Aimed at core problems of contemporary moral rhetoric - pluralistic argument, incommensurable disagreement on ordering terms, and a theoretical move away from essence to relativism - this study is an attempt to restore rhetoric as an art capable of investigating and positing terms of order and being. This restoration relies upon viewing rhetoric as a practice of epistemic mediation between the experiential and language-based knowledge of the local, and the perfected knowledge of the Absolute. I propose characteristically Socratic notions of contingency and ignorance as the bases for this mediated approach. As a recognition of what is unknown and uncertain in relation to the Absolute, contingency and ignorance promote rhetoric as genuine dialogue, an other-recognizing, inclusive, and open-ended practice carried out in the local but aimed at the Perfect. Genuine dialogue allows agents to relationally enact virtue, collapsing virtue and rhetoric together as a craft or techne. The study is structured as an argument against immanent notions of contingency (in historical and political utopianism and progressivism), and a-discursive notions of ignorance, which are demonstrated to violate basic values of dialogue. Concluding remarks focus on the praxis of contingent, ignorant dialogue as enacted in actual policy settings, as well as focusing on future directions and applications.

Gossip occurs in the organization and individuals exposed to these gossip messages must decide how to interpret the gossip. This dissertation explains the definitions and research for gossip, message direction, sex differences, message interpretation, politicalism, and believability. Applying symbolic interactionism and social exchange theory, seven relationships between variables are proposed. The seven hypotheses are tested via a web-based questionnaire that manipulated the message direction and sex of the gossiper and gossip receiver. Two hundred seventy-six full time employees completed instruments measuring gossip believability, purpose, and politicalism. Data were subjected to a MANCOVA, and correlation statistics. Results supported three of the seven hypotheses. Specifically, message direction and sex of the receiver influenced gossip interpretation. Data confirmed a predicted negative relationship between believability and politicalism. Interpretations of results, limitations, implications, and directions for future research are included.

In this study, I document and analyze how I applied Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) techniques in introductory Public Speaking and Interpersonal Communication (IPC) courses. In the first chapter, Boal's democratic praxis is discussed in terms of critical performance pedagogy and Brecht's social aesthetics. I identify the qualitative social scientific method of data collection and analysis I used and base the significance of the study in my testing of TO in non-performance educational contexts and in the integrated communication studies curricula that resulted. In Chapter Two, I summarize Boal's career as an interactive theatre practitioner. My review includes synopses of his practices and the books he wrote. In Chapter Three, I document and discuss the two Boal based assignments I developed for the Public Speaking course. In the first, Boal's newspaper theatre exercises and Gregory Ulmer's "mystory" method are applied to a self-introductory speech assignment. In the second, Boal's "cop in the head" exercises and Joker System are adapted to a group project titled The Persuasive Speech Forum. In Chapter Four, I document and analyze my application of TO to three IPC course assignments. In the first, Boal's concept of Image Theatre informs an assignment in which students show their understanding of IPC concepts of selfhood in a shadow box they create and present. Boal's Invisible Theatre practices are used to test nonverbal norms in the second assignment. In the third, a fusion of Boal's Forum Theatre and Joker System techniques are used by students to investigate interpersonal conflicts and management strategies. In Chapter Five, I summarize the study and my findings, applying myself to the merits, drawbacks and possibilities of the assignments I developed. Lastly, I discuss the role and function of the educator as a Joker figure. The Appendices offer course handouts and representative examples of the students' work which I draw on throughout the study to discuss and evaluate the merits and limitations of the assignments.

This study employs a Burkeian cluster-agon analysis approach to analyze the rhetoric of four members of the Jesus Seminar; namely, Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and John Shelby Spong as well as that of two of the Jesus Seminars critics; Luke Timothy Johnson and N. Thomas Wright. Specifically, this study sought to discern the orientations or perspectives held by each of the examined rhetors in an effort to locate common ground or similar foundations within two seemingly disparate points of view. In doing so, this study creates a third perspective, or corrective, based on the orthopraxis approach of liberation theology that may be appropriated to dissolve other seemingly intractable rhetorical conflicts that threaten to shut down dialogue in conflicts.

