Digital Commons Network^™

Age, Gender, Race, And Culture In The Er: A Content Analysis Of End-Of-Life Issues In The Television Drama, Katrina Wilson Burtt

Dissertations

Within one of the most popular television dramas on American television, hundreds of depictions of end-of-life (EOL) care and decision-making conveyed impressions of how death and dying occurred in a hospital. This content analysis of EOL incidents that appeared in every episode of the television drama ER indicated that viewers got powerful messages about EOL. The long-playing, popular television drama exaggerated the role of physician within the EOL scenes and minimized the roles of women, racial minorities and ethnic groups. Notably lacking from the EOL content were accurate or positive representations of racial, ethnic or cultural differences in death and …

Interpersonal (Re)Relating: Investigating The Experience Of Refriending, Paul Edgerton Stafford

Dissertations

This study reveals findings from qualitative research investigating the relational experience of friends reconnecting after a long period of disconnect. Borrowed from the lexicon of social networking terminology, this particular process is conceptualized here as a process of refriending: when two individuals whose interactive behavior and shared lived experiences that once characterized their friendship have reestablished contact and are interacting after an extended period of communication dormancy. A content analysis of 15 participant interviews about their refriending experiences resulted in a typology of 12 thematic categories related to identity, disclosure, motivation, and communication competence. Aspects of relational continuity as well …

A Pedagogical Guide To Roberto Carpio's Music For Solo Piano, Pablo Ernesto Sotomayor Kamiyama

Dissertations

The purpose of this document, targeted to an international audience of pianists, is to present the solo piano music of the Peruvian composer Roberto Carpio (1900-1986). While most of Carpio’s compositions are scored for solo piano, he also composed lieder, choral pieces, and a few string chamber music works. A pianistic analysis of his keyboard output reveals a relative modesty of technical requirements, which makes his pieces suitable for pianists in their formative years. Notwithstanding the technical simplicity, Carpio’s piano music shows a remarkable musical creativity and an interest to combine elements derived from traditional Peruvian music with early twentieth-century …

Power Of Speech Styles: A Relational Framing Perspective, Michael Lewis King

Dissertations

This study advances understanding of powerful and powerless language effects by incorporating a relational framing perspective. Relational framing theory (RFT) suggests that when messages are interpreted using a dominance frame, issues regarding persuasion, influence, and control become salient. When exchanges are framed by affiliation, however, issues of liking, attraction, and regard become salient. Power of speech style researchers have instantiated dominance-framed interactions in their experiments primarily, thus leaving affiliation-framed interactions largely ignored. Addressing this gap, this study considered the effects of relational framing differences on participants’ evaluation of speech style variations. Consistent with previous literature and in partial support for …

Tweet, Tweet, And Repeat: How College Students And Social Media Bring You The News, Judith Penelope Roberts

Dissertations

This study examined what college students tweet about, how that information is presented, and if age and/or social media experience play a role in the tweets. The researcher followed 118 college student participants on Twitter in the fall of 2012 to determine if use the social media network to communicate news and found that the college students in the study did use Twitter to communicate news and receive the news. Their main topics of Twitter conversation included sports, politics, and arts and entertainment, and they tweeted more opinionated tweets than pure factual tweets. Additionally, the researcher found students in the …

Adapting J.S. Bach's Solo Violin Sonatas And Partitas For The Marimba: Broken Chord And Arpeggio Performance Practices, Jason Eugene Mathena

Dissertations

This purpose of this study is to provide the keyboard percussionist with information and examples for breaking chords and properly executing arpeggio passages in J. S. Bach’s solo violin Sonatas and Partitas. Primary sources included Baroque treatises on performance practice and recent scholarship of the past one hundred years. Various editions of the Sonatas and Partitas were surveyed for this document but, in the end, only Bach’s autograph manuscript and Gunther Hausswald’s critical edition were used for the musical examples as well as the marimba transcriptions included in appendices.

Topics covered are appropriate places to break chords and the various …