Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Characterization Of Prose By Rhetorical Structure For Machine Learning Classification, James Java

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Measures of classical rhetorical structure in text can improve accuracy in certain types of stylistic classification tasks such as authorship attribution. This research augments the relatively scarce work in the automated identification of rhetorical figures and uses the resulting statistics to characterize an author's rhetorical style. These characterizations of style can then become part of the feature set of various classification models.

Our Rhetorica software identifies 14 classical rhetorical figures in free English text, with generally good precision and recall, and provides summary measures to use in descriptive or classification tasks. Classification models trained on Rhetorica's rhetorical measures paired with …

Attitudes Toward Mental Illness And Mental Health In The Literature Classroom, Melissa B. Guadron

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this study was to observe undergraduate students’ attitudes toward mental illness and mental health in the literature classroom. This was an observational, inductive study of Jeffrey Berman’s literature course, featuring books written by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This setting was chosen because of Berman’s unique pedagogy, which encourages self-disclosure and psychoanalytic readings. Three questionnaires and three introspective reader response diaries were collected from fifteen participants; text analyses were performed on diaries. Research inquiries questioned a participant’s interactions with the books: How did participants respond to the portrayals of characters with mental illness or mental health …

Sit, Stand, Speak: Examining The Perceptions Of The Basic Public Speaking Student On Normative Forensic Practices And Their Effect On Competitor Credibility In Oratory, Katie Marie Brunner

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This paper examines basic public speaking students' perceptions forensic competitor credibility based on normative factors present within the forensic community. Anecdotal and experiential evidence provided this researcher with reason to believe that the unwritten rules and normative expectations of forensics were so far-removed from what students were used to seeing in their classrooms and in the media, that they could have a negative impact on a competitor's ethos, from the basic public speaking students' perspective. This research was performed in an attempt to determine whether these anecdotal and experiential assumptions were accurate and also to gain insight into the how …

The Bridge, Volume 12, 2015, Bridgewater State University

the bridge

Art Editor-in-Chief: Ghada Masri
Literature Editor-in-Chief: Briana McDonald
Managing Editor: Elizabeth Tobin
Senior Photography Editor: Sara Kelley

Art Editors
Kerrin Flynn
Shannon Stivaletta

Literature Editors
Jillian Boger
James Holbert
Anthony Holland
Jenna Lopes
Kate Pallis
James Stewart
Carley Taylor
Abigail Wotton

Student Consultant: Meaghan Casey

The False Idea Of Human Nature’S Duality In Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, Megan Sperger '18

Outstanding Gateway Papers

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The mention of these two people will evoke a specific thought in most people’s minds: good and evil; light and dark; normal and deformed. However, the truth isn’t nearly so simple. Humans are free, and therefore a mixture of good and evil; accordingly, both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are neither solely good nor evil. Due to the stifling sexual and social repression in Victorian society, Jekyll became convinced that he could somehow purge himself of the evil inside him by splitting his soul; this, however, had far graver consequences than he suspected. Due to …

The Rise Of Boko Haram: An Analysis Of Failed Governance, Andrew Pichette '18

Outstanding Gateway Papers

The Boko Haram threat in Nigeria has been the subject of constant review as of the last few years. Underlying causes as well as the organizational ideology have consistently been the subject of investigation. While popularly considered to be an Islamic extremist group, academic thought has proposed that Islam is used as a means of legitimization rather than motivation, and that socio-economic and political realities are far more relevant to explaining the activities of Boko Haram. The purpose of this essay is to examine the origins of Boko Haram, how the government has reacted, and propose solutions to the deeply …

Developing Moocs To Narrow The College Readiness Gap: Challenges And Recommendations For A Writing Course, Shoba Bandi-Rao, Christopher Devers

Publications and Research

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have demonstrated the potential to deliver quality and cost effective course materials to large numbers of students. Approximately 60% of first-year students at community colleges are underprepared for college-level coursework. One reason for low graduation rates is the lack of the overall college readiness. MOOCs offering "remedial" writing have the potential to better prepare high school graduates for college, thereby increasing their chances of completing a degree and reducing the cost of education for students, families, institutions, and taxpayers. However, MOOCs are typically more suitable for motivated and prepared students. Designing a MOOC on writing …

