The rhetorical strategies of Lyndon Baines Johnson promoting education

Abstract

From Johnson's Senatorial speech in 1957 to his Vice Presidential Memorial Day Address of 1963, we follow Johnson's delivering the message about the need for education for a democratic citizenry. We continue with his Presidential speeches. From the first speech he delivers to the last speech he delivers as an active president, we examine how he promotes his belief in education as a way out of marginalization. As Johnson maneuvers from the local arena to the national stage, we see the relative ease Johnson transforms what he says and how he says it to embrace new audiences. Additionally, in each of these speeches, Johnson's expansion of ethos, which grows along with the size of his audiences, becomes apparent. What was once only known to Johnson became an understanding of the complex interrelatedness of the events making up the 1960s. This sense permeated his being to solidify the eudaimonia which Johnson manifested in order to persuade not only his immediate, listening audience, but also his universal audience. I discovered traits of Johnson's make-up in early as childhood which served to be sharpened, distilled, and developed into the pivotal Johnson Treatment. This dissertation reveals Johnson's remarkable ability to empathize with disenfranchised groups showing how his perspective encompassed not only what needed change in the moment, but also what was needed over time to help build a Great Society. People look at dissertations to see how they contribute to society's knowledge. This dissertation shows how one man was able to transcend his Texas twang to use words in so forceful a way that he impacted a nation. Johnson was remarkable in that he had a persuasive style--or ethos--with which he was born as well as which he developed. We are the benefactors of Johnson's complex personality that used rhetoric to change a world.