Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Universal Design In First-Year Composition – Why Do We Need It, How Can We Do It?, Danielle Nielsen

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Ensuring that all students can access information, demonstrate mastery, and feel comfortable in the classroom is important, yet first-year composition faculty may find reaching the diverse populations in their classrooms daunting. Learning styles, comfort levels with writing and English language skills, disabilities, and family life impact all students, leaving us to wonder how best to facilitate student success. This essay, in taking up the question of universal student success, explores Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the first-year composition classroom and its benefits to both students and teachers. I first define Universal Design for Learning and then attend briefly to …

Cross-Cultural And Multilingual Encounters: Composing Difference In Transnational Contexts, Tika Lamsal

Rhetoric and Language Faculty Publications and Research

A rapid increase in the population of cross-cultural and multilingual students and faculty in the U.S. universities has spurred the need to develop a culturally and linguistically more inclusive pedagogy in the teaching of writing. By analyzing the writing of a couple of multilingual and multicultural students from a freshman composition class in a U.S. university, this article explores the ways that help facilitate the writing process of such students. Stressing the value of students’ previous experiences based on their social, cultural, and language differences, the essay argues for the need to recognize and promote the use of multilingual and …

Sustainable & Effective Integrated Technology In Classrooms, Nada Shokry

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

Leaders and Laggards describe how "educational innovation means discarding policies and practices that no longer serve students while creating opportunities for smart, entrepreneurial problem-solvers to help children learn" (qtd.In Blueprint). This description of Education Innovation relates well with the idea of integrating technology in education. However, this integration process is a complex one that must be carefully done and well researched in order for education process to benefit and develop. The most important point that educational administration has to focus on is how to construct a sustainable practical integration of technology in education to eliminate the drawbacks of traditional teaching …

Islamophobia - Is It Justified?, Nada Shokry

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

This research paper discusses the main reasons, triggers and consequences of the so-called Islamophobia phenomenon. The answer to the question raised in the title "Is Islamophobia justified?" is found to be: Islamophobia is a religious discrimination affecting innocent people who are or appear to be Muslims, especially after 9/11. This is due to the generalization of the guilt of any terroristic attack on the whole Muslim community and even on Islam. This answer was concluded through an evaluation of the aspects mentioned earlier which precedes through referencing other scholarly works, showing a collection of statistics developed by well established Research …

A Word Is Worth A Thousand Pictures: A Systemic Functional And Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Intersemiotic Evaluation In University Science Textbooks, Leo William Roehrich

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Images are an invaluable medium in science textbooks for clarifying confusing concepts and establishing a visual foundation for field related topics. The integration of image and language within a single unit of discourse builds a larger meaning than the two semiotic forms are capable of producing separately. Visual representations are chosen for their functional value in aiding linguistic explanation and also for their aesthetic value in textual enhancement. Aesthetic choice is a matter of subjective opinion. Although science writing is generally classified as objective, authors embed personal opinion in written and visual discourse. The choice of visual medium has a …

Who Is You? Identifying "You" In Second-Person Narratives: A Systemic Functional Linguistics Analysis, Davina Kittrell

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In narratives, characters are introduced to readers through the use of textual clues left by the author. These clues, often in the form of pronouns, enable the reader to follow the various characters involved throughout the story. Pronouns have no lexical content and are used as referential devices, guiding the reader through the story and helping them recover the identity of the story’s characters. However, some narratives employ a literary technique in which the story’s protagonist is introduced by the pronoun “you” with no previous textual information given. As a result the pronoun “you” is assumed to be exophoric, pointing …

A Contrastive Systemic Functional Analysis Of Causality In Japanese And English Academic Articles, Masaki Shibata

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Typological differences between languages have been a much debated topic in linguistic studies. Despite their usefulness in understanding syntactic features of various languages, such contrastive analyses have yet to thoroughly explore semantic variation among languages; furthermore, the results obtained have not been practically utilized in other areas of applied linguistics. This situation may come from the fact that a large number of contrastive studies have eclectically examined isolated areas of language variation either from syntactic, morphological, or from pragmatic perspectives. Viewing this issue from another angle, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) focuses on language from a multi-dimensional perspective, where language is …

Approaches To Life Narrative: A Scholarly And Creative Thesis, Tanya Bomsta

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis includes both scholarly and creative approaches to women’s life narrative and rhetoric. The author first analyzes Terry Tempest Williams’ recently published memoir, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice, through the lenses of writing and rhetorical theory. She examines how Williams’ hybrid genre negotiates the boundaries between journaling and autobiographical writing and between silence and voice. She argues that Williams employs a feminist rhetoric in her writing in order to negotiate these boundaries.

The second and third works are personal essays in which the author examines her journals and her marriage. These creative works meditate on the …

Chambers, Ephraim (1680-1740), Krista Kennedy, Cécile Révauger, George Lamoine

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition - All Scholarship

Encyclopedia entry on Ephraim Chambers, from Le Monde Maçonnique des Lumières (Europe, Amériques et Colonies).

