Digital Commons Network^™

Lifelong Movie Goers, Hardworking Filmmakers, And Oscars Discourse, Haley Kamola

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper focuses on the discourse surrounding the Academy Awards, often referred to as the Oscars. The differences in discourse between people working in the film industry and those who watch movies are analyzed, as they represent the supplier and recipient of films and filmmaking. These two groups offer varied perspectives on the topic. The discourse of another group, a group in-between–student filmmakers–is also analyzed. To many people, what makes a film “good” is quite subjective, so the Academy Awards are often a subject of discourse. One particular focus of discourse will be the 2024 Academy Awards. There were a …

“Pro-Woman, Pro-Life”: Framing Of The Anti-Abortion Movement, Olivia Rivet

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This project on the “Pro-Woman, Pro-Life" framing of the Anti-Abortion Movement uses James Paul Gee's theoretical lens on discourse analysis. My research corpus is comprised of historical, legislative, news, editorial, and film data. This project focuses on when the term "Pro-Woman" first appeared in the anti-abortion discourse and how it has been used to reinforce the Pro-Life stance. I argue that the phrase -- "Pro-Woman" -- is a discoursal strategy to appeal to women who are ideologically aligned with the Pro-Choice movement. According to the Pro-Woman, Pro-Life framework, no "feminist" would want to support a practice, such as abortion, that …

Andrew Tate, Matt Walsh, And The Discursive Production And Policing Of Gender, Alan J. Bandyk, Alan J. Bandyk

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis utilizes the works of Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, Frederic Jameson, and Edward Said in a discourse analysis of influencers and writers in the right wing "manosphere." The figures analyzed herein are Andrew Tate and Matt Walsh. Their rhetoric aims to create a discursive woman who embodies traditional notions of gender and sex that de Beauvoir critiqued in 1949. The constant adherence and reference to a mythical past exhibits ways of thinking that coincide perfectly with Jameson's own theoretical work with the term and its inherent false nostalgia. Tate's and Walsh's efforts also fall into discursive attempts at …

Rhetorical Privilege: Entitlement, Control, And The Disruption Of Shared Discourse, Marc Grandillo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to explore a concept that I call rhetorical privilege, an occurrence that develops within a particular population of individuals who exhibit an elevated sense of self, demanding exclusive accommodation or recognition for unearned accomplishment. Commonly known as entitlement, this mentality is often associated with younger generations that have been raised in an environment that engenders an attitude of control. Equipped with the misguided notion that all aspects of their lives may be personally determined, individuals carry this same assumption into communicative encounters. My contention is that the contemporary rhetorical speaker-audience relationship, understood to be built upon “a …

Rewriting Web 2.0 Discourses Of The Local For Socio-Spatial Literacy Theory, Erin Daugherty

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to provide a framework for engaging with two spatial concepts that have been foundational to theorizing literacy across time but have often been taken for granted as passive backdrops to the social action of literacy practice: the notions of “the local” and “the global.” By interrogating the histories, both past and ongoing, of these two spatial concepts as they are interwoven into the sociocultural paradigm of literacy theory, research, and pedagogy, this project identifies new ways that literacy researchers and educators can attend to spatial concepts so as to promote and encourage literacy research and learning that …

Thomas Kent's Paralogic Rhetoric As A Framework For Analyzing Corporate Social Responsibility Discourse, Donald E. Penner

English Department Theses

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) scholarship increasingly uses rhetorical theory as a method for analyzing contested meaning between communicants. However, the classical and social constructivist rhetorical theories typically used for analysis do not address the primary cause of contested meaning – relativism. Conversely, such theories often contribute to a dualistic worldview by utilizing internally imagined conceptual schemes for analyzing texts. This thesis proposes Thomas Kent’s paralogic rhetorical theory as an alternative method of analyzing CSR texts, and focuses on three common areas typically utilized in rhetorical analyses of CSR texts: text reception, the rhetorical situation, and genre. Where paradigmatic rhetorical theories …

Examining Place Meanings In The Social Media Of The U.S. National Park Service, Camille Marcotte

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

National parks are important ecological and cultural resources worldwide, and in the United States, many have begun to use social media to guide visitors’ experiences and to communicate about special qualities of place. But, how exactly are social media messages crafted, and how do they attempt to structure viewers’ ideas about national parks? To answer these questions, this study used rhetorical discourse analysis to examine a one-year sample of texts and images from Facebook posts drawn from three large U.S. national parks. Results of this study showed that parks use different stylistic devices and methods of persuasion to make claims …

Examining Political Discourse On A Crafting Website, Laura Steibel O'Brien

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Websites dedicated to leisure pursuits are often used to connect with others over a shared interest. Some allow and encourage participants to engage in discussion. This project examined the ways that one crafting website, Ravelry, attempts to maintain civil discourse among its users, as opposed to the sometimes hostile and aggressive interactions found on other sites. The study looked at its discussion moderation practices as its users discussed politics and then analyzed how this related to community norms and practices of civil public discourse. Discourse analysis of words, phrases, and interactions within representative discussion threads suggest that while Ravelry’s guidelines …

