Defense Date

10-25-2024

Graduation Date

Spring 5-9-2025

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

Communication and Rhetorical Studies

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Richard Thames

Committee Member

Erik Garrett

Committee Member

Janie Harden Fritz

Keywords

Kenneth Burke, epideictic, science, rhetoric, rhetoric of science, epideictic rhetoric

Abstract

This dissertation addresses Kenneth Burke’s challenges, notions, and perspectives on modern science and how we should view, utilize, and apply science to our lives. This project argues that we need more than the rhetoric of science; we need an epideictic rhetoric of science. The term epideictic is important because the encounter between science and society creates a tension between maintaining and changing beliefs. Because science involves belief and is itself a belief, every time we engage with science, it demands a verdict from us: to believe or to reject it. On the other hand, as we seek to maintain our beliefs, this creates tension. Here, engaging with science becomes more complex because the tension occurs within a nomos, and our nomos constantly change from time to time and from place to place.

After leveraging insights from Burke’s epideictic rhetoric and science to offer a novel perspective on the rhetoric of science and rhetorical studies in Chapter One, this dissertation examines the nature of science and its epideictic nature across four historical periods, with each period primarily represented by a thinker or theorist in Chapter Two. This dissertation follows the structure of Burke’s Permanence and Change: orientation, perspective, and reorientation in writing, as explored in Chapters Three, Four, and Five. Chapter Three identifies four epideictic challenges that occur in modern science. Chapter Four analyzes Burke’s perspective by incongruity and three other concepts related to scientia purificandum for refining modern science and providing a terministic screen for the challenges of science. Finally, Chapter Five explores the importance of Burke’s four notions in refining modern science and presents Burke’s vision of how the new orientation or reorientation should look after we reorient our perspectives. Thus, through Burke’s epideictic rhetoric of science, this dissertation promotes the idea that we need to return to the ancient in order to move forward.

Language

English

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