Finding the fourth locale: dichotomy challenges in the rhetoric of Barack Obama
- WCU Author/Contributor (non-WCU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Joseph Telegen (Creator)
- Institution
- Western Carolina University (WCU )
- Web Site: http://library.wcu.edu/
- Advisor
- Beth Huber
Abstract: The historic election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008
has attracted much interest in the humanities. The narrower lens of rhetorical analysis has
yet to explore one of Obama’s most notable inclinations, namely his tendency to
challenge existing, binary-based conceptualizations in America’s political climate.
Rhetorical scholar Joseph Telegen will explore the manner through which this effective
communicator complicates existing dichotomies, observing that the now-President never
attempts to negate these dualisms, even when questioning their simplicities.
Through detailed scrutiny of three “Obama Texts” (the speeches entitled “Out of
Many, One” and “A More Perfect Union” and the memoir Dreams from My Father),
Telegen will show the means through which Obama “maintains and improves” (to use
Wayne Booth’s term) these polarized understandings. Through three discernible methods,
The Alteration Technique, The Vision Technique, and The Empathy Technique, the
rhetor complicates an existing binary, prior to the arrival upon a nuanced position that
embraces neither polarity and refuses to settle for a banal 50-50 compromise between the
two extremes. This rhetorical arrival is (what Telegen calls) a “Fourth Locale.”
This writing will also discuss scenarios in which these Techniques “play out”: Barack Obama’s misrepresented exchange with “Joe the Plumber,” the website that has, to an extent, mass-marketed the concept of “community organizer” (which Dreams from
My Father gave visibility), and the recent challenge of the Health Care Reform bill. Also
included will be a proposed rekindling of the deeply controversial Ebonics debate. These
will all be included in order to connect Obama’s rhetoric to situations in which his
strategies were (or could be) applied.
Theoretical connections will also be made, most frequently to Wayne Booth’s
Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, which, Telegen will argue, finds its edicts
satisfactorily applied in Obama’s language approaches. It is hoped that this thesis will
reveal the importance of “Finding a Fourth Locale” as a means of promoting dialogues
which both arrive upon “warrantable” positions and open the door to subsequent, open
dialogues. Obama’s rhetoric can be credited as promoting such discourse, and thus can be
seen as highly constructive.
Finding the fourth locale: dichotomy challenges in the rhetoric of Barack Obama
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Created on 4/1/2010
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2010
- Keywords
- Dichotomy, Memoir, Obama, Oratory, Politics
- Subjects
- Obama, Barack -- Oratory
- Obama, Barack -- Literary art
- Rhetoric -- Political aspects -- United States -- History -- 21st century
- Communication in politics -- United States -- History -- 21st century
- Political oratory -- United States -- History -- 21st century