The purpose of this study is to examine the function of the bard in situation comedy theme songs. This study calls upon Fiske and Hartley's concept of television as a cultural bard, a singer and teller of stories that create and conserve community. The bard reaffirms the culture's identity while delivering social and political messages relevant to the culture at specific times throughout history. This study also draws upon social-historical and cultural perspectives, and a selective semiotic analysis to investigate the visual, vocal, and musical themes from four decades of television sitcoms. The shows and themes from the 1960s include The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-71), The Andy Griffith Show (1960-68), Gomer Pyle, USMC (1964-70), Bewitched (1964-72), and That Girl (1966-71). Those from the 1970s include All in the Family (1971-79), The Jeffersons (1975-85), Maude (1972-78), The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77), M*A*S*H (1972-83), and Three's Company (1977-84). Those from the 1980s include The Cosby Show (1984-92), Cheers (1982-93), The Wonder Years (1988-93), The Golden Girls (1985-92), and It's Garry Shandling's Show (1988-90). Lastly, the shows and themes from the 1990s include Roseanne (1988-97), Married. . .With Children (1987-97), The Simpsons (1989-), Home Improvement (1991-99), Dharma and Greg (1997-2000), Everybody Loves Raymond (1996-), Frasier (1993-), and The Drew Carey Show (1995-). The results of the analysis reveal that the themes address relevant cultural issues such as race relations, the role of the domestic woman, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, class conflict, and the construction of reality. To date, very little scholarly attention has been paid to the area of television theme songs. Given that television is a central part of popular culture, and that sitcoms and theme songs comprise a significant amount of television air time, it is important to understand their relationship to culture and culture making. This study concludes that theme songs are concise bardic utterances that offer brief yet powerful rhetorical statements. Through the performance of these texts, the bard speaks to the prevailing values of the culture, using familiar means to uphold a sense of community and offer the audience a reinforcing idea of themselves.

This study explored imagined interaction (IIs) and bereavement coping self-efficacy in psychosocial adjustment to spousal bereavement. II characteristics and functions explored include discrepancy, activity, proactivity, specificity, retroactivity, variety, valence, catharsis, self-understanding, rehearsal, compensation and use of IIs with the deceased spouse. The current study's primary contribution is the introduction of bereavement phenomena into the framework of intrapersonal communication. The present investigation includes results of two studies. The first included a sample of 232 individuals at varying lengths of widowhood who completed the Adjustment Survey, a 15-page survey instrument consisting of II factors, IIs with deceased spouse, bereavement coping self-efficacy, social support, interaction with other widow(er)s, pre-death communication for survivorship, as well as demographic characteristics. The second study, a follow-up to the initial study, included a sample of 75 widows/widowers who completed a revised version of the Adjustment Survey. Revisions to the survey consisted of contextualizing the II measurement tool to reflect more direct association with spousal bereavement. Findings of the first study unearthed an indirect relationship between psychosocial adjustment to spousal bereavement and reports of IIs with the deceased spouse. Participants reporting more frequent occurrence of IIs with the deceased spouse reported lower levels of adjustment. Findings confirmed a direct relationship between bereavement coping self-efficacy and psychosocial adjustment to spousal bereavement. These findings indicate that internal phenomena, namely imagined interaction and self-efficacy, make significant contributions to processing spousal bereavement. The nature of the association between IIs and the adjustment process was further explored in a follow-up investigation. The second study was conducted to explore the strength of the relationship between global psychosocial adjustment and II factors more specifically reflecting the nature of spousal bereavement. Study 2 results support the first study in that IIs with the deceased spouse again were found to share an indirect relationship with global adjustment. II valence also emerged as a significant, negatively-related factor in global adjustment. II self-understanding, which also shared an indirect relationship with adjustment, began to approach traditional significance as well. Overall findings confirm that intrapersonal phenomena contribute to the adjustment process in spousal bereavement.

This study examines the rhetorical choices made in public addresses by members of the contemporary conservative movement in the United States during the 1990s. The contemporary conservative movement in this instance is defined as a post World War II phenomenon. Specifically, it is argued that the popular notion of a unified conservative ascendence in America is but an illusion. Rather, two distinct tribes of conservatives, the economic and the traditional conservative, participate in a rhetorical homology that serves to hide significant ontological differences beneath the dialectical God terms freedom and order. Additionally, the charismatic nature of the term freedom authorizes allegiance to several abstract policy positions for differing reasons. It is only when the abstract is offered as concrete policy proposal that each wing of the movement is confronted with the gap between their core beliefs and those held by their ally. Because of the transcendence achieved in their discourse, conservatives are able to continually win election while experiencing policy defeat. Several implications for the future of conservatism in particular and political movements in general are asserted in the conclusion.

