Charles U. Larson

A Prairie home companion and the fabrication of community

On the live variety radio program A Prairie Home Companion, host Garrison Keillor fabricates the fictional community of Lake Wobegon. In doing so, he also addresses another fabricated community, the baby boom generation. The weekly monologues portray Keillors persona moving from nostalgia and bitterness to acceptance of the conditions of community as they are. Consequently, they reflect and encourage a passive and uncritical approach toward community life in an audience that has outgrown activism and is searching for an alternative.

Media metaphors: Two models for rhetorically criticizing the political television spot advertisement

In every election year, concern is raised about the spot commercial for and against various candidates. To date, little rhetorical‐critical research has been done concerning the political television commercial, though more has been done from a quantitative perspective. Two models of perspectives on the way the television spot message works are presented here—the transportation model and the evoked‐recall model. They imply the use of one of two message types: those using methods which focus on the logic or reasoning in the ad and those which focus on the ad from a metaphorical or dramatic methodology.

A case for the doctor of arts in speech communication

The Doctor of Arts and extern‐internship program in Speech Communication is a viable alternative to the present Ph.D. program particularly in light of the existing job market. This article explores many of the advantages and considerations surrounding such a program.

Radio, secondary orality, the search for community, and “a prairie home companion”

Although it assembled the audience for our televisual world, radio is probably one of the most overlooked oral/aural media among those that makeup what Walter Ong has termed “secondary orality,” Ong and others argue that, in comparison to primal orality and print, this secondary orality profoundly influences and predominates modern thought, and motivates each individuals search for social as well as inner character and meaning. After exploring primary and secondary orality and examining the relationship of radio to secondary orality, as viewed by media critic and practitioner Tony Schwartz, the author presents a brief analysis of one media‐created community of secondary orality—the listeners to public radios variety show, “A Prairie Home Companion.” This analysis demonstrates how radio functions to fabricate both mediate and immediate surrogate communities, how the program reflects elements of both primary and secondary orality, and considers the strengths and shortcomings of the surrogate community of ...

The trust establishing function of the rhetoric of black power

By looking at one function of the rhetoric of Black Power—its trust establishing function—from a behavioral point of view, one can identify rhetorical strategies closely akin to those used by almost everyone in the marketplace. This analysis examines the notion of trust and its relationship to persuasive attempts made on behalf of Black Power.

A Content Analysis of Media Reporting of the Watergate Hearings

News reporting is inevitably affected by the persons who are in charge of the news system or news channel. That proposition is scarcely controversial, but determining just how the news reportage is affected and what its subsequent effects are is a topic that is quite controversial. To some degree every Presidential administration has made the charge that the &dquo;gatekeeping&dquo; activities of the press have been injurious to the self-interests of that administration. Originally, the notion of a gatekeeper implied that the function of this activity was to expand the potential sources and items of information available to a receiver in a simple communication system.’ But with the application of the idea of gatekeeping to a mass medium, the function of selection of information becomes more important; because information must be selected, it can be selected and arranged with a purpose. Media selection attracts criticism and