Critical Discourse Analysis: Definition, Approaches, Relation To Pragmatics, Critique, And Trends, Linda R. Waugh, Theresa Catalano, Khaled Al Masaeed, Tom Hong Do, Paul G. Renigar

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This chapter introduces the transdisciplinary research movement of critical discourse analysis (CDA) beginning with its definition and recent examples of CDA work. In addition, approaches to CDA such as the dialectical relational (Fairclough), sociocognitive (van Dijk), discourse historical (Wodak), social actors (van Leeuwen), and the Foucauldian dispositive analysis (Jager and Maier) are outlined, as well as the complex relation of CDA to pragmatics. Next, the chapter provides a brief mention of the extensive critique of CDA, the creation of critical discourse studies (CDS), and new trends in CDA, including positive discourse analysis (PDA), CDA with multimodality, CDA and cognitive linguistics, …

Constructing Negotiated Meaning And Knowledge For The Sol Y Agua Project's Role-Playing Adventure Game Focused On Sustainability Problems In The El Paso-Rio Grande Area, Claudia Chihiro Santiago

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Video games that address environmental sustainability issues could engage students. However, video games make simplifications and establish idealistic expectations that do not resemble real life sustainability challenges and settings. Game developers and scholars believe that depicting the complexity of the real world could help video games become effective educational tools. They call for additional procedures that incorporate information from actual settings and real life situations. Furthermore, scholars have argued that video games addressing sustainability issues can be improved or made more meaningful with the participation of youth from underrepresented populations, e.g., Latinos. The Sol y Agua project at The University …

Expansive Learning In Fyc: Using Linguistic Discourse Analysis To Measure The Effects Of Threshold Concepts In Facilitating Generalization, Allison Morrow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how and if threshold concepts enable expansive learning and generalization. Expansive learning and generalization are part of the highly contested conceptions of transfer, and these specific conceptions offer a more complex conception of transfer that deals with knowledge transformation (Tuomi-Gr?hn and Engestr?m, Beach). One way that we can see expansive learning and generalization transform knowledge is through the teaching of threshold concepts. In the last decade, there has been a movement toward using threshold concepts in FYC*s that take up writing studies as their curricula (Wardle and Downs, Dew). Even though using threshold concepts seems to be …

"A Memorial And A Name": Construction Of Public Memory Through Chronotopic Arrangement Of Antecedent Genre At Yad Vashem, Emily Brennan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This spring marked the 70th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis and the end of the Holocaust in Europe. Memory of this genocide has occupied a central place in Israeli identity since the establishment of the state. This thesis explores the history of Holocaust memory in Israel and examines how public memory is constructed in the present, as the era of the survivor draws to a close and commemorative efforts linked to survivors take on a sense of urgency. The contemporary memorial places examined in this study are part of Yad Vashem, Israel*s premier institution for Holocaust commemoration. The …

"I'M Not Talking To Myself, I'M Having A Parent-Teacher Conference!": A Study Of Literacy Practices And Mediation Within Homeschooling Families, Joshua Corlew

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Homeschooling is a dynamic learning and living community producing a growing percentage of our nation*s college-ready students. Serious academic studies of homeschooling remain scarce, and those that exist tend to come out of sociology and anthropology. Through an analysis of the literacy practices that constitute the work of homeschooling, this study offers findings and conclusions relevant to current discourses in the fields of literacy studies and rhetoric and composition. These include discussions on the ways technology is reshaping and individualizing traditional models of literacy learning and composing, as well as the growing research on the specific actions taken by literacy …

Scribblescholar Was Here: Confessional Notes Of A Vandal Academic, Clay Shields

Theses and Dissertations--English

As a (former) vandal-punk in the academy, I often fear succumbing to Ivory Tower Stockholm syndrome. The identities I perform, vandal-punk and scholar, ideologically clash to the point that they often feel irreconcilable. By codemeshing the high-low discourses associated with these adopted cultures, I attempt to disrupt any hierarchal privileging of either, instead searching for a way to live with and harness both.

