pdillon's analysis [29 articles]

Abstract

Using Kenneth Burke's pentadic method of criticism, a study of four modern compositions based on the legend of John Henry reveals modern white anxietiesambivalent attitudes toward class, race, and agency that leave modern white performers far less certain than their folk precursors about the nature of the world and of heroism. While the composers of modern John Henry songs emulate the traditional ballad's populist idealism, their compositions betray a doubleness of mind that vacillates between celebrating John Henry as an agent ...

Abstract

This research explored National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise owner Mark Cuban's dissent expressions posted on his blog. Using grounded theory and constant comparative methodology (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) of 30 blog entries posted on Cuban's site from March 16, 2004, through July 20, 2007, was conducted. Analysis revealed that Cuban's blog functioned to promote change within the NBA and that his dissent expressions were overwhelmingly confirmed by blog readers. The findings of the study suggest that blogs provide a rich medium ...

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This article interrogates the shared public efforts of athletes, sports leagues, and media myth-makers to reshape America's relationship with sport as a contemporary myth system in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A rhetorical analysis of several articles printed directly after the attacks reveals that the periodicals' coverage bolstered sport's mythic function in significant ways. These findings point to the role mediated messages continue to play in the reinforcement of contemporary American myths and underscore the extent to which enthusiasts ...

Abstract

This essay explores relationships between southern black queer experience, grassroots activism, and the literacies of southern culture through a case study of Ella Mosley, a 56-year-old black transgender woman activist living in the South. Out of the misuses of literacythe ways oppressive agents appropriate literacy to the detriment of an individual or communitymanifests a mandate and an occasion for social action, identity formation, and affirmation. The rhetorical strategies employed in Mosley's activism are linked to her literacies of southern culture and ...

Abstract

The noted novelist Walker Percy (19161990) endured the suicides of his grandfather, father, and mother during his childhood. His cousin William Alexander Percy (18851942) adopted Walker and his two brothers following those tragedies. Uncle Will took great interest in the education of his adoptive sons. Walker in particular benefited from this; later in life, Walker and his good boyhood friend, Shelby Foote, who himself was to gain fame as a Civil War historian, speculated that Will Percy's influence played a major ...

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This essay examines the differences in coverage of the Afghanistan and the Second Persian Gulf War within the <i>Toronto Star, Winnipeg Free Press,</i> and <i>Vancouver Sun</i>. I examine Robert M. Entman's model by exploring the role foreign news outlets play in the dissemination of American foreign policy frames across the globe. In cases where the frame offered by the White House is accepted by the foreign leaders, journalists extend and enhance it, but in instances where there is disagreement with the ...

Abstract

Drawing from the rhetoric emanating from those involved with the Duke Lacrosse rape case, this essay argues that the case was dominated by a scene-act ratio. The analysis demonstrates how the rhetorical framing of social hierarchical issues, left unchecked, led to tensions between members of a community and its institutions. Finally, the paper demonstrates how both sides in the case employed a tragic frame to purify themselves of guilt in the resulting social drama and suggests how Burke's notion of the ...

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This essay examines the discourse of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, two of the most prominent political comedians in America. Kenneth Burke's theories of perspective by incongruity and the comic frame provide a general structure for surveying Stewart and Colbert's comic strategies on their nightly television shows, and their roles across various media events. Stewart and Colbert use three rhetorical strategies, in particular, to critically reframe American political discourses: (a) parodic polyglossia; (b) satirical specificity; and (c) contextual clash. By illustrating ...

Abstract

Forty-one years after the original publication of Michael Osborn's Archetypal Metaphor: The Light-Dark Family, Jerold Hale sponsored a panel at the Southern Communication Association honoring Osborn's work. For my part, I was drawn to the idea of employing archetypal metaphor as the central feature in an act of criticism. In this essay, which grew out of my presentation on that panel, I argue that a significant portion of the potency of Barack Obama's presidential campaign derives from the confluence of trajectories ...

Abstract

This essay summarizes and synthesizes the author's previously published work on rhetorical metaphor and depiction and relates personal stories behind this research. The essay also explores points of connection that tie this research together into an oeuvre. These points of connection trace a trajectory from the initial microscopic view of metaphor to the later panoramic view of functions sketched in the rhetorical depiction essay. The present essay pinpoints a vital over-statement in the original formulation of archetypal metaphor, the claim that ...

