Noor Ghazal Aswad
University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa, Communications, Faculty Member
- University of Memphis, Communication/Rhetoric, Graduate Studentadd
- Transnational Social Movements, Immigration Rhetoric, Political Rhetoric, Media Studies, Critical Race Theory, Refugees, migration and immigration, and 6 moreRhetoric and Public Culture, Rhetoric, Rhetoric and Social Theory, Immigration an Citzenship, Rhetorical Criticism, and Political Communication (Communication)edit
- Scholar on political rhetoric, liberatory social movements, immigration rhetoric, and transnational feminism.edit
In this essay, we theorize how terms like “decolonization” and “decoloniality” have entered into the vernacular of the discipline of Communication Studies and remained largely as metaphors. We connect to a conversation among scholars... more
In this essay, we theorize how terms like “decolonization” and “decoloniality” have entered into the vernacular of the discipline of
Communication Studies and remained largely as metaphors. We connect to a conversation among scholars in Indigenous Studies, Cultural
Studies, and others who have turned attention to “decolonial” critiques in academic environments, and how they remain detached
from their activist origins. We begin with a discussion of metaphor
and the cultural and political implications for adopting and misattributing a term like decolonization. Moreover, this study develops
a critical method to make sense of the rapid and vast uptake of the
term decolonization as a harmful metaphor in the discipline’s most
widely read journals. Our critical thematic meta-analysis is driven by
a quantifying tool – we turn our research lens to the body of literature
written by the collective of scholars in the discipline who refer to or
rely on decolonization in their research to reveal the way in which the
term is connoted over the last decade. Our analysis reveals “decolonization” is often used as a liberal abstract concept divorced from
material contexts. We critique this reductionism, noting how decolonization becomes a buzzword for institutional change without genuine engagement with anti-colonial movements. We end by inviting
scholars to reconsider the study of colonization and those materially
resisting it with new energies and orientations.
Communication Studies and remained largely as metaphors. We connect to a conversation among scholars in Indigenous Studies, Cultural
Studies, and others who have turned attention to “decolonial” critiques in academic environments, and how they remain detached
from their activist origins. We begin with a discussion of metaphor
and the cultural and political implications for adopting and misattributing a term like decolonization. Moreover, this study develops
a critical method to make sense of the rapid and vast uptake of the
term decolonization as a harmful metaphor in the discipline’s most
widely read journals. Our critical thematic meta-analysis is driven by
a quantifying tool – we turn our research lens to the body of literature
written by the collective of scholars in the discipline who refer to or
rely on decolonization in their research to reveal the way in which the
term is connoted over the last decade. Our analysis reveals “decolonization” is often used as a liberal abstract concept divorced from
material contexts. We critique this reductionism, noting how decolonization becomes a buzzword for institutional change without genuine engagement with anti-colonial movements. We end by inviting
scholars to reconsider the study of colonization and those materially
resisting it with new energies and orientations.
Research Interests:
This short essay introduces the special issue, "Radical Rhetorics at/ and the World's End," which features original short essays that offer bold, risky, and provocative perspectives that share the general belief that we can no longer... more
This short essay introduces the special issue, "Radical Rhetorics at/ and the World's End," which features original short essays that offer bold, risky, and provocative perspectives that share the general belief that we can no longer afford safe, incremental, or mechanical solutions and responses to the profound challenges that confront our planetary community/ies today. Rather than a new set of universals, or proscriptive, prescriptive, or diagnostic solutions, the essays included herein open an in/coherent political horizon and gesture to a diverse set of tools, concepts, and approaches that might help rethink what meaningful social change, world-building, and the pluriversal present and future might look like in all of its diversity, unpredictability, and in/ coherence. This forum emerged from a roundtable discussion at the 2022 National Communication Association convention and was developed through a collaborative peer review process that involved all contributing authors. This introduction establishes the disciplinary, conceptual, and personal context surrounding this forum before providing a brief overview of the essays.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT This essay explores the existence of alternative worlds and radical rhetorics within the seemingly apocalyptic landscapes of borders, patriarchy, and environmental decay. Despite the prevailing chaos, there exists evidence of... more
ABSTRACT
This essay explores the existence of alternative worlds and radical
rhetorics within the seemingly apocalyptic landscapes of borders,
patriarchy, and environmental decay. Despite the prevailing
chaos, there exists evidence of the palpable vitality at the end of
the world. Framed through the lens of “radical subjects,”
individuals immersed in embodied struggle against oppressive
regimes, I put forth three key claims: (1) the generative power of
rupture, stressing emancipatory possibilities in disruptions to the
status quo; (2) the intellectual power of those in corporeal
resistance, highlighting the transformative potential of embodied
agency and resistive organizing; and (3) the genealogical power
of struggle, emphasizing the significance of ancestral
collaboration across temporalities. Ultimately, I argue for the
importance of attention, acceptance, and affirmation of those
alive at the end of the world. By examining the interplay of
rupture, corporeal resistance, and intergenerational struggle, the
essay offers a reimagining of how we might foster radical care
and solidarities with those in pursuit of hope, justice, and liberation.
