Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Speech Communication, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 127 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-114).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1932. / Photolithographed. "Private edition, distributed by the University of Chicago libraries."

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Seminary, Portland, Or., 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 264-269).

Thesis (M.S.) in Human Development--University of Maine, 2002. / Includes vita. Bibliography: leaves 53-61.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989.

Thesis--M.A., University of Hong Kong, 1984.

With increasing frequency, the United States Supreme Court has faced questions pertaining to the Constitutional rights of parents. Contemporary conflicts between states’ authority and parents’ rights to shape the moral education of children are manifestations of a tension in liberal political thought. Although liberalism assigns responsibility for the education of children to private institutions, such as families and churches, there is a public need in liberal regimes for citizens to possess certain skills, habits, and beliefs. When these competing interests have come before the Supreme Court, its rhetoric has not always done justice to the importance of both interests. Here, I examine the Court’s nineteenth-century jurisprudence on polygamy, its important early twentieth-century cases on the family, and a selection of recent cases relating to the education of children. I conclude that the Supreme Court has in recent years put too little emphasis on the legitimate interests of states in shaping the moral education of children. / text

The social and political function of humor in any era is to provide commentary, insight, and catharsis into the concerns facing that time. In this dissertation I investigate the role humor, particularly irony and satire, plays in informing public discourse and civic participation in the contemporary Internet age. This age is often characterized a highly mediated one with the proliferation of increasingly powerful, and increasingly mobile, media an ongoing concern of communication scholars. Understanding how these new forms refashion public discourse to address new contexts is important. In order to understand these differences it is necessary to understand how newer media work in relation to older media. I contend this relationship can be understood through the trope of irony. More importantly irony shares a relationship to the rhetorical process of remediation, whereby newer media are placed in a dialectic relationship with older media. For rhetorical and media scholars these relationships represent an opportunity to understand new possibilities for discursive action. This dissertation provides answers to three questions. What is the relationship between irony and remediation? How can mediated texts of humor illustrate the relationships between irony and remediation? What rhetorical implications might these relationships have for communication scholars interested in civic engagement, political participation, and mass mediated public discourse?I argue that remediation, the underlying rhetorical structure of media, is ironic. This structure is best revealed through analysis of highly mediated humorous texts. To answer these questions I conduct a rhetorical analysis of several case studies using irony and remediation as guiding theoretical mechanisms. Each case study focuses on a text characterized as ironic, though not necessarily humorous. I illustrate how irony contributes to the creation of multiple, and often contradictory, meanings in a text while remediation illustrates how media forms influence the creation of increasingly fragmented texts. When combined in a rhetorical analysis these mechanisms work to reveal underlying ideological concerns prevalent in public discourse in an age of new media. The significance of these concerns, and their relationship to irony, satire, and humor is discussed. / text

Much of the existing scholarship on the popular appeal of television emphasizes the role of content over any of the medium’s other elements. Work within the cultural studies tradition, for example, often centers the importance of specific television programs when discussing the small screen’s allure for discerning viewers. Other analyses that proclaim explicit concern for “the rhetoric of television” as a whole nevertheless tend to limit their focus to specific, recognizable elements within broadcast programming. As a result, there exists no strong theoretical perspective that helps account for an attraction to television as a medium, despite that fact that many people are familiar with instances of television reception that appear to have nothing to do with the specificity of broadcast content (i.e. collapsing in front of “the box” after a long day and watching whatever happens to be on—sometimes for hours at a time). The present study remedies this absence by proposing a rhetorical mode for the medium of television based on the psychoanalytic concept of “projective identification.” Originating in the object relations work of Melanie Klein, projective identification names a primary mechanism by which individuals manage unconscious anxieties that attend modern subjectivity. This study asserts that specific elements of the televisual apparatus in combination invite unconscious acts of projective identification from viewers. Because this invitation relieves viewers of primal anxieties and increases their attraction to the medium itself, it is appropriate to interpret projective identification in this context as an inherently rhetorical concern. This study progresses in three basic sections. The first two chapters review relevant literature in the fields of rhetoric, media, and psychoanalysis in order to propose “the rhetoric of projective identification” as a mode of address inherent to the medium of television through the second half of the 20th century. The middle three chapters then validate and extend this mode by considering three elements of the televisual medium in even greater depth: Intimacy, flow, and instances of audience activism. Finally, the conclusion of the study considers the continued utility of the proposed mode in a contemporary era marked by media convergence and technological implosion.

Not available / text