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Dramatic Catharsis: Barack Obama’s rhetoric of redemption / CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL

Swansea University Author: CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL

DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUthesis.37298

Abstract

The 2008 election of Barack Obama as America’s first African American president was popularly held to represent a fulfilment of Martin Luther King’s Dream and led to speculation about the implications of an Obama victory for a post racial America. This thesis argues that race was a recurring theme o...

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Published: 2016
Institution: Swansea University
Degree level: Doctoral
Degree name: Ph.D
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa37298
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spelling 2020-09-01T15:45:32.5811681 v2 37298 2017-12-01 Dramatic Catharsis: Barack Obama’s rhetoric of redemption 517f152755bc5a7c3dcf03ab178a1ae7 CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL true false 2017-12-01 The 2008 election of Barack Obama as America’s first African American president was popularly held to represent a fulfilment of Martin Luther King’s Dream and led to speculation about the implications of an Obama victory for a post racial America. This thesis argues that race was a recurring theme of Obama’s election campaign, and that his rhetoric referred frequently to America’s history of racial inequality. It explores how Obama constructed a racial identity that connected him to the African American struggle for civil rights and which placed him within a national progress narrative, and it argues that an important feature of Obama’s campaign was the articulation of a rhetoric of redemption.Academic debates focussing on Obama’s racial identity and the extent to which he spoke about race have been supported either by textual analysis of his speeches or by applying a historical perspective to the campaign. This thesis incorporates both approaches as it combines discourse analysis of a reference corpus of 172 speeches with intertextual and extralinguistic analyses facilitated through contextual knowledge of African American history and culture. The methodology embraces Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach, consideration of Obama’s appropriation of the Exodus narrative, and the application of Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad to explore the construction and representation of racial identity in Obama’s rhetoric.The approach identifies an analytic corpus of 41 speeches which focus on race. This is used to identify how Obama presented his personal history within the context of the civil rights struggle and how he positioned his campaign to neither confront nor accommodate white America about racism and inequality. The results reveal Obama’s desire for a national catharsis in repudiation of America’s history of racial injustice; a redemptive moment made possible through unity, atonement and the collective effort encapsulated in the campaign slogan, “yes, we can”. E-Thesis Obama, Barack, Race, Equality, Political campaigns 31 12 2016 2016-12-31 10.23889/SUthesis.37298 CD Rom of the "Corpus of speeches" to accompany the physical copy of the PhD held in Singleton Park Library. Multiple images redacted due to copyright. COLLEGE NANME COLLEGE CODE Swansea University Doctoral Ph.D 2020-09-01T15:45:32.5811681 2017-12-01T15:02:17.7508934 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL 1 0037298-01122017150650.pdf Marshall_Christopher_Guy_phd_thesis_redacted_content.pdf 2017-12-01T15:06:50.4170000 Output 2756545 application/pdf Redacted version - open access true 2017-12-01T00:00:00.0000000 true
title Dramatic Catharsis: Barack Obama’s rhetoric of redemption
spellingShingle Dramatic Catharsis: Barack Obama’s rhetoric of redemption
CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL
title_short Dramatic Catharsis: Barack Obama’s rhetoric of redemption
title_full Dramatic Catharsis: Barack Obama’s rhetoric of redemption
title_fullStr Dramatic Catharsis: Barack Obama’s rhetoric of redemption
title_full_unstemmed Dramatic Catharsis: Barack Obama’s rhetoric of redemption
title_sort Dramatic Catharsis: Barack Obama’s rhetoric of redemption
author_id_str_mv 517f152755bc5a7c3dcf03ab178a1ae7
author_id_fullname_str_mv 517f152755bc5a7c3dcf03ab178a1ae7_***_CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL
author CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL
author2 CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL
format E-Thesis
publishDate 2016
institution Swansea University
doi_str_mv 10.23889/SUthesis.37298
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchytype
hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics
document_store_str 1
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description The 2008 election of Barack Obama as America’s first African American president was popularly held to represent a fulfilment of Martin Luther King’s Dream and led to speculation about the implications of an Obama victory for a post racial America. This thesis argues that race was a recurring theme of Obama’s election campaign, and that his rhetoric referred frequently to America’s history of racial inequality. It explores how Obama constructed a racial identity that connected him to the African American struggle for civil rights and which placed him within a national progress narrative, and it argues that an important feature of Obama’s campaign was the articulation of a rhetoric of redemption.Academic debates focussing on Obama’s racial identity and the extent to which he spoke about race have been supported either by textual analysis of his speeches or by applying a historical perspective to the campaign. This thesis incorporates both approaches as it combines discourse analysis of a reference corpus of 172 speeches with intertextual and extralinguistic analyses facilitated through contextual knowledge of African American history and culture. The methodology embraces Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach, consideration of Obama’s appropriation of the Exodus narrative, and the application of Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad to explore the construction and representation of racial identity in Obama’s rhetoric.The approach identifies an analytic corpus of 41 speeches which focus on race. This is used to identify how Obama presented his personal history within the context of the civil rights struggle and how he positioned his campaign to neither confront nor accommodate white America about racism and inequality. The results reveal Obama’s desire for a national catharsis in repudiation of America’s history of racial injustice; a redemptive moment made possible through unity, atonement and the collective effort encapsulated in the campaign slogan, “yes, we can”.
published_date 2016-12-31T03:46:57Z
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score 11.036334

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