Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Campbell, Brian F

Titel

Kennedy Wakes Up: A Rhetorical Analysis of John F. Kennedy's Bay of Pigs Crisis Discourse

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Jeffery K. Tulis authored a book entitled The Rhetorical Presidency, in which he argues the role of the United States chief executive now centers on his, or her, ability to speak over Congress and directly to the public. A modern or contemporary president’s ability to accomplish roles typically associated with the executive office is principally dependent on his/her implicit role: to appeal to public opinion. Presidential power comes from how effectively the chief executive can employ rhetorical discourse to affect change from the audience. This is an interesting concept for consideration, especially as it relates to contemporary President John F. Kennedy. In a 2013 Gallup poll, Americans rated Kennedy as the most outstanding, above average president in the contemporary era—the inception of which came around the turn of the 20th century. The primary inquiry, “why is this so,” can be answered through an examination into Kennedy’s rhetorical discourse, specifically his foreign crisis speeches. This thesis’ primary analysis centers on Kennedy’s address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 20, 1961 following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion on Cuba. Utilizing a unique analytic framework provided from the theoretical understandings of Lloyd F. Bitzer’s rhetorical situation and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s rhetorical hybrids model, with supplement aide from scholars such as Bonnie Dow and Denise Bostdorff, the aim is to provide value to the subject of rhetorical communication by researching, studying and analyzing an area of interest that has not received much to any scholarly emphasis in the past.