Rhetoric Commons^™

Women's Self Perceptions And Fashion Industry Rhetoric, Grace Cody

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Self-Deceive And Conquer: A Rhetoric Of Cunning, David Manuel Cajias

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this investigation is to determine the role that self-deception plays in helping demagogues deceive or manipulate their audiences while remaining unaccountable. I will examine the ways in which self-deception aids demagogues and other unethical rhetoricians compellingly present their deceptive belief systems. This is done in a way that their beliefs are only unconsciously known to be false, inaccurate, or incomplete. As this knowledge is subconsciously stored and concealed from the demagogue’s conscience, I will argue that self-deception is the missing piece in the puzzle that is demagoguery.

Demagogic rhetoric has recently experienced a revival due to the …

Building A (Great) Wall: A Semiotic Analysis Of The Rhetoric Of President Donald J. Trump, Lauren Gilmore

Honors Theses

When Donald J. Trump announced he was running for president of the United States, the country was thrown into division. He was an abnormality as a presidential candidate and a rhetorical oddity since so many of his messages were ones of ignorance and bigotry rather than understanding and inclusion, the expected rhetoric of a president. Through a semiotic analysis, this study aims to understand who the people were that supported Trump, why his rhetoric appealed to them, the ways in which Trump talked about America and its people, and how his supporters interpreted his language. Semiotics is the study of …

Presidents And Populist Politics, Brooke Sobo

Honors Theses

Populist language is a common rhetorical practice of United States Presidents. There is a breadth of literature on the study of populism and populist language, yet few studies identify populist language as reimagining the relationship between president and people. This paper identifies populist language as a political tactic of presidents and links the tactic’s use to the cultivation of authority and legitimacy. A central theoretical foundation of this paper rests on Skowronek’s concept of political time and authority structures. Through the use of four case studies spanning the presidencies of Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump, this …

Prageru As A Parasite Public., Ryan A Corso-Gonzales

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the media corporation PragerU as a parasite public, using the framework provided by Larson and McHendry (2019). Parasitic publics are “reactionary discursive spaces formed residual and institutionalized affectively through the invention, circulation and uptake of demagogic rhetorics” (Larson & McHendry, 2019, p. 517). The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyze the argumentative tactics used by PragerU in the public sphere. I argue that PragerU utilizes its extensive network to resist counterpublicity and influence the dominant public sphere. This thesis demonstrates the ways in which this PragerU utilizes its unique position in the public sphere …

Motivation And The Young Writer: Reimagining John Dewey's Theory Of Experience, Billy Cryer

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Issues of motivation remain a perennial topic among teachers of English Language Arts and first-year college composition courses. While modern evidence-based research in educational psychology has yielded fruitful avenues for harnessing motivation in writing instruction, in recent decades, industrious composition scholars have also turned to history for insights on composition pedagogy. In this study, I also embark on a historical excavation to glean from our composition forebears regarding motivation in writing instruction. In particular, I examine how the educational writings of John Dewey were translated into the English classroom during the Progressive Era. More specifically, I seek to recover how …

The Role Of Translation In Multilingual User Experience, Tetyana Zhyvotovska

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Examining the intersections of technical communication, user experience, and translation, this study focused on the contexts of a user experience (UX) research center as a site where these intersections occurred and on practices of multilingual users while encountering translated information. In order to explore translation practices in relation to UX and cover the gap in understanding multilingual UX, the study examined how multilingual users worked with translated content, how they acted and reacted to it, and what they experienced during this process. Based on the existing scholarship in translation and usability studies in technical communication, this Dissertation undertook empirical research …

Rewriting Web 2.0 Discourses Of The Local For Socio-Spatial Literacy Theory, Erin Daugherty

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to provide a framework for engaging with two spatial concepts that have been foundational to theorizing literacy across time but have often been taken for granted as passive backdrops to the social action of literacy practice: the notions of “the local” and “the global.” By interrogating the histories, both past and ongoing, of these two spatial concepts as they are interwoven into the sociocultural paradigm of literacy theory, research, and pedagogy, this project identifies new ways that literacy researchers and educators can attend to spatial concepts so as to promote and encourage literacy research and learning that …

