Browsing by Subject "rhetoric"
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Item A Rhetoric of Moral Imagination: The Persuasions of Russell Kirk(2010-07-14) Jones, Jonathan L.This rhetorical analysis of a contemporary and historical social movement, American conservatism, through a prominent intellectual figure, Russell Kirk, begins with a description of the author's work. Ideologies, arguments, and sentiments are considered as implicit rhetoric, where social relations are defined by persuasion, ideas, historical appeal, persona, and various invitations to shared assumptions. First, a descriptive historical context is the foundation to explore the beliefs, communicative strategies, and internal tensions of the conservative movement through the development of various identities and communities during its rise as a formidable political power. Second, an analysis of the author and the author's texts clarifies argumentative and stylistic choices, providing a framework for his communicative choices. The thesis of this discussion is that the discourses implicit and explicit in the author's writing and conduct of life were imaginative and literary products of what he termed "moral imagination." How this imagination developed, and its impact upon his persuasion, was a unique approach not only to an emergent intellectual tradition but also to the disciplines of history, fiction, policy, and audience. This work argues there were two components to Kirk's rhetoric of moral imagination. First, his choosing of historical subjects, in biographical sketch and literary content, was an indication of his own interest in rhetorical efficacy. Second, he attempted to live out the sort of life he claimed to value. I argue he taught observers by an ethos, an endeavor to live a rhetorical demonstration of what he genuinely believed was good. As demonstrated by what many who knew Kirk identified as an inner strength of character and conduct, his rhetorical behavior was motivated by a love for and a curiosity toward wonder and mystery. By an imaginative reading of history, his exemplars of more properly ordered sentiments of a moral order sought to build communities of associational, relational persons that found identity in relation to other persons. His ambition was to explore and communicate what it meant to be human - in limitation, in promise, and in the traditions and customs that provide a framework for "human" in a culture.Item Begging for Money: Technology Commercialization and the Genre of the Business Pitch(2016-12) Nelson, Richard S; Spinuzzi, Clay; Charney, Davida; Roberts-Miller, Patricia; Boyle, Casey; Hodgson, JustinAlthough popular literature on business pitches abounds with advice to tell stories to engage an audience, little has been said about the function of those stories in creating technology commercialization networks. Current theories of business pitches present the product (and by proxy, the company making the product) as an entrepreneurial hero, one which relieves a population from some market pain. In these approaches, products, consumers, and values are intertwined in sociotechnical networks with an orientation toward relieving this pain. However, these approaches ignore the role of investors in technology commercialization networks. Investors hold the power to bring a product to market or banish it to obscurity, and thus further study of their roles in these sociotechnical networks is needed. This dissertation seeks to fill that gap, using two case studies from a larger data set collected over the course of a year. These case studies are from a technology commercialization pitch competition held in Suwon, South Korea, and supported by the University of Texas at Austin and the government of Gyeonggi-do province. Using the lenses of North American genre theory, actor-network theory, and narrative, I show that placing products between investors and preferred roles can be an effective approach to integrate investors into a network oriented to technology commercialization in international markets.Item Ecopornography and the Commodification of Extinction: The Rhetoric of Natural History Filmmaking, 1895-Present(2013-07-19) D'Amico, Lisa NicoleThis dissertation builds upon the relatively young fields of visual and environmental rhetoric and analyzes the rhetoric of natural history filmmaking, focusing on the ways in which the genre illustrates the complex relationship between contemporary culture and the environment. Each text demonstrates how the constructs of ?nature? and ?wilderness? perform necessary cultural work by representing particular ideals that change to meet the public?s shifting needs. Nature performs various roles, serving as a source of knowledge, solace, wonder, mystery, anxiety, truth, identity, and affirmation. The dominance and immediacy of visual culture make the natural history film, along with advertising, one of the most significant sources of meaning regarding the natural world. These films employ familiar syntactic and semantic cues such as sentimental parent/offspring interactions, authoritative narration that limits the ability of the audience to interpret freely, and a musical score that influences the viewer?s emotional response to certain scenes. The net result of these rhetorical practices is a distancing of the viewer from the natural world that destabilizes the attempts of many eco-political programs to emphasize the interconnectedness of ecological systems and their components. The emergent genre of big-budget nature films (BBNFs) is a distinctly modern and extremely popular take on natural history filmmaking that has more in common with summer blockbusters and wildlife theme