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Rhetoric
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What is Rhetoric?

Rhetoric is the study of how language is used to persuade, inform, and influence audiences, and it sits at the center of communications, English, political science, and philosophy curricula. Its academic interest lies in the tension between language and reality, form and meaning, power and reason. Students engage with foundational questions about what makes an argument effective and how speech shapes public life. Core thinkers and frameworks that appear across coursework include Aristotle's definition of rhetoric, Plato's critique of false rhetoric as it relates to democracy, Foucault's contributions to rhetoric and ideology, and the competing positions of Bitzer and Vatz on how rhetorical situations are constructed.

Papers on this topic take several distinct approaches. Some are historically oriented, tracing classical and modern rhetorical theory to compare how ideas about persuasion have evolved. Others focus on close analysis of specific texts or speeches, such as Carmichael's Black Power speech or George Orwell's political writing, using rhetorical frameworks to examine how language and power operate together. Additional papers explore rhetoric within specific domains — religion, education, and political ideology — while others work through theoretical debates about the relationship between knowledge and rhetoric or the role of rhetorical education in shaping civic life.

A strong essay on rhetoric grounds its thesis in a clear claim about how a specific use of language achieves — or fails to achieve — a persuasive effect. Evidence drawn from the text, speech, or theoretical framework under analysis carries the most weight. The most common pitfall is treating rhetoric as merely a list of devices; effective essays instead connect those devices to broader questions of audience, power, and meaning.

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Paper High School

Paul B. Ryan's analysis of United States Panama Canal politics and diplomacy

This paper covers all 11 chapters of the book by Paul Ryan (not the Ryan who was Mitt Romney's VP candidate), a book which goes into great detail about every aspect of the Panama Canal, from the time when mosquitoes had to be wiped out before work could even begin, to the final stages of negotiations that led to the canal being turned back over to Panama. the book is fascinating and opens the door to many interesting political goings-on throughout the 100 years the U.S. had control

Research Paper Doctorate

Behaviorism and childhood development: an educator and parent's perspective

Behaviorism and Childhood Development: An Educator and Parent's Perspective

Paper Undergraduate

American capitalism and the management-labor divide in Franklin and Melville

Benjamin Franklin's autobiography and Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener both offer important insights into the internal ideological function of American capitalism. The texts demonstrate (whether intentionally or unintentionally) how American capitalism attempts to paper over the contradiction between America's rhetorical focus on liberty, equality, and freedom, and its economic focus on profit at the expense of essentially everything else. Franklin embodies the myth of American meritocracy and reveals the appeal to divine right that underlines the legitimacy of the upper classes' economic dominance, while Melville's narrator demonstrates the strict blinders that must be maintained in order to deny the existence of the injustice and inequality that is inherent to capitalism. Taken together, these texts allow one to better understand how the seemingly obvious contradiction between America's ostensible political ideals and its economic realities has far not been able to diminish capitalism's hegemonic control of the country for over two hundred years.

Research Paper Doctorate

Rhetorical analysis of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address

¶ … Atlanta Exposition Address (1895)" by Booker T. Washington

Thesis High School

School voucher programs in the United States: effectiveness and controversy

School voucher grants by the governments serve the purpose of improving educational standard of the children who belong to low-income families. This system is aimed to provide school tuition that can be paid to both public and private schools. The inspiration behind school vouchers system is to present to parents an open choice of educational institutions and approaches for their children. Another idea behind this system is to pressurize public schools to compete with the private schools and provide a better educational culture for their students. In the United States of America, the first school-voucher program was instituted in 1990 in Milwaukee, Wis., that was funded by the state. Later in 1995, a federal bill was proposed to set up pilot school-voucher plans in twenty six cities ("school vouchers").

Essay Doctorate

Presidential unity and shared values in an inaugural address

¶ … President: 1. The President's opening

Paper Undergraduate

Free trade policy and economic development in Tunisia

¶ … Principal-Agent Model in Economics and Political Science

Essay Doctorate

Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and the origins of evil behavior

aggressor and victim (Enders, and Bevington). The idea of presenting violence, torture, and cruelty through fiction is a dangerous combination in which the related laws, drama, and poetry cannot present the lighter side of art and culture. The medieval authors presented the sufferings and culture of their societies. The French authors not only harmed their credibility in metaphor but at the same time the audience of these drams and fiction were also taught unethical practices. These included that finding truth through torture and violence. The creativeness within the drama and fiction was also damaged through projecting violence and the phenomenon that physical pain cannot resist language and it has to take a medium to flow out of the creative minds (Enders, and Bevington).

Paper Doctorate

Sequencing strategy and outcome in the Harborco negotiations

Sequential, opaque negotiations can provide tremendous advantage in certain negotiation scenarios involving multiple parties. This is demonstrated not only in more recent game theory developments but is also clearly observable in a variety of practical examples. A more collaborative consensus building approach can also be advantageous in some scenarios, but would not have been as effective in the Harborco negotiations.

Essay Doctorate

Gorgias' Encomium of Helen and sophistic rhetoric

The "dissoi logoi" fragment attributed to Protagoras is used to explain the form and function of Gorgias' "Encomium of Helen". Gorgias' work is contextualized within the rhetorical world of 5th century BCE Athenian legal practice--his defense of Helen of Troy is described in terms of a modern Christian offering a "devil's advocate" defense of the actions of Eve, or the snake, in the Book of Genesis. Gorgias' role within the practice of the Sophists in classical Athens is explored, and the ramifications of offering a praise and defense of Helen is shown to be an illustration of Sophistic practice by insisting that there are "dissoi logoi" or two sides to every story.

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