Becoming A Woman Of Isis, Zoe D. Fine

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine how terrorism is produced and consumed in communication. Using discourse analysis, I investigate how terrorism is constituted in the accounts of four women described in online news reports as having joined, or almost joined the so-called Islamic State (IS): “Alex,” constructed as having been lonely and flirted with IS; “Khadija,” presented as a schoolteacher turned member of IS’s all-women’s brigade; Laura, described as a woman whose partner abandoned her, who met a man online, and who brought her son with her to join IS; and Tareena, referred to as a health worker who brought her …

A Mexican American's Passage: An Autoethnographic Exploration Of Identity And Self-Empowerment, Corina Lerma

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis presents a critical autoethnography that explores how an understanding of political and cultural events have contributed to my conflicted sense of identity. The purpose of the study was to identify genealogical and historical patterns that manifest in the traumas that have influenced and problematized the construction of my reality and to discover if personal traumas and conflicted senses of identity as a Mexican American in the United States finds any source in the social and political events that took place during the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s. The autoethnography was conducted both through research of Mexican American history, …

Literacies Of The Disaster Zone: New Media Genres And Participatory Rhetorics After The 2010 Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill, R. J. Lambert

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

On April 20, 2010, explosions at the British Petroleum (BP) Macondo Project in the Gulf of Mexico initiated what would become the world's largest accidental release of oil into the ocean. This ecological disaster, a unique combination of natural and human causes, is one of many significant traumas over approximately the last two decades that various stakeholders have documented, participated in, and responded to largely through the expanding and increasingly ubiquitous media of the internet, computers, cell phones, and other networked communicative technologies, which both enable and constrain the variety of responses to traumatic events.

This Dissertation improves our understanding …

An Ecological Application Of Kleinian Theory To Political And Social Discourses As A Means To Extend Ecological Modernization Discourse, Gage Peterson

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Though largely marginalized within its own discipline, Psychoanalytic theory, specifically object relation’s theory, promises a breadth of value to ecological modernization (EM) discourse when appropriated interdisciplinarily as a rhetorical frame or lens. This project incorporates and extends the ecopsychological application of Kleinian object relations to the human-nature relationship, previously researched by Joseph Dodds (2011). Through the application of Kleinian theory to environmental rhetoric, both within political and social discourses, this paper explores the psychological processes that characterize political decision-making regarding the economy versus ecology debate, as well as exploring cultural ideologies that perpetuate the forgetting of our integral relations with …

Black Voices Matter, Shenika Hankerson

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

This article examines the role of voice in the writing of African American students from the African American Language (AAL)-speaking culture. Drawing on data from a qualitative study, this article presents empirical evidence that is likely to inform existing and new initiatives to support the voice and writing practices of AAL-speaking students, and by extension, all culturally and linguistically diverse students. This rarely considered insight, I argue, is important as in recent decades there have been a growing number of calls for instructional material that meets the language and literacy development needs of second language speakers and writers. By generating …

What’S Creative About Creative Writing? Critical Pedagogy And Transversal Creativity, Erick Piller

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

As creative writing studies emerges as a field, scholars should interrogate the meanings and possibilities of creativity in the educational contexts of creative writing. This article draws from the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to propose the concept of transversal creativity, which emphasizes agency and self-invention through a realized meshing of discourses and identities—ways of speaking, writing, thinking, and being that cut across and run between established discourses and subject positions. Conceived in this light, creativity can bring critical pedagogy into the creative writing course.

In Search Of Solidarity: Identification Participation In Virtual Fan Communities, Jaime Shamado Robb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study questions the way sports fans create (a sense of) community through online conversations. Here, ‘community’ and ‘internet’ are seen as invitational terms that suggest an authentic social interaction. By examining the language used by fans to sustain a sense of solidarity in the virtual realm, this study questions the ways in which rhetoric frames the situation. Participation in the virtual space relies on practices of identification derived from physical engagements. By using a rhetorical approach, this study illuminates the way individual participants operationalize a rhetoric in virtual conversations that spiritualize the fan’s experience at the base of a …

Blackfish-Ing For Buzz: The Rhetoric Of The Real In Theme Parks And Documentary, Steven W. Schoen

Faculty Publications

In 2014, a year of record tourism in the state of Florida, SeaWorld saw a drop of one million visitors to its theme park in Orlando. The decline followed Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s 2013 documentary film Blackfish, which presented the circumstances of orcas, or “killer whales,” held in captivity at parks like SeaWorld as cruel to the animals and dangerous to their trainers. In 2016, SeaWorld announced it will stop breeding orcas, and phase out its orca theatrical shows by 2019, a move widely attributed in the press to the impact of Cowperthwaite’s film. This article examines the film Blackfish as a …

