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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Literacy, Rhetoric, Tradition, And Truth In The Age Of Bede, Gerard A. Lavin Iii
Literacy, Rhetoric, Tradition, And Truth In The Age Of Bede, Gerard A. Lavin Iii
English Language and Literature ETDs
Despite his own high level of literacy and education, the Venerable Bede (672/3–735) inhabited a world in which nearly all personal, social, educational, and political discourse was conducted orally. A thorough understanding of his works will require an understanding of this discourse, but attempts to apply broad theories of “orality” derived from other cultures to early medieval England have repeatedly foundered. This dissertation establishes a set of guiding principles to produce a more nuanced and localized model of discourse in Bede’s England and observes a variety of ways oral and literate forms of rhetoric were employed by political actors in …
Shifting Dreams: Intersections Of The Rhetorical Imagination Of U.S. Immigration Policy And The Writing Practices Of Dreamers, Genevieve Garcia De Mueller
Shifting Dreams: Intersections Of The Rhetorical Imagination Of U.S. Immigration Policy And The Writing Practices Of Dreamers, Genevieve Garcia De Mueller
English Language and Literature ETDs
This dissertation examines the intersections between the rhetoric of the DREAM Act and the discourse of the migrant activists, specifically DREAMers, affected by the Acts language. Through a hermeneutic approach combining a rhetorical, genre, and critical discourse analysis, I examine how the DREAMers respond to marginalizing textual features of the Act. DREAMers appropriate genres and rhetorical moves of the dominant discourse to combat four problem features of the DREAM Act, namely the criminalizing nature, the erasure of the affected subjects (migrants), the taking away of agency from the affected subjects (migrants), and the propagation of xenophobic racism. Often fraught with …
Memory, History, And Forgetting In The Sandra Allen Collection Of Papers On Mormonism: A Feminist Rhetorical Historiography Of Institutional Intervention In The Equal Rights Amendment, Valerie Kinsey
English Language and Literature ETDs
This dissertation leverages archival theory, public memory theory, feminist historiography, and rhetorical theory to argue that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reinterpreted the Mormon past to engender identification and foster political action during the Equal Rights Amendment ratification period (1976-1981). Chapter One provides readers with an orientation to the Sandra Allen Collection of Papers on Mormonism and argues that its creator, Sandra Allen, marshaled her understanding of archiving, history writing, and institutional archives to make her history public. Chapter Two: On Memory uses theories of public memory to explain why the Mormon Church built the Nauvoo Monument …
A Model Citizen: Ethos, Conservation, And The Rhetorical Construction Of Aldo Leopold, Daniel Cryer
A Model Citizen: Ethos, Conservation, And The Rhetorical Construction Of Aldo Leopold, Daniel Cryer
English Language and Literature ETDs
This dissertation explores the changing, multifaceted ethos of Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), one of the twentieth centurys most versatile environmental communicators. Drawing on scholarship in environmental rhetoric, rhetorical genre theory, citizenship theory and ecofeminism, I argue that throughout his career Leopold offered evolving rhetorical versions of himself as ideals of ecological behavior to be emulated by his readers. The chapters analyze Leopold's ethos as it was constructed in his early-career writings in the New Mexico Game Protective Association Pine Cone, a wildlife protection broadsheet; in the Report on a Game Survey of the North Central States, his first book; in reports …