'In Love With Either/Or': Religion And Oppositional Logic In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (Chapter 3 Of Irigaray, Incarnation And Contemporary Women's Fiction), Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Margaret Atwood is a prolific and award-winning Canadian writer whose work regularly exposes the destructive and oppressive forces at work in society, particularly as they affect women. Though Atwood refers to herself as a 'strict agnostic: she maintains an interest in religion, which is evident in her fictional work (Moyers 2006).1 Atwood's second novel, Surfacing (1973) , has received a fair amount of critical attention for its religious themes and is examined in both Carol Christ's Diving Deep and Surfacing and Barbara Rigney's work Lilith's Daughters.2 Atwood's Cat's Eye (1989), with its mystical Marian imagery, has also been explored …

Hybrid Identities In Radio Discourse, Francisco Javier Aguirre

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this thesis was to conduct a discourse analysis of conversational data from a radio station program in Southern California to see if the speakers' language displays hybridity theory. The radio program in question is unique because all speakers including the deejays and call in listeners do not exclusively speak English or Spanish but codemix or alternate between English and Spanish (Spanglish hereafter) during on-air conversations.

Performing Hegemonic Masculinity: The Rhetorical Spectacle Of Mixed Martial Arts, Allison Marie Mark

Theses Digitization Project

This project explains the sport of mixed martial arts and provides a theoretical foundation for rhetorical analysis of hegemonic masculinity in the sport. The influence of mixed martial arts on society is pervasive. Any values produced by the sport echo in the community, which crosses into the rest of society.

Resisting The "Sound Of Muzak": Alienating Effects In Conceptual Progressive Music, Bryan Michael Mcculley-Mendoza

Theses Digitization Project

This study was to showed how popular music is used to create passive consumers driven by a need for instant gratification, rather than objective, active listeners. It then discusses how "conceptual progressive music", demonstrated my Porcupine Tree and Pink Floyd rebels against this mass culture nature.

The Internet, Anonymous, And Our Public Identities Recreating Democracy, Leslie Anne Hutchinson

Theses Digitization Project

This study discusses the pursuit of understanding how the discursive construction of the internet affects individuals, identities, and democracy. it also discusses the internet within theoretical positions on its history, the public sphere, and revolutionary politics. Western governments have created legislation regulating the internet for democratic purposes, and this study examines how different and often contrasting views of democracy have shaped the way those of us connected to the internet can speak about it. The Anonymous identity, articulates one such contrast. Anonymous constructs an alternative, Internet identity-one stemming from the identity of the hacker. Policies targeted at stopping hackers and …

Galton To Himmler: An Archeology Of Eugenics Discourse, Jeffery Logan Clark

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to trace interdiscursive and intertextual relations between ancient and modern social discourses that allow and constitute Francis Galton's eugenics discourse, and how Francis Galton's eugenics discourse effects change in other social discourses of the twentieth century.

Stop! Think! Grade!: Developing A Philosophy Of Writing Evaluation, Terri Fredrick

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

n the first day of my graduate course in evaluating student writing, I ask the students to describe their evaluation philosophy. After a few moments of silence, the students, a mix of graduate assistants and full-time K–12 teachers, begin by telling me what they expect from students’ writing. When prodded to focus on their own evaluation, they list writing issues they mark in student papers. Some describe evaluation practices: “I don’t pick up my pen until I’ve read through the paper at least once,” says one teacher. “Why?” I press. Eventually someone will venture a claim like this one: “I …

Eco-Terrorism Or Eco-Tage: An Argument For The Proper Frame, David Thomas Sumner, Lisa M. Weidman

Faculty Publications

What does the term “terrorism” mean? Is it accurate to lump illegal acts that destroy property but carefully avoid harming people into the same category as acts clearly intended to kill? Is this a difference of kind or just of degree? While we (the authors) don't generally endorse the destruction of property as a method of generating social change, we believe that the destruction of property is fundamentally different from the intentional killing of people; therefore, to label acts of obstruction, trespassing, vandalism, sabotage, or arson as “terrorism” is inaccurate and has the potential to damage one's understanding of real …

The Rhetorical Oracle: A Fun Introduction To Rhetoric, Dan Gleason

Rhetoric Unit

In this lesson students meet three key rhetorical schemes – anaphora, antithesis, and chiasmus – in a fun, engaging way. The students share some common concerns related to school (e.g., too much homework, not enough time with friends, bad grades on essays); after a student raises an issue, that student is given a slip of paper with a relevant (and rhetorical!) sentence or two to read aloud. With these rhetorical pronouncements, students hear the patterns of the three schemes in an engaging and personal way. The teacher can then follow up with a more detailed account of the rhetorical patterns.

Understanding School Genres Using Systemic Functional Linguistics: A Study Of Science And Narrative Texts, Allison D. Canfield

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to examine elementary level textbooks (grades 2-4; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing; The Trophies Collection) using Systemic Functional Linguistics as the theoretical framework to study the different types of lexical choice and grammatical options made in the textbooks. The two genres examined are science and narrative, which are significantly different from each other. Science texts are “information based,” and narrative texts, “story based.” It is very important for teachers to understand how the genres are different so that they can convey those differences to their students.

The two school genres, science and narrative, differ from …

Unhinged: Kairos And The Invention Of The Untimely, Robert Leston

Publications and Research

Traditionally, kairos has been seen as a “timely” concept, and so invention is said to emerge from the timeliness of a cultural and historical situation. But what if invention was thought of as the potential to shift historical courses through the injection of something new or alien into a situation? This essay argues that kairos has not been able to free itself from its historical constraints because it has been bound to a human sense of temporality. By evolving along patterns different from print, the apparatus of the cinema developed in a way where it was not bound to illustrating …