Arab Palestinians in Israel live under highly complex circumstances. In 1948, when they became Israeli citizens, they found themselves facing challenges at different levels: national, social, political, financial, educational, as well as the very challenge of existence. The Palestinian community in Israel underwent various stages of development and witnessed major events under the new Israeli rule, bringing about fundamental changes in their lives, their attitudes, and consequently, their rhetoric. Arab politicians, particularly those who represent Arab Palestinians in the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament), often find themselves compelled to adjust the approach and rhetoric they use to address the Arab public. They do it not only to satisfy the Arab public's expectations, but also to adapt to the ever-changing Israeli political atmosphere and to avoid conflict with the Jewish public, the majority of whom, as polls indicate, are not happy about Arab representation in the Israeli Knesset. Discussion of the rhetoric used by the Arab parties in Israel that represent the Palestinian people who before 1948 were a majority and after that year became a minority that suffers inequality, oppression, and discrimination, is important in order to understand how argumentation and methods of persuasion are influenced by the kind of circumstances that national minorities like Palestinians in Israel experience. This thesis will examine the rhetoric used by the main Arab political movements in Israel when addressing several key issues that are currently the subject of heated debate and are expected to have remarkable effects on Arabs and their lives as non-Jews in the Israeli state. These issues are: Arab representation in the Israeli Parliament, recognition of Israel as a "Jewish State", and National Service for Arabs. The largest part of the research will focus on the Arab representation in the Knesset, being the most controversial topic among the Arab minority in Israel, and which also determines to a great extent the positions of the parties on other issues. After reviewing the position of each party/political movement on each of these topics, I intend to analyze the rhetoric each of them uses to defend their position or promote it to gain the support of the public, especially during parliamentary elections. Is the rhetoric of Arab parties in Israel coherent and harmonious as it represents a Palestinian minority dealing with Israeli policies as a collective entity, or does each of the parties have a unique rhetoric of its own, based on its ideology and agendas? What are the arguments that these parties use to justify their views, and how do they present these arguments? Are the arguments used by each party from the deliberative branch of rhetoric, the forensic, or the epideictic? Do Arab politicians mostly use ethos, pathos, or logos to persuade the audience and gain their support? This thesis will answer these questions by analyzing the parties' publications and official statements and political charters, and it will show that the positions, the rhetoric, and the argumentation of the different Arab parties are far from being homogeneous, and are highly influenced by their ideological background.

Includes bibliographical references. / The annual national Budget Speeches made by the Ministers of Finance of South Africa are epideictic (ceremonious) speeches that praise the government's economic policy for the coming year, recommend it to the nation, and also present the proposed Budget to the world. This speech contains information that is the policy of the government since it is ultimately written into law and so affects the fortunes of every citizen of South Africa. The Ministers of Finance have to persuade the nation to adopt a plan for distributing the wealth of the nation which becomes a greatly significant exercise in the context of a developing third world country like South Africa where there is still great inequality. The Ministers of Finance do this by using ceremonious rhetoric that attempts to unite the people of South Africa under a common vision for the economy. In this thesis, I provide an analysis of the political rhetoric of four Budget Speeches of South Africa, each selected because of their importance in the various stages of South Africa's political history. This thesis is not an economic analysis; it is a rhetorical analysis of the speeches since the technique of rhetoric is used to analyse the Budget Speech. The selection of speeches is as follows: the Budget Speech of 1985 represents the apartheid era, even though at that time there were some moves towards reform. The peculiar two-pronged apartheid rhetoric of providing a place for all South Africans, of working together to build the nation and the economy, while there is still racial oppression is present in the introduction and conclusion of this speech. With the development of negotiations in the early 1990s which culminated in the first democratically elected Government of National Unity in 1994, the Budget Speeches of 1993 and 1994 became more representative of the interests of all South African citizens. In these speeches there is the rhetoric of hope for the future, transparency and nation-building. The 2002 Budget Speech represents a mature Budget Speech of a post-1994 South Africa where a democratically elected majority black party is in power. In the 2002 speech there is the rhetoric of solidarity, poverty and nation building. In the chapters containing the rhetorical analysis for each speech there is a description of the rhetorical situation, a summary of the speech, and then an analysis of the inventio, dispositio, and elocutio of the speech. In the final section of the thesis I provide a comparison of the four speeches analysed. Included in this dissertation are illustrations of the Ministers of Finance, the official print version of their speeches, a selection of media articles published on or around the day that each of the Budget Speeches were delivered, and also the transcripts of two interviews that I conducted with two of the former Ministers of Finance.

