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Debating Their Beliefs to Victory: How the Beliefs of Presidential Candidates Transform the Rhetoric Used in Presidential Debates

As presidential candidates rhetorically articulate their beliefs during presidential debates, they reveal a lot about their underlying ideological beliefs. These beliefs were examined through the lens of an established methodology called the Operational Code, which uses a program to decipher a candidate's beliefs through what they say in debate transcripts. In this study, the belief trends of the Operational Codes of all presidential candidates from 1976-2012 were examined through a rhetorical lens, and it was found that rhetoric was indeed the driving force for the apparent changes in Operational Code beliefs. These changes were examined on a greater level of detail through four case studies, which illustrated the changes in Operational Code beliefs and rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the incumbent presidential candidates, the 2004 election, and lastly, with the independent presidential candidates.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-2589
Date01 May 2014
CreatorsMarks, Aubrey
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceHIM 1990-2015

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