English Language and Literature Commons^™

"To You I Give Myself, For I Am Yours": Editorial Giving And Taking In Shakespeare's As You Like It, Jennifer Jean Thorup

Theses and Dissertations

In As You Like It 5.4.107-08 we receive Rosalind returning as herself”a woman”no longer in the guise of Ganymede, the boy page. Her first lines upon returning are repetitive: To you I give myself, for I am yours [To Duke Senior] / To you I give myself, for I am yours [To Orlando]. However, comparing Folio versions of these lines produces a provocative variant. In the third and fourth folios, these lines are no longer a repetitious patriarchal pledging, but a tender dialogic exchange "much like vows" between Rosalind and Orlando. While none of our modern Shakespeare editions make a …

Idioms Or Open Choice? A Corpus Based Analysis, Kaitlyn Alayne Vanwagoner

Theses and Dissertations

The ambiguous nature of idioms has been a persistent challenge for English language learners and researches alike. Problematic issues include identifying which idioms are most pertinent for study, and the question of how frequently idiom forms found in dictionaries and other canonized resources actually function as idioms in real language use. This study differentiates between idiom forms used idiomatically (idiom-principle) versus literally (open-choice principle), and provides quantitative data to assess this difference. The data was obtained through a corpus analysis of 1,000 randomly-selected idioms in 10,000 randomly-selected contexts (10 contexts per idiom), and revealed that the majority of idiom forms …

Accommodation, Decorum, And Disputatio: Matteo Ricci's The True Meaning Of The Lord Of Heaven As A Renaissance Humanist Disputation, Roberto Sebastian Leon

Theses and Dissertations

Matteo Ricci's True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (1603) has been studied extensively by scholars of the Jesuit China Mission, especially in terms of accommodation through means of Scholastic and Humanist arguments and translation choices. Few of these studies, however, discuss the genre of this work (disputation), nor consider this genre in relation to Renaissance rhetorical teachings and how this relationship informs Ricci's accommodative strategies. The purpose of this paper is to remedy this gap in early modern Jesuit scholarship. Through a review of the history of accommodations in disputations in the Aristotelian-Scholastic and Ciceronian-Humanist traditions, this paper claims …

Testing The Test: Expanding The Dialogue On Workplace Writing Assessment, Lindsay Elizabeth Tanner

Theses and Dissertations

This project is a case study of writing assessment practices in a particular workplace called "High Hits," a local search engine optimization (SEO) company. The writing tests given to new hires serve a parallel purpose to academic placement exams, in that they are a high-stress, high-risk situation that aims to evaluate writer ability rather than the quality of the completed task (Haswell 242, Elbow 83, Moss 110). However, while academic assessment measures ability with the aim to improve the students' learning, workplace assessment is driven by market forces and is seen in terms of return on investment. This case study …

Jittery Gauges: Combating The Polarizing Effect Of Political Data Visualizations Through Uncertainty, Bethany Blaire Hardy

Theses and Dissertations

Since the late 1800s, public data visualizations displaying election forecasts and results—such as the red and blue map of the United State—have presented an irreparably divided country. However, on November 8, 2016, the New York Times published a data visualization on their live presidential forecast page that broke over a century of visual expectations, inspiring many to tweet reactions to what popular media has dubbed the "jittery gauges." Not surprisingly, the tweets about this unique and difficult-to-interpret display were mostly negative. This paper argues, though, that the negative feedback indicates that the gauges, while imperfect, represent an important step away …

Examining Experiences With English Language Studies In Taiwan And In The United States, Ying-Mei Chien

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The importance of learning English to find success in today’s global community has never been more vital. However, choosing the best method for teaching English language skills in the second language (L2) classroom is still open for debate. This paper examines L2 strategies for teaching English in Taiwan. More important, it examines the notion that English as a Foreign Language (EFL) training in Taiwan could be made more successful by incorporating more effective EFL teaching strategies, including a communicative, or creativity based methodology for second language learning. EFL teaching methodology in Taiwan has and continues to emphasize a teacher centered …

A Neglected Source For Burns Manuscripts? Some Old Guides For Autograph Collectors

Patrick Scott

Final Ma Portfolio, Annelise Mason

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains papers on Urban Education and teaching speakers of African American Language/ African American Vernacular English. As the capstone to my Masters in English with a Specialization in Teaching, I have chosen four papers to revise and resubmit: “Intertwining Narratives: Stories of the I-280 Bridge Collapse,” “Reshaping Attitudes: Tailoring Urban Education to fit the African American Student,” “The Study of Language in a Multi-Dialectical Classroom,” and “Youth Acquisition and Ownership Is Crucial Language Vitality.” "Intertwining Narratives" is a report on the I-280 bridge collapse in Toledo. "Reshaping Attitudes" is an explanation of some best practice in urban education. …

The Text Of Robert Burns's 'What Ails Ye Now': An Early Holograph Manuscript From The Roy Collection

