The Diversity of American Dream Rhetoric: LBJ to Obama

Donna Hoffman, Alison Howard

    Research output: Contribution to conferencePresentationpeer-review

    Abstract

    Presidents often use symbolic rhetoric when communicating with the American public, and the conception of the “American dream” is a frequent vehicle that conveys a sense of commonality and economic opportunity in the United States. This rhetoric can be powerful because most Americans believe in some formulation of the American dream, at the very least as an historical notion. But there can be differences in the way it is both conceptualized and utilized by presidents. We will examine how presidents since Lyndon Johnson have used American dream rhetoric both symbolically, as well as substantively. For each president, we will utilize content analysis of three genres of rhetoric: nomination acceptance speeches, inaugural addresses, and State of the Union addresses. Acceptance and inaugural addresses, because they tend to be thematic, will be particularly useful for identifying how each president conceptualized the American dream and its importance in their administration. State of the Union addresses, because they are policy oriented, will help identify the ways in which presidents linked (or did not link) their American dream conception to their public policy requests. We hypothesize that we will see diversity in the symbolic usage of the American dream among presidents we study due to differences in their personal biographies, but not due to differing partisan affiliation. We further expect that the way presidents substantively link their conception of the American dream to policy proposals will vary by partisanship, as Democrats will be most likely to use dream rhetoric substantively, as well as symbolically, and Republican presidents will be most likely to simply use dream rhetoric symbolically. How presidents use the framework of the American dream to explain their public policy goals and their visions of the future sheds light on whether there are distinct partisan differences, personal differences, or time-bound differences in presidential rhetoric.
    Original languageAmerican English
    StateUnpublished - 2015
    EventAmerican Political Science Association's Annual Meeting - San Francisco, United States
    Duration: Sep 3 2015Sep 6 2015

    Conference

    ConferenceAmerican Political Science Association's Annual Meeting
    Abbreviated titleAPSA
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    CitySan Francisco
    Period9/3/159/6/15

    Keywords

    • presidential rhetoric

    Disciplines

    • American Politics

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