[Introduction To] Mapping The Cold War: Cartography And The Framing Of America's International Power, Timothy Barney

Bookshelf

In this fascinating history of Cold War cartography, Timothy Barney considers maps as central to the articulation of ideological tensions between American national interests and international aspirations. Barney argues that the borders, scales, projections, and other conventions of maps prescribed and constrained the means by which foreign policy elites, popular audiences, and social activists navigated conflicts between North and South, East and West. Maps also influenced how identities were formed in a world both shrunk by advancing technologies and marked by expanding and shifting geopolitical alliances and fissures. Pointing to the necessity of how politics and values were “spatialized” in …

[Introduction To] A Revolution In Tropes: Alloiostrophic Rhetoric, Jane S. Sutton, Mari Lee Mifsud

Bookshelf

A Revolution in Tropes is a groundbreaking study of rhetoric and tropes. Theorizing new ways of seeing rhetoric and its relationship with democratic deliberation, Jane Sutton and Mari Lee Mifsud explore and display alloiōsis as a trope of difference, exception, and radical otherness. Their argument centers on Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric through particular tropes of similarity that sustained a vision of civic discourse but at the same time underutilized tropes of difference. When this vision is revolutionized, democratic deliberation can perform and advance its ends of equality, justice, and freedom. Marie-Odile, N. Hobeika, and Michele Kennerly join Sutton and Mifsud …

[Introduction To] Rhetoric And The Gift: Ancient Rhetorical Theory And Contemporary Communication, Mari Lee Mifsud

Bookshelf

Rhetoric and the Gift, taking as its starting point the Homeric idea of the gift and Aristotle’s related rhetorical theory, explores rhetoric not only at the level of the artful response but at the level of the call and response. Mari Lee Mifsud takes up a number of questions crucial to thinking about contemporary communication: What does it mean that communication is a system of exchange with others? How are we to deal with questions of ethics in an economic system of power and authority? Can exchange ever be truly generous, and can communication, then, ever be free? Is …

Se Habla Español: The Health Disparity Among The Latino Population, Karen Paz

The Corinthian

Latinos are considered the fastest growing and the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. It is estimated that by 2050, 24% of the U.S. population will be Latino. According to Census data, approximately 18% of the U.S. population age five or older speaks a language other than English at home, and current projections continue to show increases in U.S. immigrant and second-language groups nationwide. About half of that population self-reported that they speak English less than “very well.” Members of this population are referred to as individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP). As the largest ethnic minority, 28 …

The Fanned Flames Of Discontent: A Solidarity-Inspired History Of The Identity/Ideology, Cultural History, And Rhetorical Strategies Of The Wobblies During The 1916 Minnesota Iron Ore Strike, Gary Kaunonen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Rooted in critical scholarship this dissertation is an interdisciplinary study, which contends that having a history is a basic human right. Advocating a newly conceived and termed, Solidarity-inspired History framework/practice perspective, the dissertation argues for and then delivers a restorative voice to working-class historical actors during the 1916 Minnesota Iron Ore Strike. Utilizing an interdisciplinary methodological framework the dissertation combines research methods from the Humanities and the Social Sciences to form a working-class history that is a corrective to standardized studies of labor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Oftentimes class interests and power relationships determine the dominant …

Foundational Practices Of Online Writing Instruction, Beth L. Hewitt (Editor), Kevin Eric Depew (Editor)

English Faculty Bookshelf

This is an Open Textbook available through the Open Textbook Library: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/foundational-practices-of-online-writing-instruction. Reviews are available there.

Foundational Practices in Online Writing Instruction (OWI) addresses the questions and decisions that administrators and instructors most need to consider when developing online writing programs and courses. Written by experts in the field (members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee for Effective Practices in OWI and other experts and stakeholders).... The editors believe that the field of writing studies is on a trajectory in which most courses will be mediated online to various degrees; therefore the principles detailed in this …

Peer Review In A Graduate Writing Class: Case Studies Of First-And Second- Language Students, Petcharat Saenpoch

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research explored peer review strategies of L1 (native speakers of English) and L2 (non-native speakers of English) graduate student writers from different disciplines. The focus was on how they revised their writing and which strategies they used. The study was conducted in a Graduate Writing Workshop class at a public university on the U.S. - Mexican border in the United States of America. Five participants were selected as case studies. The researcher collected data by recording face-to-face peer review sessions, observing the class, interviewing the instructor and students, collecting the students' reflections, and gathering the students' writing drafts. The …