<p> In deliberative argument, in political discourse, in teaching, and in casual conversation, as rhetors we often hope that our attempts at interaction will have some effect on the participants in these discursive environments. The phenomena of stubbornness, however, would seem to suggest that, despite our efforts, there are times when rhetoric just doesn't work. This dissertation complicates this premise, and in so doing complicates common understandings of both stubbornness and rhetorical effect. As I argue, rhetorical effects exist within a complex rhetoric <i>system</i>, within which they circulate and are interconnected with a diversity of other rhetorical and non-rhetorical elements. Using N. Katherine Hayles's concept of "making the cut," I argue that within such complex systems, stability and change are tangled up in an interdependent relationship; in short, in order for complexity to exist it must be constrained by contingent stabilities. These necessary stabilities mask the way that systems are always moving, and so we often do not see changes in the rhetoric systems we inhabit. In this sense, these changes are <i> compensatory</i>, and they work to maintain a stability that can manifest precisely as stubbornness. In delineating what I call a "rhetoric-systems" approach, this dissertation maps the stabilities and movements of several different rhetoric systems, and provides new insight into the complex and relational movement of rhetorical effect. Our use of this approach asks us to recognize the existence and value of certainty and stability, and <i> then</i> to pull back and recognize the existence of complexity and change. The approach integrates insights from systems theory (and so from the sciences) into existing rhetorical theory, and in so doing models an interdisciplinary approach to public rhetorics and writing studies that is firmly grounded in rhetorical theory.</p>

In this study, differences between literary and digital storytelling are identified as a context for the issues explored within this thesis. I argue both the strengths and weaknesses of both the written and digital arratives. It is difficult to apply the same standards to two exceptionally different genres, but it is the truest way to compare and contrast the two. I will examine a few of the studies that have already been done that are similar and some of the assertions they have concluded. / Storytelling : past and present -- An objective comparison of narrative -- Literary and digital narrative -- Digital media and the digital narrative -- Objective and subjective issues. / Department of Telecommunications

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

The purpose of this research was to examine the role of language in persuasion. In other words, are some language styles or variations more persuasive than others? Specifically, powerful and powerless language were studied. Powerless language contains hedges, hesitations, and tag questions. Powerful language does not contain these markers. The study involved having students listen to a message advocating comprehensive examinations for college seniors. Half the students participated in a simultaneous exercise while listening to the message to distract them from the central merits of the arguments. The remaining half simply listened to the message. Students then filled out questionnaires designed to measure their perceptions of the message and speaker. Regardless of whether subjects were distracted or not, those that heard the powerful language message were more positive towards the speaker than those that heard the powerless language message. / Department of Psychological Science

No description available.

No description available.

<p> The persuasive power of music is often relegated to the dimension of <i> pathos</i>: that which moves us emotionally. Yet, the music commodity is now situated in and around the liminal spaces of digitality. To think about how music functions, how it argues across media, and how it moves us, we must examine its material and immaterial realities as they present themselves to us and as we so create them. This dissertation rethinks the relationship between rhetoric and music by examining the creation, performance, and distribution of music in its material and immaterial forms to demonstrate its persuasive power. While both Plato and Aristotle understood music as a means to move men toward virtue, Aristotle tells us in his <i>Laws</i>, through the Athenian Stranger, that the very best kinds of music can help guide us to truth. From this starting point, I assess the historical problem of understanding the rhetorical potential of music as merely that which directs or imitates the emotions: that which "Soothes the savage breast," as William Congreve writes. By furthering work by Vickers and Farnsworth, who suggest that the Baroque fascination with applying rhetorical figures to musical figures is an insufficient framework for assessing the rhetorical potential of music, I demonstrate the gravity of musical persuasion in its political weight, in its violence--the subjective violence of musical torture at Guantanamo and the objective, ideological violence of music--and in what Jacques Attali calls the prophetic nature of music. I argue that music has a <i>significant function</i>, and as a non-discursive form of argumentation, works on us beyond affect. Moreover, with the emergence of digital music distribution and domestic digital recording technologies, the digital music commodity in its material and immaterial forms allows for ruptures in the former methods of musical composition, production, and distribution and in the political potential of music which Jacques Attali describes as being able to foresee new political realities. I thus suggest a new theoretical framework for thinking about rhetoric and music by expanding on Lloyd Bitzer's rhetorical situation, by offering the idea of "openings" to the existing exigence, audience, and constraints. The prophetic and rhetorical power of music in the aleatoric moment can help provide openings from which new exigencies can be conceived. We must, therefore, reconsider the role of rhetorical-musical composition for the citizen, not merely as a tool for entertainment or emotional persuasion, but as an arena for engaging with the political.</p>

