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Abstract
Recently, U.S. American pageant systems have worked to redefine their cultural position as state titleholders within these systems are thrust into the public dialogue. However, the unique rhetorical artifact that is titleholder oratory coupled with the dynamic public address contexts in which titleholders locate themselves demands a blurring of lines between texts and performance of textuality due to cultural status as pageant winners. This oratory, then, becomes a deserving artifact of study, necessitating fresh forms of criticism. This essay champions the study of pageant titleholder oratory and proposes a mixed methodology of autoethnographic rhetorical criticism to authentically evaluate the contextual reconstruction pageant titleholders undergo in their varied oratorical contexts. Additional suggestions regarding transferability of this method to similar orators and oratorical contexts are also provided.
Notes
Robert J. Branham and W. Barnett Pearce, “Between Text and Context: Toward a Rhetoric of Contextual Reconstruction,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (1985): 19.
Ibid., 29.
Ibid., 30.
Victor Turner as quoted in Lyall Crawford, “Personal Ethnography,” Communication Monographs 63 (1996): 158.
Carolyn Ellis, The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Autoethnography (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004), 33.
Deborah Reed-Danahay, Auto/Ethnography (New York, NY: Berg, 1997).
Laurel Richardson, “Writing: A Method of Inquiry” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (London: SAGE, 1994), 516–529.
Robert L. Ivie, “The Performance of Rhetorical Knowledge,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): n.p.
Raymie McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Practice,” Communication Monographs 56 (1989): 91.
Ibid., 101.
Ibid.
Praxis as identified with Aristotle's vision of phronesis or practical wisdom—the doing of fine and noble deeds. See Seyla Benhabib, Critique, norm, and utopia (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1986), 157.
McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric,” 103.
Ivie, “Performance of Rhetorical Knowledge,” n.p.
Robert L. Ivie, “A Question of Significance,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): n.p.
John Lofland and Lyn H. Lofland, Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and Analysis, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1995), 3.
Ibid.
Victor Turner as quoted in Lyall Crawford, “Personal Ethnography,” Communication Monographs 63 (1996): 158.
Ibid.
McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric,” 109.
Ibid.
This phrase is coined from the book Living the Ethnographic Life by Dan Rose in which he likens the methodology of ethnography to a lifestyle. Similarly, Carolyn Ellis encourages her readers to make the “I” a part of, even a focus of, ethnographic research in her methodological fiction novel The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Authoethnography.
Fran Lebowitz cited in Rick Marin, “Ms. America: Making over an Icon Very, Very Carefully,” New York Times, September 13, 1993.
Frank Deford, There She Is: The Life and Times of Miss America (New York: The Viking Press, 1971): 3.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Bonnie J. Dow, “Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6, no. 1 (2003): 128.
Ibid., 129.
Ibid., 146.
Sarah Banet-Wesier, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999): 3.
Ibid., 44–45.
Miss America Organization, “Purpose,” Miss America Organization Website, http://www.missamerica.org, accessed November 2006.
Miss America Organization, “Platform Program: Miss Americas Make a Difference,” Miss America Organization Website, http://www.missamerica.org, accessed November 2006.
Ibid.
Ashley Halfmann, email message to author, September 9, 2006.
Lisa Dondlinger, email message to author, September 15, 2006.
My work as Miss North Dakota provided the opportunity to represent my title and platform issue in the states of North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, Colorado, Alabama, Florida, New Jersey, Iowa, and Montana.
Branham and Pearce, “Between Text and Context,” 19.
Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 29.
Ibid., 30.
Ibid.
This untitled speech was prepared for delivery to the 1999 legislative session of the North Dakota Senate and House of Representatives. It was printed in the session journal of the North Dakota Senate on the 53rd day of session meeting. See http://www.legis.nd.gov/assembly/56-1999/journals/HR53.pdf for full text.
Branham and Pearce, “Between Text and Context,” 20–21.
Ibid., 21.
Michael C. McGee, “Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture,” Western Journal of Communication 54 (1990): 284.
Ibid.
Branham and Pearce, “Between Text and Context,” 30.
Ibid.
Robert L. Ivie, “A Question of Significance.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): n.p.
Karl Albrecht, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 33–34.
Branham and Pearce, “Between Text and Context,” 30.
Albrecht, Social Intelligence, 87.
William Keith and Kari Whittenberger-Keith recommended an entire body of analysis devoted to this notion of public address as conversation, because of the important role this style plays in connecting speakers to their audiences. See William Keith and Kari Whittenberger-Keith, “The Conversational Call: An Analysis of the Conversational Aspects of Public Oratory,” Research on Language and Social Interaction 22 (1988–1989): 115–156.
Robert J. Branham and W. Barrnet Pearce, “The Conversational Frame in Public Address,” Communication Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1996): 423.
Ibid., 424.
David Zarefsky, “The State of the Art in Public Address Scholarship,” in Texts in Context: Critical Dialogue on Significant Episodes in American Political Rhetoric, ed. Michael C. Leff and Fred J. Kauffled (Davis: Hermagoras Press, 1989), 205.
Stephen E. Lucas, “The Renaissance of American Public Address: Text and Context in Rhetorical Criticism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 74 (1998): 242.