Embracing Commonplace: Creating Ground for a Life of Rhetorically Engaged Civic Action

This project responds to the question: How do communication educators encourage students to enact the communicative practices necessary for a life of rhetorically engaged civic action? In responding to this question, the academic field of communication studies is recognized as a site for implementing the lessons of rhetoric, democracy, and civic engagement. This project contributes to the civic engagement scholarship from a communication studies perspective by foregrounding human communication as an essential component of the civic engagement process. As an interpretive inquiry, the philosophical thought and the pragmatic action of twentieth-century rhetorician and social activist Jane Addams (1860-1935) provides a hermeneutic entrance point for identifying and understanding the ways in which faculty members in higher education might conduct service-learning in a more responsive and engaged manner.</p><p> Practicing situated communicative service-learning, a pedagogical approach that embraces the historical moment and the challenges facing service-learning on today's college campus, provides one possibility. Addams's philosophical thought and communicative practices inform the integration of situated communicative service-learning into the communication studies field and college campus through the understanding of commonplace stemming from the Greek understanding of topoi (Aristotle). This praxis-centered approach to service-learning provides ground for students to understand the rhetorical and communicative practices necessary for a life of engaged civic action. By grounding individual communicative practices in a communication classroom setting, communicative habits can grow and flourish in communities.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Immediate Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication and Rhetorical Studies

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Burk, Jill K.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Pat Arneson
• Janie Harden Fritz
• Calvin Troup

• Civic engagement
• Communication pedagogy. Jane Addams
• Philosophy of communication
• Service-Learning

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/365

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dsc.duq.edu:etd-1378