The Rhetoric of Witnessing and Heckling: A Case Study in Ethnorhetoric

This study examines a rhetorical event that occurs between preacher Jed Smock and his student audiences. The study illustrates an ethnorhetorical approach to rhetorical criticism. A naturalistic methodology is used to capture the nature of the rhetorical transactions in situ and of the perspectives which the participants themselves bring to bear in understanding and acting within the event. These perspectives offer their occupants radically different dramatic structurings of the event. Each perspective is reflexively organized within a system of interdependencies among the perspectives. The way in which occupants of different perspectives act toward and interpret the event works to preserve the sense of objectivity each occupant assigns to the drama he finds in the event. The result is that participants orchestrate their transactions by virtue of a fundamental relativity of meanings.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Speech Communication

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Jacobs, Curtis Scott

• Speech Communication

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8302894

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/77265