Digital Commons Network^™

Light And Heavy Verb Usage By People With Non-Fluent Aphasia, Chase Sophia Kozak

Honors Theses

The purpose of the study was to investigate the discourse elicitation task effect and whether it affects the production of verbs with different semantic weight (light verbs with vague semantic representations, e.g., ‘do’, or heavy verbs with specific semantic representations, e.g., ‘deliver’). Thirty people with non-fluent aphasia and twenty people without aphasia were included. The light and heavy verb ratios over the total number of verbs were calculated for two discourse elicitation tasks: sequential picture description and storytelling. The results for the healthy control group showed that they produced a significant higher heavy verb ratio in sequential picture description than …

Duality In Digital Discourse: The History And Future Of The American Public Forum, Nicholas Weaver

Honors Theses

From the onset of the republic, the liberty to speak freely and debate openly has stood guard and helped preserve all other American rights. While this concept has endured, the means by which it exists in society has changed immensely. As the public forum has evolved to fit the modern needs of the citizenry, political discourse has become less a defense against tyranny and more a chaotic space of conflicting opinions.

In the United States, privately-owned social media companies have grown at an unprecedented rate, yet lawmakers have been slow to exercise any authority to regulate these corporations. For public …

Light And Heavy Verb Productions Between Single And Sequential Picture Description Tasks In People With And Without Non-Fluent Aphasia, Jessica Hall

Honors Theses

Background: Previous research has shown that persons with non-fluent aphasia (PWNFA) suffer from the inability to retrieve words, specifically more of a difficulty with verb productions. Various discourse elicitation tasks have shown to have differing effects on verb retrievals in this population. However, there is a lack of research on the relationship between single vs. sequential picture description tasks and the productions of heavy and light verbs in persons with non-fluent aphasia.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the ratios of heavy and light verbs produced in both single picture description tasks and sequential picture description tasks …

‘Con Los Brazos Abiertos’: Venezuelan Migration And The Humanitarian State Under Ecuador's Moreno Administration, Madeline Cook

Honors Theses

In its 2008 Constitution, Ecuador enshrined radically inclusive principles of universal citizenship and legal protections for migrants, written in a moment of historic Ecuadorian emigration. Yet in the wake of the Venezuelan migrant crisis and President Lenin Moreno’s shift towards austerity, how has his administration (2017-2021) responded to the Venezuelan migration in policy and in political discourse? Through an analysis of legal documents including ministerial agreements, legislation, executive decrees, and the VERHU visa, this paper outlines a pattern of legal restrictions levied on Venezuelan migrants. Additionally, this paper employs a qualitative content analysis of the Moreno administration’s political discourse, including …

The Transcendental Foundation Of Kant's Cosmopolitanism, Daniel J. Ellison

Honors Theses

Scholarship on Kant’s philosophy of history has insufficiently considered its place in the larger system of transcendental idealism. In this project, I argue that Kant’s guarantee of progress in history is grounded in his universal characterizations of human nature, which he makes both explicitly, as with the notion of “unsociable sociability” put forth in “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective,” and implicitly, as with what I term a responsiveness to reasons. These characterizations are grounded, I claim, in an attribution of reason which is always already achieved to the constitution of human beings, which emerges out of …

The New White Moderate: Bearing Witness To The Differend Of Race, Ethan T. Ashley

Honors Theses

As Frantz Fanon demonstrates in his text, Black Skin, White Masks, Sartrean existentialism fails to account for differences in racialized existence. Quite simply, the notion that “existence precedes essence” is reversed in the case of the black subject; he/she is living in a world that has rendered the black subject subservient to a predetermined essence. Ultimately, the fact that the white subject exists and may freely determine his/her essence while the black subject may not further demonstrates this gap or a chasm between black and white subjects that calls for further examination. In the first chapter, I will use …

Computer Mediated Discourse: Applying Defamation Laws Of Slander And Libel In The 21st Century, Derreck Langwith

Honors Theses

With the integration of technology into society computer mediated discourse (CMD) has become a standard form of communication. E-mail, chat rooms, and social networking websites are used daily to discuss a variety of informal and formal topics. The ability to communicate with millions of people across the world instantaneously has not come without legal repercussions and court cases involving online defamation have started to appear. Traditional law separates defamation into two categories: slander encompassing oral defamation and requiring greater proof of injury, and libel including written texts without need of definitive proof to collect compensation. Current lawsuits involving online defamation …

Figuring The Refugee, Genevieve Goulding

Honors Theses

''Figuring the Refugee" explores humanitarian relief for refugees as a discourse; a system of communication and identity-making which creates a subhuman refugee and perpetuates the problems of assistance. Through an auto-ethnographic narrative of my experience in the camp, I consider how the space itself creates exploitative binaries between aid workers and refugees. In an analysis of the United Nations 2006 film appeal, I argue that the discourse is normalized by images of the dehumanized refugee. The rhetoric of the film appeal limits the response of the western viewer to an uncritical sympathy, and allows for ineffective models of refugee assistance …

Research In Semantical Development, Allen Eaton

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.