DEBATE CENTRAL
Debating Resources for the World since 1994

HONORS 195: Rhetoric of Impeachment
Fall, 1999, John Dewey Honors Program, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Vermont
Alfred C. Snider, Edwin W. Lawrence Professor of Forensics


This course focused on one area of public discourse (the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton) for comprehensive rhetorical analysis. Students studied political rhetoric and isolated a specific portion of this discourse for individual study. Students also studied theories or rhetoric, style, construction, strategies, and the criticism and evaluation of rhetoric as applied to the American political system. Students engaged in extensive research on one figure in the impeachment scandal and their associated discourse. Each student had to produce an extensive descriptive criticism of their speaker (analysis of their rhetorical acts), an extensive analytical criticism of their speaker (analysis of these rhetorical acts in context), and then produce a final essay rendering a citical evaluation of some aspect of the rhetoric of their speaker.

This web page features selected essays from my students. I found them interesting and enjoyable to read. I have not edited these essays, since I do not offer them as sophisticated professional academic efforts but as examples of what undergraduate students at the University of Vermont are capable of doing. In that context I am quite pleased with these essays.

For more information about Speech and Debate at the University of Vermont, please contact me at asnider@zoo.uvm.edu.

-Alfred C. Snider
December, 1999


 

RHETORIC OF IMPEACHMENT ESSAYS

LINDA TRIPP: "I’m you. . . I’m just like you." I don’t think so
Erika B. Browne

BARNEY FRANK: Truth, Lies, Privacy
Michael Cerrati

LINDA TRIPP: The Feminist Movement and Linda Tripp
Maria Carrao

HENRY HYDE: From Henry to Hyde - Two Different Types of Leaders
Aaron Fishbone

CHARLES RUFF: The Privacy Defense
Bethany Fuller

DICK MORRIS: SPIN POLITICS AND PARTISANSHIP BLUES
Matthew Kelly

LARRY FLYNT: Confronting Sex and Politics in America
Amber Lim

HILLARY CLINTON: Strategies and Goals
Vanessa Melamede

BILL CLINTON: Rhetorical Settings, Strategies, and Paradoxical Popularity
Travis Morrison

MONICA LEWINSKY: Women in Society, Body Image and Feminism
Audrey Ryan

JAMES CARVILLE: Guard Dog of the White House
Stephen Schachterle

HENRY HYDE: Which Henry Hyde Will Show Up Today?
Adam Terella

MONICA LEWINSKY: Body Image and Rhetoric
Amy Watker