Haole is a contested, multi-faceted word in Hawaii. It generally means “foreigner,” or “white person.” It is used to refer to both tourists, and haoles like me, or those who are born and raised in Hawaii. In either case, it is always negative, referring to something “other” and really, colonial. Paraphrasing rhetorician Kenneth Burke, this thesis analyzes how this word “works in the world,” and from there, explores how identity, culture, and belonging are constructed through language. The essential questions become: are culture and identity constructed and performed, through language, tradition, and cultural engagement? Or is some blood content or ethnicity warranted to claim cultural belonging, and in this case, a Hawaiian identity? The method for this research began with seven interviews with people from Hawaii—a mix of haoles, hapa (mixed race) people, and ethnic Hawaiians—followed by the analyzing of these interviews, and ending with my personal engagement with these findings autoethnographically. Writing this thesis has changed how I see my own identity in Hawaii. I have used this autoethnographic method to share this transformation, explore it, and through it, mimic the in-flux nature of identity construction and language at large. I see this thesis as fluid and subject to change; as a jumping off point for future research on an otherwise “silent” topic, silent in that people in Hawaii do not openly discuss this issue; as the beginning of a necessary dialogue on what it means to be haole, what it means to be Hawaiian, and the nature of identity and cultural construction at large.

On the 14th of July 1969 president Richard Nixon informed the United States Congress, how drugs had become a serious threat to the nation’s wellbeing. He called for a new drug policy that would be applied to both state and federal levels. This would be the start of a political campaign that has resulted in new legislation, mass incarceration and in recent year an overwhelming criticism. This essay intends to review the newspaper New York Times reporting of this political campaign. The purpose is to study the role of language in the political discourse, this through a rhetorical analysis. The thesis intends to identify the discursive process framed by the selected news articles at hand. How the magazine’s approach has changed in 20 years will not only be examined by its explicit reporting, but also through the shaping and reflecting function of language. In my analysis, I identify key themes in the general metaphorics and a reproduction of a certain role distribution that leaves the reader with a certain understanding of its contemporary time. I have also come to the conclusion that the idea of American identity is central to the war on drugs as a linguistic domain. / I ett meddelande till den amerikanska kongressen den 14 juli 1969, informerade den dåvarande presidenten Richard Nixon om hur drogerna utgjorde ett allvarligt hot mot landets välmående. Han efterlyste en ny drogpolitik som skulle gälla på både delstatlig och federal nivå. Detta blev starten på en politisk kampanj som resulterade i ny lagstiftning, massfängslande och på senare år en överväldigande kritik. Jag har i denna uppsats för avsikt att granska tidningen The New York Times rapportering av denna politiska kampanj. Syftet är att studera språkets roll i den politiska diskursen genom en retorisk analys. Jag har för avsikt att kartlägga de diskursiva processer som de valda nyhetsartiklarna ramar in. Hur tidningens förhållningssätt från har förändrats under drygt 20 år kommer inte bara granskas genom den explicita rapporteringen, utan också genom språkets formande och speglande roll. I min analys identifierar jag nyckelteman i den övergripande metaforiken och hur en reproduktion av en viss rollfördelning lämnar läsaren med viss förståelse av sin samtid. Jag har även nått slutsatsen att idén om den amerikanska identiteten är central för kriget mot droger som språklig domän.

Typically, when considering Adolf Hitler, we see him in one of two ways: A parodied figure or a monolithic figure of power. I argue that instead of only viewing images of Hitler he wanted us to see, we should expand our view and overall consideration of images he did not want his audiences to bear witness. By examining a collection of photographs that Hitler censored from his audiences, I question what remains hidden about Hitler’s image when we are constantly shown widely circulated images of Hitler. To satisfy this inquiry, I utilize rhetorics of display to argue that when we analyze and include these hidden images into the Hitlerian visual discourse, we further complicate and disrupt the Hitler Myth. This study aims to contribute to recent scholarship that aims to learn more about the “hidden” Hitler as well as to rhetorical studies of display.

The intention of this essay is to examine how the political commentators from three different kinds of media (evening, morning, public service) portray the party leaders after the election of 2018 in Sweden. My first specific research task is to analyze how the commentators portray the party leaders according to Kenneth Burke´s pentadic analysis. Hereafter, I aim to identify the intended audience that the commentator could have in mind. For this question it is important to analyze how they use language as a way to depict the political reality. The theoretical framework for this essay is based on Burke´s dramatism, terministic screens and identification, and Edwin Black´s second persona. The result shows that two of the commentators have fairly the same way to present the narrative of the dramatic pentad. They frequently highlight the purpose of the way the party leaders handle the situation. The other commentator, from the evening paper, strongly emphazises the lack of action from the politicians after the election. All commentators use a language that mostly depicts the politics as a game or strategy – but the tone differ from accusatory to understanding towards the party leaders. The analysis shows that the overall intended audience probably is quite politically interested, but from different political parties and ideologies.

Although philosopher Robert Solomon and rhetorician Kenneth Burke wrote in isolation from one another, they discuss similar concepts and ideas. Since its introduction in Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives, identification has always been important to rhetorical theory, and recent studies in emotion, such as Solomon's, provide new insight into modes of identification—that human beings can identify with one another on an emotional level. This paper places Solomon and Burke in conversation with one another, arguing that both terministic screens and emotions are ways of seeing, acting, engaging, and judging. Hence, terministic screens and emotions affect ethos, or character, both in a specific moment and over periods of time as they are cultivated through habit. Because emotions influence ethos, it is important for a speaker to cultivate the right emotions at the right time—Solomon's notion of emotional integrity. Emotional integrity facilitates Burkean identification between speaker and audience because it enables human beings to see the other as synecdochically related to themselves, a part of the whole. Hence, this paper ultimately argues that a speaker will improve his or her ethos by cultivating emotional integrity.