ORCID Identifier(s)

0000-0003-3592-7722

Graduation Semester and Year

2015

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Sociology

Department

Sociology and Anthropology

First Advisor

Robert Young

Abstract

Presidential narratives are influential components of the national conversation about social issues. In order to gain a better understanding of how the Presidents framed and discussed poverty and the poor State of the Union addresses between the years 1964 and 2014 were analyzed. The focus of this research was to identify the narratives the Presidents crafted about the war on poverty. Narrative analysis was utilized to unpack and these narratives and identify the different narrative forms they took while the Presidents presented and discussed the war on poverty. Initially the war on poverty was presented as a romantic quest to rescue the poor from the structural forces trapping them in poverty. Over the 51 State of the Union addresses, that narrative shifted to a tragic narrative that implicated the welfare system as the villainous force that harmed the middle-class and had to be defeated. This gave rise to a second romantic narrative that cast the middle-class as the victims of Government overspending on the unworthy poor. The narrative about the war on poverty ultimately ended during the Clinton administration after welfare was successfully framed as code for the unworthy poor and welfare reform was passed in 1996.

Keywords

Sociology, Poverty, Presidential speech, War on poverty, Narrative analysis

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences | Sociology

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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