Communication
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Item A Rhetorical Criticism of Hillary Clinton in Political Satire and Political Parody(2021) Hannah-Prater, Kimberley Jacqueline; Parry-Giles, Shawn J; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Between the years of 1992 through 2016, Hillary Clinton was framed rhetorically by various forms of political humor, including political satire and political parody. These messages were disseminated across television and the Internet in ways that depicted Clinton as a “threat” to the myth of the cis-gendered, white male presidency. However, Clinton attempted to participate in mediated humor to blunt the negative characterizations of her in entertainment media. This dissertation examines how television humor and online platforms for humor contributed to the humorous, and often sexist, framing of “Hillary Clinton.” More specifically, this project analyzes how Hillary Clinton’s personality, character, political ambition, and gender identity were rhetorically framed in mediated humor and how these frames circulated widely across these texts. I propose the concepts of the political killjoy and comedic grandstanding as humor strategies that comedians used to depict Clinton and that Clinton used in turn to boost her own relatability. In Chapter 1, I explore how late-night shows, including Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, made arguments about Clinton’s political image as first lady, senator, secretary of state, and presidential candidate. I focus on television programs that implement political satire and/or political parody for at least part of their humor. In Chapter 2, I trace various forms of online political humor that were created during Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns. These texts include parody articles and humor videos on the Onion, videos created for Funny or Die, humor articles on College Humor, and Internet memes posted to Reddit and KnowYourMeme.com. While sexism was present in many of the television texts in this study, the Internet humor texts often circulated more vulgar and misogynistic frames about Hillary Clinton. And in Chapter 3, I analyze examples of Clinton’s appearances on televised and online humor, beginning in 1992 and continuing through her televised and online humor appearances during her own 2016 presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton participated in mediated political humor to portray her marriage as stable, project her knowledge about policy, and frame herself as self-deprecating, especially when selling books and reinforcing her electability as U.S. president.Item Boosting the Mythic American West and U.S. Woman Suffrage: Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain Women's Public Discourse at the Turn of the Twentieth Century(2013) Lewis, Tiffany; Maddux, Kristy L; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project examines how white women negotiated the mythic and gendered meanings of the American West between 1885 and 1935. Focusing on arguments made by women who were active in the public life of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain States, these analyses illustrate the ways the mythic West shaped the U.S. woman suffrage movement and how Western women simultaneously contributed to the meaning of the American West. Through four case studies, I examine the ways women drew on Western myths as they advocated for woman suffrage, participated in place-making the West, and navigated the gender ideals of their time. The first two case studies attend to the advocacy discourse of woman suffragists in the Pacific Northwest. Suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon championed woman suffrage by appropriating the frontier myth to show that by surviving the mythic trek West, Western women had proven their status as frontier heroines and earned their right to vote. Mountaineer suffragists in Washington climbed Mount Rainier for woman suffrage in 1909. By taking a "Votes for Women" pennant to the mountain summit, they made a political pilgrimage that appropriated the frontier myth and the turn-of-the-century meanings of mountain climbing and the wilderness for woman suffrage. The last two case studies examine the place-making discourse of women who lived in Rocky Mountain states that had already adopted woman suffrage. Grace Raymond Hebard, a Wyoming historian and community leader, participated in the pioneer reminiscing practices of marking historic sites. Hebard's commemorations drew on the agrarian myth and Wyoming woman suffrage to domesticate Wyoming's "Wild West" image and place-make Wyoming as settled, civilized, and progressive. When Jeannette Rankin was elected as Montana's U.S. Representative in 1916, she introduced herself to the nation by enacting her femininity, boosting Montana's exceptionalism, and drawing on the frontier myth to explain Western woman suffrage. As I conclude with an analysis of Henry Mayer's "Awakening" cartoon, I illustrate the ways place-based arguments for woman suffrage and the boosting of Western woman suffrage worked together to construct the meaning of the West as a place of gender equality in the early twentieth century.Item Crafting Queer Identity, Building Coalitions, and Envisioning Liberation at the Intersections: A Rhetorical Analysis of 1970s Lesbian-Feminist Discourse(2012) Samek, Alyssa A.; Parry-Giles, Shawn J.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines how lesbian-feminists navigated the competing pressures of identity politics and coalition politics and confronted compounding frustrations, divisions, and exclusionary practices throughout the 1970s. Specifically, the study attends to the ways lesbian-feminists rhetorically recalibrated their identities in and through coalitional relationships with such social movement communities as women's liberation, gay liberation, and anti-war activism. In the process, they were able to build coalitional relationships with activists from other movements while retaining a space for articulating and bolstering their lesbian-feminist identities. This study accordingly examines lesbian-feminist published writings and speeches given during conferences, marches, demonstrations, and political rallies between 1970 and 1980 to reveal how they crafted a space for lesbian-feminist politics, identity, and liberation from within coalitional relationships that also marginalized them. The project intersects the theories of public address, social movement rhetoric, intersectionality, identity politics, and coalition politics to examine the strategic interaction between coalition politics and identity politics in lesbian-feminist activism. In particular, recalibration allowed lesbian-feminists to strategically capitalize on intersectionality in order to negotiate the tension between identity creation and coalition formation. Using the rhetorical strategy of pivoting to feature certain aspects of their identities with the various coalitions in mind, lesbian-feminists increased their visibility. They did so not only for the sake of promoting shared political goals and legitimizing lesbian-feminism, but also to confront social movement members on issues of exclusion, homophobia, and sexism. As a result, lesbian-feminism came to hold a variety of meanings for women working in the second-wave women's liberation, gay liberation, and anti-war movements. At times, lesbian feminists upheld a separatist, vanguard ethic, which was defined in opposition to other identities and movements. Though empowering and celebrated by some as more ideologically pure, separatist identity formations remained highly contested at the margins of lesbian-feminist identity politics. With those margins clearly defined, lesbian-feminists strategically pivoted to enact political ideologies and preserve identity from within coalitional relationships. In the process, their discourse revealed a great deal about the relationship between identity politics and coalition politics in the context of U.S. social protest in the post-1960s era.