The study focuses on the rhetoric used during the drafting of the Constitution of the Republic of Namibia. The thesis will offer a framework for understanding negotiations in terms of distinct and coherent rhetoric. Primary sources for this thesis consist of five volumes of the Hansard of the Standing Committee on Standing Rules and Orders and Internal Arrangements of the Windhoek Constituent Assembly. To understand the rhetoric under which the Namibian Constitution was drafted, the Hansard of the Standing Committee was analysed. By analysing the Hansard, one can begin to formulate a picture of the rhetoric that led to a new Constitution of the Republic of Namibia and begin to understand rhetoric in the Namibian context. In order to make valid assertions, one has to go beyond what was said in the Constituent Assembly and look at what the participants said elsewhere. The thesis is concerned here with their words, not with their thoughts. But there is a recognition that sometimes thoughts matter as much as words. No judgements are made on the merits of their arguments. The study simply intended to examine their rhetoric and how rhetoric impacted on the final outcome of the negotiations. The study revealed that, with very few exceptions, most of the debates of the Windhoek Constituent Assembly were initially built on argument and many of them were solved through practical reasoning. This can be explained in part by the attitude of the members and in part by the constraint of the process. The study also revealed that the informative role of deliberation helped the framers of the Namibian constitution to form a more complete set of preferences than they originally had or even forced them to change positions when they were exposed to the full consequences or incoherence of their original proposals. For another, when political actors needed to justify their proposals, they found that impartial arguments were not available or, if they were, they were too obviously tied to a particular interest to be convincing. vi Persuasion as a Social Heuristic: A Rhetorical Analysis of the making of the Constitution of Namibia The appeal to fear strategy, as a means to enable delegates to better recognise the nature of the problems facing the political community and to begin thinking about potential solutions, was clearly at play at the Windhoek Constituent Assembly. Finally, the proceedings of the Windhoek Constituent Assembly which framed the Constitution show that many of the provisions of that instrument which are seemingly straightforward and artless rest in reality upon compromises, and are often laboured and tortuous. The outcome of constitution-making in Namibia was greatly influenced by the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments among the framers.

Includes bibliographical references. / This study focuses on rhetorical discourse of the 2002 presidential election campaign in Zimbabwe. The thesis analyses the rhetoric used by the two major contenders of this controversial election - the incumbent president Robert Gabriel Mugabe, candidate of Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) and the challenger Morgan Tsvangirai, candidate of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The study first traces the origin of rhetoric, the art of persuasive communication, to ancient Greek and Roman traditions. Following Hanson (1997), the study treats Kenneth Burke's and Chaim Perelman's different rhetorical theories as complementary. The argument is that, although the two contemporary scholars offer different views on the nature and process of rhetoric, these views are two sides of the same coin as the ultimate goal is to convince people, to create a communion between the rhetor and the audience. The study shows that both parties used negative advertisements in the election campaign. This persuasive attack produced negative images of both candidates. The rhetoric induced political cynicism of the candidates in the minds of the voters. Mugabe used collective memory and nostalgia in four funeral speeches in order to persuade the voters to vote for him. As the chief interpreter of past events, he chose those events that presented him as the vanguard of the values of the liberation struggle. His rhetoric called on the voters to guard against forces of imperialism by voting him back to the presidency. Consistently, Mugabe centred his campaign rhetoric on the achievements of his government over 22 years since independence in 1980 and attacked his opponent as a sell-out, a puppet of Britain and the whites in the country. Mugabe's land rhetoric was popular with people in the rural and peri-urban areas whose lives depended on land. Tsvangirai's rhetoric focused on the need for a change of government. He attacked Mugabe and his government for mismanaging the affairs of the country, resulting in the economic and political meltdown in the country. Tsvangirai offered practical ways of delivering the country from its economic and political quagmire and end the suffering of the people. This study argues that Tsvangirai's rhetoric of change was so persuasive to voters that had the electoral process been free and fair, he could have easily won this election.