This essay explores the existence of alternative worlds and radical
rhetorics within the seemingly apocalyptic landscapes of borders,
patriarchy, and environmental decay. Despite the prevailing
chaos, there exists evidence of the palpable vitality at the end of
the world. Framed through the lens of “radical subjects,”
individuals immersed in embodied struggle against oppressive
regimes, I put forth three key claims: (1) the generative power of
rupture, stressing emancipatory possibilities in disruptions to the
status quo; (2) the intellectual power of those in corporeal
resistance, highlighting the transformative potential of embodied
agency and resistive organizing; and (3) the genealogical power
of struggle, emphasizing the significance of ancestral
collaboration across temporalities. Ultimately, I argue for the
importance of attention, acceptance, and affirmation of those
alive at the end of the world. By examining the interplay of
rupture, corporeal resistance, and intergenerational struggle, the
essay offers a reimagining of how we might foster radical care
and solidarities with those in pursuit of hope, justice, and liberation.
Research Interests:
This paper attends to the Syrian refugee crisis to argue that land dispossession is not only a political and humanitarian phenomenon, but one that cuts to the core of how we inhabit, experience, and belong on the land. Amid the forced... more
This paper attends to the Syrian refugee crisis to argue that land dispossession is not only a political and humanitarian phenomenon, but one that cuts to the core of how we inhabit, experience, and belong on the land. Amid the forced repatriation of Syrian refugees to their country, activists used the hashtag #SyriaNotSafe to raise awareness about the detentions, disappearances, and torture of returnees. Beyond the immediate political persecution of refugees, this paper argues for crafting networked cultures of care attentive to the toxic environmental legacies of the Syrian conflict. Cultures of care must be sensitive to the affective relationships of interdependence between Syrians and their local ecosystems forged during the lifetime of revolutionary struggle. By shedding light on the toxicity of war, the weaponization of the environment, and the deliberate land dispossession by the Assad regime, the ability of Syrians to constitute acts of resistance in sympoiesis or "making with" the land is impacted. If we are to unite in acts of care for refugees, we must resist the inclination to imagine the necropolitical cultures in which we live as somehow distinct from the imperative for environmental justice and the ability to survive and thrive with the land.
Research Interests:
This unit teaches students how to perform racial rhetorical criticism and positions them to engage in discussions of race through experiential learning, namely through exploring the links between rhetoric, public memory, and campus... more
This unit teaches students how to perform racial rhetorical criticism and positions them to engage in discussions of race through experiential learning, namely through exploring the links between rhetoric, public memory, and campus history projects. Courses: Rhetorical Criticism, Rhetorical Theory, Communication Theory. Objective: Students will gain a better appreciation of racial rhetorical criticism as a research method through an analysis of campus architecture.
Research Interests:
This article takes the assassination of Qasem Soleimani as a case study that manifests the schism between the realities of those in revolutionary struggle and those on the U.S. American left who might gather in solidarity with them. I... more
This article takes the assassination of Qasem Soleimani as a case
study that manifests the schism between the realities of those
in revolutionary struggle and those on the U.S. American left
who might gather in solidarity with them. I explicate “reverse
moral exceptionalism” as a nationalistic tendency to insist on
oneself as central to every event of significance on the world
stage and which positions the United States (U.S.) as a singular
source of evil in the world. Based on an ethnocentrism that
approaches the world from a position of dominance, reverse
moral exceptionalism saturates the space available for others
and induces the inability to listen to the testimony of
others. Cartesian “either-or” logics situate all non-white state
actors as inherently colonized and by extension, all colonial
brown actors emerge as apolitical victims. I argue that when
whiteness is only understood in racially provincial terms, it
distorts understandings of inter-racial collusion in the transnational
context. I attend to the unlikely ways in which whiteness and its
concomitant forms of exceptionalism permeate U.S. American
nationalist subjectivities, setting the groundwork for an anticolonial discourse that paradoxically justifies oppressive regimes
and brings about indifference to grassroots revolutionary discourse
and the micropolitics of resistance.
