First Name:
Caroline
Last Name:
Koons
Major Department:
English and Communcation
Thesis Director:
Beth Carroll & Cindy Spurlock
Date of Thesis:
May 2012
From September 11111, 2001 up through the present3, the War on Terror has impacted the United States and world order in unique and unprecedented ways. Although this war adds another chapter to the history book of international wars, it changed, and is changing aspects of domestic and global society and the way in which powerful figures talk about war. This paper examines the rhetorical nature of President George W Bush's War on Terror and the addresses made by the president to joint sessions of Congress in the two years and four months following the events of September 11th, 2001. These addresses fulfill the subgenera requirements of presidential rhetorical studies, classifying them as State of the Union addresses-a unique form of presidential address in its own right and with its own parameters that will be examined in greater depth further in this paper. Each speech is examined in its own right and individual contexts, and then placed in sequence with the other State of the Union addresses to allow for overall analysis of nruTatives and shift in message over time and as the war develops. I ru·gue the themes and messages of these particular addresses indicate the way in which presidential rhetoric, pruticularly in times of war, aims to persuade the public to embrace a certain understanding a support for the cause of war. However, when examined in combination with the ideas of Giorgio Agamenben's "State of Exception" and Richard Rorty's "Achieving Our Country," a new aspect to presidential rhetoric surfaces and complicates our understanding of citizenship.