Date of Award

2014

Publisher

North Dakota State University

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Awarded

Master of Arts (MA)

Program

Speech Communication

Department

Communication

College

Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

Faculty Advisor

Littlefield, Robert S.

Description

As a communication device, television helps cultivate a culture’s social reality. Yet, television sometimes advances flawed concepts in a social reality, particularly concerning addiction. Television appears to have cultivated limiting stereotypical concepts regarding the attitudes, thoughts, and action patterns characteristic of addicts. These stereotypes may hinder a person’s recovery. This analysis, therefore, examines narratives in AMC’s Breaking Bad to learn how the television series conceptualizes addiction. Combing Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm with William Kirkwood’s Rhetoric of Possibility, it delineates an alternative narrative representation of addiction. It reveals limitations in stereotypically conceived representations of addiction, and shows coherent narratives supporting a more comprehensive concept of the term. Through the Fisher-Kirkwood lens, Breaking Bad may be seen as cultivating an enlightened conceptualization of addiction. In so doing, the television show’s cultural importance is established.

Rights

NDSU Policy 190.6.2

Rights Link

https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/policy/190.pdf

Handle Identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/10365/27584

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