The full text of the speech given by President Barack Hussein Obama in Chicago after he won a second term in office as US President has been broken into its minimal communicative speech acts. This strategy has been used to analyse and understand how the whole speech is consistent with the cooperative maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relation and…

Colleges and universities currently face challenges in the form of calls for increased accountability, clear economic outcomes and return on investments in education. These challenges emanate from many sectors, including students and families, employers in industry, and state and federal governments. The language of these calls for accountability…

This article presents a discourse analysis of President Barack Obama's 2011 State of the Union Address. Fredric Jameson's concepts of cognitive mapping, cultural revolution, and the unconscious are employed to examine the president's vision of educational and economic transformation. Ultimately, it is argued this vision evokes a world in which…

Most every writing teacher can relate to the curse of reading yet another incoherent essay, the contents of which resemble an unorganized junk drawer of thoughts. Such essays cry out for a main idea. The remedy is a thesis, and teachers rightly take pains to help students discover this. Yet in spite of this, writing teachers ought to bear in mind…

This essay examines women's commencement addresses presented from 1910 to 1915 at Vassar College. These addresses are significant because they reveal the students' rhetorical education and the "available means" upon which these women drew in developing a public voice. By prompting reflection and the potential for change, the commencement…

Recently, genre studies have become increasingly important in the area of rhetorical criticism. This method of analysis is based on the assumption that rhetorics vary situationally, like situations will produce like rhetorics, antecedent rhetorical events significantly affect the creative product, and analogy is more important than anomaly when…

Offers theoretical distinctions among the terms sacred, myth, ideology, and political myth. Analyzes representative speeches and debates on imperialism in the United States and Great Britain and contends that the distinction between the two rhetorical typologies concurrently existing in each nation account for the dominance of imperialist rhetoric…

Critical discourse is best understood when its logical features are identified. An examination of the basic elements and modes of rhetorical criticism (a form of critical discourse) produces a finite set of options for the critic, thus enabling him to develop a system of alternatives in his critical efforts. For example, by selecting from among…

This study sought to discover the extent of the parallel between the processes of curriculum evaluation and literary criticism in order to clarify the evaluation process. A consideration of both literatures confirmed the presence of the analogy and allowed the development of a concept of descriptive validity as well as the identification of three…

Emphasizes the complementary nature of the work of the rhetorical historian and the rhetorical critic. (MH)

Argues that Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech of 1775 lacks textual authenticity and discusses how and why a text was created to replace the oral tradition of "Liberty or Death" and why its influence has continued for two hundred years. (MH)

Examines three rhetorical techniques that Franklin D. Roosevelt used in his "First Inaugural Address" to announce and implement his New Deal. The various speech drafts examined reveal that he purposefully used military metaphor, the scapegoat, and the carrot-and-stick approach to accomplish certain persuasive goals. (JMF)

Analyzes the rhetorical practices and the theoretical writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Concludes that he regarded orations as practical instruments and that the judgment that he was disinterested in persuasion is untenable. (JMF)

Kenneth Burke's Dramatistic Pentad is an analytical device intended to be used by critics to discover the roots of motivation for particular acts. The five elements of the pentad are the scene, act, agent, agency, and purpose. Using the Burkean Pentad, this symposium presents the following five analyses of Watergate: "Scenic Responsibility:…

The most widespread and effective thought-control games, many of which will be used in the 1984 presidential campaign, are described, e.g., the "be glad you're unhappy" game and the games of understatement and overkill. (RM)