parks than its predecessors with an unprecedented ability to influence public perception of the natural world. Even as environmental concerns become increasingly dire, the BBNF tends to commodify death and extinction, avoid political engagement, reduce engagement with nature to its most sentimental and violent moments, perpetuate the perceived separation between humans and their environment, and provide a soothing escape to a virtual environment that too often seems unaffected by climate change and habitat destruction. The BBNF has the potential to undermine environmental and conservation efforts. It also exemplifies what some ecocritics have termed ?ecopornography,? an exploitative representation that objectifies its subjects, encourages viewers to develop identifications with unrealistic images rather than their real-world analogs, and helps enable unethical behavior toward the environment and nonhuman animals. At stake in this dissertation is a deeper understanding of how natural history filmmaking affects the public?s awareness of (and role in) the environment.Item Elegiac Rhetorics: From Loss to Dialogue in Lyric Poetry(2012-10-19) Hart, Sarah ElizabethBy reading mournful poems rhetorically, I expand the concept of the elegy in order to reveal continuities between private and communal modes of mourning. My emphasis on readers of elegies challenges writer-centered definitions of the elegy, like that given by Peter Sacks, who describes how the elegy's formal conventions express the elegist's own motives for writing. Although Sacks's Freudian approach helpfully delineates some of the consoling effects that writing poetry has on the elegist herself, this dissertation revises such writer-centered concepts of the elegy by asking how elegies rhetorically invoke ethical relationships between writers and readers. By reading elegiac poems through Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theories and Emmanuel Levinas's ethics, I argue that these poems characterize, as Levinas suggests, subjectivity as fundamentally structured by ethical relationships with others. In keeping with this ethical focus, I analyze anthology poems, meaning short lyric poems written by acclaimed authors, easily accessible, and easily remembered - including several well-known poems by such authors as Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Robert Frost. Anthology pieces invite ethical evaluation in part because they represent what counts as valuable poetry - and also, by implication, what does not. Because anthology poems are read by broad, diverse audiences, I suggest that a rhetorical methodology focusing on writer-reader relationships is essential to evaluating these poems' ethical implications. This rhetorical approach to poetry, however, questions rhetoricians and aesthetic theorists from Aristotle and Longinus to Lloyd F. Bitzer and Derek Attridge who emphasize distinctions between rhetoric and poetics. I address the ongoing debate about the relationship between rhetoric and poetics by arguing, along the lines of Wayne C. Booth's affirmation that fiction and rhetoric are interconnected, that poetry and rhetoric are likewise integrally tied. To this debate, I add an emphasis on philosophy - from which Plato, Ramus, and others exclude rhetoric and poetry - as likewise essential to understanding both poetry and rhetoric. By recognizing the interrelatedness of these disciplines, we may better clarify poetry's broad, ethical appeals that seem so valuable to readers in situations of loss.Item From Writers and Readers to Participants: A Rhetorical/Historical Perspective on Authorship in Social Media(2012-10-19) Melzow, CandiceDespite the recent growth of social media, rhetorical theory which addresses authorship in this realm has been slow to develop. Static terms such as "reader," "writer," and "author" are often used to refer to the roles occupied by users in social media, although these terms are insufficient to describe the dynamic rhetorical exchange which occurs there. The goal of this dissertation is to use rhetorical theory to develop an updated terminology to describe the model(s) adopted by creators of social media content. First, past models of authorship are surveyed to locate rhetorical precedents for the model(s) that currently exists in social media. After comparing potential historical precedents to the overall process of content creation in social media, the term "participant" is adopted to describe the roles which users assume when creating digital content. Although "participant" initially appears to be an appropriate term, this notion is complicated when one considers the asymmetrical roles adopted on a smaller scale in genres such as social networking and blogs. To determine if the "participant" model is still applicable in such cases, an examination of authorship as it occurs in the genre of women's personal blogs is conducted. An analysis of the terms that bloggers use to refer to themselves as writers reveals that bloggers situate themselves in roles through which they claim to speak for a group such as storyteller and truth-teller. Subsequent examination of the interactions between bloggers and other participants reveals that bloggers negotiate authority with readers in a variety of ways. By using such strategies, bloggers attempt to situate themselves as community members in a manner which aligns with the "participant" model. The participant role adopted in women's personal blogs helps this previously marginalized group to establish a public presence and may also serve as a precedent for models which could be adopted by learners in the composition classroom as they strive to break free from the