Abstract

We argue that the HBO series <i>Deadwood</i> reflects post-9/11 angst regarding the domestic and international scenes by simultaneously exploiting and subverting the narrative comfort and cathartic closure characteristic of the traditional American Western. In doing so, we contend, <i>Deadwood</i> functions as a ritual of disquiet that poses three key challenges to the conventions of the American monomythic formula that informs the traditional Western genre. First, there is no Edenic community to redeem. Second, the morality, practicality, and psychological satisfaction associated with ...

Abstract

Under the threat of obesity-related legal claims, food industry advocates have responded with rhetorical efforts to articulate obesity to a body politics of personal responsibility. This article extends Laclau and Mouffe's (1985) theory of articulation to Foucault's (1977) spectacle of the scaffold to critique verbal and visual articulatory efforts that position personal responsibility alongside social values such as common sense and consumer choice and against a shamed fat body. The article offers an extended critique of publicity campaigns by the Center ...

Abstract

An examination of the rhetoric of the Court's majority opinion in Roe v. Wade shows that, in contrast to the public meaning of Roe's ruling as a second wave feminist victory, Roe's rhetoric denied women agency and undermined their judgments and their voices. This study demonstrates how the community of meaning endorsed through Roe's rhetoricspecifically the rhetorical constructs of the doctor knows best and the woman-as-patientadvanced traditional ideas about women and provided a host of warrants for future judges and legislatures ...

Abstract

This essay forwards epic form as a way to better understand King's last speech,I've Been to the MountaintopIt demonstrates the way King uses epic frames to resonate with American and Christian epic narratives and to constitute the civil rights struggle as a new epic, and himself as an epic hero. King uses the epic frame to persuade and to encourage his audience, and to frame his controversial decisions within a wider context. This functions to encourage his audience to persevere and ...

Abstract

This paper investigates a controversy between the U.S. Navy and rural North Carolinians in which Navy officials tried to procure local property for a Navy training facility or outlying landing field (OLF). Analysis suggests that locals who defined themselves as patriotic, common sense agents, and the scene as heritage, built a more credible connection to a patriotic American <span>ethos</span> than did the rhetoric of the Navy, which defined the OLF debate primarily as part of the war on terrorism. The locals' ...

Abstract

In few circumstances are news media more powerful than during crisis events. The purpose of this research was to document the discursive construction of individuals who experienced hurricane Katrina in post-Katrina print news coverage. Informed by a social constructionist perspective, this critical discourse analysis highlights the power of news media to shape cultural understanding of the citizens involved and, consequently, the crisis event itself. The study found that post-Katrina news depictions relied on specific rhetorical devices and semantic strategies, as well ...

Abstract

The devastating event that was hurricane Katrina is a fertile field for risk and crisis communication scholars. As a case study in failed risk communication by the City of New Orleans, this paper explores the inadequacies of the risk communication based upon Lundgren and McMakin (2004) as augmented by Rowan's (1991) rhetorical perspective. The analysis concludes that while the care communication was adequate, inadequate clarity, insufficient credibility, and a failure to properly adapt to critical audiences resulted in a failure of ...

Abstract

Despite the fact that most Mississippians living on the gulf coast knew about the approach of Hurricane Katrina and had adequate time to evacuate, only one-third of that population left. Almost two-thirds of those who stayed indicated that they did so because they did not think the storm would be that bad (Harvard, 2006). Emergency risk messages that appeared in the most popular newspaper in the region attempted to communicate the grave danger of this massive storm. Unfortunately, these messages often ...

Abstract

Among critics who work from a dramatic or dramatistic perspective, our field seems to be at odds over what generic label or labels to use for discourse that is other, or mainly other, than comic or burlesque. For quite a long time, the name tragic was the stated or implied choice for much, or at least some, of that rhetoric. Some recent scholars are now describing such address as melodramatic. Their reasons for doing so carry some weight. This essay, however, ...

Abstract

Although narrative is established as a critical part of human communication, recent typologies of apologia have neglected to account for its prominence. In this essay, I argue that narrative is not just a decorative strategy but rather an essential component within successful apologia when a negative action cannot be denied outright. Well-designed narratives are central to effective apologia statements for several reasons: First, humans are storytellers by nature; second, narratives are uniquely suited to providing explanations for behavior; and third, the ...

