The rhetoric of health awareness
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: English, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Gaudet, Loren
issued: 2020-03-23T17:50:14Z
issued: 2020
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This dissertation uses the tools of rhetorical study to investigate how health awareness, as both a concept and a set of beliefs that reinforce ideals of health, permeates everyday life and affects ways of being. I draw on Kenneth Burkeâs concepts of âorientation,â âaltar,â and âpietyâ to offer a more nuanced description of health awareness. Orientations of health awareness name both altars and pieties. Altars are the iterations of health that should be worshipped, and the pieties provide the appropriate ways to worship at each altar. Health awareness (as in health-awareness campaigns, for example) promotes both altars of health and their corresponding pieties. Using this Burkean theoretical framework, I argue for a reconceptualization of health awareness as a series of temporal and epistemic orientations that are increasingly mediated through technology, are affectively charged, and are extensively commodified. In each of my chapters, I identify a different heath awareness orientation, the specific pieties that correspond to each orientation, and the iteration of health that each orientation maintains. The three health awareness orientations I identify are Optimization, Preparedness, and Revelation. I approach each orientation to health awareness with exemplars in pairs, because their juxtaposition illuminates what happens, rhetorically, when people are urged to be pious: for Optimization, I examine a health and fitness campaign alongside wearable technology marketing; for Preparedness, cancer awareness campaigns alongside critical-injury insurance marketing; and for Revelation, a Lyme disease campaign alongside direct-to-consumer genetic-test marketing. Approaching health awareness through the Burkean concept of orientation highlights some of the ways that health awareness, in its various iterations, carries with it a sense of what behaviors are appropriate (and inappropriate) and shapes understandings of selves and others. This dissertation contributes to Rhetori…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/73785
note: THE RHETORIC OF HEALTH AWARENESS by Loren Gaudet B.A. (Hons.), University of Victoria, 2011 M.A., York University, 2013 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIRMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) March 2020 Ã Loren Gaudet, 2020 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: The Rhetoric of Health Awareness submitted by Loren Gaudet in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language and Literatures Examining Committee: Judy Segal, Professor, English, UBC Supervisor Ian Hill, Associate Professor, English, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Jeffrey Severs, Associate Professor, English, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Margery Fee, Professor, English, UBC University Examiner Thomas M Kemple, Professor, Sociology, UBC University Examiner Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Amy Koerber, Professor, Communication Studies, Texas Tech University Supervisory Committee Member Supervisory Committee Member iii ABSTRACT This dissertation uses the tools of rhetorical study to investigate how health awareness, as both a concept and a set of beliefs that reinforce ideals of health, permeates everyday life and affects ways of being. I draw on Kenneth Burkeâs concepts of âorientation,â âaltar,â and âpietyâ to offer a more nuanced description of health awareness. Orientations of health awareness name both altars and pieties. Altars are the iterations of health that should be worshipped, and the pieties provide the appropriate ways to worship at each altar. Health awareness (as in health-awareness campaigns, for example) promotes both altars of health and their corresponding pieties. Using this Burkean theoretical framework, I argue for a reconceptualization of health awareness as a se…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2020-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0389616
language: eng
degree discipline: English
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/73785