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

Though a relatively new form of communication technology, the podcast serves as a remediated form of the classical orator—merging the classical practices of oration with current methods of production and delivery. This study draws connections from the historical five canons of rhetoric and current usability studies to build a heuristic for developing and evaluating usable podcast design.

“A Building that Recalls” is a report that offers up the provocation that figures of housing are prevalent throughout histories of rhetorics connected to memory, and are of great ethical significance. One can turn to three key examples to demonstrate this thesis: Martin Heidegger’s Black Forest “Hut,” Michel Foucault’s “Panopticon,” and Lebbeus Woods’ “Scar” and “Scab” architectural designs. Heidegger’s hut reminds its viewers that a place of dwelling can serve both as a lesson in the dangers of nationalist memory-politics, and simultaneously as a model for overcoming fascism in oneself. Foucault’s Panopticon model reveals that the rooting out and “forgetting” of burned in social norms is difficult because subjectivity is a social fabrication. Finally, Lebbeus Wood’s “Scar” and “Scab” designs (accompanied with commentary by Victor Vitanza) show how an affirmative forgetting is possible in the wake of tyranny and trauma. / text

This dissertation applies a mixed-methods model across three cases of climate risk in order to examine the rhetorical dynamics of uncertainties. I argue that a rhetorical approach to uncertainties can effectively scaffold civic agency in risk communication by translating conflicting interests and creating sites of public participation. By tracing the networks of scientists and their artifacts through cases of climate risk, I demonstrate how the performances of scientific ethos and their material-discursive technologies facilitate the personalization of risk as a form of scientific prudence, and thus a channel to feasible political action. I support these claims through a rhetorical model of translation, which hybridizes methods from discourse analysis and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in order assemble a data-driven and corpus-based approach to rhetorical analysis. From this rhetorical perspective uncertainties expand on our notions of risk because they reveal associations between scientific inquiries, probability assessments, and the facilitation of political dialogues. In each case, the particular insight of the model reveals a range of rhetorical potentials in climate risk that can be confronted through uncertainties.

While memoria is the fourth canon of rhetoric, its generative power remains essentially absent from rhetoric and composition studies. In my dissertation I use Mnemosyne's story as a way to reconceptualize memoria beyond the confines of mnemonic techniques and memorization. I provide an overview of memoria using the terministic screens of storehouse, invention, and subjectivity in order to explain its absence and the consequences of this gap. I posit that the generative, critical, and embodied qualities of memory shape our ways of knowing and being and our hermeneutical, inventive, and revisionary practices.I argue that memory is rhetorical: it's not just what is remembered/forgotten that matters, but how it is remembered, by whom, for what purpose, and with what effect. Rhetorical memory is a process and product(s) of remembering. Rather than remaining fixed, rhetorical memory is dynamic, relational, infused with emotion, steeped in imagination, and context dependent. It is also relational, not autonomous and continuous. When memory is written, it expresses, analyzes, connects, rebuilds, and transforms the links between private and public, past and present, self and other, reason and emotions, fact and fiction, and mind and body. Rhetorical memory is (re)visionary. In chapter two, I explicate the constructed/reconstructed nature of rhetorical memory as demonstrated by Maxine Hong Kingston in No Name Woman. I also examine how rhetorical memory enriches feminist pedagogy(s), especially how agency might emerge and be sustained. In chapter three, I focus on the critical aspects of rhetorical memory by investigating how the memory of Mary Magdalene was constructed to maintain cultural hegemony. I argue that rhetorical memory provides a critical tool for underrepresented groups to critique, disrupt, and revise truth claims often represented in traditional bodies of knowledge. In chapter four, I assert that rhetorical memory empowers writers to uncover white privilege and take action against such injustices. I also include a section on how I incorporate rhetorical memory into my pedagogical practices. I call on scholar teachers to address how our professional discourses and scholarly conventions impede how we communicate about the kinds of insights we gain from rhetorical memory.

The present study is a delving in the rhetoric of Spanish hip hop with focus on five songs of some of the most prominent artists in the genre in Spain. The aim is a study of the rhetorical figures present in these songs and which function they have in the context of the songs and of hip-hop. The analysis is based on previous studies in the same field as well as different dictionaries and handbooks of rhetorical figures but many conclusions also derive from the investigators own interpretations . The underlying purpose of this study is to locate tendencies in the rhetorical expression used in these songs; the result will be a suggestion of what possibly could be representative for this genre in Spain. / El presente estudio es una indagación en la retórica del hip hop español, enfocado en cinco canciones de algunos de los artistas más prominentes del género en España. El propósito es estudiar las figuras retóricas halladas en las canciones seleccionadas y sus funciones en el contexto de las canciones y de hip-hop. El análisis se basa en investigaciones previas en el mismo ámbito así como en distintos manuales y diccionarios de figuras retóricas, si bien muchas de las conclusiones derivan también de las interpretaciones del investigador. La intención última de este estudio es localizar posibles tendencias de la expresión retórica en las canciones analizadas; el resultado es una propuesta de lo que según el análisis del presente corpus parece ser representativo de este género en España.

