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 Communication in 1995. [1] She then continued to study there as a graduate student, earning an M.A. in Communication 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. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, and motivate their audiences. Rhetoric also provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations.
Genre is any style or form 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, based on some set of stylistic criteria. 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. The proper use of a specific genre is important for important for a successful transfer of information (media-adequacy).
Wayne Clayson Booth was an American literary critic and rhetorician. 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.
Kenneth Duva Burke was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burke was best known for his analyses based on the nature of knowledge. Further, he was one of the first individuals to stray from more traditional rhetoric and view literature as "symbolic action."
Genre studies is an academic subject which studies genre theory as a branch of general critical theory in several different fields, including art, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition studies.
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, in which she argues that 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 is communication that exists in the digital sphere. It can be expressed in many different forms, including text, images, videos, and software. Due to the increasingly mediated nature of contemporary society, distinctions between digital and non-digital environments are less clear. This has expanded the scope of digital rhetoric 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.
Genre criticism is a method within rhetorical criticism that 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.
A rhetorical situation is an event that consists of an issue, an audience, and a set of constraints. A rhetorical situation arises from a given context or exigence. An article by Lloyd Bitzer introduced the model of the rhetorical situation in 1968, which was later challenged and modified by Richard E. Vatz (1973) and Scott Consigny (1974). More recent scholarship has further redefined the model to include more expansive views of rhetorical operations and ecologies.
Trumpism is a political movement in the United States that comprises the political ideologies associated with Donald Trump and his political base. It incorporates ideologies such as right-wing populism, national conservatism and neo-nationalism, and features significant illiberal and authoritarian beliefs. There is significant academic debate over the prevalence of neo-fascist and fascist elements of Trumpism. Trumpists and Trumpians are terms that refer to individuals exhibiting its characteristics.
This bibliography of Donald Trump is a list of written and published works, by and about Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States. 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 human beings in all manner of experiences. It also redefines traditional delivery sites to include non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes, and alternative practices such as rhetorical listening and productive silence. In her book, Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope (2018), Cheryl Glenn describes rhetorical feminism as, "a set of tactics that multiplies rhetorical opportunities in terms of who counts as a rhetor, who can inhabit an audience, and what those audiences can do." Rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences view rhetorical appeals.
Brian L. Ott is professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Texas Tech University Press (TTUP) at Texas Tech University. He is an author and communications expert in the field of study of rhetoric and media.
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.
The rhetoric of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States and current President-elect, is widely recognized for its unique populist, nationalistic, and confrontational style, which has been the subject of extensive analysis by linguists, political scientists, and communication experts. Known for its direct and unfiltered approach, Trump's rhetoric emphasizes themes of crisis, division, and loyalty, often casting himself as an outsider fighting against a corrupt political establishment. Central to his communication strategy are emotional appeals that resonate with voter insecurity, promises of restoring past national "greatness," and the use of simple, repetitive language that amplifies his message to broad audiences.
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