The Communication of Beliefs: An Inquiry Into the Rhetoric of Collective Identity and the Origins and Uses of Normative Logic

"Four areas of contemporary academic discussion are assessed---""intercultural communication,"" ""social psychology,"" ""social semiotics,"" and ""historiography""---wherein the normative dimension of human affairs has become a topic of special interest. Next the inquiry looks into the origins of our peculiarly ""Western"" forms of normative logic; and indeed, we find that the ancient Greeks talked and wrote extensively about questions generally concerning ""collective identity"" and ""normative logic,"" they mounted a number of serious attempts to treat related matters in systematic fashion, and their discussions were urgently motivated by cultural changes underway in the pre-Christian Greek world. Next the dissertation examines some of the uses to which discourses about collective identity and normative logic have been put since ancient times, so as to give shape to the content of Western beliefs about humanity, our place in the world, and the social-political arrangements deemed necessary and proper to human existence and dignity. Lastly analysis is made of some recent situations and strategies in political discourse; here, modern political appeals to the public sense of collective identity offer demonstration of both the historical continuity and the dazzling fluidity of our norms of belief about the good and the right and the real and the true in human affairs."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communications

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Dowdy, Earl Edward, Jr

Contributors dc:contributor

• Nerone, John

• Language, Rhetoric and Composition

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9912221

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86613