Rhetoric

The commodification of the female body is a vital concern that can be seen throughout history from the rhetoric consumed by societies. This thesis will give a rhetorical analysis of the websites of the milk banks of Prolacta Bioscience, Medolac, and The Human Milk Banking Association of North America. This will demonstrate how commodification, erasure, and disembodiment occurs to the mothers who donate their milk. I will examine how each organization offers up mothers, their milk, and infants as complete separate entities. My argument will propose a new metaphor I will define as the unfiltered raw public. I will demonstrate how this metaphor might better serve to restructure rhetoric to tether the mothers back to their bodies more sustainably for a cyborg future. The unfiltered raw public seeks to shift future discourse to reflect one more inclusive to difference rather than a future that commodifies the female body.

This thesis examines contemporary African-American church rhetoric within the Protestant evangelical tradition, focusing specifically on two influential preachers, one past and one present: Thomas Adams (1583-1652) and Thomas Dexter Jakes, also known as T.D. Jakes. I analyze sermons by both men to show common features in their strategic use of religious rhetoric. In particular, I focus on their organization of entire sermons around a guiding metaphor and on their creative use of references to various kinds of non-religious experiences to reach their targeted audience. Also, because this comparison has not been made before, I seek to discover the influential impact of early modern religious rhetoric on contemporary religious rhetoric in the church and its limitations. But finally, I argue that while Adams sees spiritual rebirth as the way to heaven, Jakes treats it as the beginning of a new life on earth.

This thesis examines Indigenous environmental justice discourse within the context of the U.S. carceral settler-state to advance a conceptual framework I name discursive frontierism. I use rhetorical analysis informed by critical and cultural theory to help make visual—and visible—the ways in which colonial frontierism operates in discursive spaces. I analyze the language of the carceral settler-state, including embodiment and affect as communicative language, as well as the language of Indigenous and Indigenous-led resistance. In the first half of the thesis, I argue that the language of the settler-state discursively constitutes Indigenous peoples as criminals and colonial subjects in order to justify their removal. The second half of this analysis finds the language of Indigenous land and water protectors to model and declare “survivance”—an active and continuing “sense of presence over absence” that both renounces dominance and victimry, and preserves traditional knowledge systems and ancestral connections (Vizenor 2018). I conclude that discursive iterations of Indigenous survivance meaningfully thwart the U.S. state’s efforts to advance occupation of discursive territory and further settle the discursive frontier.

While published current literature reveals how the inanimate figure, the action given by manipulation, and the voice performance are perceived by the audience, it does not show how the puppet functions as argument. This thesis seeks to determine if one dramatic form, the puppet play, "The Adventures of Peer Gynt" is an effective forum for argument. "The Adventures of Peer Gynt" is analyzed according to Walter Fisher and Richard Filloy's critical methodology for examining dramatic texts. This analysis reveals that Peer Gynt functions as an effective form of argument. The play argues, through the character of Peer Gynt, that we have choices when confronted with evil, either to follow evil or stay true to our good self. The play teaches us, but children especially, that one must develop the discernment to go beneath the exterior finish to the underlying substance.

As the basis for major religions widely practiced in western cultures, the Pentateuch also has deeply influenced the structure of these societies. A short historical review demonstrates the secondary status women occupy in western cultures. This study focuses on uncovering the presumed existence of embedded patriarchal ideology within the Pentateuch's text. For the purpose of this study, the researcher draws on the Pentateuch as it appears in the King James Version of the Bible. By conducting an ideological rhetorical analysis of this text, this examination uncovers elements characteristic to patriarchal rhetoric promoting men's superiority and ideals as well as constricting and channeling women's identities. This ideology has contributed to depreciating women's status in western cultures, and awareness of its existence might help women in their struggle for equality.

This thesis provides a rhetorical analysis of the Western representation of the Kosovo conflict and its resolution in the year 1999. By reviewing political, scholarly and media rhetoric, the thesis examines how the dominant narrative of "genocide in Kosovo" was created in Western discourse, arguing that it gained its persuasive force from the legacy of the collective memory of the Holocaust. Using the framework of Kenneth Burke's theory of Dramatism and Walter Fisher's theory of the narrative paradigm, this thesis aims to understand how language, analogy and collective memory function in rhetoric to shape audience perceptions and guide political and military action. The study illustrates the mechanics of the operating rhetoric by analyzing two primary sources, the rhetoric of U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The purpose of this study was to examine the persistence of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students at a large multi-campus community college/baccalaureate degree-granting institution in South Florida. The study aimed to determine whether there was a relationship among a specific set of independent variables, background and defining variables (age, enrollment status, prior college education, gender, race, ethnicity, and marital status), academic integration variables (academic goal and first semester GPA), social integration variables (faculty interaction, college facilities and grounds, sense of community, college services, and student life), and environmental variables (family responsibilities, employment status, outside encouragement, and financial aid) and the dependent variable, EAP student persistence. The variables were extrapolated both from student academic transcripts and from an adapted version of the State University of New York (SUNY) Student Opinion Survey-Form A (ACT, 2006). T test and chi square analyses were performed. No relationship was found between any of the independent variables and the dependent variable. The thirteen respondents had high first semester GPA, favorable environmental support, and were socially integrated into the institution.