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

Let Me Tell You About Homestuck: The Online Production Of Place, Jennifer Short

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the potential for the online production of place, specifically as it applies to the host site for the Homestuck web comic, MS Paint Adventures, and its attendant fandom. The proliferation of digital environments such as video games, web sites, and chat rooms has led to numerous opportunities for the study of online spaces and the numerous practices that take place within them. The lack of physical location in online spaces can, however, make it difficult to conceptualize of a web site as real, a problem that has often led researchers to develop new theories of space that …

Veteranness : Representations Of Combat-Related Ptsd In U.S. Popular Visual Media, Diane J. Keranen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Posttraumatic stress and PTSD are becoming familiar terms to refer to what we often call the invisible wounds of war, yet these are recent additions to a popular discourse in which images of and ideas about combat-affected veterans have long circulated. A legacy of ideas about combat veterans and war trauma thus intersects with more recent clinical information about PTSD to become part of a discourse of visual media that has defined and continues to redefine veteran for popular audiences.

In this dissertation I examine realist combat veteran representations in selected films and other visual media from three periods: …

Seeing The Sausage Made: How Compromise Works In Large Groups And Representative Bodies, James E. Crawford Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Inspired by the lack of Congressional compromise during the 2013 federal shutdown, I explore how compromise works in large groups and representative bodies. An on-line survey, personal interviews, and a discourse analysis of the Congressional Record yield a diverse collection of data, including personal and public stories of compromise. I examine the stories and other data through an eclectic mix of contemporary scholarship, borrowing literary theory from the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, socio-linguistic concepts from American linguist James Paul Gee, and moral philosophy from Israeli thinker Avishai Margalit. I also incorporate the work of political scientists Amy Gutmann and Dennis …

What I Mean When I Say Autism: Re-Thinking The Roles Of Language And Literacy In Autism Discourse, Bernice M. Olivas

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Literacy studies are deeply intertwined with issues of identity. Olivas explores the ways that public discourses of autism have constructed an autism “Identity kit,” as defined by James Paul Gee, which harms autistic students and communities more than it helps. This is particularly true for adult autistics. Considering the growing presence of the autistic learner in the composition classroom, it is important to understand how public discourse influences classroom dynamics. Drawing heavily on her own experience as the mother of autistic sons and on Melanie Yergeau’s “Circle Wars: Reshaping the Typical Autism Essay,” Olivas explores how her children have been …

Communicating Crimes: Covering Gangs In Contemporary Canadian Journalism, Chris Richardson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this integrated-article dissertation, I examine representations of gangs in Canadian journalism, focusing primarily on contemporary newspaper reporting. While the term “gang” often refers to violent groups of young urban males, it can also signify outlaw bikers, organized crime, terrorist cells, non-criminal social groups, and a wide array of other collectives. I build on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to probe this ambiguity, seeking to provide context and critical assessments that will improve crime reporting and its reception. In the course of my work, I examine how popular films like West Side Story inform journalists’ descriptions of gangs. Though reporters have …

Prose And Polarization: Environmental Literature And The Challenges To Constructive Discourse, Paige E. Costello

CMC Senior Theses

This work explores how authors employ literary modes to persuade readers towards one side or another of the environmental debate and whether the works promote constructive discourse on environmental issues. It uses two seminal works from each side of the environmental discourse, Silent Spring and The Population Bomb and The Ultimate Resource and The Skeptical Environmentalist, to analyze stylistic differences and similarities, to compare public reception, and to explain the increasing polarization of environmental discourse.

Bringing "Abnormal" Discourse Into The Classroom, Virginia M. Tucker

English Faculty Publications

Assuming student discourse is prone to error, teachers have long implemented rules that ensure "safe" discourse, particularly in composition instruction. My fifth grade teacher taught me to place a comma in a sentence whenever I take a breath rather than teaching me the language of comma rules. To my dismay, many of my first-year composition students raise their hands in agreement that they too have been taught to place a comma wherever their lungs suggest. These students learn to call independent clauses a complete sentence, and to them an ellipsis is merely “dot, dot, dot.” In an attempt to reach …

The Political Economy Of Truth In The 'War On Terror' Discourse: Competing Visions Of An Iraq/Al Qaeda Connection, Adam Hodges

Adam Hodges

Writing An Important Body Of Scholarship: A Proposal For An Embodied Rhetoric Of Professional Practice, Jane Hindman

Publications and Research

Identifies a set of professional discursive practices of rhetoric teachers that reveal gendered power relations. Proposes an "embodied rhetoric" characterized and authorized in part by specific sorts of personal author- and context-saturated gestures. Concludes that an embodied rhetoric regenders academic discourse, assures agency and power to feminist theory and praxis, and facilitates efforts to effect change in teachers and students' lives.

Special Focus: Personal Writing, Jane E. Hindman

Publications and Research

This introduction to a special section of College English treats the nature, role, and problematics of personal academic discourse and professional work. It address the place of personal writing in professional contexts and aims to clarify the myriad denotations of "the personal" in academic discourse and to suggest viable criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of personal writing's contributions to knowledge-making in English studies.