This dissertation examines Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that “anyone can edit,” in order to locate an emerging digital rhetoric. That emerging rhetoric is being developed from the bottom up by various rhetors, and it offers rhetoricians a framework for rethinking some of the foundations of the discipline. The discipline has tended to define agency in terms of the conscious rhetor, intellectual property in terms of an author-origin, and community in terms of a shared project that a collective has agreed upon. This dissertation rethinks each of these disciplinary key terms by examining Wikipedia’s hospitable structure, a structure that welcomes writers regardless of identity or credentials. This structure of hospitality troubles the notions that agency can be reduced to consciousness, that texts are easily linked to an owner, or that community is the result of an agreed upon project. In many ways, Wikipedia acts as a microcosm of the various rhetorical collisions that happen to rhetors both online and offline. The proliferation of new media makes for more rhetors and more rhetorical situations, and this requires a complete rethinking of certain portions of rhetorical theory. The theory of hospitality that grounds this project is not utopian—it is instead a full consideration of the complications and perils of welcoming others regardless of identity or credentials. This is a structural hospitality, one that is not necessarily the result of conscious choice. This structure means that Wikipedia is far from a utopia—certain voices are filtered or silenced. But these filters are put up in the face of a hospitable structure that welcomes a broad range of writers, invites colliding interests, allows libelous or inaccurate writings, and encourages an endless chain of citations. The invitations extended by hospitable texts open up difficult questions for rhetoricians: Who is editing this text as I read it? How do we define “community” in such a situation? Who owns this text? “Hospitable Texts” rethinks these questions in light of the Web’s emerging ethical and rhetorical structures. / text

This dissertation examines new media by taking as its starting point the definition offered by Lev Manovich, "the shift of all culture to computer culture"--new media are new not so much because they have not existed before but because they must adhere to the conventions of a computer. Media, according to Manovich, become programmable, and in their new programmability, along with a host of other implications and repercussions of that programmability, we human beings experience something new. Articulating that something remains no easy chore, and Manovich continually makes his case that "the language of new media" much resembles the language of that older medium, cinema.However, to nod in agreement with Manovich is not the present task; instead, I take Manovich and place his notion of new media in direct dialogue with rhetorical theorists Aristotle, Plato, Kenneth Burke, Barry Brummett, Jeffery Walker, Michel Foucault, and other writers and thinkers in order to pursue a portion of that "shift of all culture": I ask, "If new media has a language, what is the poetics of that language?" In order to pursue an answer to this question, I take individual new media objects--the film Saving Private Ryan; the video game Medal of Honor: Frontline; the computer worm MyDoom; the media coverage of the 1996 presidential campaign trail, including the "Dean Scream"; the SanDisk's cooperation with the Alzheimer's Association's "Take Action against Alzheimer's" campaign; the film The Manchurian Candidate; and the modern database--and analyze how they make meaning. In order to do this, I frequently reach back into antiquity, specifically into the early and predisciplinary areas of philosophy, rhetoric, and poetics.

The epideictic discourse of political autobiography offers a powerful means of persuasion to attitude not otherwise available to politicians. In the extended narrative form of political autobiography, the audience's identification with characters, actions and speaker is central to persuasion. Narrative persuades implicitly by disposing the audience favourably to the rhetor and through the "common-sense assumptions" that the audience supplies in order to understand the discourse. The methodological approach used in this thesis, Fantasy Theme Analysis, addresses how the socialization process that is a primary function of epideictic rhetoric takes place. In the analysis, the rhetorical vision of the "game of politics" and two other fantasy themes are identified. The analysis demonstrates that an audience who identifies with this network of fantasy themes would also be influenced attitudinally and ideologically. The author concludes that political autobiography deserves further study because of its potentially important role in political persuasion. / vi, 95 leaves ; 29 cm

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Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [52]-55).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [52]-55).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [345]-381).

Thesis (doctoral)--Faculté des lettres, Université de Helsinki, 1981. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-261) and index.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas Christian University, 2009. / Title from dissertation title page (viewed Oct. 30, 2009). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Inaug.-Diss.--Heidelberg. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 273-288.