Citizens deliberate the 'good death': The vernacular rhetoric of euthanasia

As medical advances continue to prolong the course of human life, choices about death and dying will touch a growing number of people struggling to make sound judgments. Faced with one of the worst existential, ethical, and emotional dilemmas, people will not only seek guidance from their loved ones and caregivers, they also will be guided by public policies that set the parameters for the decisions they may make in their lives. This thesis rests upon the assumption that in a democratic society, public policy should be responsive to the will of the people. However, the people's will regarding complex issues is not easily tapped through polling techniques that belie the discursive processes of opinion formation, nor is it manifest in conventional analyses of public address that privilege official, powerful, or particularly artful public figures, not does it conform to the ideals of rational deliberation that have been held as the hallmark of communication in the public sphere.; Employing an alternative approach for assessing public discourse, this project investigates vernacular rhetoric (Hauser 1998, 1999) to see how ordinary citizens engage in public dialogue about euthanasia. By analyzing naturally occurring citizen discourse, this project uses contemporary rhetorical theory to refocus recent theorizing about the public sphere to be more attuned to the inherently rhetorical characteristics of public talk.; Through the analysis of three case studies that investigate mainstays of citizen discourse (e.g., letters to the editor, statements to legislators, and talk radio), this thesis finds that the vernacular discourse of euthanasia relies primarily on a rhetoric of personal experience. By employing this mode of talk---which would be discounted in leading models of the public sphere---I conclude that citizens are attempting to subvert dominant institutional discourses surrounding the issue of euthanasia. Moreover, by speaking from personal experience citizens are attempting to redirect public conversation about euthanasia to be more sensitive and responsive to the needs of the fragile human beings at the center of the debate.