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Right Neural Substrates Of Language And Music Processing Left Out: Activation Likelihood Estimation (Ale) And Meta-Analytic Connectivity Modelling (Macm), Lauren C. Keith

Master's Theses and Capstones

Introduction: Language and music processing have been investigated in neuro-based research for over a century. However, consensus of independent and shared neural substrates among the domains remains elusive due to varying neuroimaging methodologies. Identifying functional connectivity in language and music processing via neuroimaging meta-analytic methods provides neuroscientific knowledge of higher cognitive domains and normative models may guide treatment development in communication disorders based on principles of neural plasticity.

Methods: Using BrainMap software and tools, the present coordinate-based meta-analysis analyzed 65 fMRI studies investigating language and music processing in healthy adult subjects. We conducted activation likelihood estimates (ALE) in language processing, …

Creating An Integration Framework For The European Union? Comparing The Role Of Language In Integration Policy Regarding Education And Labor Participation Rates In Germany And Sweden, Kate Elizabeth Persson

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Discourses Of Diversity: A Qualitative Case Study Of World Language Pedagogies Through An Intersectional Lens, Sheri Dion

Doctoral Dissertations

Schools are becoming more linguistically and racially diverse in K-12 settings, yet there is relatively little research that explores how language teachers incorporate student and community diversities in their pedagogies. Situated at one, northeastern public secondary school in the United States, this research offers a qualitative case study of language pedagogies through an intersectional lens to investigate the mechanisms and contexts through which inequities arise. Data is collected from the following sources: teacher interviews, classroom observations, teachers’ syllabi, and student de-identified work. This study employs intersectionality (Collins & Bilge, 2016; Crenshaw, 1989, 2010) as a primary theoretical lens and critical …

Cognitive Control And Language Network Connectivity Associated With Language Production In Aphasia, Jessica Lee

Master's Theses and Capstones

Aphasia is the breakdown of language comprehension and production due to an acquired brain injury of the left hemisphere. Investigation of the neurological underpinnings of aphasia have advanced from post-mortem investigation of specific regions in the 1800s to the utilization of brain imaging technology to understand brain networks. These approaches have helped us to appreciate the reorganization of the brain and its networks post stroke, particularly as it relates or is modified for adequate versus impaired performance. Research into neuroplastic changes can elucidate differences between healthy and lesioned brains. Furthermore, identification of adaptive (or maladaptive) neuroplastic changes can also inform …

Constructed Languages And Their Role In Drama, Emelie Vandenberg

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper covers the history and use of constructed language and dialect on stage and screen as well as the issues that arise concerning social awareness and intellectual property.

Storytelling Study, Samantha Irene Pepe

Honors Theses and Capstones

Expressive prosody (i.e., a manner of communication that is characterized by lively rhythm and tempo) and inexpressive prosody (i.e., monotone speech) present different environments for listening to a story during a read-aloud session. This study aims to assess whether there are visual attention differences for preschoolers in these varied prosodic environments and how this affects comprehension.

El Uso Del Quechua En El Perú: Una Investigación De Identidad Y Performance Cultural, Theresa A. Renker

Honors Theses and Capstones

Utilizando varias fuentes diversas de campos de estudio diferentes, este trabajo investiga temas de autenticidad y autoridad como son relacionados a los “performances” culturales que tantas personas indígenas son forzadas dar para evitar la discriminación cultural y sobrevivir económicamente. Este proyecto se enfoca en el doble siguiente: la sociedad peruana dominante rechaza el quechua por representar atraso, mientras a la vez frecuentemente idealizándolo como reliquia del imperio inca. Generalmente quechua-hablantes del Perú no tienen el espacio ni la autoridad cultural necesarios para establecer sus propias identidades distintas. Concepciones sociales de sus culturas y formas de hablar son construidas por una …

Enhancing Memory Access For Less-Skilled Readers, Emily R. Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

Ericcson and Kintch (1995) suggested that less-skilled readers often have an impoverished representation of text. The results of five experiments demonstrated that the addition of causality enhanced the text representation of less-skilled readers. Experiments 1-3 showed that the addition of causal information enhanced less-skilled readers' ability to detect global inconsistencies. Experiments 4 and 5 showed that the addition of causal information to updating information resulted in less-skilled readers updating to the same extent as skilled readers.