study that manifests the schism between the realities of those
in revolutionary struggle and those on the U.S. American left
who might gather in solidarity with them. I explicate “reverse
moral exceptionalism” as a nationalistic tendency to insist on
oneself as central to every event of significance on the world
stage and which positions the United States (U.S.) as a singular
source of evil in the world. Based on an ethnocentrism that
approaches the world from a position of dominance, reverse
moral exceptionalism saturates the space available for others
and induces the inability to listen to the testimony of
others. Cartesian “either-or” logics situate all non-white state
actors as inherently colonized and by extension, all colonial
brown actors emerge as apolitical victims. I argue that when
whiteness is only understood in racially provincial terms, it
distorts understandings of inter-racial collusion in the transnational
context. I attend to the unlikely ways in which whiteness and its
concomitant forms of exceptionalism permeate U.S. American
nationalist subjectivities, setting the groundwork for an anticolonial discourse that paradoxically justifies oppressive regimes
and brings about indifference to grassroots revolutionary discourse
and the micropolitics of resistance.
Research Interests:
Transnational rhetorical scholarship has yet to enact meaningful solidarity with the subaltern. “Inclusionary” efforts have actively excluded what I term the “radical subject,” the subject revolting against repressive hegemonic forces to... more
Transnational rhetorical scholarship has yet to enact meaningful solidarity with the subaltern. “Inclusionary” efforts have actively excluded what I term the “radical subject,” the subject revolting against repressive hegemonic forces to achieve liberatory change in society. Without privileging the radical subject and a critique of freedom over a critique of domination, hegemonic narratives continue uninterrupted. This paper turns toward the Syrian revolution to illustrate how critical rhetoric does not stretch far enough for the radical subject. I propose a radical rhetorical paradigm that centers the radical subject’s lived knowledge as determining meaning. This approach realizes the wisdom in relinquishing skepticism during the critical reasoning process by placing the radical subject as the starting point in inquiry in contested spaces where negotiation over meaning is ongoing. It acknowledges the radical subject’s testimony as born of the epistemic relevance of social
location and the boundedness of knowledge. The radical rhetorical
approach consecrates the epistemologies of the radical subject as inculcating the imperative for action on behalf of the oppressed.
location and the boundedness of knowledge. The radical rhetorical
approach consecrates the epistemologies of the radical subject as inculcating the imperative for action on behalf of the oppressed.
Research Interests:
This essay identifies and explicates a key rhetorical form-"redemptive exclusion"-underlying former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley's efforts to defend barring Syrian refugees from American soil. Through a... more
This essay identifies and explicates a key rhetorical form-"redemptive exclusion"-underlying former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley's efforts to defend barring Syrian refugees from American soil. Through a reliance on ethotic prolepsis, the rhetorical form of redemptive exclusion enables the creation of a transcendent perspective that reconciles seemingly opposite contemporary cultural and political rhet-orics: xenophobic discourses of exclusion become coarticulated with the mythic promise of an America open to all. We show how Haley's rhetoric combines antithetical gestures of inclusion and exclusion by interweaving synecdochic narratives of her own immigrant history; hyperbolic narratives of American benevolence toward immigrants; and stereotypical narratives of terrorist identity that preempt the acceptance of Syrian refugees as even potentially American. We argue that Haley converts the rejection of Syrian refugees from American soil into an opportunity for constraining and qualifying the mythic ideal of the United States as an historical beacon for immigrants around the globe. In the conclusion, we suggest that a close study of how redemptive exclusion takes life in Haley's discourse offers more general lessons about the rhetorical and ideological character of controversies over U.S. immigration policy. NOOR GHAZAL ASWAD is a doctoral candidate at the University of Memphis. ANTONIO DE VELASCO is an associate professor of rhetoric in the Department of Communication and Film at the University of Memphis.
