Created in the image of: Mormonism and the rhetorical production of identity in privately-published family histories
This dissertation is a qualitative study of seven privately-published family histories written by descendants of Mormon polygamists. Using methods of discourse and rhetorical analysis, these texts and various interviews are analyzed with the contention that identity is a rhetorical production and that the authors (either intentionally or unwittingly) fictionalize each of the identities involved---their own, their readers', and their ancestors'---to bring them together in moments of Burkean identification. These moments of identification are also analyzed in terms of communal and generational memory, temporal proximity, and communal discourses. An important conclusion in this study is that this rhetorical production of identity often results in silencing and marginalizing certain ancestors, such as those whose actions or values don't mirror the author's or the family's preferred identity---an identity greatly influenced by the communal discourse and identity of the Mormon Church.
Language, Rhetoric and Composition, Religion, History of, Sociology, Individual and Family Studies
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