Digital Commons Network^™

Analyzing The Rhetorics Of Wine: Ethnographic Research Of Wine Community Narratives, Bailey Mcalister

English Dissertations

In this dissertation, I explore the effective communication and rhetorical practices of sommeliers and wine professionals. Using interdisciplinary work and ethnographic study, I analyze the general narrative of the wine community in order to draw conclusions about the rhetorics of wine. Specifically, I argue that professionals in the wine community utilize a unique expertise founded on managing relationships between the wines, the experiences, and the wine community, and that these rhetorics are crucial to the industry's success. To support my argument, I conducted personal interviews with seven wine professionals during the summer of 2022. These primary sources inform my rhetorical …

Secondary & Collegiate English Composition Education In Turkey: A Case Study Of History And Present State, Haris U. Haq

English Dissertations

Turkey is a nation situated between Europe and Asia with a population of over 80 million. It is literally and metaphorically an embodiment of its reputation as the intersection of East and West, be it geographically, socially, politically, or culturally. Its modern history was significantly influenced by its role as the succeeding state to a collapsed empire and adapting to the ever-changing world it found itself engaged with. This dissertation analyzes the state of English composition education in Turkey at the secondary and tertiary levels, responding to a gap in the literature in examining contexts outside of the United States. …

Ann Berthoff From The Margins: An Infusion Of All-At-Once-Ness For Contemporary Writing Pedagogy, Paige Davis Arrington

English Dissertations

This dissertation argues that contemporary scholarship in the field of composition and rhetoric largely marginalizes and misconstrues the work of Ann Berthoff, one of the field’s founders. Employing a feminist rhetorical, dialogic methodology, my study resources the scholarship of Ann Berthoff, the newly available archival collection of her papers, a personal interview with Berthoff, and a survey of contemporary and historical texts in the field that enroll Berthoff into their discussions. I enroll these sources in order to identify, trace the origins of, and explain the misconstruance of Berthoff’s work. This work suggests that the field pays a price in …

Programmed 'Treasuries Of Eloquence’: A Rhetorical Take On Productivity Aids In Audio Engineering Software, Thomas Breideband

English Dissertations

This project examines the influence of productivity aids in digital audio production software on matters of professional expertise, user experience, and workflow. The research is based on both the public reflections of 25 leading audio engineers about the state of the craft and the field as well as close content analyses of the most widely used software solutions for music mixing. Using the practical tenets of the fourth canon of rhetoric, memory, as a heuristic lens and emphasizing its role as an arbiter of professional expertise, this study contextualizes memory as both recollection strategy and programmed practice. It examines the …

Rhetorical Being: A Metaphysics Of Freedom And Essence, Nathan Wagner

English Dissertations

My dissertation examines the connection between rhetoric and being. I critique subject-oriented phenomenological assumptions that have perpetuated for decades within rhetorical theory and offer an alternative metaphysical methodology. I initially focus on Lloyd Bitzer and Richard Vatz’s debate about the rhetorical situation, which shaped accepted theories of subjectivity for decades to come. I offer an alternative model of the subject that is based on Augustine’s metaphysical model of being, and I focus on this notion of rhetorical being as a means of revealing knowledge as potentially, contextually already present through readings of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas’s work. Augustine’s paradigm …

The Tyranny Of Custom: Discovering Innovations In Forensic Rhetoric From Classical Athens To Anglo-Saxon England, Steven Sams

English Dissertations

Scholarship tells the story of the history of rhetoric whereby the study of rhetoric declines first in the “Silver Age of Rome,” then loses any bearings or progress during first the Patristic period of the formation of the early Christian Church in the third through fifth century CE, and undergoes a second decline during the Germanic invasions starting in the fifth century. My task is defining and recovering new sources for rhetoric to spark more creative and in-depth analysis of this period in the history of rhetoric.

Rather than simply move through a bibliographical list chronologically, I narrow in on …

Building The New Babel Of Transnational Literacies: Preparing Education For World Citizens, Xiaobo Wang

English Dissertations

The transnational diasporas in a technological world that is postmodern and posthuman mean both exciting diverse communities and challenging problems. On the one hand, globalization brought human beings the convenience of exchanging ideas, doing business, and building a better world together. On the other hand, the political economy of nation states that shaped non-translational ideologies, created at the same time conflicts and misunderstandings among citizens from different parts of the world.

Responding to the current transnational clashes in flow (information dissemination) and contra flow (surveillance and control of information flow) of our information age, this dissertation builds up a transnational …

The Value Of Scholarly Writing: A Temporal-Material Rhetorical Analysis Of Delivery In Google Documents, Valerie Robin

English Dissertations

This project examines the impact that cloud-based writing has on scholars’ material work processes and the temporal value shift that occurs as we write in an ‘always-on’ environment. It analyzes how interactive writing software (IWS) like Google Documents serve to forefront functions of interactivity between writers, and by doing so, reshape and create Western values surrounding the academic writing process that are uniquely post-industrial. Using James Porter’s (2009) components of digital delivery as a lens, this project contextualizes the ways that the work of writing is performed online by looking at the features embedded in a Google Document. This examination …

"Speaches Seeming Fitt": Rhetoric And Courtesy In The Faerie Queene, Michelle L. Golden

English Dissertations

The practice of courtesy was of the utmost importance in Renaissance England; courtesy was tied to social standing, virtue, and civility. Spenser joins in a rich tradition of courtesy literature by including the Book of Courtesy in The Faerie Queene. His presentation of courtesy goes far beyond the limited discussion of the concept by his predecessors and peers; instead of limiting his depiction of courtesy to “courteous” behavior, Spenser includes every aspect of courtesy, including courteous and completely discourteous behavior and effective and ineffective expressions of courtliness.