Research Interests:
This collaboratively written piece materializes the collective experiences of 14 students and an instructor in a graduate-level feminist research methods class in the United States. Instead of writing a traditional seminar paper, the... more
This collaboratively written piece materializes the collective experiences of 14 students and an instructor in a graduate-level feminist research methods class in the United States. Instead of writing a traditional seminar paper, the class decided to continue our weekly discussions, during which we wrestled with both theory and practice, in text in a final paper. It just seemed like the best way to end our time together. In so doing, the she embodied collective furthers feminist writing practices that embrace uneasy collectives of varying viewpoints. This particular collective acknowledges our she, but recognizes, listens to, and celebrates all the powerful pronouns that create a collective.The collective offers a brief introduction and lengthy appendix to situate the piece. We do not adhere to a singular feminism in the piece. Consequently, our collective is a way of doing unity differently, of attending to and residing with the frictional thought within feminisms and finding that frictional thought as generative. We invite readers to join our collective, to think together across differences without reducing those differences to similarities.
Research Interests:
This study examines the charismatic leadership rhetoric of the Democratic Party's nominee Hillary Clinton and the Republican Party's nominee Donald Trump during the 2016 election. DICTION 7.0, content analysis software designed for... more
This study examines the charismatic leadership rhetoric of the Democratic Party's nominee Hillary Clinton and the Republican Party's nominee Donald Trump during the 2016 election. DICTION 7.0, content analysis software designed for political discourse, was used to analyze the campaign speeches of both candidates. The findings suggest that Donald Trump was significantly more likely to use hyperbolic crisis rhetoric regarding the intolerable nature of the status quo as well as rhetoric emphasizing a shared social identity, the pursuit of a common goal, and tangible outcomes. His communitarian rhetoric enabled the creation of a hermeneutic praxis shifting identity salience from the individual to the collective, encouraging the formation of collective memory and national nostalgia. Hillary Clinton, while employing egalitarian rhetoric, was constrained in her ability to utilize agentic rhetorical constructs due to stereotypical gender expectations and her positionality as a member of the incumbent party. The findings affirm presidential rhetoric as being anchored in political times and question the role of charismatic rhetoric in influencing the appeal, and potential electability, of the candidates during the 2016 presidential election.
Research Interests:
This paper examines recent advertisements used by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to raise awareness about the predicament of endangered, vulnerable, and threatened species. By engaging in a critical discourse analysis of a selection of... more
This paper examines recent advertisements used by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to raise awareness about the predicament of endangered, vulnerable, and threatened species. By engaging in a critical discourse analysis of a selection of advertisements, this study demonstrates how the WWF uses intertextuality as a discourse strategy to articulate its message and objectives. In this paper, I argue that by engaging in the juxtaposition of various paratexts (“layers of meaning”), the WWF produces a narrative which reveals an anthropocentric lens through which we view the world. The advertisements are found to resort to paratexts of anthropomorphism with the intent of extending the bounds of personhood to non-human animal species. In closing, I maintain that intertextuality is employed not only to question the dominant humancentric paradigm, but serve the heuristic function of encouraging a more empathetic identification with the animals in question and the creation of a more holistic worldview.
Research Interests:
Although the Syrian refugee crisis has received global media attention, studies exploring the representation of Syrian refugees in American media have been lacking. Using both content and critical discourse analysis methods, this paper... more
Although the Syrian refugee crisis has received global media attention, studies exploring the representation of Syrian refugees in American media have been lacking. Using both content and critical discourse analysis methods, this paper examines the discursive constructions of Syrian refugees in the New York Times during the 2016 presidential election. The findings reveal that despite the overall “neutral” tone of media coverage, this did not negate the existence of implicit bias toward refugees. The linguistic strategies employed, though at times engaging in narratives of victimhood, result in the demarcation of Syrian refugees as “universal refugee subjects” rooted in past historical and geographical contexts. Together with an emphasis on vulnerability over agency, pernicious depictions of Syrian refugees as terrorists or political bargaining tools, and an assumption of popular resentment by the public, these seemingly disconnected discursive strategies collectively contribute to the dehumanization of Syrian refugees, with damaging implications for the case of their acceptance into American society.
