Jill K. Burk

Defense Date

3-14-2014

Graduation Date

Spring 2014

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

Pat Arneson

Committee Member

Janie Harden Fritz

Committee Member

Calvin Troup

Keywords

Civic engagement, Communication pedagogy. Jane Addams, Philosophy of communication, Service-Learning

Abstract

This project responds to the question: How do communication educators encourage students to enact the communicative practices necessary for a life of rhetorically engaged civic action? In responding to this question, the academic field of communication studies is recognized as a site for implementing the lessons of rhetoric, democracy, and civic engagement. This project contributes to the civic engagement scholarship from a communication studies perspective by foregrounding human communication as an essential component of the civic engagement process. As an interpretive inquiry, the philosophical thought and the pragmatic action of twentieth-century rhetorician and social activist Jane Addams (1860-1935) provides a hermeneutic entrance point for identifying and understanding the ways in which faculty members in higher education might conduct service-learning in a more responsive and engaged manner.

Practicing situated communicative service-learning, a pedagogical approach that embraces the historical moment and the challenges facing service-learning on today's college campus, provides one possibility. Addams's philosophical thought and communicative practices inform the integration of situated communicative service-learning into the communication studies field and college campus through the understanding of commonplace stemming from the Greek understanding of topoi (Aristotle). This praxis-centered approach to service-learning provides ground for students to understand the rhetorical and communicative practices necessary for a life of engaged civic action. By grounding individual communicative practices in a communication classroom setting, communicative habits can grow and flourish in communities.

Format

PDF

Language

English

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