Media and Communication Ph.D. Dissertations
Title
The Cultural Rhetorics of After-Dinner Speaking
Date of Award
2016
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
Media and Communication
First Advisor
Alberto Gonzalez (Advisor)
Second Advisor
John Dowd (Committee Member)
Third Advisor
Ellen Gorsevski (Committee Member)
Fourth Advisor
Douglas Forsyth (Other)
Abstract
The following study investigates the genre of after-dinner speaking (ADS) as articulated within US public discourse in the twentieth-century. Though ADS is an integral facet of speech communication pedagogy and was, in the early twentieth-century, the most popular site of public address outside of pulpit oratory, because the genre is identified as a form of epideictic oratory for the personal sphere, the history of the genre is obfuscated. This dissertation argues that during the early twentieth-century ADS provided a space for the expression of nineteenth-century platform oratorical culture in the banquet halls of the twentieth-century US urban landscape. As a central part of this historical moment of US rhetorical and political culture, ADS functioned to remediate platform oratorical traditions and provide opportunities for cultural identification.
Recommended Citation
Wright, Courtney J., "The Cultural Rhetorics of After-Dinner Speaking" (2016). Media and Communication Ph.D. Dissertations. 35.
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/media_comm_diss/35