Skip to content
University of Maryland LibrariesDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    The Textualization of Pat Tillman: Understanding the Relationships Between Person, Discourse, and Ideology

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Herbig_umd_0117E_11935.pdf (601.1Kb)
    No. of downloads: 2551

    Date
    2011
    Author
    Herbig, Arthur William
    Advisor
    Gaines, Robert N
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    This project is a critical examination of the ways in which the life and death of Pat Tillman were shaped into a discursive <italic>Pat Tillman</italic>. This is not a project that examines the life led by the person Pat Tillman. The discursive <italic>Pat Tillman</italic> can be found in the pages of magazines, on television, invoked by politicians, and even memorialized in song. It is <italic>Pat Tillman</italic>, the discursive creation, that is my focus. In this project I take for granted that Pat Tillman only existed in places like the pages of books or on film. What is not lost on me and should not be lost on the reader of this project is my own participation in this process. With this project I have entered into the very discourses that I seek to critique. This is an analysis of the existence of a <italic>Pat Tillman</italic> that many people still know and the ideas that help shape how that existence is communicated. My critique focuses on the existence of a discursive <italic>Pat Tillman</italic> as a rhetorical phenomenon, drawing upon scholarship that can inform an understanding of how the life of Pat Tillman became the material for public discourse. My analysis interconnects Michel Foucault's (1972) work on knowledge and discourse with Michael Calvin McGee (1990) referred to as rhetorical fragments, in order to provide a foundation for understanding the discursive existence of <italic>Pat Tillman</italic>. Using how discourse producer connected various facts, stories, and images with conceptions of heroism, masculinity, and the American Dream, I reveal how the life and death of Pat Tillman was used as the material to represent political and cultural positions that exist external to that life. Through an analysis of the various news reports, books, documentaries, blogs, and other mediated texts that were produced in response to the life and death of Pat Tillman, this study presents a clearer picture of what is meant by "fragmentation" in critical analysis.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1903/11468
    Collections
    • Communication Theses and Dissertations
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DRUMCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister
    Pages
    About DRUMAbout Download Statistics

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility