Road to Perdition

The 2011-12 U.S. presidential campaign was the most expensive and broadly troubling contest in the country’s history. “Perdition” provides a doubly apt metaphor for assessing its place in cultural history. The gangster film “Road to Perdition” (2002), a “blood” or “revenge” tragedy, captures the sense of inter-necine warfare that the GOP primary and caucus battles enacted. John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (1667) parallels the public’s sense of the country’s descent into a state of darkened disgust and despair. The unexpected con-sequences of the ‘70s party structural reforms, the fracturing of the Republican base in the 2010 bi-election, the number of increasingly acrid GOP debates, and the sheer amount of money spent by candidates, PACs, and especially anonymous superPACs during the electoral contest are explored as accounts for the aptness of the metaphors. Calls for reform complete the analysis

Norms of Presentational Force

This is the author's accepted manuscript, made available with permission of the American Forensic Association.Can style or presentational devices reasonably compel us to believe, agree, act? I submit that they can, and that the normative pragmatic project explains how. After describing a normative pragmatic approach to presentational force, I analyze and evaluate presentational force in Susan B. Anthony's "Is it a Crime for a U. S. Citizen to Vote" as it apparently proceeds from logic, emotion, and style. I conclude with reflections on the compatibility of the normative pragmatic approach with the recently-developed pragma-dialectical treatment of presentational devices

From Electioneering to Governing: Obama’s Transition as Legitimation Ritual

This essay reviews Barack Obama’s 2008-2009 transition from president-elect to president. Not only must the new and old presidents coordinate practical, bureaucratic matters, but in the United States, the president-elect is put through an 11-week legitimation ritual. As his status is transformed from campaigner to president, his words and actions in various situations are viewed as tests of strengths, weaknesses, vision, prudence, negotiative skill, humanity, fiber, and resolve. Not only is he tested but his words and actions are read by the press, commentators, and bloggers as signs of good or bad fortune for the country, just as the augurs of old read natural signs before momentous events. In general, Obama passed the tests and for the most part, an era of good fortune was predicted

Principles of speech communication

xvi, 368 p. : il.; 24 cm

Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong′s Thought

This book explores relationships among consciousness, orality (and literacy) and culture - an area of study in which the work of Walter Ong is integral. Essays are constructed around notions articulated and argued for by Ong but then extended into new territories by other specialists in the fields he touches. While all of the essays involve the study of media, consciousness and culture, to some degree, voice, a primary medium of communication, receives special attention, as do the effects of writing, print and television in particular circumstances; for example a media ecology of Iran today describes the interplay of primary orality of ′illiterate′ people, secondary (electronic) orality, and print.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1408/thumbnail.jp