You Have the Right to Not Say That to Me| A Dramatistic Analysis of The 2017 UC Berkeley Anti-Free Speech

• Main Author: Celski, David A.
• Language: EN
• Published: Northern Arizona University 2017
• Subjects: Communication
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10282848

<p> This study compared the 1964 UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the 2017 UC Berkeley Anti-Free Speech Riot to determine the evolution of free speech in America and its current state. Analyzing each event revealed several key communicators who became rhetorical stakeholders based on their roles and responses within and to each event. Examining their roles and responses using Burke&rsquo;s (1969) dramatistic pentad and pendatic ratios not only reveals the stakeholders motive, but also a much larger rhetorical situation within each event. I posed five research questions asking who the rhetorical stakeholders were within each event, how they responded, the similarities and differences between each response, if the 2017 riot indicates a change in attitudes towards free speech, and if the analysis helps us understand social movement theory. The study concludes that social movement theory may be taking a turn away from the narratives developed by scholars in the last 50 years, in addition to the ways that the power holders and the dissenters will continue to delay conciliation should neither choose to compromise.</p><p>