Rhetorical analyses of collective memory study how perceptions of a shared past are maintained through public texts. This analysis explores an alternative relationship between rhetoric and remembrance. Rather than study the textual form of public memory alone, I argue that communities actively interpret artifacts of public discourse as public memory. The most enduring form of this practice is ceremonial repetition, or the deliberate recitation of a text during moments of communal observance. When performed effectively, ceremonial repetition imagines a text by highlighting a resonant virtue through public reading. Such strategies to mold the meaning of a text occur through a variety of messages adjoining recitation, such as formal speech, visual display, written testament, or spatial and bodily enactment. Ceremonial repetition illustrates the extensional evolution and legacy of speech in the public imagination. In a range of historically grounded case studies, this work explores the effectiveness and dominant strategies of ceremonial repetition different eras of American public discourse. These examples include the rhetorical invocation of a text within the discursive space of repetition, illustrated in Frederick Douglass’s August First orations on the Emancipation Proclamation in the late nineteenth-century; the pairing of visual icons and ceremonial repetition, as exemplified in official and public readings of George Washington’s Farewell Address within the context of a political flag display during the Civil War; the disjunction of repetition and written reflection, as evidenced by the U.S. Senate’s institutional recitation of the Farewell Address on Washington’s birthday; and the emerging genre of repetition performed through multiple voices and resonant scenery, as clarified in a variety of modern performances, such as the reading of the “I Have a Dream” speech by elementary school students celebrating the King holiday. These case studies illuminate various strategies used to translate past words by constraining their meaning for the needs of the present. Though ceremonial repetition offers audiences the opportunity to reconstitute a text’s properties and public legacy, this study concludes that such epideictic practice is most effective during moments of perceived crisis wherein core tenets of a political culture are profoundly questioned or disrupted.

This thesis scrutinizes the IRB's designation as an "expert tribunal" over the content of a "well-founded fear of being persecuted". Firstly, it suggests that a decision-maker's appeal to the "good reasons" and "say-so" of an "expert" authority serves only the interests of legal justice. Secondly, it looks behind the "rule" of a well-founded fear and considers the role of language and rhetoric in the "expert" construction of the "genuine" refugee claimant. Finally, it argues that the possibility of an ethical and responsible form of justice for the gay refugee claimant lies behind the "rule" of an authentic homosexual identity, in the moment of recognition of the distinct face and vulnerability of the gay refugee claimant. / Cette thèse propose une critique théorique de la nomination de la Commission de l'immigration et du statut de réfugié du Canada comme "tribunal expert" concernant le contenu de la définition d'une « crainte fondée de persécution ». D'abord, elle suggère que la référence par un décideur au « bon raisonnement » et à la « parole » d'une autorité « experte » sert surtout les intérêts de la justice judiciaire. Deuxièmement, elle cherche au-delà de la « règle » d'une crainte fondée et analyse le rôle de la langue et de la rhétorique face à la construction du demandeur « authentique » au statut du réfugié. Enfin, elle suggère qu'une forme de justice éthique et responsable pour le demandeur homosexuel au statut du réfugié est possible et se trouve derrière la « règle » de l'identité homosexuelle authentique, au moment de l'identification de son visage particulier et de sa vulnérabilité.

I intend, with this thesis, to investigate how Michel Foucault's concept of ???a positive unconscious of knowledge??? can be illustrated by overlapping narrative segments. I have coined the term ???friction???, as a writing practice, to describe the space in-between narrative conception and conscious, ordered reflection upon that narrative. Thus, the thesis comprises an exploration of Foucault's intersecting marginal zone, which is an integral aspect of his philosophic concept of ???positive unconscious???. The ???positive unconscious??? is where the overlapping sections of what Foucault calls, a ???table??? (creative narrative) and ???tabula??? (the ordering of the narrative) are situated. The frictional form is synonymous with Foucault's concept. It is as a developing narrative conception that becomes an ordered practice, and also aims to be what Jacques Derrida calls ???a new writing???. Hence, Foucault's ???positive unconscious???, Derrida's ???new writing???, and the frictional narrative process all comprise, along with and through the multiple inclusions of myriad theorists, philosophers, fiction writers, lyric poets, etc., an amalgamated whole ???new??? narrative (the frictionalised thesis). The paradox of the ???new??? (frictional) narrative is that through mimesis comes characterised difference - a ???new??? hybridised space is opened up which both fascinates and appals, railing as it does against fixed, constraining and systematised linguistic and discursive structures. Yet this is a stimulating space that ultimately brings new focus to stifling self-conformity. It is a frictional space comprised of a profusion of literary ???voices??? made singular, a singularity that is also mutiplicitous in its composite origin. It is a frictional observance that refutes the injunction of needing definite closure given its inclusion of potentially unlimited sources.