This study uses Mikhail Bakhtin's chronotope, which is the informing principle of one's experience of space and time, to explore different relations among space, time, actors, and audience in medieval theatre. Relations between the material and spiritual worlds as understood in the Middle Ages are considered in the context of relations between performers and audience members with two goals. First, I explore how the ontological status of the metaworld created through performance changed in the context of specific chronotopes. Second, I explore how diverse religious discourses affected medieval modes of representation. This study posits three chronotopes of performance informing medieval theatrical experience. In the sacramental chronotope, disciplined bodies moved through spiritual geographies in Latin liturgical dramas to bring participants into contact with an ontologically superior divine world. The consubstantial chronotope operated from an ontology of self-sufficiency locating power in the individual's body rather than in a superior being. Within the consubstantial chronotope, performance, and representation more generally, was understood as a tool for the contemplation of ideas rather than as a vehicle for bringing performers into contact with an ontologically substantive world. The transubstantial chronotope works within an ontology of community that constructs performances as sites of cultural contestation and engagement. The communal mystery plays performed on Corpus Christi day in medieval England created a space and time for communicative bodies to tell shared narratives in a ritual effort to strengthen, purify, and heal souls. Performance within the transubstantial chronotope was uniquely open to metalinguistic and dialogic play, allowing the imaginative metaworld of the performance to function as innerly persuasive discourse possessing its own ontological weight and agency. Having explored these three chronotopes, this study examines the heterochronotopic quality of medieval English morality plays. I conclude with an analysis of a recent production of the Chester mystery cycle, Yimmimingaliso: The Mysteries. Using a variety of different languages in performance, as well as different languages of performance, this production evoked something of the transubstantial chronotope of medieval England.

This work seeks to define, explain, and place into historical and social context the phenomena of Christian Repertory Theater (CRT). It does so by examining three CRT troupes: Acts 2 from Nashville, TN, sponsored by Two Rivers Baptist Church; The Company from Fort Worth, TX, sponsored by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Gen X from Clinton, MS, which operated independent of external support . Ethnographic fieldwork was the primary vehicle of information-gathering in this case study analysis. The author experienced each group as either a participant-observer, observer, and/or interviewer. CRT was ultimately defined as an activity wherein a constituted group performs short, primarily dramatic and versatile performances within the context of larger worship services. The group also trains and ministers to its own members while maintaining an active performance schedule. CRT is classified as both a performance troupe and a ministry team. CRT is an active movement primarily within the Southern Baptist Convention where thirty-two states have annual drama festivals/workshops, there is an annual national meeting, and a decanal celebration. Churches and religious organizations are utilizing the dramatic arts in a variety of forms on a more frequent basis, and CRT is a part of that movement. CRT struggles with its dual functions of ministry and performance, walking the line between self-glorification and humble ministry. A third, less vital, function is the training of the group members. The survival of a troupe rests largely with a driving force internal or external to it which provides both vision and leadership. Performance styles for the groups vary, but the one consistency is the presence of "straight drama" in which the performers fully embody characters and the audience suspends their disbelief. Further, CRT contends with the impression of frivolity as it does not contain the inherent gravity of more fully-developed and technical main-stage plays. CRT fills an important role both for its practitioners and the members of the churches and groups for whom they perform. The art form presents religious truth in a unique manner and provides an opportunity for growth and ministry to the members themselves.

In this study, I describe and analyze the masculinities constructed in four performance art monologues staged in the US on Broadway. I examined Whoopi Goldbergs 1984 performance Whoopi Goldberg Live, Lily Tomlins 1987 performance in Jane Wagners The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Eric Bogosians 1990 performance Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and John Leguizamos 1998 performance Freak: A Semi-Demi-Quasi-Pseudo Autobiography. My method of analysis is a critical interpretation incorporating the lenses of Robert Connell and Victor Seidler. It is grounded in a social-cultural perspective using Arthur W. Franks sociology of the body. By means of Connell, Seidler, and Franks theories, I conceptualize human behavior, gender in particular, in light of the social signs and codes, roles, and identities, that the performers bodies represent. The shows advance social critiques to their audience while also meeting the expectations of the popular marketplace by incorporating representational and presentational aesthetics. By evaluating and reconceiving the constructed nature of the self in and by means of performance, the performances advance a praxis. In light of my interest, they serve as a model for masculinities, as everyday actors, might (re-)conceive of and construct their lives, identities, and relationships. This study contributes to the growing literature and discourses concerned with representations of the male body and masculinities, particularly in live performance. In particular, this study offers an analysis of performance art monologues presented to the mainstream audiences that tend to frequent Broadway shows and that focus on diverse masculinities.