author/student writer binary and to establish themselves as socially-engaged participants.Item Hospitable texts(2009-05) Brown, James Joseph, 1978-; Davis, D. Diane (Debra Diane), 1963-This dissertation examines Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that “anyone can edit,” in order to locate an emerging digital rhetoric. That emerging rhetoric is being developed from the bottom up by various rhetors, and it offers rhetoricians a framework for rethinking some of the foundations of the discipline. The discipline has tended to define agency in terms of the conscious rhetor, intellectual property in terms of an author-origin, and community in terms of a shared project that a collective has agreed upon. This dissertation rethinks each of these disciplinary key terms by examining Wikipedia’s hospitable structure, a structure that welcomes writers regardless of identity or credentials. This structure of hospitality troubles the notions that agency can be reduced to consciousness, that texts are easily linked to an owner, or that community is the result of an agreed upon project. In many ways, Wikipedia acts as a microcosm of the various rhetorical collisions that happen to rhetors both online and offline. The proliferation of new media makes for more rhetors and more rhetorical situations, and this requires a complete rethinking of certain portions of rhetorical theory. The theory of hospitality that grounds this project is not utopian—it is instead a full consideration of the complications and perils of welcoming others regardless of identity or credentials. This is a structural hospitality, one that is not necessarily the result of conscious choice. This structure means that Wikipedia is far from a utopia—certain voices are filtered or silenced. But these filters are put up in the face of a hospitable structure that welcomes a broad range of writers, invites colliding interests, allows libelous or inaccurate writings, and encourages an endless chain of citations. The invitations extended by hospitable texts open up difficult questions for rhetoricians: Who is editing this text as I read it? How do we define “community” in such a situation? Who owns this text? “Hospitable Texts” rethinks these questions in light of the Web’s emerging ethical and rhetorical structures.Item The house that Jill built : a review of feminist approaches to teaching argument in the composition classroom(2009-08) Ludlow, Marcee Monroe; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-; Ferreira-Buckley, LindaCongruent with the second wave of feminism and continuing into the 1990s, a group of feminist compositionists felt that argument should not have a major, if any, place in the feminist classroom and began to redefine, revision, and reposition argument. With a rhetorician’s bias, this report looks at one articulation of why they turned away from argument—Sally Miller Gearhart’s claim that “any intent to persuade is an act of violence”—, what they turned to, some critique surrounding their approaches and theories, and how a broader understanding of rhetoric and the role of agonism in rhetoric and education can add depth to the feminist approach.Item Necessary evil: rhetorical violence in 20th century American literature(Texas A&M University, 2007-09-17) Baker, James AndrewWayne Booth and other rhetorical critics have developed methods for examining the rhetorical aspects of fiction. In this dissertation, I examine, specifically, the use of rhetorical violence in American fiction. It is my premise that authors use rhetorical violence and the irrationality of violence created mimetically to construct ironic metaphors that comment on the irrationality of the ideology behind the violence, pushing that ideology's maxims to its logical ends. The goal of rhetorical violence, therefore, is to create the conditions for a transfer of culpability so that the act becomes transitive-transferable-loosed from its moorings. Culpability, if indeed it reflects something intrinsically awry with an ideology, becomes the fault of the ideology-????????it becomes the perpetrator of illogic and the condemnatory force associated with the act of violence gets transferred to it. Hence, if the author has created an effective metaphor, when he or she flips the violent scene'????????s "????????value," the audience is willing to follow along. The violence remains a great evil, but the culpability for the act is shifted to a representative of the ideology in question-as-victimizer; nonetheless, that transfer can only occur inasmuch as the audience is willing to force-fit the incongruities of the metaphor.I examine this rhetorical phenomenon in the works of three modern American writers: Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, and Chuck Palahniuk. I seek to examine the ideologies questioned in these works, the contradictory beliefs expressed by the authors, and to explicate primary episodes in the works of fiction wherein rhetorical violence functions in a rhetorical fashion to promulgate the author's ideology by emotionally jarring the reader loose from commonly-held ideological assumptions in three specific appeals: first, to negate one socially-held ideology in order to promote a conflicting one (Wise Blood); second, to elicit compassion for victimized characters representing social ills (Beloved); third, to call into question the validity of social institutions and practices (Fight Club).Item Rapture rhetoric: prophetic epistemology of the Left Behind subculture(2009-05-15) Hill, Kristin DawnThis thesis provides a rhetorical analysis of prophetic texts, non-fiction premillennialist dispensational studies, the fictional series, Left Behind and interviews with series? readers. This thesis argues that prophetic rhetoric constitutes an epistemological position whereby Rapture believers create knowledge, cast knowledge as good or evil and finally act as gatekeepers to determine what can and should be known. Rapture subculture is composed of both a hard core and a set of narrative believers, those who have acquired the nomenclature, but perhaps not the dogmatic belief in a Rapture, Tribulation, Armageddon, and Millennium schema. The process of turning narrative believers into hard core believers relies on the use of a range of topoi, appeals to authority, evil and time. Rapture rhetoric, aimed at bolstering the beliefs of the hard core and cultivating the beliefs of those still undecided, relies on the process of transfer to gain acceptance for one claim based on acceptance of another and then relies on narrative plasticity to enlarge the basis for those accepted claims. These arguments are exchanged for stories in the fictional Left Behind series, whereby the characters, institutions and knowledge of the end-times becomes encapsulated in an easy-to-read and simple-to-relate tale that codes knowledge as either good knowledge revealed from God or evil knowledge acquired through human understanding. These narratives and arguments both get used among prophetic believers to explain their lives and their world, internally and externally to the prophetic subculture, in order to convince more narrative believers of the truth of their claims. Prophetic communities develop knowledge products, cultural entailments and cultural manifestations of prophetic belief to serve as symbols of the end-times narrative. Rapture subculture, based on prophetic beliefs, is not monolithic; however, this thesis is able to draw some broad generalizations about the prophetic community and the rhetoric they use to explain their claims within their ranks and to the outside world.Item Rural Drag: Settler Colonialism and the Queer Rhetorics of Rurality(2013-07-16) Nichols, Garrett WedekindIn the United States, rural culture is frequently thought of as traditional and ?authentically? American. This belief stems from settler colonial histories in which Native lands are stolen and ?settled? by white colonial communities. Through this process, the rugged ?frontier? becomes a symbol of American identity, and rural communities become the home of ?real? Americans. Because settler colonization is invested in maintaining systems of white supremacy, sexism, and heteropatriarchy, these ?real? Americans are figured as normatively white and straight. This dissertation analyzes the rhetorical construction of rurality in the United States, specifically focusing on the ways in which settler colonial histories shape national discussions of rural sexuality. I theorize a rhetorical practice I call rural drag, a process by which individuals in settler society can assert membership in white heteropatriarchy by performing ?rurality.? I trace the development of this rhetorical practice through three case studies. In the first, I analyze 19th-century Texan legislative writings during the creation of Texas A&M University. These writings and related correspondences reveal a baseline of white supremacist and settler colonial rhetorics upon which the university established its ethos. In the second, I look at how these rhetorics continue to inform performances of sexuality and gender at Texas A&M. These performances derive from earlier rhetorical practices designed to create a space for white settler privilege. Together, these two case studies suggest that rhetorical practices shape and are shaped by the spaces in which they are practiced and the rhetorical histories of these spaces. In my final case study, I interrogate national discourses of rurality through an analysis of country western music to show how rhetorics of rurality are simultaneously local and national. I conclude by challenging scholars of rhetoric and queer studies to recognize that the relationship between rhetoric and place is key to recognizing our relationship to privilege and oppression in the United States. To further this, I propose a decolonial queerscape pedagogy that accounts for the multiple overlays of sexual identities and practices that travel through the academy while challenging the colonial histories and actions upon which the academy is built.Item Televised political satire: the new media of political humor and implications for presidential elections(2009-05-15) McKenzie, John Marshall, IIShows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, Saturday Night Live, and even South Park represent an underresearched subfield of discourse about political communication and persuasion. These shows manage to reach audiences not traditionally known for high levels of political engagement and draw them in with their comedic framework. This thesis investigates the impact of televised political satire on public perceptions of presidential candidates and campaign issues and the direct result these impacts may have on presidential elections. This thesis first gives some background in the types of communication and personalities of the front-men and women of these shows and then moves into a historical account of how the exigence for this recent explicit hybridization between comedy and news emerged. It then analyzes how these comedians view their own role within media and politics. It provides a thick account of the liberalizing force televised political satire has been for the American political climate so far, and where it will likely lead us in the near future with the growth of new communication technologies.Item The Rhetoric of ?Japanese with English Abilities?: Analyzing the Discourse of English Curriculum Reform and Its Problems with the Mext's ?Action Plan?