Search

Exhibiting motion pictures as a commercial enterprise in North America dates from 23 April 1896, when Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins introduced Thomas A. Edison's 'latest marvel,' the Vitascope, [...]

Canadians exploit a wide variety of symbolic resources to construct their regional and municipal identities, from the physical characteristics of their area to their community's rich historical past. People in Calgary project their civic identity through the city's distinctive community spirit, which has its roots in the myths of the western frontier. In this article, we analyze, from a cultural studies perspective, Calgary's practice of presenting visiting dignitaries with a white cowboy hat, a symbol of the city and of its unique brand of hospitality. We see the ceremony as a site of struggle, the dynamics of which have become increasingly apparent in recent years. We attempt to clarify how, via this ritual, those who arguably constitute the city's civic and business elite have drawn on the western heritage of southern Alberta -- its ranching and agricultural history -- to help construct a highly charged civic identity that has served during a period of rapid social change to downplay social cleavages and to promote corporate interests.

Cattle people across the western United States and Canada have been celebrating their western heritage annually since 1883, when the cattle people of Pecos (Texas) organized the very first rodeo or stampede. Over the years, one rodeo has surpassed all the others: the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, which has been hailed as 'The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.' In this paper we examine selected representations of the cowboy, taking as our corpus the official posters circulated by the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Board during the years 1952 to 1972. We focus on the texts as the artful organization of iconographic and linguistic messages and how they were read by their consumers.

The article offers information on the rhetorical phenomenon of the personalized license plate (PLP). It focuses on how people use the medium of the license plate and how the text can be decoded or read with a view to understand how messages control and foster impressions. It presents a study of popular cultural artifacts to find out how some readings of artifacts back the dominant ideology while others oppose it.

The article discusses the rhetorical aspects of David Alexander Colville's art. It offers biographical information on Colville who was born in 1920 in Toronto, Ontario, and was a war artist during World War II. It discusses Colville's achievement from a rhetorical perspective, examining his works such as "Nude and Dummy," "Couple on Beach" and "To Prince Edward Island."

The article examines selected newspaper reports on the brutal murder of teenager Reena Virk to determine the possible role played by media coverage in the heightened anxiety about public safety in Canada. It explores the rhetorical techniques used by reporters, such as framing, inflecting and indexing, to shape the story for their readers. News reports about Virk's murder which appeared in "The Province," "The Times Colonist" and other Canadian newspapers are presented.