The 1854 Speech by Chief siaʔɬ (Seattle) is surrounded by controversy. There are many versions of this speech available online and in print, but which one is the most true to who Chief siaʔɬ was? How can we find out what Chief siaʔɬ said when the speech was given in Lushootseed, translated to Chinook Jargon, and then published for the first time in English, 30 years after the speech was given? Today, even Chief siaʔɬ's tribal descendants have differing versions of the speech on their official tribal websites. To answer these questions, I conducted semi-structured individual interviews with tribal members from each of Chief siaʔɬ's descendant tribes, the Duwamish, the Suquamish, and the Muckleshoot. Within these interviews, I chose to use the "Think Aloud" method to structure how the participants read the versions of the speech presented. This allowed me to code their comments on the speech into specific categories in order to analyze how each participants felt about the speech, about Chief siaʔɬ's character, and about their own knowledge and their tribe's own knowledge about the speech and speaker. This research provides a brand new and comprehensive perspective on this aged speech that is surrounded by mystery. It gives these tribal members the opportunity to set the record straight on what Chief siaʔɬ might have actually said.

At 1:44 PM EST on March 11th of 2020, Trump tweeted that he would be “addressing the nation” at 9 PM EST that same day. This oval office address was a statement on COVID-19 and what the pandemic meant for America. This research is a rhetorical analysis of Trump’s public address on that day. His speech, already given in a time of uncertainty, led to widespread panic amongst consumers, with U.S. stocks falling the next day by almost 10%, in their worst day since the 1987 crash. News outlets and economists reported that the uncertainty that came along with the pandemic was only worsened because of Trump’s fear stoking and the atmosphere of uncertainty this speech created. What were people reading in the speech that could have pushed them towards this economic behavior? Conducting a rhetorical analysis of the speech through an innovation on the textual-intertextual method, this paper analyzes Trump’s speech and what people and the Trump administration said in response. In the first part of the paper, close textual analysis allows us to have an in-depth, microscopic understanding of the speech itself. In the second part of the thesis, we examine intertextual evidence of the speech’s extrinsic effect. Reading secondary sources that explicitly mention the primary text, including those produced by audiences hailed by the text as well as by Trump and his proxies, we can understand its broader reception especially as it relates to investor behavior and consumer attitudes. This study finds that Trump’s lack of key information, sparse emphasis on international cooperation, and contradictory rhetoric towards public officials all help explain the economic uncertainty that resulted from this speech. Studying the relationship between rhetoric and the economy through this research has implications on presidential rhetoric, unsuccessful early pandemic communication and the factors influencing stock price volatility.