English Ph.D. Dissertations
Towards A Cultural Rhetorics Approach to Caribbean Rhetoric: African Guyanese Women from the Village of Buxton Transforming Oral History
Date of Award
2016
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
English/Rhetoric and Writing
First Advisor
Andrea Riley-Mukavetz (Advisor)
Second Advisor
Sue Carter Wood (Committee Member)
Third Advisor
Lee Nickoson (Committee Member)
Fourth Advisor
Alberto Gonzalez (Committee Member)
Abstract
In my project, "Towards a Cultural Rhetorics Approach to Caribbean Rhetoric: African Guyanese Women from the Village of Buxton Transforming Oral History," I build a Cultural Rhetorics approach by listening to the stories of a group of African Guyanese women from the village of Buxton (Buxtonians). I obtained these stories from engaging in a long-term oral history research project where I understand my participants to be invested in telling their stories to teach the current and future generations of Buxtonians. I build this approach by using a collaborative and communal methodology of asking Wah De Story Seh? This methodology provides a framework for understanding the women's strategies in history-making as distinctively Caribbean rhetoric. It is crucial for my project to mark these women's strategies as Caribbean rhetoric because they negotiate their oral histories and identities by consciously and unconsciously connecting to an African ancestral heritage of formerly enslaved Africans in Guyana. In my project, I enact story as methodology to understand how the rhetorical strategies of the Buxtonian women make oral histories and by so doing, I examine the relationship between rhetoric, knowledge, and power.
Recommended Citation
Baird, Pauline, "Towards A Cultural Rhetorics Approach to Caribbean Rhetoric: African Guyanese Women from the Village of Buxton Transforming Oral History" (2016). English Ph.D. Dissertations. 12.
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/eng_diss/12