| Summary |
The purpose of this thesis is to study political redistricting and the language used by proponents and opponents during the process. The historical background of the United States and of the individual districts are studied. It follows the districting process step-by-step in the two case studies to understand how the situation occurred, the North Carolina 12th District and the Georgia 11th district. Discourse analysis is used to see how people involved in the conflict described their opposition or support of districting plans that emerged after the 1990 census. There were two major reasons for the conflict. One was two different ideologies, the 'geographic' and 'demographic' viewpoints of representation. The second was that controversial districts were minority-majority, meaning that a minority group was the majority of the population within the districts. The difference between the 'geographic' views and 'demographic' is over the community. The 'geographic' side believes community is a place, while the 'demographic' side believes community is a group with something in common. This thesis observes language used in the case studies. It studies the use of the term of community of interest and how both sides of the dispute used the same words. It concludes with a plea for a comprehensive definition of place that takes both sides of the issue into account. Keywords: political redistricting, race, community of interest discourse analysis. |
| General note | Presented to the faculty of the Department of Geography. |
| General note | Advisor: E. Jeffrey Popke |
| Dissertation note | M.A. East Carolina University 2005 |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-102). |
| Genre/form | Academic theses. |
| Genre/form | Academic theses. |
| Genre/form | Thèses et écrits académiques. |
