Jennifer Mercieca | |
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| Nationality | American |
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| Institutions | Texas A&M University |
Jennifer Mercieca is an American scholar of rhetoric. She is a professor of communication at Texas A&M University. She has written about the rhetorical style of Donald Trump, and the founding narratives that informed the political culture of the United States.
Mercieca attended the University of the Pacific, where she earned a B.A. degree in communications in 1995. [1] She then continued to study there as a graduate student, earning an M.A. in communications in 1997. [1] In 2003, she obtained a PhD in speech communication at the University of Illinois. [1]
In 2003, Mercieca joined the faculty in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. [1] In 2009 she became an Associate Professor there. [1] In 2015 she was a founder and briefly Acting Director of The Texas A&M Agora, and during 2016–2017 she was a Faculty Administrative Fellow in the College of Liberal Arts. [1]
In 2010, Mercieca published Founding Fictions. [2] The book argues that the political philosophy of the early United States can be understood as a type of meta-narrative that generates the stories that individuals use to inform their views of their role in society. [3] She analyzes the way that the founding stories of the United States, which informed its governing documents and its public discourse, informed Americans' views of themselves and their roles in society between 1776 and 1845. [4] She argues that the narratives that were constructed in American public discourse reveal a fundamental tension between the two goals of having a stable republic and having an active citizenry. [5]
In 2020, Mercieca published a second book, called Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump. In Demagogue for President, Mercieca argues that Donald Trump campaigned for president successfully by employing classic rhetorical tricks that have historically been effectively employed by a variety of demagogues. [6] She argues that Trump's language can be classified into six distinct rhetorical patterns, of which three are employed to divide his opponents and three are used to unite his supporters. [7] For example, she argues that Trump is deliberately vague or transgressive in certain situations because these can be useful traits of persuasive messaging, and that there is historical precedent for rhetoricians to use these tools. [8] However, she also argues that, while these rhetorical devices can be highly effective and are employed for specific strategic purposes, [7] they also have identifiable limitations in their capacity to persuade people. [9] Demagogue for President was included on Literary Hub's summer 2020 list of "The Best New Books to Read This Summer", [10] as well as its "Most Anticipated Books of 2020". [11]
In 2021, Mercieca was offered literary representation by Allison Devereux of The Cheney Agency for her next book, on propaganda. [12] Mercieca's expert testimony was requested by a researcher from the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in 2022. The 28-page statement by Mercieca, submitted to the committee in March, outlines Trump's history of using rhetoric in "anti-democratic ways". [13]
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" and since mastery of the art was necessary for victory in a case at law, for passage of proposals in the assembly, or for fame as a speaker in civic ceremonies, he calls it "a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics". Rhetoric typically provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations, such as Aristotle's three persuasive audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. The five canons of rhetoric or phases of developing a persuasive speech were first codified in classical Rome: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.
Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as cultures invent new genres and discontinue the use of old ones. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility.
Wayne Clayson Booth was an American literary critic. He was the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in English Language & Literature and the College at the University of Chicago. His work followed largely from the Chicago school of literary criticism.
Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. It is an anglicisation of French narratologie, coined by Tzvetan Todorov. Its theoretical lineage is traceable to Aristotle (Poetics) but modern narratology is agreed to have begun with the Russian Formalists, particularly Vladimir Propp, and Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of heteroglossia, dialogism, and the chronotope first presented in The Dialogic Imagination (1975).
Apophasis is a rhetorical device wherein the speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up. Accordingly, it can be seen as a rhetorical relative of irony.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson is an American professor of communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She co-founded FactCheck.org, and she is an author, most recently of Cyberwar, about how Russia very likely helped Donald J. Trump become the U.S. President in 2016.
Edward P.J. Corbett was an American rhetorician, educator, and scholarly author. Corbett chaired the 1970 Conference on College Composition and Communication, and was chair of the organization and a member of the National Council of Teachers of English Executive Committee in 1971. He was also chair of the Rhetoric Society of America from 1973 to 1977. From 1974 to 1979, he was editor of the journal College Composition and Communication. He is known for promoting classical rhetoric among composition scholars and teachers.
