Shawn J. Parry-Giles

Shawn J. Parry-Giles is Professor in the Department of Communication, Director of Graduate Studies, and Director of the Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership at the University of...

Trevor Parry-Giles

Trevor Parry-Giles is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland; Affiliate Faculty Member with the Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership; Affiliated Scholar, Center for American Politics and Citizenship; and a former political consultant.

Public Address and Moral Judgment
Critical Studies in Ethical Tensions

Shawn J. Parry-Giles

Trevor Parry-Giles

This book is an examination of rhetorical discourse on public morality and public ethical judgment: Public Address and Moral Judgment offers a critical look at the ways in which public address can enact moral codes, articulate moral judgments, and manifest ethical tensions. Each chapter carefully examines specific examples of public address for their moral dimensions, exploring how public address functions to articulate and express the ethical tensions of its time and context. The contributors highlight important and often different ways that public address works to expose problematics in ethical tensions — problematics of language and imagery, metaphor and character, genre and definition. The authors are also mindful of the tenuous relationship that exists between rhetoric and morality, between situated public address and a society's ethical foundations.

The essays in Public Address and Moral Judgment, on topics ranging from WWII propaganda to the civil rights rhetoric of President George H. W. Bush to the photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison, consider the powerful role of public discourse in the constitution of a moral code for the American people.

CONTENTS:
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Ethical and Moral Judgment and the Power of Public Address | Shawn J. Parry-Giles and Trevor Parry-Giles
- Where Is Public Address? George W. Bush, Abu Ghraib, and - Contemporary Moral Discourse | Celeste Michelle Condit
- George H. W. Bush and the Strange Disappearance of Groups from Civil Rights Talk | Vanessa B. Beasley
- Public Moral Argument on Same-Sex Marriage, 2000–2005: A Narrative Approach | Martin J. Medhurst
- Time, Space, and Generic Reconstitution: Martin Luther King's "A Time to Break Silence" as Radical Jeremiad | James Jasinski and John M. Murphy
- From Civilians to Soldiers and Back Again: Domestic Propaganda and the Discourse of Public Reconstitution in the U.S. Treasury's World War II Bond Campaign | James J. Kimble
- Constituting Benevolent War and Imperial Peace: U.S. Nationalism and Idyllic Notions of Peace and War | Shawn J. Parry-Giles
- The Abu Ghraib Iconic Photographs: Constitutive Spectacles and the Gendering of Public Moralities | Rebecca Gill and Marouf A. Hasian Jr.
- Conclusion: Public Address and Public Morality |Shawn J. Parry- Giles and Trevor Parry-Giles
- Contributors

Reviews

"...President George Bush, Martin Luther King, and Abraham Lincoln are figures whose words are analyzed for the moral position reflected in them....Contrasting Lincoln's viewpoint toward war and foes with Bush's in the article "Bush, Abu Ghraib, and Moral Discourse"...Differences in such moral outlooks result in differences in policies and actions....a relevent, informative, and insightful media study." - Midwest Book Review

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