Research Interests:
This paper presents an overview of recent public awareness campaigns on CE issues in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. It also provides an in-depth case study of the United Arab Emir-ates (UAE), examining the obstacles and... more
This paper presents an overview of recent public awareness campaigns on CE issues in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. It also provides an in-depth case study of the United Arab Emir-ates (UAE), examining the obstacles and successes such campaigns have encountered in the country. As part of this work, the objectives of these CE awareness campaigns, the groups they have targeted, the institutions behind them, the level of support they have garnered and their impact are assessed. Design/methodology/approach: Besides a critical review of various secondary sources (publicly available and otherwise), the paper reports on the findings of in-depth interviews conducted with several professionals engaged in CE awareness-raising activities in the UAE.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efforts undertaken by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in deploying renewable energy (RE), in terms of capacity assessments, research and development... more
ABSTRACT Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efforts undertaken by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in deploying renewable energy (RE), in terms of capacity assessments, research and development activities, and current and planned projects. The paper also aims to investigate the drivers and barriers for the diffusion of RE technologies in the GCC. Design/methodology/approach ‐ The paper provides a literature-based study on the status of the RE sector in the GCC, including capacities, projects, policies and frameworks in the GCC, in addition to an analysis of the main drivers and barriers to RE deployment arising from the literature. Findings ‐ The results of this paper illustrate growing interest in renewable energy in the GCC countries at the R&D and project implementation level. Originality/value ‐ The paper contributes by the provision of the latest knowledge on the status of the RE sector in the GCC and by highlighting the most significant drivers fuelling RE deployment, as well as the barriers currently hindering the greater diffusion of RE technologies in the region.
Research Interests:
In this autoethnography, I bring my own embodied experience as an “othered” being to consciousness by tracking and tracing “vignettes” from my academic journey. Using multiple layers of consciousness, I connect the personal to the... more
In this autoethnography, I bring my own embodied experience as an “othered” being to consciousness by tracking and tracing “vignettes” from my academic journey. Using multiple layers of consciousness, I connect the personal to the cultural to the political. More specifically, I mark moments of otherization as a diasporic graduate student during my doctoral journey in the American academy. This chapter illustrates how pedagogical spaces valorize American notions of identity within a U.S. colonial imaginary. The academy actively imposes, in interstitial moments, U.S. racial hierarchies in a manner so settled, as to be diminutive of diasporic students. Critical discourses of race, though aiming to alleviate oppressions, at times operate oppressively toward diasporic identities by drawing on and sustaining discourses of race. In doing so, the academy is complicit in the material production and reproduction of hegemonic racial classifications, at the cost of a contemplation of the dynamic and layered histories of others.
Research Interests:
This study engages in a rhetorical analysis of the representations of Syrian refugees resettling in the United States in a recent short film by the International Rescue Committee in April 2017. The study illustrates the importance of... more
This study engages in a rhetorical analysis of the representations of Syrian refugees resettling in the United States in a recent short film by the International Rescue Committee in April 2017. The study illustrates the importance of strategic portrayals of refugees to the mobilization of principles of engagement. Despite the presence of overtly positive narrative elements, these constructive overtures are contradicted by various equivocalities of meaning. The narrating voice becomes a catalyst for the imperialist gaze, through an epistemology of liminality, extra-territorialization at the border, obfuscation of individual history, and an endowed precarity as beneficiaries of Western aid. In presenting a fragmented paradigm of transculturality, I posit that resettlement is presented as an ongoing form of assimilation demanding an erasure of one’s historical origins. Underlying these depictions is a conditionality of the rights of refugees, compromising their constitution as fully agentic subjects worthy of empathetic identification, and belonging, in the host society.
Research Interests:
We must expand our understanding of the refugee figure beyond the spectacle of suffering, to a celebration of bravery and revolution.
Research Interests:
Declarations of the Syrian revolution’s “failure” overlook the profound ways in which the past ten years have positively transformed and empowered Syrians.
Research Interests:
The anthology Intercultural Competency: Learning, Communicating, and Serving helps students become engaged and culturally competent communicators. The selected readings illustrate key concepts and perspectives in intercultural... more
The anthology Intercultural Competency: Learning, Communicating, and Serving helps students become engaged and culturally competent communicators.
