Final Paper Proposal

There is a high enough chance that, come Monday morning, I will forget to print this thing off. So I'm posting it here in case that happens:

This is a proposal for a final project about proposals – in a way. The proposal I'm referring to, however, is not like typical proposals, like the one you are reading now. Rather, this deals in a type of persuasion rooted in the traditions of romance, sex, and lust: the mating ritual, specifically.

The performance of every ritual, whether animal or human, verbal or visual, religious or pagan, romantic or war-like has at its core a history and weight of some rhetorical significance. The male peacock does not display his tail feathers before the batting eyes of a female because they need stretching; clubbers don't gyrate and thrust their hips at the local dive because of bad ball and socket joints that need regular movement to keep the bearings greased; you don't lean in with your elbows on the counter to flirt with a cute barista because it's loud in the coffee shop, or because you're a bit jaded and enjoy teasing the service industry. The mating ritual is rhetoric on display and dancing.

If to swoon an audience is your purpose, then your performance must come equipped with just the right amount of stimulating logos, raw, sexual pathos, and a graceful, eloquent ethos. Even Plato is pinning his toga a bit higher above the knee these days because we all – well, most of us – inherently know how to grab the attention and draw in a potential spouse, lover, spontaneous dance partner, ad infinitum. But the question remaining is why? How does one learn to act this way? What do these signifiers signify?

This is what I hope to address in my final paper. Through a series of familiar social exhibits that appear in the subtle positioning of bodies in bars, colorful shows in nature, and even in conversations at your local fine-dining establishment, I hope to identify whatever exigence these scenes demand through an analysis of the interactive rhetoric we use every single day. This could be studied in more general ways if that works better for the paper. Or, I thought it might be fun to do some work directly in the field (as a casual observer, mind) and narrow my focus to the question of What is the rhetorical situation of the Bozeman mating ritual? How do the residents of Bozeman (human and Big Sky fauna, alike) go about their rhetorical performance in situations ranging from just getting laid to seeking out a life-long companion?

Using nature as a necessary framework (because animal rituals meet the demands of biology before rhetoric) I will compare how our biological desires are fueled by, and translated into, rhetorical rituals. And depending on what direction I take my paper, these could be real or hypothetical.

Because I don't have the luxury of time to theorize about what makes the whole clock tick, I will take generous advantage of the fact that others before me have probably already asked the same questions that I have, thought about it longer, and made smarter arguments than I could, and use that a starting off point. Some links and sources that look promising:

Rhetorics of Display

Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture

http://ijh.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.26/prod.1313

In the chance that you know of any good publications about the topic off the top of your head, I would appreciate your feedback.