Copyright and Rhetoric

Terry Stedman

Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Fitzgerald, Keith

Keywords

Rhetoric, Copyright, American Political Development

Area of Concentration

Political Science

Abstract

Nearly all political action in the modern world boils down to the use of words to legitimate political goals and make illegitimate the goals of opponents. However, even the meanings of words is subject to political struggle; rhetoric requires legitimacy to be able to legitimate action. Clever political actors attack not only opponent's goals, but also their rhetoric. What better way to analyze political rhetoric than to examine the politics of the protection of expression? Copyright is one of the old national laws with a rich history of sophisticated rhetoric. Further, it has demonstrated a consistency of rhetoric over the years even as new political actors gain an interest in it. Copyright is an excellent example of a self-contained political field to examine the use of rhetoric in political struggles. A theory of the use of rhetoric is developed in Chapter One. Chapter Two traces the development of copyright up to its most recent revision in 1976. Chapters Three and Four examine rhetoric in congressional hearings for the Copyright Acts of 1891 and 1909. This paper concludes that rhetoric is an essential, requisite part of the political process; even a strong political actor must employ legitimating rhetoric for political success. A full understanding of the rhetoric used in a political struggle is necessary to understand the struggle itself.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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