Student Papers and Presentations Copyright (c) 2013 Liberty University All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/coms_stud_pres Recent documents in Student Papers and Presentations en-us Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:05:16 PDT 3600 The Strategic Rhetoric of a President: A Narrative Criticism of President George W. Bush’s Second Republican Party Nomination Acceptance Speech http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/coms_stud_pres/2 http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/coms_stud_pres/2 Tue, 27 May 2008 09:50:51 PDT President George W. Bush’s second “Republican Party Nomination Acceptance Speech” is an intriguing piece of rhetoric that is discussed in this study. The research question asks how Bush’s rhetoric in this speech exemplifies his use of specific narratives in order to assimilate with the audience. Fisher’s narrative paradigm is used as a rhetorical analysis tool to explore these narratives, looking at their narrative coherence and fidelity and showing how satellites within his speech do not relate to the speech but are aimed at the audience’s feelings. In this study, certain pieces of Bush’s narratives within his nomination acceptance speech were selected and analyzed using Fisher’s narrative paradigm. Each of those pieces are not directly related to the purpose of the speech, but are satellites. The narrative coherence and narrative fidelity were determined in these satellites in order to attempt to discover their purpose and place in the overall speech. The conclusions of this study is that the many arbitrary narratives that President Bush includes in his speech serve the purpose of connecting him with his audience and have both narrative coherence and fidelity with his audience members. Additionally, further research should be done on this specific speech using other rhetorical analysis tools in order to go into even more depth with the narratives.

]]> miriam o. bundick Do You Think Your Group Thinks? http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/coms_stud_pres/1 http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/coms_stud_pres/1 Tue, 27 May 2008 09:43:07 PDT “Do You Think Your Group Thinks?”

An Examination of the Relationship between Groupthink and Small Group Type

The intent of our research was to analyize the six main groups in our culture and to determine which group, if any, suffers from groupthink more than the others. Groupthink is defined as “a strong concurrence-seeking tendency among members within a group that leads to a deterioration in the decision making process.” There are six main types of groups, primary groups, social groups, educational/theraputic groups, decision making/problem solving groups, work groups and mediated communication groups.

A literature review was conducted on previous studies about various aspects of small group and groupthink research. In 1972, Irving L. Janis studied political disasters and developed “groupthink theory”. Eight symptoms were developed to assess group think.

We determined that surveys were the best, and most efficient way to calculate these queries. Entitled, “Group Interaction Survey” our group composed a survey which consists of twelve close-ended (yes or no) questions. Each question was designed to detect one of the eight symptoms of groupthink Janis outlined. The purpose of asking these surveys was to gauge what groups are more susceptible to groupthink.

Twenty surveys were passed out to each group totalling 120 surveys. According to our research, determined by the survey, primary groups had the highest amount of groupthink. Of the people we surveyed 55% of the answers indicated group think. Problem solving groups had the lowest amount of accumulated groupthink with an outcome of only 40% of the answers indicating groupthink.

There are other ways the study could have been conducted, several other factors that could have been considered such as a wider variety of ages, greater number of surveys, or wider geographical area covered. Other methods could have been used as well to evaluate each individaul symptom.

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