Identifier
etd-07102008-110841
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Communication Studies
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
This research analyzes changes in the rhetoric of a sustaining myth in order to better assess what happens when a myth is threatened. By examining American sport and its current struggle to withstand the widespread use of steroids, the author investigates how public discourse about the scandal turns athletes from mythical heroes to cheaters. The author begins by explicating the rhetorical construction of the athlete as a moral hero in America and how this myth is perpetuated today. The author then examines how steroids threaten the myth of the moral athlete and uses Major League Baseball as a case study to illustrate the rhetorical justification of their use. Ultimately this research offers a cyclical method of mythical analysis as a new method to analyze threatened myths. Current research offers few methods to explain how myths develop and this cyclical method attempts to provide specificity for one-way myths can survive. It is argued that the cyclical method acts as a way to account for threats to the myth, as well as to allow for rhetorical shifts.
Date
2008
Document Availability at the Time of Submission
Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.
Recommended Citation
Hartman, Karen L., "The rhetorical myth of the athlete as a moral hero: the implications of steroids in sport and the threatened myth" (2008). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2015.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2015
Committee Chair
Andrew King
DOI
10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.2015