The Individual Voice: The Expression Of Authority Through Dialects, Idiolects, And Borrowed Terminology In Chaucer’S Canterbury Tales, Jacqueline Cordell

Honors Theses and Capstones

Using Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this paper seeks to demonstrate how language affects the social construction of identity in literature within the late Middle Ages. To accomplish this it looks at how characters (particularly those in the Reeve's and Miller's Tales) attempt to give themselves greater authority over their peers in instances of social conflict by either changing their dialect or, by using terminology borrowed from power-imbued languages like French and Latin. The paper also discusses changes in authority outside the literature by examining the impact of scribal idiolect on the presentation and perception of Chaucer's individual characters.

Created In The Image Of: Mormonism And The Rhetorical Production Of Identity In Privately-Published Family Histories, Michael K. Peterson

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a qualitative study of seven privately-published family histories written by descendants of Mormon polygamists. Using methods of discourse and rhetorical analysis, these texts and various interviews are analyzed with the contention that identity is a rhetorical production and that the authors (either intentionally or unwittingly) fictionalize each of the identities involved---their own, their readers', and their ancestors'---to bring them together in moments of Burkean identification. These moments of identification are also analyzed in terms of communal and generational memory, temporal proximity, and communal discourses. An important conclusion in this study is that this rhetorical production of identity …

Towards Public Professionalism: A Pentadic Intervention In Debate Between The Common Core Standards Initiative (Ccsi) And The National Council Of Teachers Of English (Ncte), Jim Webber

Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I propose an alternate rhetorical strategy for literacy educators (K-16) seeking to enter debates over common standards for "college- and career-readiness" in literacy. I argue that the NCTE's current strategy fails to invite public participation in debate, and to remedy this situation, I suggest educators employ Kenneth Burke's pentad to sponsor public inquiry into the standards. When the CCSI claims its standards will ensure that all students "demonstrate independence as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners," I suggest educators ask: in what situations do students demonstrate independence? With whom or for whom? For what purposes? Using what methods? …

Learning From Feedback: How Students Read, Interpret And Use Teacher Written Feedback In The Composition Classroom, Elisabeth A. Kramer-Simpson

Doctoral Dissertations

Much research on teacher written feedback has focused on the teacher's role in giving the written commentary. What these studies fail to provide is a description of if and how students are reading, interpreting and using this feedback in their revisions. Some research has explored how students feel about the feedback they receive, but few studies have investigated the interplay between teacher and student in the actual process of feedback and revision. Those studies that have looked at feedback and revision in the classroom context are few in both first and second language writing research. Further, these few studies fall …

Who Do I Say I Am? Evangelical Identity And Academic Writing, Jeffrey M. Ringer

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores how evangelical Christian students negotiate their identities in their academic writing. Specifically, this study addresses two overarching questions: 1. What happens to evangelical students when they write academically? 2. How are evangelical students' identities integrated into and implicated by their academic writing?

In answering these questions, this project seeks to bridge two key scholarly discussions in rhetoric and composition, namely the discussions about writing and identity and about evangelical discourse. This project also seeks to challenge reductive stereotypes about evangelicals perpetuated in rhetoric and composition and in the academy at large. The research for this project comes …

Politics And Ethics Of Student Self-Assessment In The Composition Classroom, Mike Garcia

Doctoral Dissertations

While writing instructors often assign student self-assessment essays with the goal of motivating their students and helping them to develop writerly self-awareness, the reality of the classroom power dynamic limits what can be accomplished in such essays. Students might feel pressured to construct versions of their "selves" that are simply reproductions of traditional student roles rather than to engage in honest, meaningful reflection. Scholars in the fields of Education, Assessment and Composition Studies have noted the lack of research into the political and ethical implications of requiring students to compose these essays.

This dissertation answers the call for research into …

Learning Systems: An Ecological Perspective On Advanced Academic Literacy Practices Of Multilingual Writers, Steve Simpson

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent work in composition's leading journals has challenged the field's exclusive focus on native English speakers and has called for a more international perspective on writing research and pedagogy. This dissertation, which grew from requests from multilingual graduate students in my own institution for more advanced academic writing support, extends this call to explore ways writing programs can better account for the needs of international graduate students, a growing population in US institutions. The role English has assumed as the lingua franca of international academic communication has made writing in English a critical skill for these students' professional development. In …

The Self-Help Of Composition: Peter Elbow's "Writing Without Teachers", Composition Studies, And The Extracurriculum, Alexandria Peary

Doctoral Dissertations

The influence of Peter Elbow's Writing without Teachers on Composition Studies and classroom-based writing instruction is indisputable, yet the central message of the book has been continually sidestepped. At the heart of Elbow's book is an inherent contradiction to classroom instruction: the original impetus for the book was based on self-instruction, or learning about writing outside of any course. For Composition Studies, Writing without Teachers, starting with its title, is a riddle or a Zen koan the discipline has delayed answering for over thirty-five years. This project examines Writing without Teachers as a self-help book on writing and thus as …

