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Dissertation Information for Sharon Denise Little

NAME:
- Sharon Denise Little

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Communication

SCHOOL:
- Indiana University (USA) (2005)

ADVISORS:
- Carolyn Calloway Thomas

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- James Andrews
- Robert Terrill
- Lynn Henderson

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: "Death at the hands of persons known": Victimage rhetoric and the 1922 Dyer anti-lynching bill

Abstract: This dissertation engaged in a rhetorical analysis of the congressional debates surrounding the 1922 Dyer anti-lynchingbill to determine what role, if any, racism played in thwarting its passage? It asked: Did the constitutional "states' rights" argument mask a racist, protectionist rhetoric of control? Did political rhetors, reliant on the black male as rapist myth, a racial and sexual rhetorical narrative that perpetuated historical stereotypes of the sexual prowess and violent propensities of black males, seek to justify lynching by literalizing savage and bestial metaphors enacting a victimage ritual? Borrowing from Kenneth Burke, I used cluster criticism to conduct a close textual analysis of the congressional debates to identify how savage and bestial imagery cohered into an interpretive pattern of motives. The four steps of cluster criticism include: (1) selection and identification of key terms in the discourse; (2) charting of key terms; (3) identification of patterns in the associations to determine meanings; and (4) the naming of motive.

Three primary clusters of images that emerged from the discourse were: (1) Blacks were animalistic, primitive, and savage enemies; (2) Blacks were menacing, predatory, criminal rapists who threatened "virtuous" white women; and (3) Blacks were ignorant, illogical stupes who needed to be led by a superior white race. All of these images were perpetuated and reinforced by savage, satanic, infestation, and force decivilizing vehicles. Deliteralizing this imagery revealed certain Congressmen's racist economic, political, and social motives. By analyzing the critical move from the metaphorical to the literal, this dissertation demonstrated how terms such as "savage" and "bestial" became synonymous with "blacks" and "black males." I began with a review of the literature on rhetoric and race, which included a discussion of America's racial history and the rhetorical construction of the black male as rapist myth. I continued with an overview of key lynching studies and the anti-lynching efforts of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the ASWPL, and the NAACP. Analytically, the cluster analysis of the debates illustrated the victimage ritual and revealed racist and paternalistic rhetorical motives. I concluded with a summary of the historical instantiation of victimage rhetoric used to justify slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, segregation, to the more present racial profiling and prison industrial complex, thereby bridging America's cultural memory regarding patterns of adverse treatment of blacks.*

MPACT Scores for Sharon Denise Little

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2010-10-05 18:04:58

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