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Setting the Table: Ethos-as-Relationship in Food Writing

Thielen, Brita M.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0308-7837
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1649175970217609

Abstract Details

2022, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, English.
Setting the Table: Ethos-As-Relationship in Food Writing employs methods from rhetoric and technical and professional communication to argue that the rhetorical mode of ethos should be understood as fundamentally relational, rather than as a more discreet property of communication synonymous with the rhetor’s authority or character. I argue that reconceiving ethos-as-relationship better accounts for the rhetorical strategies used by the food writers who identify as women, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and/or as part of the LGBTQ+ community whose texts I analyze, which include food memoirs, decolonial cookbooks, and food blogs. Food writing is a valuable place to examine the development of ethos because food writers are especially attuned to hospitality, a structural metaphor that all rhetors can use as a framework for understanding their relationship to their audience. A key focus of my analysis is the development of these food writers’ textual personas, or their self-portrayal within the text. Textual personas are crucial to the development of what I call the ethotic relationship between writers and readers because a reader is unlikely to meet the writer in person, and an ethotic relationship can only be formed with another party. Ethos-as-relationship has important implications for understanding expertise and professional identity, especially for those rhetors who occupy historically-marginalized positionalities, as they must often work harder to negotiate a position of authority in relation to their audiences.
Kimberly Emmons (Advisor)
T. Kenny Fountain (Committee Member)
Vera Tobin (Committee Member)
Mary Grimm (Committee Member)
Christopher Flint (Committee Member)
264 p.
Composition; Rhetoric; Technical Communication
ethos; food rhetoric; rhetoric; hospitality; technical & professional communication; expertise; professionalism; textual persona; ethotic relationship; food memoir; cookbook; food blog; rhetorics of healing; rhetorical healing; constitutive rhetoric; utopian rhetoric; decolonial; ethos-as-relationship; digital rhetoric

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Thielen, B. M. (2022). Setting the Table: Ethos-as-Relationship in Food Writing [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1649175970217609

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Thielen, Brita. Setting the Table: Ethos-as-Relationship in Food Writing. 2022. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1649175970217609.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Thielen, Brita. "Setting the Table: Ethos-as-Relationship in Food Writing." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1649175970217609

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1649175970217609
352
© 2022, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.