(2013-12-03) Watanabe, KenIn this thesis, I would examine the discourse of Japan?s English language education reform for primary and secondary schools through the close reading of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology?s (MEXT) ??Action Plan: Cultivating ?Japanese with English Abilities,?? released in 2003. This document marked a critical touchstone of Japan?s drastic move for English curriculum change by suggesting the shift of national attitude from hesitancy to willingness in the name of change for the needs of language improvement. ?Action Plan? served as a master plan for the MEXT by providing the attainment goals, key tasks, and benchmarks that would see fit to achieve in the next five years. It raised the public awareness and stirred up the public debate, for containing challenging proposals such as implementation of standardized English exams (TOEIC and TOEFL) for student assessment and teaching qualification, innovative teaching practices to high schools (i.e., Super English Language-High school[SEL-Hi]), and English as foreign language activities to primary schools. Specifically, first, I would discuss how Japan?s cultural ambivalence toward English language since the late 19th century sets up the contexts for nation?s historical struggle in upgrading the curriculum that draws the problems reflecting on the MEXT?s recent education policy proposal. Then, I would examine Action Plan?s attainment goals setting and key agendas highlighted as the MEXT?s main strategy, and analyze its critical issues and problems affecting the needs for both students and teachers. The issues include the mismatched targets, ill-defined goals setting, and benchmarks for academic achievements and project proposals aimed for teacher training and quality instruction (i.e., JET program, and Assistant Language Teachers [ALTs]). Finally, I would provide the implications for Action Plan?s impact on educational practice by assessing student?s learning achievement and target benchmarks set for students and teachers in the five years after its release. At the end of conclusion, I would offer the list of recommendations for effective administrative policy that could provide better teaching and learning practice in Japanese schools.Item The Rhetoric of Conflict in Political Theory(2014-01-14) Brown, Ted HThe language surrounding the decision to go to war in American political discourse is often very divisive and draws upon numerous rhetorical traditions. Early research on the question of what types of arguments favoring war has been largely inconclusive. Alongside the facts concerning conflict are numerous orators drawing upon various discourses and intellectual traditions seeking to sway their audience either toward or away from conflict. One such study is the work of James Andrews who conducted case studies to develop an ?American adolescence? theory suggesting that arguments of honor and principle were the most persuasive in convincing men to take up arms. This research, however, fails to convincingly answer this question. In this dissertation, I use a rhetorical framework to investigate the types of arguments used in early-American history that try to influence the decision to go to war. Primarily, this dissertation examines Andrews? theory of principled arguments and employs a second variable, that is, arguments of expediency. I argue that principled arguments are not as successful as Andrews concludes and instead arguments of expediency are more commonplace than arguments of principle. Additionally, I argue that expedient rhetoric is a necessary component for mobilizing mass support for a war but expedient rhetoric is not necessary when arguing for inaction. Rather, principled arguments can also serve to motivate audiences toward inaction. To examine whether Andrews? theory of principled arguments is largely correct, I first demonstrate that Machiavelli used arguments of expediency in an attempt to convince the Medici to go to war. From this example, I conduct three case studies where arguments of principle and arguments of expediency are both present. I find that in arguments prior to the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican-American War are largely a mixed bag. In the American Revolution and the War of 1812, arguments of expediency are often capable in convincing men to take up arms. However, I demonstrate that in the Mexican-American War, arguments of principle may help to limit the severity of conflict.Item The rhetoric of presidential summit diplomacy: Ronald Reagan and the U.S. Soviet summits, 1985-1988(2009-05-15) Howell, Buddy WaynePresident Ronald Reagan participated in more U.S.-Soviet summits than any previous U.S. president, as he met with his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, on four occasions between November 1985 and June 1988. Prior to, during, and following each meeting with Gorbachev, Reagan often engaged in the rhetoric of public diplomacy, including speeches, statements, and media interviews. The four Reagan- Gorbachev summits accompanied significant changes in U.S.-Soviet relations, in the Cold War, and also within the Soviet Union. Many scholars attribute improved U.S.- Soviet relations to a change in Reagan?s Soviet rhetoric and policies, arguing that he abandoned the confrontation of his first term for conciliation during his second term. Other scholars argue that Reagan failed to abandon confrontation and, consequently, missed opportunities to support the liberalization of the Soviet system. Based upon close analysis of Reagan?s summit rhetoric, this dissertation contends that he did not abandon his confrontational policy objectives, but he did modify his rhetoric about the Soviets. Reagan reformulated the conventional Cold War rhetoric of rapprochement that emphasized nuclear arms controls as the path to world peace by emphasizing increased U.S.