Spenser’s courtesy involves layers of complexity that exist in various social spheres …

A Rhetoric Of Data: How A Technology Company Communicates Research, Laurissa Wolfram-Hvass

English Dissertations

This dissertation provides a new understanding about the role of communication in the User Experience design process. For eight months, I conducted an ethnographic, participatory case study of “the EmailFactory," a mid-sized technology company that builds and runs a web-based email-marketing platform. Throughout the study, I explored how the company collects user research, shares it, and uses it to inform their design process and company decisions. Through this dissertation, I examine the entire rhetorical situation of user experience research at this company: the author (those who gather and share the research), the audience (the designers, developers, corporate executives, other company …

From The 'Hood To The Classroom: A Rhetorical Perspective On Teaching Secondary English To The Urban Student, Shae A. Anderson

English Dissertations

African American students, particularly those from low socio economic levels, are often at a disadvantage when it comes to being prepared for Georgia’s state mandated tests such as the End of Course Tests (EOCT). These students often fall behind not because they are not as intelligent as their middle class counterparts, but because of negative teacher attitudes and cultural insensitivities. The research question is “What should teachers of urban students know to successfully implement a blending of critical pedagogy and rhetorical pedagogy?” The purpose of this project is to make the case for a rhetorical pedagogy that focuses not solely …

Teaching Speculative Fiction In College: A Pedagogy For Making English Studies Relevant, James H. Shimkus

English Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) has steadily gained popularity both in culture and as a subject for study in college. While many helpful resources on teaching a particular genre or teaching particular texts within a genre exist, college teachers who have not previously taught science fiction, fantasy, or horror will benefit from a broader pedagogical overview of speculative fiction, and that is what this resource provides. Teachers who have previously taught speculative fiction may also benefit from the selection of alternative texts presented here. This resource includes an argument for the consideration of more speculative fiction in …

The Art Of Future Discourse: Rhetoric, Translation And An Interdisciplinary Pedagogy For Transglobal Literacy, Estefania Olid-Pena

English Dissertations

Theorists who have categorized translation as an imperfect and never-ending task have also questioned the legitimacy of this field over the years. It is uncommon for other disciplines to consider translation a topic of study. Except for translation classes in which students discuss in detail the nature of the translators’ tasks and their methodology, professors of other disciplines rarely address the fact that the voice of the translator is an overlooked, yet an important component of any translation. As a consequence, students around the globe read translated works without acknowledging translators’ ethos and their rhetorical situation. The consideration of this …

Two New Heuristics In Response To Formulaic Writing: What Lies Beyond Oversimplified Composition Instruction, James T. Davis Ii

English Dissertations

Many high school and college composition students have misused formulaic organizational structures, most conspicuously the five-paragraph theme, as invention tools. This misappropriation comes from teacher and student tendencies to oversimplify both the processes of writing instruction and its practice into countable and inflexible forms. In order to help students move towards improved invention models that respond to the overall rhetorical situation, this dissertation offers two new models of invention, the x, y thesis and the argument guide models. Beginning at the invention stage and extending recursively to all stages of the writing process, these two heuristics help guide students towards …

From Orators To Cyborgs: The Evolution Of Delivery, Performativity, And Gender, Victoria E. Willis

English Dissertations

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The purpose of this project is to provide a thorough account of delivery by tracing the history and evolution of delivery from antiquity to the present day in order to expose the spread and transmission of proto-masculine ideologies through delivery. By looking at delivery from an evolutionary perspective, delivery no longer becomes a tool of rhetoric, but the technology of rhetoric, evolving over time in the same way the system of rhetoric itself has evolved. Contemporary scholarship …

Toward A Rhetoric Of Scholar-Fandom, Tanya R. Cochran

English Dissertations

Individuals who consider themselves both scholars and fans represent not only a subculture of fandom but also a subculture of academia. These liminal figures seem suspicious to many of their colleagues, yet they are particularly positioned not only to be conduits to engaged learning for students but also to transform the academy by chipping away at the stereotypes that support the symbolic walls of the Ivory Tower. Because they are growing in number and gaining influence in academia, the scholar-fans of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy) and other texts by creator Joss Whedon are one focus of …

Winning, Losing, And Changing The Rules: The Rhetoric Of Poetry Contests And Competition, Marc Pietrzykowski

English Dissertations

This dissertation attempts to trace the shifting relationship between the fields of Rhetoric and Poetry in Western culture by focusing on poetry contests and competitions during several different historical eras. In order to examine how the distinction between the two fields is contingent on a variety of local factors, this study makes use of research in contemporary cognitive neuroscience, particularly work in categorization and cognitive linguistics, to emphasize the provisional nature of conceptual thought; that is, on the type of mental activity that gives rise to conceptualizations such as “Rhetoric” and “Poetry.” The final portions of the research attempt to …