Digital rhetoric can be generally defined as communication that exists in the digital sphere. As such, digital rhetoric can be expressed in many different forms —including but not limited to text, images, videos, and software. Due to the increasingly mediated nature of our contemporary society, there are no longer clear distinctions between digital and non-digital environments. This has led to an expansion of the scope of digital rhetoric as there is a need to account for the increased fluidity with which humans interact with technology.
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell is an American academic specializing in rhetorical criticism at the University of Minnesota.
Cognitive rhetoric refers to an approach to rhetoric, composition, and pedagogy as well as a method for language and literary studies drawing from, or contributing to, cognitive science.
Jim A. Kuypers is an American scholar and consultant specializing in communication studies. A professor at Virginia Tech, he has written on the news media, rhetorical criticism and presidential rhetoric, and is particularly known for his work in political communication which explores the qualitative aspects of framing analysis and its relationship to presidential communication and news media bias.
James Phelan is an American writer, literary scholar, and Distinguished University Professor of English at The Ohio State University. He joined the faculty of Ohio State in 1977 after earning his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. At the University of Chicago, he studied with the Chicago School theorists Sheldon Sacks and Wayne Booth. In 2013 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Aarhus University (Denmark), and in 2016 he was inducted into the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 2020 the International Society for the Study of Narrative named him the winner of the 2021 Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award. The citation for the Award reads in part,"Phelan has influenced generations of narrative theorists and literary scholars, as he has provided a powerful model for thinking about the purposes of literature and reasons and methods to engage with it. In so doing, he has transformed and energized the interdisciplinary field of narrative studies." The recording of the Award ceremony from the May 2021 ISSN Conference can be found at the Society's website.
Genre criticism, a method within rhetorical criticism, analyzes texts in terms of their genre: the set of generic expectations, conventions, and constraints that guide their production and interpretation. In rhetoric, the theory of genre provides a means to classify and compare artifacts in terms of their formal, substantive and contextual features. By grouping artifacts with others which have similar formal features or rhetorical exigencies, rhetorical critics can shed light on how authors use or flout conventions for their own purposes. Genre criticism has thus become one of the main methodologies within rhetorical criticism.
Michael Leff (1941–2010) was an internationally known U.S. scholar of rhetoric. He was a Professor and served as Chair of the Department of Communications Studies at the University of Memphis.
The rhetorical presidency is a political communication theory that describes the communication and government style of U.S. presidents in the twentieth century. This theory describes the transition from a presidency that directed rhetoric toward the United States Congress and other government bodies, to one that addresses rhetoric, policy and ideas directly to the public.
Dana L. Cloud is an American communication professor. Cloud's primary research focuses on rhetoric, cultural theory, gender theory, and queer theory. She is best known for her 1998 book Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetoric of Therapy in which she coined the term "rhetoric of therapy".
Trumpism is a term for the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping control of power associated with Donald Trump and his political base. Trumpists and Trumpian are terms used to refer to those exhibiting characteristics of Trumpism, whereas political supporters of Trump are known as Trumpers.
This bibliography of Donald Trump is a list of written and published works, by and about Donald Trump. Due to the sheer volume of books about Trump, the titles listed here are limited to non-fiction books about Trump or his presidency, published by notable authors and scholars. Tertiary sources, satire, and self-published books are excluded.
Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists, but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all living beings and in all manner of experiences, and it redefines traditional delivery sites to include the non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes. An important distinction is made between "feminist rhetoric" and "rhetorical feminism": rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences define rhetorical appeals. Rhetorical feminism also values listening and silence as dynamic rhetorical practices.
Janice M. Lauer Rice was an American scholar of composition, rhetoric, and linguistics. She was a founding member of the Rhetoric Society of America. She founded one of the first doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition at Purdue University in 1980. The Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition from Parlor Press is named in her honor, as well as the Rhetoric Society of America's Janice Lauer Fund for Graduate Student Support and the Purdue Foundation Janice M. Lauer Dissertation Award.
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