ABSTRACT
Members of the audience could recall as much or as little of the Alamo story and its associated Texas origin mythology as they needed to assent to the farmer's argument against water regulations. The "Alamo moment" is often used among Texans, perhaps to the point of being incendiary hyperbole, right up there with comparing any politician one disagrees with to Adolph Hitler. "Alamo moment", in addition to conjuring up the image of the 1836 seige, also has a poetic flow, an element of both assonance and alliteration with the repeated "mo" sound in both words. Of course, the name Alamo by itself immediately calls to mind the battle at San Antonio and what it symbolizes to independent-minded Texans, even though the word in its original Spanish simply means "a poplar tree". Clearly, then, a simple turn of phrase like "an Alamo moment" is loaded with rhetorical effects.