The selected readings illustrate key concepts and perspectives in intercultural communication that assist students in gaining entrée into small group discussions and activities. Specifically, they serve as jumping off points for in-class discussions on specific target topics, skills, and strategies.
The material addresses both verbal and non-verbal communication, as well as cultural identity and perspectives. Students learn how culture affects conflict and negotiation, as well as how cultural identity, cultural perspectives, and communication styles come into play in health, education, tourism, and business settings.
Intercultural Competency: Learning, Communicating, and Serving is ideal for introductory intercultural communication courses. Designed for undergraduates, and with a focus on interpersonal communication, the reader also is a useful learning resource for study abroad programs.
The selected readings illustrate key concepts and perspectives in intercultural communication that assist students in gaining entrée into small group discussions and activities. Specifically, they serve as jumping off points for in-class discussions on specific target topics, skills, and strategies.
The material addresses both verbal and non-verbal communication, as well as cultural identity and perspectives. Students learn how culture affects conflict and negotiation, as well as how cultural identity, cultural perspectives, and communication styles come into play in health, education, tourism, and business settings.
Intercultural Competency: Learning, Communicating, and Serving is ideal for introductory intercultural communication courses. Designed for undergraduates, and with a focus on interpersonal communication, the reader also is a useful learning resource for study abroad programs.
Research Interests:
Course Description COM 548 provides an examination of various methodological perspectives on rhetorical criticism. Specifically, the course aims to familiarize students with both traditional and alternative critical methods and to... more
Course Description COM 548 provides an examination of various methodological perspectives on rhetorical criticism. Specifically, the course aims to familiarize students with both traditional and alternative critical methods and to encourage students to perceive the rhetorical dimensions of all manner of public discourse, ranging from speeches, advertising, film, popular music, to discursive forms in new media and the Internet. The course fulfills a method requirement for Master's students in Communication Studies, and is designed with a number of primary objectives and outcomes. This seminar is about writing-specifically the mode of writing called rhetorical criticism. To write we must first read, and to that end we will begin with foundational essays on the nature of rhetoric and criticism. These essays are meant to inspire as much as inform. We will then familiarize ourselves with common modes of rhetorical criticism, with an emphasis on critical approaches to criticism. You will write in several ways during the class, with options for a final project that fits into your graduate study goals.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This short essay introduces the special issue, "Radical Rhetorics at/ and the World's End," which features original short essays that offer bold, risky, and provocative perspectives that share the general belief that we can no longer... more
This short essay introduces the special issue, "Radical Rhetorics at/ and the World's End," which features original short essays that offer bold, risky, and provocative perspectives that share the general belief that we can no longer afford safe, incremental, or mechanical solutions and responses to the profound challenges that confront our planetary community/ies today. Rather than a new set of universals, or proscriptive, prescriptive, or diagnostic solutions, the essays included herein open an in/coherent political horizon and gesture to a diverse set of tools, concepts, and approaches that might help rethink what meaningful social change, world-building, and the pluriversal present and future might look like in all of its diversity, unpredictability, and in/ coherence. This forum emerged from a roundtable discussion at the 2022 National Communication Association convention and was developed through a collaborative peer review process that involved all contributing authors. This introduction establishes the disciplinary, conceptual, and personal context surrounding this forum before providing a brief overview of the essays.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, Rhetoric, Composition and Rhetoric, Resistance (Social), Rhetorical Criticism, and 13 moreEthnic and Racial Studies, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Environmental Justice, Rhetorical History, Rhetorical Theory, Settler Colonial Studies, Decolonial Thought, Decolonization, Abolitionism, Settler colonialism, Epistemic Injustice, Antiracism, and Pluriverse
This essay identifies and explicates a key rhetorical form—“redemptive exclusion”—underlying former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley’s efforts to defend barring Syrian refugees from American soil. Through a... more
This essay identifies and explicates a key rhetorical form—“redemptive exclusion”—underlying former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley’s efforts to defend barring Syrian refugees from American soil. Through a reliance on ethotic prolepsis, the rhetorical form of redemptive exclusion enables the creation of a transcendent perspective that reconciles seemingly opposite contemporary cultural and political rhetorics: xenophobic discourses of exclusion become coarticulated with the mythic promise of an America open to all. We show how Haley’s rhetoric combines antithetical gestures of inclusion and exclusion by interweaving synecdochic narratives of her own immigrant history; hyperbolic narratives of American benevolence toward immigrants; and stereotypical narratives of terrorist identity that preempt the acceptance of Syrian refugees as even potentially American. We argue that Haley converts the rejection of Syrian refugees from American soil into an opportunity...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Journal #25 from Media Rise's Quarantined Across Borders Collection by Noor Ghazal Aswad. From England, UK. Quarantined in Memphis, Tennessee, United States.