Despite longstanding attention to rhetorical form and structuring logics that give discourse its persuasive power (metaphor, genre, narrative, definitional frames, ideology, etc.), the relative amount of publication attending to international rhetoric remains slight. As the composition of audience(s) has stretched to global proportions the challenges of apprehending the manifold cross-cultural complexities for presidential address have expanded. Spanning five decades and three presidencies (Kennedy, H.W. Bush and Clinton), this dissertation takes presidential public address at the United Nations as its object of study in an effort to help remedy this shortcoming, while also aiming to provide a richer theoretical underpinning for accounts of globalization and its impact on the modern presidency. The analysis grapples with three particular problems: conceptualizing increasingly pluralized audiences, the matter of ascertaining how non-American institutions (like the United Nations) shape and are shaped by American rhetorical productions, and the difficulties in gauging presidential rhetorical efficacy. Two main arguments are advanced. First, the dissertation argues that presidential rhetoric at the United Nations traffics in a particular brand of cosmopolitanism, which helps presidents to constitute a universal audience nonetheless ideologically sympathetic to American goals. The terrain and implications of this cosmopolitanism rhetoric are mapped and unpacked. Second, it is argued that when crafting rhetoric for the specific audience of the United Nations General Assembly, the President is obligated to work within the confines of the rhetorical institution that is the United Nations. The project seeks to understand the limits and possibilities of presidential rhetoric based on existing international institutional constraints. Taken together, the resulting scene of presidential cosmopolitan address, rather than culminating in efforts primarily concentrated on persuasion, end up mainly interpellating a global audience supportive of a cosmopolitan agenda which in turn is pre-structured to support the interests of the United States.

With the rise of extremist fundamentalist groups, such as ISIS, it is important to note similar happenings in other traditions. This thesis traces the interpretive tradition of the Book of Revelation, from its composition in 90 C.E. through the dispensationalist usage of it by John Nelson Darby in the 19th century, and how its modern use by American Christian fundamentalist groups leads to rhetorical violence, including feelings of marginalization and societal targeting, and creation of insider/outsider dynamics with those outside the tradition. While rhetorical violence—language and behaviors that harm others and that occur so regularly that they often become routinized and habitual—does not directly involve killing and enacting of physical violence, it can lead to it. This thesis concludes that the instances of rhetorical violence occurring in mainstream American Christian fundamentalism, such as in Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind series and the author’s ethnographic case study of a church in Bowling Green, Kentucky, are problematic because of the possibility for physical violence.

Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Afghan women suddenly gained high visibility all over the world. Since then, representations of Afghan women in the Western media and notably in the U.S. news media provide a critical concern to scholars. Much of the relevant literature on this topic speaks to the fact that the dominant portrayal of Afghan women in the Western media has shown them as passive victims of war and violence, to be liberated only by the Western military intervention. However, the question remains as to how the popular fictional narratives, as another vivid source of information, represent Afghan women to the Western readers. To address this question, A Thousand Splendid Suns, as a popular novel authored by Khalid Hosseini, an Afghan novelist, was selected. Bormannian fantasy theme analysis of this novel conveys the passivity of women in the context of Afghanistan. The findings reveal that the portrayals of Afghan women in the novel correspond with the images of Afghan women in the Western media. Moreover, an examination of a sample of book reviews of the novel unveils the important contribution of Khalid Hosseini to the Orientalist discourse.

This thesis deals with the Christology of the book of Hebrews, specifically the relationship between the Christological categories of "Son" and "high priest". It is argued here that the rationale for the introduction of a priestly Christology has been insufficiently considered in previous scholarly work on Hebrews Furthermore, in previous studies insufficient consideration has been given to the way in which the interrelationship of the categories of sonship and priesthood functions in the rhetorical structure of Hebrews. This thesis argues that a form of "second Adam" Christology lies behind the Christological thought of Hebrews. It consequently endeavours to establish the rationale for the introduction of priestly Christology by exploring those "second Adam" ideas. Until the 1970s historical-critical methodologies dominated in the study of Hebrews. This is one of the reasons for the lack of scholarly consideration of the interrelationship of the priestly and filial Christological categories in the rhetoric of Hebrews. This thesis underscores the deficiencies of the historical-critical approaches to Hebrews as highlighted by the paucity of results such approaches have produced. It is argued that rhetorical criticism is an appropriate methodology for supplementing more historical-oriented methodologies. A survey of previous rhetorical-critical work on Hebrews is undertaken with a view to showing the potential of rhetorical-critical study of the book. It is argued that the rhetorical purposes of Hebrews is the bolstering of the community's confidence in their confession of faith. Acceptance of such an understanding of purpose leads naturally to the further question of the content of that confession, and specifically to the issue of whether or not it contained a statement of the priesthood of Christ. It is argued that the confession of the Hebrews did not refer to the priesthood of Christ, but can rather be summarized as "Jesus is the Son of God". The core of this thesis is found in a careful exegesis of Heb 2 which is crucial for understanding the relationship of the sonship and priesthood of Jesus in Hebrews. This chapter is introduced by explicit references to Jesus as Son (in Hebrews 1:5-14) and ends with the first explicit application of the word "priest" to him (2:17). It is argued that the underlying Adamic and Edenic themes in the chapter provide the key to understanding the relationship. The significance of such Adamic/Eden themes lies at the heart of this thesis. The rest of Hebrews is then examined with a view to ascertaining if such Adamic/Edenic themes are utilized elsewhere in the work. The rhetorical significance of the Adamic/Edenic allusions found throughout Hebrews is also explored. It is argued that the pattern of usage strongly suggests that Adamic/Edenic themes constitute "common ground" between Auctor and his recipients, which is presupposed in the overall argument of Hebrews rather than being argued in detail. The thesis concludes with a summary of the work as a whole, a statement of conclusions arrived at and an outline various implications arising from it.