Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, 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.

Committee: Kimberly Emmons (Advisor); T. Kenny Fountain (Committee Member); Vera Tobin (Committee Member); Mary Grimm (Committee Member); Christopher Flint (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric; Technical Communication