-Soviet trust as prerequisite to new arms treaties. Reagan?s summit rhetoric emphasized the need for the Soviets to make changes in non-nuclear arms areas as a means of reducing international mistrust and increasing the likelihood of new U.S.- Soviet arms treaties. Reagan advocated that the Soviets participate in increased bilateral people-to-people exchanges, demonstrate respect for human rights, and disengage from various regional conflicts, especially Afghanistan. Reagan adopted a dualistic strategy that combined confrontation and conciliation as he sought to promote those changes in Soviet policies and practices. During his second term as president, Reagan made his confrontational rhetoric less strident and also used more conciliatory discourse. At the same time, he subsumed his anti-Soviet objectives within his conciliatory rhetoric. This rhetorical strategy allowed Reagan to continue to advocate anti-Soviet objectives while at the same time seeking to promote improved relations and world peace. The findings of this dissertation suggest that existing scholarly views of Reagan?s summit rhetoric and his role in promoting the liberalization of the Soviet system should be reconsidered.Item The rhetoric of Southern identity: debating the shift from division to identification in the turn-of-the-century South(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Watts, Rebecca BridgesRecent debates as to the place of Old South symbols and institutions in the South of the new millennium are evidence of a changing order in the South. I examine -- from a rhetorical perspective informed by Kenneth Burke's theory of identification and division -- four debates that have taken place in the South and/or about the South over roughly the past decade, 1995 to the present. In this decade, Southerners and interested others have debated such issues as 1) admitting women to the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel; 2) integrating displays of public art in Richmond to feature Confederates and African Americans side by side; 3) continuing to fly the Confederate battle flag in public spaces such as the South Carolina Capitol or including it in the designs of state flags such as those of Georgia and Mississippi; and 4) allowing Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, who seemed to speak out in support of the South's segregated past, to continue in his position of Senate leadership. Looking at each of these debates, it is clear that at issue in each is whether the ruling order of the South should continue to be one of division or whether that order should be supplanted by identification. Judging from the outcomes of the four debates analyzed here, the order of division seems to be waning just as the order of identification seems to be waxing in influence over the turn-of-the-millennium South. But a changing South is no less a distinctive, continuing South. I argue that a distinctive Southern culture based on a sense of order has existed and continues to exist amidst the larger American culture. If some form of "Southernism" is to continue as a distinctive mindset and way of life in the twenty-first century, Southerners will need to learn to strike a balance between their past, with its ruling order of division, and the present, with its ruling order of identification.Item Writing the life of the self: constructions of identity in autobiographical discourse by six eighteenth-century American Indians(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Pruett, David AlanThe invasion of the Western Hemisphere by empire-building Europeans brought European forms of rhetoric to the Americas. American Indians who were exposed to European-style education gradually adopted some of the cultural ways of the invaders, including rhetorical forms and operations that led, via literacy in European languages, to autobiographical writing, historical consciousness, and literary self-representation. This dissertation uses rhetorical criticism to analyze autobiographical discourse of six eighteenth-century American Indian writers: Samuel Ashpo, Hezekiah Calvin, David Fowler, Joseph Johnson, Samson Occom, and Tobias Shattock. Their texts are rhetorically interrelated through several circumstances: all of these men were educated in a missionary school; most of them probably learned to read and write in English at the school; they left the school and worked as teachers and Christian missionaries to Indians, sharing similar obstacles and successes in their work; and they are Others on whom their teacher, Eleazar Wheelock, inscribed European culture. The six Indian writers appropriate language and tropes of the encroaching Euro-American culture in order to define themselves in relation to that culture and make their voices heard. They participated in European colonial culture by responding iv to, and co-creating, rhetorical situations. While the Indians' written discourse and the situations that called forth their writing have been examined and discussed through a historical lens, critiques of early American Indian autobiography that make extensive use of rhetorical analysis are rare. Thus this dissertation offers a long-overdue treatment of rhetoric in early American Indian autobiography and opens the way to rhetorical readings of autobiography by considering the early formation of the genre in a cross-cultural context.