Patrick Scott

Practical Christianity: Religion In Jane Austen's Novels, Erin R. Toal

Senior Honors Theses

A beloved English novelist of the late eighteenth century, Jane Austen captures the attention and emotion of readers through timeless insights into the inner workings of the human heart as characters navigate society, family life, and love. Her novels’ attention to practical morality but reticence toward explicitly religious subject matter raises conjecture concerning the religion behind her values; however, Austen’s Christian upbringing, Anglican practice, and Christian values suggest a foundation of faith from which the morality in her novels emanates. In Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park, Austen demonstrates her eighteenth-century Anglican worldview in …

On Cliché: Expression, Cognition And Understanding, Craig Jordan-Baker

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Abstract: This paper argues that cliché is not simply a problem of language and expression, but rather a cognitive problem or one of understanding. It locates several distinctive features of cliché, namely their characteristic superficiality (low informational content) and the typically low cognitive effort they require to understand. It then argues for a distinction between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ clichés, where the former are the well-known phrases commonly recognised as clichés, but the latter are not recognised as clichés but nevertheless function as clichés within a specific literary work.

The Kilmarnock Burns And Book History, Patrick Scott

Patrick Scott

Terrorism, Islamization, And Human Rights: How Post 9/11 Pakistani English Literature Speaks To The World, Shazia Sadaf

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The start of the twenty-first century has witnessed a simultaneous rise of three areas of scholarly interest: 9/11 literature, human rights discourse, and War on Terror studies. The resulting intersections between literature and human rights, foregrounded by an overarching narrative of terror, have led to a new area of interdisciplinary enquiry broadly classed under human rights literature, at the point of the convergence of which lies the idea of human empathy. Concurrently with the development of human rights literature as a distinct field of study, two new strains of Pakistani literature have emerged on the Anglophone literary scene. Firstly, there …

The Absent Father In Jane Eyre, Lauren Megan Epperson

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

The novel Jane Eyre was originally published as an autobiography by Charlotte Brontë, under the pseudonym Currer Bell. The heroine of this novel is widely celebrated as a proponent of feminist ideals, and as such, this paper is designed to examine the role of the patriarchy in Victorian English through the novel. The focus of this inquiry is the importance of the “father figure,” for young women, as means of protection, developing social identities, and securing, financially, a future. This paper, then, is an examination of the ramifications, i.e. the physical and verbal abuse, gross negligence, and poverty, Jane faced …

Devilish Leaders, Demonic Parliaments, And Diabolical Rebels: The Political Devil And Nationalistic Rhetoric From Malmesbury To Milton, Karra Hk Shimabukuro

English Language and Literature ETDs

Throughout its history, England and its writers have created its national identity out of thin air. Some writers such as William of Malmesbury and John Milton have consciously constructed their imagined Englands, while other authors during the medieval and early modern periods are subtler, but whose works reflect the historical and cultural moment, the fears, desires, and anxieties about kingship, tyranny, heirs, and stability, that existed during that time. Little scholarship has focused on the devil’s role in these constructions, his political nature, and how this nature is used in constructing nationalistic arguments. This devil can lead kings, nobles, and …

Tolkien’S Theology Of Beauty: Majesty, Splendor, And Transcendence In Middle-Earth (2016) By Lisa Coutras, John Wm. Houghton

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by John Wm. Houghton of Tolkien’s Theology of Beauty: Majesty, Splendor, and Transcendence in Middle-earth (2016) by Lisa Coutras

The Great Tower Of Elfland: The Mythopoeic Worldview Of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton And George Macdonald (2017) By Zachary A. Rhone, Mike Foster

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Mike Foster of The Great Tower of Elfland: The Mythopoeic Worldview of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald (2017) by Zachary A. Rhone.

Dr John Mackenzie And The Irvine Miscellany

Patrick Scott

Social Justice Across The Curriculum: Research-Based Course Design, Rebecca Walton, Jared Sterling Colton, Rikki Kae Wheatley-Boxx, Krista Gurko

English Faculty Publications

This Programmatic Showcase describes why and how Utah State University redesigned our Technical Communication and Rhetoric program to incorporate considerations of social justice across the curriculum. After describing our programmatic vision, we describe in detail the design of a pedagogical study informing our curricular redesign and then share strategies for course design and university-community partnerships. The course-design strategies include 1) explicitly framing courses around broad issues of social justice, 2) incorporating hands-on practice to connect conceptions of social justice to professional practices, and 3) facilitating opportunities for both students and clients to reflect upon these connections. The strategies for facilitating …

Lost In Translation: The Immigration To Academia And Implementing Critical Thought, Stacie Denetsosie

Writing Center Analysis Papers

Denetsosie compares her entry-level English students to immigrants. New to the requirements of academia, these students need practice acclimating to academic culture. Denetsosie recommends writing centers and composition classes as low-stakes environments where students can practice their new voice. Tutors and teachers can make this transition easier by asking open-ended questions, encouraging students to use their own words, and teaching students to think critically.