English Language and Literature ETDs
Publication Date
Summer 7-28-2026
Abstract
This article-based dissertation analyzes public death rhetoric, defined as communications surrounding death in public discourse (e.g. the news or social media). In “Teaching Death in Public Discourse,” I analyze student reflections from an undergraduate course about public death rhetoric to better understand how students make connections between death discourse and systemic oppression, as well as the ways students create rhetorical distance from their own engagement with death. In “The Language and Stories of Green Burial,” a set of companion articles, I first analyze the language of ‘green’ burial marketing within the legacy of the traditional American funeral industry—finding narratives of transformation, ‘green’ as a contemporary status symbol, and narratives of ‘returning’ humans to the natural life cycle, while also highlighting historical contexts that complicate these messages—and I conduct a narrative analysis of the ways that burial history within the U.S., from colonization to present, affects how we tell the story of green burial. In “A Case for Public Death Rhetoric: Why Rhetors Should Engage Social Media,” I argue that rhetorical scholars should take social media seriously as a cite of rhetorical engagement, particularly for public death rhetoric, and include a case study analyzing social media language surrounding the genocide in Gaza.
Degree Name
English
Level of Degree
Doctoral
Department Name
English
First Committee Member (Chair)
Beth Davila
Second Committee Member
Cris Elder
Third Committee Member
Chuck Paine
Fourth Committee Member
Jennifer Tucker
Language
English
Keywords
death rhetoric, public death rhetoric, death discourse
Document Type
Dissertation
Recommended Citation
Stringfield, Shelby Rae. "Public Death Rhetoric." (2026). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds/474