Browsing by Subject "Apologia"
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Item "That the Truth of Things May Be More Fully Known:" Understanding the Role of Rhetoric in Shaping, Resolving, and Remembering the Salem Witchcraft Crisis(2011-08-08) Lemley, LaurenThis project investigates how rhetorical texts influenced the witch trials that were held in Salem in 1691-1692, how rhetoric shaped the response to this event, and how rhetorical artifacts in the twentieth and twenty first centuries have shaped American public memory of the Salem witchcraft crisis. My analysis draws from three different chronological and rhetorical viewpoints. In Chapter II, I build upon work done by scholars such as McGee, White, and Charland in the area of constitutive rhetoric to address the question of how the witchcraft crisis was initiated and fueled rhetorically. Then, as my examination shifts to the rhetorical artifacts constructed immediately after the trials in Chapter III, I rely on the tradition of apologia, rooted in the ancient Greek understanding of stasis theory to understand how rhetorical elements were utilized by influential rhetors to craft a variety of different explanations for the crisis. And finally in Chapter IV, I draw from individuals such as Halbwachs, Kammen, Zelizer, and Bodnar, working in the cross-disciplinary field of public memory, to respond to the questions of how we remember the trials today and what impact these memories have on our understanding of the themes of witchcraft and witch hunting in contemporary American society. Therefore, this project uses the lens of rhetorical analysis to provide a method for examining and understanding how individuals, both in the seventeenth century and today, have engaged in the act of updating their reflections about this facet of American history.Item The aftermath of a deadly explosion: a rhetorical analysis of crisis communication as employed by British Petroleum and Phillips Petroleum(Texas Tech University, 2006-05) Maresh, Michelle Marie; Williams, David E.; Scholl, Juliann C.; Gring, Mark A.Using a rhetorical, public address approach to conducting a case study analysis, this study argues for the connection between rhetoric, specifically public address, and public relations. This study goes beyond seeking to understand the damage a crisis has caused and, rather, views the discourse as a crucial took for the success of a crisis response method. Within this study, a working definition of the term crisis is created, and the possibility for developing a crisis response model for industry-specific accidents using a hybrid of the crisis communication strategies of Coombs, Benoit, and Hearit is explored. The rhetorical effectiveness of the crisis response and image restoration strategies used by British Petroleum and Phillips Petroleum in response to tragic explosions that occurred at their respective facilities is analyzed. Overall, this study is meant to be an analysis of the use of crisis response strategies in similar accidents in the industrial field and how the communication used affects the stakeholders’ perception of the refineries as a whole. The results of this analysis will contribute to organizational strategy improvement and existing literature on crisis communication and rhetoric. Furthermore, aside from the airline industry, the body of crisis communication literature is lacking in the study of industry-specific crises, particularly in the refinery industry. Therefore, it should be suggested that industry-specific accidents and the crisis response strategies should be studied in hopes of developing a model that could be used for these accidents.