Award Date

12-2010

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Communication Studies

Department

Communication

First Committee Member

Thomas Burkholder, Chair

Second Committee Member

Donovan Conley

Third Committee Member

Tara Emmers-Sommer

Graduate Faculty Representative

Todd Jones

Number of Pages

119

Abstract

This thesis examines President Barack Obama’s address given on September 9, 2009 entitled “Remarks by the President to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care.” In order to address various situational and contextual elements such as legislative ambiguity, national expense, bureaucratic intrusion, abortion, euthanasia and illegal immigration, President Obama opportunely enters the conversation at a particular time so as to benefit his agenda of passing health care reform. Revolving around the notion of kairotic strategema, which includes the understating of deliberative address as well as the possession of kairos and phronesis, I assert that this aids President Obama in being able to strategically deliver a crucial address while influencing both the American public and Congress first toward acceptance and then toward the passing of health care reform.

Keywords

Obama; Barack; Oratory; Rhetoric; Speeches; addresses; etc.

Disciplines

Communication | Rhetoric | Social Influence and Political Communication | Speech and Rhetorical Studies

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Download


Share

COinS