Wooster Professor Earns Award from National Communication Association

WOOSTER, Ohio – Rohini Singh, assistant professor of communication studies at The College of Wooster, won the “Outstanding Article Award” from the National Communication Association’s Asian Pacific American Caucus & Studies Division. She was honored at the 105th NCA Annual Convention, held in Baltimore on Nov. 14-17.
Singh’s essay, “In the Company of Citizens: The Rhetorical Contours of Singapore’s Neoliberalism,” was published in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, which is a peer-reviewed journal for an international readership on communication as a theory, practice, technology, and discipline of power.
The award-winning article centers around an analysis of Singapore’s 1960 to 2018 National Day Rally addresses, the equivalent of State of the Union addresses in the U.S. Singh asserts that the language of business has long been a mainstay in Singaporean politics, and the government there constructs an image of the nation as a corporation with a product to sell and a brand to protect.
In studying these National Day Rally speeches, Singh found that the Singapore leaders “sell Singapore to Singaporeans” by presenting public policies as “pre-determined products” with little opportunity for deliberation or disagreement. She concludes that these political rallies frame the relationship between country and citizens as primarily economic, thus when there is no economic reason to stay, citizens often leave, and she also states there is a need for additional studies of economic rhetoric beyond the U.S.
The NCA, founded in 1914, is a nonprofit whose mission is to advance communication as the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media, and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific, and aesthetic inquiry. Each year, it presents awards for outstanding scholarship, teaching, and professional service.

Posted in News on December 9, 2019.