Presidential Eulogies in the Wake of Mass School Shootings: A Call to Action

1 online resource (71 pages) : PDF

2019

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

President Barack Obama described December 14, 2012 saying, "it continues to haunt me, it was one of the worst days of my presidency." That morning, a gunman stormed through the doors of Sandy Hook Elementary School and began opening fire on children and their teachers. By the end of the rampage, 20 children and six adults had lost their lives. Throughout his time in office, President Obama was forced to deliver at least 14 eulogies after mass shootings. This thesis explores the rhetorical strategies presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, William Jefferson Clinton, and Obama activated during their responses to mass shootings in an effort to restore order and to identify resources of social and political guilt for such gun violence. Using Burkean Dramatism, this thesis critiques the use of the tragic frame by presidents. Arguing that eulogies should instead be delivered in the comic frame, this thesis concludes with calls to action for encouraging more dialogue regarding gun violence. Collectively, the eulogies delivered by Johnson, Clinton, and Obama represent important case studies because they represent the ways in which the tragic frame constrains public discourse and policy debate. While presidents may seek social change, their insistence on following a pattern of scapegoating has helped sustain an environment where the underlying faults in the system are overlooked in favor of purification and redemption. Kenneth Burke’s guilt-purification- redemption cycle is important for critically examining the eulogies delivered in response to mass shootings. A disruption to the social order, such as the tragedy at Sandy Hook, among other school shootings, calls for an executive rhetorical response. In responding to unspeakable acts of violence, presidents often employ the language of scapegoating and the tragic frame. By critiquing these eulogies, this thesis provides an argument for an augmented response to such tragedies in the context of gun violence. Eulogies to those impacted by mass shootings will likely continue to appear ubiquitously in the United States. Therefore, I conclude, in part, that it remains the responsibility of those powerful interests responding to the tragedies to move beyond scapegoating and the tragic frame and more toward a comic frame. If this can happen, our nation may be better equipped to address collective, systemic problems related to gun control rather than merely scapegoating mass shooters as individually and singularly responsible.

masters theses

Communication
Political science
Rhetoric

M.A.

Comic Frame
Eulogy
Guilt
Purification
And Redemption
Mass Shootings
School Shootings
Tragic Frame

Communication Studies

Black, Jason

Grano, Daniel
Leeman, Richard

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2019.

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http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:2176