Archiving The Sacred: Austin Phelps And The Adaptation Of Nineteenth-Century Rhetorical Education At Andover Theological Seminary, Michael-John Depalma

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation project expands the canon of nineteenth-century rhetorical history by providing a broadened understanding of how professional rhetoric was taught, learned, and practiced in nineteenth-century America. To do so, I examine the rhetorical theory, writing pedagogy, and pulpit oratory of Austin Phelps, an accomplished nineteenth-century preacher and professor of sacred rhetoric at Andover Theological Seminary. In drawing from the archival materials at the first graduate seminary in the United States and Phelps's published preaching manuals, I highlight the ways that Phelps's civic-minded rhetorical theory and pragmatic methods of instruction depart from documented trends in rhetorical education at American colleges …

Oral Language Milestone Acquisition In Children Adopted From China, Hannah Harwood

Master's Theses and Capstones

This study contains language milestone acquisition information for 14 children adopted from China between 8 and 12 months of age. A retrospective questionnaire was utilized to gain information regarding the specific ages at which these adoptees demonstrated an understanding of English along with the ages where they demonstrated proficient usage of English. Parent responses indicated that these adoptees developed English language milestones comparable to their monolingual peers, for both age of acquisition and order of acquisition. This research adds to the literature on what may be expected regarding language development in children adopted from China prior to one year of …

Arresting Beauty, Framing Evidence: An Inquiry Into Photography And The Teaching Of Writing, Kuhio Walters

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the uses and conceptualizations of photography in college Composition. Composition has long been conflicted over the relation between form and content---and since the 1970s, between aesthetics and politics. Today, this disciplinary tension manifests in how the visual is brought into pedagogy: either it is approached aesthetically, as something to beautify a text, or politically, as a source of cultural critique. The field's uses of photography have been positioned within this aesthetics/politics binary, but to understand the medium as only one or the other is to miss its full practical and theoretical potential.

Theoretically, photography is powerful and …

Knowing More Than They Can Tell: An Assessment Of Genre Awareness Among Students In Writing Intensive Zoology And Civil Engineering Courses, Joleen Kidwell Hanson

Doctoral Dissertations

Developing genre awareness as a means of "learning how to learn" in new writing situations is a goal of four recently proposed writing pedagogies that recognize the context-dependent nature of standards for "good writing" (Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi (2004); Beaufort (2007); Johns (2008); Downs and Wardle (2007)). Yet other scholars argue that useful genre knowledge cannot be taught explicitly in the classroom, but must be acquired tacitly through participation in a workplace or other discourse community (Dias et al. (1999); Freedman (1994); Smit (2004)).

This qualitative study investigates the range of variability and potential sources of genre awareness among undergraduates …

"Racism Is A Misunderstanding": Rhetorically Listening To White Students' Performances Of Race, Meagan Rodgers

Doctoral Dissertations

This study describes white student talk about race in terms of performance. I show what white talk regarding race looked like in my study, thus inviting the reader to reflect on her own experiences in terms of performativity and common sense. Recognizing student talk as a complex performance enables us to introduce the practice of rhetorical listening into the classroom in order to encourage students with differing common senses to work toward mutual understanding.

The dissertation is based on an empirical multivocal study in which white first year writing students and teachers were asked to comment on a racial text, …

Understanding Sla Through Peer Interactions In A Chinese Classroom: A Sociocultural Perspective, Lei Wu

Doctoral Dissertations

Second language learning and development is a complex process that is situated in sociocultural settings. Classrooms provide such daily life settings in which language acquisition occurs via social interactions among peers and the instructor as well as other mediated means. The purpose of this research study was to examine the roles of peer interaction in a Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) classroom and how different types of peer interaction affect learners' second language development in a classroom setting, and what roles peer interactions played in such a setting. Based on the sociocultural theory, the study explored the opportunities for …

Teaching Toward Understanding: Feminist Rhetorical Theories And Pedagogies In The College Composition Classroom, Alison A. Knoblauch

Doctoral Dissertations

While recognizing the value of traditional argument, many teacher-scholars have begun to challenge the primacy of antagonistic debate in college classrooms. In "Teaching Toward Understanding: Feminist Rhetorical Theories and Pedagogies in the College Composition Classroom," I maintain that the inclusion of invitational rhetoric, embodied rhetoric, and rhetorical listening as classroom content, coupled with the translation of these theories into pedagogical practice, can both challenge and expand current approaches to the teaching of writing and rhetoric. Furthermore, by offering alternatives to antagonistic debate, these rhetorical theories encourage productive and ethical forms of discourse, promoting more successful cross-cultural communication both in the …

