This class focuses on the communication habits of the President of the United States (POTUS). It contends that while individual speeches almost never shift public opinion, the overall communication habits of an administration can either help or hinder a president’s agenda. Rhetoric—which includes oratory, press releases, Twitter posts, signs, slogans, photographs, press conferences, and videos—is an essential political resource for the modern president. Each president puts his and, hopefully soon, her stamp on the institution, but despite differences of personality and style consistent patterns of presidential rhetoric presist. Consequently, this course asks the following question:
- How has the communication habits of the Obama administration maintained and changed prior patterns of presidential rhetoric?
To answer this question, the class will study rhetoric produced by Obama and past presidents, read scholarship about how presidential communication functions, conduct original research into the daily communication habits of the current administration, and create an original video that features a mock speech by the next POTUS.
Course Objectives
- Students who complete the course should understand how the rhetoric of a modern president and the White House Office of Communications functions and what an administration can and cannot do to alter public perception of its agenda.
- Students who complete the course should have an appreciation for how presidents are constrained by specific genres of address even as they attempt to shape those genres for their own ends.
- Students who complete the course should be able to analyze political communication more effectively and/or write a presidential speech in a manner that conforms to audience expectations for that particular type of address.
- Students who complete the course will have a greater appreciation of current political issues, and how those issues have been framed, discussed, and debated in the public sphere.
Kirt H. Wilson