Bibliography: leaves 39-41.

This paper makes a critical analysis of media rhetoric in South Africa. It does so by looking at the Floor Crossing Legislation debate. It makes analysis of material, and texts that were reported by different media institutions to create a particular perception by repeatedly stating the same view through different forms of communication during the floor crossing debate. It also looks at the active part that the media plays in policy formulation particularly its influence on any bill that draws significant attention. Rhetorically, the paper will look at whether the methods or arguments employed by the media were successful in manipulating public perception and presenting a particular view.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-164).

This dissertation sets out to add to the existing body of research on the SABC by performing a rhetorical analysis of SABC 3's flagship English news bulletin, broadcast between 18:30 and 19:30, weekdays, and 19:00 and 19:30 on weekends. The purpose of this analysis is to determine the manner in which the SABC attempts to position itself as a credible news source through its use of the rhetorical tools of persuasion. As texts presented to an audience with the intention of persuading them of certain ideas, it is possible to study and analyse television news reports by employing the same rhetorical analysis techniques that one would use when analysing a political speech or any other rhetorical text. This dissertation is broken up into two major sections. Part one will discuss the theories and research around the notion of television news as rhetorical texts, setting the stage for part two of the dissertation, which will actually perform a rhetorical analysis on selected news stories aired on SABC 3 over a period of 30 days. The key conclusions from this research are that the SABC frequently employs the pathos proof in its reports, primarily through the reporters using emotive language in their scripts, even though this is not always accompanied by corresponding footage. Instead of relying primarily on reporters to state and interpret the emotional aspects of the story, the broadcaster should be using its visuals to do this, drawing on the television journalism principle of 'show, don't tell', where visuals are the primary means through which a story is told, not the words. What the broadcaster should instead be doing is using the logos proof more, to make sound arguments for some of the claims that are made in its reports. The second key conclusion is that the broadcaster relies on the epideictic genre of rhetoric in most of its reports, when the deliberative and judicial genres would be more fitting. The SABC has lost a significant number of viewers from the days when it was the sole television news broadcaster in South Africa, and there were no other alternatives. This dissertation shows that one of the main reasons for this is that the public broadcaster is failing to produce its news reports in a manner that correctly employs the tools of rhetoric to persuade viewers that its version of the news is credible.

Includes bibliography.

This thesis presents a socio-legal approach of the rhetoric of law and the rhetoric of forgiveness in bodies legally mandated with reconciliation in post-conflict contexts of South Africa and Rwanda. Through a qualitative engagement with literature, the aim is to ascertain whether the law has the authority to grant forgiveness to a perpetrator on behalf of a victim? This question is premised on an understanding of reconciliation as occurring between two individuals in the presence of a third party in view of a specific political outcome, whereas forgiveness is personal, occurring without a specific political outcome and only between two individuals. It is argued that there exists a rhetorical gap between those who speak the language of the law on reconciliation, and those who speak the everyday language of forgiveness informed by a Judaeo-Christian rhetorical frame. It is argued that the gap is addressed by public deliberation or “live rhetoric”, allowing for a divided citizenry in post-conflict contexts to create a transformation (metanoia) and sameness of intent (homonia) in their community that prevents stasis – a reciprocal threat of civil war due to a difference of opinion. “Live rhetoric” functions to keep everyone bound in the process towards reconciliation, and this thesis seeks to highlight that live rhetoric is significant not only for the maintenance of peace and democracy in post conflict contexts at the level of the state, but also allows processes of reconciliation and possibly forgiveness to continue among individuals beyond the confines of bodies legally mandated with reconciliation.