Ingrid Li Soto (UC Santa Barbara)  “Social Relations and Institutional Structures and in Modern American Political Campaigns.” Dissertation Chair: Geoffrey Raymond.

Reviewers wrote: Soto’s dissertation focuses on the 2008 Presidential Election campaign speeches and
provides a fine grained analysis of interaction between the speaker and the audience. It demonstrates how a successful speech depends on properly timed audience response to the speaker’s communicative actions, whether they are boo’s for the bad guys or applause for the candidate and his/her ideas. The dissertation shows how LSI research into the organization of social interaction can help us understand a form of political power. It makes important contributions to several strands of communication scholarship, including political speech making and public oratory, research into the interactional foundations of social institutions, studies of collective action and social coordination, and to Conversation Analysis.