Self-Structure and the Rhetorics of Social Discourse in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Date of Graduation
Fall 1994
Degree
Master of Arts in English
Department
English
Committee Chair
Donald Holliday
Abstract
In this thesis, I argue that Mark Twain's runaway slave, Jim, displays the characteristics of a brilliant modern rhetor; that is, Jim accounts for the historical and cultural complexities influencing the meaning of the linguistic sign and applies several effective rhetorical strategies based on this knowledge. Significantly, I borrow Toni Morrisons's term "American Africanism" to assert that Jim consciously becomes with or embodies Africanist American stererotypes influencing "white" American racial discourses. In other words, Jim appropriates an ethos consistent with antebellum "white" rhetorics aimed at racial subordination. To explain Jim's ironic decision, I employ Marshall W. Alcorn's theory of self-structure: a theory defined in his article "Self-Structure as a Rhetorical Device: Modern Ethos and the Divisiveness of the Self" and ironically rooted in both sociolinguistic and psycho-analytic philosophies. In the end, this study seeks to identify the technique and trace the influence of social discourses on the self-structure of Huckleberry Finn, and map Huck's moral growth in the context of rhetorical argument.
Subject Categories
English Language and Literature
Copyright
© Brett Patrick Desnoyer
Recommended Citation
Desnoyer, Brett Patrick, "Self-Structure and the Rhetorics of Social Discourse in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1994). MSU Graduate Theses. 350.
https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/350
Dissertation/Thesis
