Bureauspeak: Discovering how elected officials perceive municipal employees\u27 dis/respectful rhetorical practices

Bureauspeak analyzes bureaucrats\u27 rhetorical practices within municipal governments. This project asserts that respectful rhetorical practices have always been implicit in traditional notions of rhetoric, but have not been explicitly addressed. This project describes the political epistemic field (PEF), formed by discourse, audience, reality and rhetor, that is created within a municipal environment where policy deliberations occur. The PEF allows for interactions among the four elements and results in changes to all the elements as the interactions occur. The policy-making audience in the PEF expects their bureaucrat-rhetor to enact respectful rhetorical practices, but in many instances those expectations are also implicit and may change from topic to topic and discussion to discussion. Thus, this project seeks to discover how bureaucrats\u27 practices are perceived by local elected officials in the El Paso, Texas region, which practices are perceived as respectful, disrespectful, neutral or contingent on the situation, and what the significance of these perceptions means for future municipal administrators