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dc.contributor.advisorMcKiernan, Peter
dc.contributor.authorParks, Ryan William
dc.coverage.spatial276en_US
dc.date.accessioned2012-03-27T15:46:22Z
dc.date.available2012-03-27T15:46:22Z
dc.date.issued2011-11-30
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/2470
dc.description.abstractThis research project seeks to explore aspects of the post-reporting phase of the public inquiry process. Central to the public inquiry process is the concept of legitimacy and the idea that a public inquiry provides and opportunity to re-legitimate the credibility of failed public institutions. The current literature asserts that public inquiries re-legitimise through the production of authoritative narratives. As such, most of this scholarship has focused on the production of inquiry reports and, more recently, the reports themselves. However, in an era of accountability, and in the aftermath of such a poignant attack upon society, the production of a report may represent an apogee, but by no means an end, of the re-legitimation process. Appropriately, this thesis examines the post-reporting phase of the 9/11 Commission’s public inquiry process. The 9/11 Commission provides a useful research vehicle due to the bounded, and relatively linear, implementation process of the Commission’s recommendations. In little more than four months a majority of the Commission’s recommendations were passed into law. Within this implementation phase the dominant discursive process took place in the United States Congress. It is the legislative reform debates in the House of Representatives and the Senate that is the focus of this research project. The central research question is: what rhetorical legitimation strategies were employed in the legislative reform debates of the post-reporting phase of the 9/11 Commission’s public inquiry process? This study uses a grounded theory approach to the analysis of the legislative transcripts of the Congressional reform debates. This analysis revealed that proponents employed rhetorical strategies to legitimise a legislative ‘Call to Action’ narrative. Also, they employed rhetorical legitimation strategies that emphasised themes of bipartisanship, hard work and expertise in order to strengthen the standing of the legislation. Opponents of the legislation focused rhetorical de-legitimation strategies on the theme of ‘flawed process’. Finally, nearly all legislators, regardless of their view of the legislation, sought to appropriate the authoritative legitimacy of the Commission, by employing rhetorical strategies that presented their interests and motives as in line with the actions and wishes of the Commission.en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of St Andrews
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
dc.subjectLegitimacyen_US
dc.subjectPublic inquiriesen_US
dc.subject9/11 Commissionen_US
dc.subjectUS congressional debateen_US
dc.subjectRhetoricen_US
dc.subject.lccK3321.P2
dc.subject.lcshGovernmental investigationsen_US
dc.subject.lcshRhetoric--Political aspectsen_US
dc.subject.lcshNational Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. 9/11 Commission report.en_US
dc.subject.lcshUnited States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Reformen_US
dc.titleRhetorical strategies of legitimation: the 9/11 Commission's public inquiry processen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoralen_US
dc.type.qualificationnamePhD Doctor of Philosophyen_US
dc.publisher.institutionThe University of St Andrewsen_US


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