This study seeks to understand public and institutional uptake of the public hearing genre. More specifically, this study examines how public hearing genre conventions are established and how those conventions inform and often govern tensions that arise in public discourse about a contested environmental project. In my research, I analyzed a corpus of public comments from two Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) 401 Water Quality Certification public hearings that were held in August 2017 and hosted by Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ). Additionally, I conducted interviews with 13 community members and two state representatives who spoke at one of the two hearings. This approach led me to several important findings. Most significantly, I found that while many community members understood VA DEQ's stated purpose of the public hearings, they prepared comments that spoke to an entirely different purpose because they were responding to a different kind of problem than that of VA DEQ. This finding is crucial to understanding the other tensions and ideas of consensus that occur among citizens and VA DEQ representatives since the kind of problem informs the uptake of the public hearing and the overall interpretation of the public hearing genre. My dissertation thus argues that there are ways we might reimagine ideas of effectiveness, consensus, and the public hearing genre, specifically in the case of the 401 Public Hearings and more generally in other public hearings where public discourses center on a contested environmental project like the MVP. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study examines the role and effect of public hearings and the tensions that sometimes arise within them. More specifically, I analyze transcripts from the two 401 Water Quality public hearings about the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). These hearings occurred in August 2017 and were hosted by Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ). Additionally, I conducted interviews with 13 community members and 2 state representatives who spoke at one of the two hearings. This approach led me to several important findings. Most significantly, I found that while many community members understood VA DEQ's stated purpose of the public hearings, they prepared comments that spoke to an entirely different purpose because they were responding to a different kind of problem than that of VA DEQ. This finding is crucial to understanding the other tensions and ideas of consensus that occur among citizens and VA DEQ representatives since the kind of problem informs how people prepare for and engage with the public hearing and the overall interpretation of the public hearing as a genre. My dissertation thus argues that there are ways we might reimagine ideas of effectiveness, consensus, and the public hearing genre, specifically in the case of the 401 Public Hearings and more generally in other public hearings where public discourses center on a contested environmental project like the MVP.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/112787 |
| Date | 10 June 2021 |
| Creators | Scarff, Kelly |
| Contributors | English, Pender, Kelly Elizabeth, Lindgren, Chris A., Mueller, Derek, Commer, Carolyn |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Coverage | Virginia, United States |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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