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A RHETORICAL STUDY OF EDITORIALS IN WISCONSIN NEWSPAPERS DURING THE ANTI-GERMAN MOVEMENT, 1916-1918
Abstract
The de-ethnicization committed by governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, the media, and by private individuals on manifestations of German ethnicity and culture in the United States during the First World War has been a continuing subject for study by historians and rhetoricians who would try to explain it. This study reviews the historical and rhetorical record of involved in the anti-German movement in Wisconsin during the time when the "Campaign for Americanism" was at its height. This study was designed to illuminate the rhetorical workings of the period by analyzing the ethnoreligious references and positions taken by nine of Wisconsin's newspapers. The analytic perspective of this study combines the psychological theories of Julian Jaynes, the anthropological theories of Bronislaw Malinowski, and the rhetorical theories of Kenneth Burke and Jacqueline de Romilly. The resultant study posits the importance of a "magico-mythical" functioning in the rhetoric which is based on the workings of a residual "bicameral mind." This theory posits that the right brain, with its manifest functions of synthetic formulary and global processing of information and of the processing of affective stimuli and its residual function of motivating and authorizing "bicamerality," is largely responsible for the workings of mytho-poesis in language and the effectiveness of myths, ideologies, and rhetorical forms, in society. A significant variance of "bicamerality" was noted in the study's sampling of newspaper editorials. "Political myths," which were largely the products of Wilson and his administration, caught up much of American society in a magico-rhetorical "war of the gods." These contrived combinations of society's "sacred myths" and "ideologies" led to much social dislocation and human suffering during the period under study. Similar "political myths" work their "magic," today.
Subject Area
Communication
Recommended Citation
SCHEDEL, JOHN RICHARD, "A RHETORICAL STUDY OF EDITORIALS IN WISCONSIN NEWSPAPERS DURING THE ANTI-GERMAN MOVEMENT, 1916-1918" (1982). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8306507.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8306507