Reconstructing Florida's Ethos

• Other Authors: Powers, Elizabeth (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: English literature; English language
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-9072

This dissertation investigates place ethos, a crucial component of rhetorics on place: visual and verbal texts that construct specific geographical locations. Through examining rhetorical representations of place, we can better understand the interplay of environments and occupants in order to enact sustainable, ethical practices in our living and teaching contexts. Drawing on Aristotelian and Isocratean descriptions of ethos as based both in text and community, this study argues that place ethos is a dynamic rhetorical strategy that contributes significantly to rhetorics on place by shaping how we perceive places through texts. To demonstrate the contribution of place ethos to rhetorics on place, this study examines place ethos as constructed through interrelated representations of Reconstruction era Florida, a time of regional re-imagining, as stakeholders constructed competing visions to draw Northern tourists and entrepreneurs to the southern state. My line of inquiry in this project includes the following key questions: 1) How do classical models of ethos apply in contemporary critical study of rhetorical character construction, and how might these models be expanded? and 2) How is ethos constructed verbally and visually for a place, and how do these constructions complement and challenge each other? I address these questions through a rhetorical analysis of discursive and visual texts designed to reconfigure postbellum Florida as an attractive destination for Northern tourists in the 1870s. As a way into understanding how a variety of materials can together function to build a place ethos, I examine nineteenth-century travel guidebooks, stereoscopic photographs, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Florida-themed essay collection, Palmetto Leaves. The critical framework that serves as a lens to analyze place ethos in these texts is a hybrid classical model of rhetorical ethos drawing on the Aristotelian triadic notion of ethos as arete, phronesis, and eunoia, and Isocratean notions of community-shaped perceptions and practices of goodness. This analytic lens reveals that widely circulated nineteenth-century Florida travel texts, both verbal and visual, construed Florida as a paradisiacal getaway for reform-minded Northerners; at the same time, these texts build conflicting arguments about the role of Northern action in Florida commercial and moral development. Through applying a hybrid classical model of rhetorical ethos to a specific socio-historical context, this study extends our understanding of rhetorics on place, which circulate as texts of places that can interact and effect a place through visual and verbal representation. The study finds that verbal rhetorics on place build a place ethos through multiple descriptive components, which act together persuasively, and that visual rhetorics on place build a place ethos through multiple textual components acting together with viewing practices and technologies. Additionally, the study finds that rhetorics on place, with co-dominant visual and verbal aspects, construct place ethos through visual-verbal interplay, and that this construction can be relationally understood to other ethē in and related to the text. These three iterations of place ethos are not mutually exclusive, and provide multiple, overlapping options for exploring the dynamic of place ethos in action with all of its contradictions. The implications for this study are fourfold. First, the study extends how we understand the rhetoric of place, or the rhetorical power of a location's material composition, through the conception of rhetorics on place, or the textual artifacts that influence, create, and interact with perceptions of a place. Second, this study introduces the concept of place ethos, a complex rhetorical structure that significantly contributes to rhetorics on place by constructing character for a location. Third, in tracing the rhetorical work of verbal and visual representation, this project illuminates the multiple strategies by which place ethos emerges. Lastly, the dissertation holds implications for rhetorical ethos more widely, as it participates in a contemporary move to extend the reach of ethos by dislodging its conventional position directed by an individual rhetor and into a more dynamic, interactive rhetorical world. === A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Summer Semester, 2014. === May 19, 2014. === Includes bibliographical references. === Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Professor Directing Dissertation; Andy Opel, University Representative; Elizabeth Spiller, Committee Member; Kathleen Blake Yancey, Committee Member.