 2) integrating displays of public art in Richmond to feature Confederates and African Americans side by side; 3) continuing to fly the Confederate battle flag in public spaces such as the South Carolina Capitol or including it in the designs of state flags such as those of Georgia and Mississippi; and 4) allowing Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, who seemed to speak out in support of the South's segregated past, to continue in his position of Senate leadership. Looking at each of these debates, it is clear that at issue in each is whether the ruling order of the South should continue to be one of division or whether that order should be supplanted by identification. Judging from the outcomes of the four debates analyzed here, the order of division seems to be waning just as the order of identification seems to be waxing in influence over the turn-of-the-millennium South. But a changing South is no less a distinctive, continuing South. I argue that a distinctive Southern culture based on a sense of order has existed and continues to exist amidst the larger American culture. If some form of "Southernism" is to continue as a distinctive mindset and way of life in the twenty-first century, Southerners will need to learn to strike a balance between their past, with its ruling order of division, and the present, with its ruling order of identification.

Donald Trump's rhetoric of winners and losers has prompted dangerous division in the United States. It is well understood that Trump's divisive discourse appealed to white, blue-collar Americans who had become disillusioned with the political establishment. This study explores how Trump persuaded this audience by transitioning business communication principles, highlighted by his signature 'winners and losers' theme, into politics. Trump's use of the reality television show, The Apprentice, as a branding platform had the rhetorical effect that catapulted Trump's unique 'winning' brand back into the public's consciousness. While the principles of business rhetoric Trump used in The Apprentice were clearly transitioned to Twitter during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, his tweets were unique in how they foregrounded the 'losers' he faced during the campaign. To illuminate Trump's branding strategy as both TV personality and political candidate, this analysis of Trump draws on Kenneth Burke's concept of consubstantiation and contemporary theories of business rhetoric, namely the idea of narrative-processing and its influence on consumers' connection with a brand. Because Trump constructs his brand with language that aims at restructuring America's social hierarchy, this study also uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to understand the implications of power for both his audience and his opponents. This study concludes that while Trump's winning brand identity contributed to him winning the presidency, it also promotes male dominance and exacerbates political division in the United States.

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The West has long been an important geographic and symbolic space for the United States. In the 19th and 20th centuries that space became the subject of numerous popular works of fiction, first in print and later in the cinema. These texts eventually formed a specialized genre, the Western, which had its own conventions, styles, and themes. Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose and Fred Zinnemann's High Noon, both seminal western texts from the mid-twentieth century, seek to reinterpret those conventions. While the Western is often characterized as a genre of violent masculinity and rugged individualism, these two texts employ conventional Western motifs in an effort to articulate a metafictional criticism of those ideas. Ultimately, they posit a reality in which traditional portrayals of the West lead to alienation, while also advocating an escape from that alienation.