It Managers, Construction Marketers, And Emergency Medical Technicians: Professional Adult Learners In Higher Education, Michael J. Michaud

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I examine the literacy, school, and work experiences of three professional adult learners attending Northeast State College (NSC), a four-year public university in New England. I define professional adult learners as those over the age of twenty-five who enroll in formal programs of post-secondary study for reasons having to do primarily with career advancement and/or transition. More often than not, professional adult learners work full-time and pursue their studies part-time. This project grew out of my work teaching at NSC in the late 1990s. At that time, I had a limited sense of who professional adult learners …

Revisiting The "Current -Traditional Era": Innovations In Writing Instruction At The University Of New Hampshire, 1940--1949, Katherine E. Tirabassi

Doctoral Dissertations

Composition histories mainly focus on a study of "official" texts such as composition textbooks and administrative records to elucidate pedagogical and curricular practices in writing instruction. Yet in recent years, more studies have focused on archival research, on what John Brereton calls the "everyday fabric" of writing instruction. My dissertation project explores the "everyday fabric" of writing instruction during the 1940s at the University of New Hampshire (UNH), looking at archival records, 1940s disciplinary debates and pedagogical practices within and beyond the formal curriculum on the national and local levels, and interviews I conducted with UNH alumni about their curricular …

Beyond "English Language Learner": Second Language Writers, Academic Literacy, And Issues Of Identity In The United States High School, Christina M. Ortmeier-Hooper

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the writing experiences of U.S. adolescent second language writers and considers how students' identities as ""English Language Learners (ELL)" contributes to their learning, their sense of self, and their academic writing. Within the perspective that writing is a socially-embedded activity, I conducted five case studies documenting the academic writing experiences of immigrant students from various countries (Nigeria, Taiwan, Dominican Republic and El Salvador) during their first year of high school.

During the year-long study, I collected data from sources, including: student interviews, classroom observations, students' writing samples, students' social influence maps, and community/school artifacts. Using a theoretical …

Race Salience In Defense Attorney Opening And Closing Statements: The Effects Of Ambiguity And Juror Attitudes, Donald Bucolo

Master's Theses and Capstones

Two studies were conducted to evaluate if making a defendant's race salient in defense attorneys' opening and closing statements would reduce White juror racial bias towards a Black defendant when evidence against the defendant was strong (Study 1) or weak (Study 2). In Study 1, making race salient did reduce guilty verdicts against the Black defendant. In addition, more racist jurors were more likely to find the Black defendant guilty only when race was not made salient. In Study 2, making a defendant's race salient did not affect White jurors verdicts. Further, in Study 2 participants with more positive views …

When The Workplace Is On Campus: Learning To Write For A University Speech Language Clinic, Michelle Cox

Doctoral Dissertations

Much of the literature on academic and workplace writing focuses on the differences between these two writing arenas, leading Dias et al. to describe writing for school and work as "worlds apart." Using insights from activity system theory and rhetorical genre theory, this dissertation project investigates the possibility of middle spaces between academic and workplace writing. Set in a Communication Science and Disorders (CSD) master's program, this qualitative study follows five graduate students as they learn workplace writing in a space that physically bridges academia and the workplace, an on-campus speech-language clinic.

Findings indicate that the genres used in the …

Indians And Immigrants: Survivance Stories Of Literacies, Joyce Rain Anderson

Doctoral Dissertations

This item is not available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.

This project stems from my mixedblood heritage and from a community of mixedblood scholars. In this text, I relate stories of the early colonization of Southern New England, of the zones of contact between whites (primarily English) and Indians (primarily Massachusett or Wampanoag). I offer perspectives on competing views of literacy and explored texts translated from Massachusett Algonquin to see how Indians used writing to enact rhetorics of survivance which challenged the prevailing assumptions of the dominant culture. Within these texts we see how Indians continued to define themselves in …

Writing American Subjects: Race, Composition, And The Daily Themes Assignment For English 12 At Harvard, 1886--1887, Amy A. Zenger

Doctoral Dissertations

This study works to develop a way of reading the functions of race in classroom contexts---specifically in the predominantly white contexts in which composition was formed as a university subject. The model of race chosen for this study is based on critical race theories that conceive of race as being socially constructed, but also a force that organizes identity and experience in powerful ways, even when (or perhaps especially when) its presence is apparently silent---or is, in the terminology of Charles Mills, "normalized."

Primary data for the study is drawn from materials related to the daily theme assignment designed by …