Research Interests:
This collaboratively written piece materializes the collective experiences of 14 students and an instructor in a graduate-level feminist research methods class in the United States. Instead of writing a traditional seminar paper, the... more
This collaboratively written piece materializes the collective experiences of 14 students and an instructor in a graduate-level feminist research methods class in the United States. Instead of writing a traditional seminar paper, the class decided to continue our weekly discussions, during which we wrestled with both theory and practice, in text in a final paper. It just seemed like the best way to end our time together. In so doing, the she embodied collective furthers feminist writing practices that embrace uneasy collectives of varying viewpoints. This particular collective acknowledges our she, but recognizes, listens to, and celebrates all the powerful pronouns that create a collective. The collective offers a brief introduction and lengthy appendix to situate the piece. We do not adhere to a singular feminism in the piece. Consequently, our collective is a way of doing unity differently, of attending to and residing with the frictional thought within feminisms and finding that...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Although the Syrian refugee crisis has received global media attention, studies exploring the representation of Syrian refugees in American media have been lacking. Using both content and critical discourse analysis methods, this... more
ABSTRACT Although the Syrian refugee crisis has received global media attention, studies exploring the representation of Syrian refugees in American media have been lacking. Using both content and critical discourse analysis methods, this paper examines the discursive constructions of Syrian refugees in the New York Times during the 2016 presidential election. The findings reveal that despite the overall “neutral” tone of media coverage, this did not negate the existence of implicit bias toward refugees. The linguistic strategies employed, though at times engaging in narratives of victimhood, result in the demarcation of Syrian refugees as “universal refugee subjects” rooted in past historical and geographical contexts. Together with an emphasis on vulnerability over agency, pernicious depictions of Syrian refugees as terrorists or political bargaining tools, and an assumption of popular resentment by the public, these seemingly disconnected discursive strategies collectively contribute to the dehumanization of Syrian refugees, with damaging implications for the case of their acceptance into American society.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper examines recent advertisements used by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to raise awareness about the predicament of endangered, vulnerable, and threatened species. By engaging in a critical discourse analysis of a selection of... more
This paper examines recent advertisements used by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to raise awareness about the predicament of endangered, vulnerable, and threatened species. By engaging in a critical discourse analysis of a selection of advertisements, this study demonstrates how the WWF uses intertextuality as a discourse strategy to articulate its message and objectives. In this paper, I argue that by engaging in the juxtaposition of various paratexts (“layers of meaning”), the WWF produces a narrative which reveals an anthropocentric lens through which we view the world. The advertisements are found to resort to paratexts of anthropomorphism with the intent of extending the bounds of personhood to non-human animal species. In closing, I maintain that intertextuality is employed not only to question the dominant humancentric paradigm, but serve the heuristic function of encouraging a more empathetic identification with the animals in question and the creation of a more holistic worldview.
Research Interests:
This study examines the charismatic leadership rhetoric of the Democratic Party's nominee Hillary Clinton and the Republican Party's nominee Donald Trump during the 2016 election. DICTION 7.0, content analysis software designed... more
This study examines the charismatic leadership rhetoric of the Democratic Party's nominee Hillary Clinton and the Republican Party's nominee Donald Trump during the 2016 election. DICTION 7.0, content analysis software designed for political discourse, was used to analyze the campaign speeches of both candidates. The findings suggest that Donald Trump was significantly more likely to use hyperbolic crisis rhetoric regarding the intolerable nature of the status quo as well as rhetoric emphasizing a shared social identity, the pursuit of a common goal, and tangible outcomes. His communitarian rhetoric enabled the creation of a hermeneutic praxis shifting identity salience from the individual to the collective, encouraging the formation of collective memory and national nostalgia. Hillary Clinton, while employing egalitarian rhetoric, was constrained in her ability to utilize agentic rhetorical constructs due to stereotypical gender expectations and her positionality as a membe...