Abstract

Through a rhetorical analysis of three conservative Web sites, this essay explores how media aesthetics relate to political struggle, particularly within today's information economy. A Burkean reading reveals how selected sites exploit the digital aesthetic to promote identification; and, following the historical analogue of yellow journalism, position their users as activists against a dominant liberal media. Yet, by presenting themselves as yellow activists, conservatives risk alienating traditionalist patrons who value truth and authority. The essay considers how David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com promotes ...

Abstract

Conspiracy on television is a distinct genre with heuristic value that fulfills important social-psychological functions for viewers. As such, this essay suggests that generic criticism can be productively expanded to focus on function rather than to be defined by recurring situation. This essay illustrates how conspiracy discourse works to articulate ideas about identity and reality in contemporary society. In addition to identifying the relationship between recurring situation and generic elements, this essay centers on the functions of the conspiracy genre that ...

Abstract

Analysis of 70 prime-time hours of host and reporter commentary in NBC's 2004 Athens Summer Olympic telecast was undertaken to determine if announcer commentary in the sports of gymnastics, track and field, swimming, and diving each contained gender biases. Results indicated that gymnastics was the most gender-marked of the four major Olympic sports, with men and women athletes being covered in starkly different ways. NBC's diving coverage also was found to contain differential treatment of men and women athletes, while track ...

Abstract

The shift from modernity to postmodernity reflects a fundamental restructuring of social and cultural life. At such dizzying and disorienting moments of social change, culture's inhabitants seek out new cultural art formsforms that offer symbolic resources for negotiating the contours of the emerging social landscape. This essay contends that Mel Brooks's 1987 film <span class="roman">Spaceballs</span> constituted an innovative form of storytelling known as parodic tourism. As rhetorical analysis demonstrates, by drawing upon the cultural memory of viewers through intertextual allusions, the ...

Abstract

This essay explores the ways that American Indians in the late nineteenth century enacted collective memories of the Indian Removal Act (1830) in their dissenting responses to the General Allotment, or Dawes, Act (1887). I argue that these collective memories served as a means for American Indians to unmask the paternal benevolence associated with the Dawes Act, while simultaneously aiding them in repositioning U.S. and Native identities. Such resistance was supported by forging connections between the removal and allotment policies. This ...

Abstract

Suburban sprawl has led to an array of problems including dependency on automobiles, neglect of cities, social stratification, and isolation. The increasingly popular movement known as new urbanism defines itself in opposition to suburban sprawl. It claims to recapture virtues of traditional neighborhood design in an attempt to create a built environment that reflectsand sometimes subvertspopular cultural premises. This essay examines the efforts of new urbanists to sell their ideas to consumers. The refutative enthymeme is a device often used to ...

Abstract

This essay examines the tension between motives for peace and motives for war in Abraham Lincoln's discourse on the eve of the Civil War, concluding that his rhetoric demonstrates the depth of Kenneth Burke's notion of the victimage ritual. At a surface level, Lincoln's rhetoric exhibits a desire for healing and conciliation. However, three antithetical pairs of underlying motives<span class="roman">Union</span> and <span class="roman">States;</span> <span class="roman">we</span> and <span class="roman">they;</span> <span class="roman">defense</span> and <span class="roman">aggression</span>disguise a dangerous polarizing dichotomy between North and South, ...

Abstract

On August 5, 1980, Ronald Reagan spoke to the National Urban League as a political candidate and used a conversation metaphor to structure his speech. However, while Reagan masterfully built common ground and framed the media's interpretation of the event, I critique the temptation to laud this trope, with its emphasis on relational concerns, informal participative structures over clearly outlined policy discussions, and more conversation over clear methods for accountability and issue resolution, as the ideal means for minority members to ...

Abstract

This essay argues that the use of mytho-historic allusions may contribute to the normalization of ethnic violence in that these discourses can mask modern issues both for the audience directly addressed as well as for a larger international community that might be compelled to intervene in the early stages of such violence. I assert that at least a part of the reason that ethnic violence was normalized in the former Yugoslavia was due to the mythic constitutive appeals and rhetorical strategies ...