Personification In Advertising: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Digital Video Ads In The Insurance Industry, Dorm Kpedor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Major companies in the insurance industry—notably Allstate, Progressive, and Farmers—often employ personification as a creative rhetorical tool in digital video advertisements. By leveraging brand characters in various ways, these companies seek to establish trust and engender emotional impact in customers. Allstate ascribes destructive characteristics that are associated with house cats to its Mayhem character; in doing so they evoke the desired emotional responses of humor and fear. Progressive creates and deploys the Motaur character, a visual personification and play on the Centaur; in this case, the company’s rhetorical strategy is to evoke humor and nostalgia that resonate with motorcycle owners. …

Memory And Rememory: Critically Cultivating An Appropriate Response Through A Storied Approach To Listening, Katie W. Powell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues for a storied approach to listening from the perspective of a white Southern woman. To do this, I carefully followed the work of two community groups. One, the Washington County Community Remembrance Project, is working to install a marker venerating Aaron, Anthony, and Randall, three enslaved people who were lynched in our area in 1856. The other, the James H. Berry United Daughters of the Confederacy, is responsible for installing a Confederate statue on the Bentonville Square in 1908 that was removed in 2020. As illustrated by the use of archival research and embedded participation in interracial …

Colonization Of The Philippines: An Analysis Of U.S. Justificatory Rhetoric, Johansen Christopher Pico

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The term “Filipino” offers more than a call to nationality; it also recalls the genesis of colonization in the Philippines. This thesis explores the colonial interventions of the United States in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, homing in on the Filipino education system as the United States’ primary method of colonizing the Filipino mind. Drawing from texts by Senator Alfred Beveridge, President William McKinley, the Philippine Commission, David Barrows, and Dr. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, I offer an ideological criticism that demonstrates a cyclical nature between both justificatory rhetoric and ideology. Working with “ideological clusters,” this …

Inventing A Space To Speak: Ethos, Agency And United States’ Woman Suffrage Cookbooks (1886-1916), Danielle Nielsen

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

During the last forty years of the United States’ fight for woman suffrage, a handful of suffragists wrote cookbooks sponsored by suffrage organisations. These cookbooks created a rhetorical space and ethos within and through the kitchen. Because their activism was grounded in expected feminine actions, this home-bound ethos allowed the primarily white, middle-class suffragists to simultaneously advocate for women’s suffrage in public and maintain their adherence to the Cult of True Womanhood. The arguments put forth in the cookbooks illustrate an ethos that is influenced by both personal agency and the rhetor’s gendered, physical location in the kitchen. From this …

01. Finding Aid To The Physical Collection, Robert H. Ellison, Elizabeth James

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

This document follows the same format as Marshall's other Guides to Manuscript Collections. It includes a biographical note, the "scope and content" of the archive, and other information, along with a complete listing of the contents of each of the 31 boxes on the shelves.

Narrating The Movement: A Rhetorical Analysis On The Digital Mobilization, Remix, And Hijack Of #Metoo, Rocky Roque

Theses and Dissertations

The Me Too movement garnered digital disclosures after Alyssa Milano’s initial tweet in October 2017. Over the period of two years, different remixes of #MeToo surfaced which led to the subsequent hijack of the hashtag. Furthermore, Boyle (2019) argued that the movement can be studied as a “moment” or a “discourse.” Scholars have examined Me Too as a moment, or a singular occurrence that emerged due to mainstream popularity. However, this analysis will study the movement as a discourse, to reveal the intricate interactions present with each remixed hashtag. Through Fisher’s narrative paradigm, an in-depth analysis will be conducted to …

Building Bridges In First-Year Composition: Investigating The Support Of Threshold Concepts In Writing-Related Transfer Across The Curriculum, Elise Antoinette Green

English Theses & Dissertations

Drawing on a multiple-case, embedded design (Yin, 2018), I highlight the in-depth differences and similarities that exist across students’ experiences in first-year composition (FYC), looking specifically at whether learners used genre and rhetorical situation as threshold concepts to transfer writing-related knowledge and skills across the curriculum. I designed and conducted this research by drawing on theories of learning transfer (Perkins & Salomon, 1988; 1989; 1992; Salomon & Perkins, 1989), writing-related transfer (Moore, 2017; Nowacek, 2011; Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014; Yancey et al., 2019), and threshold concepts (Meyer & Land, 2006). Across this study, I collected data as I facilitated …

A Rhetorical History Of Black Studies: Black Power & Epistemology, Kayla Corbin

Honors Theses

In this thesis, using my own experiences and research, I will map out a rhetorical history of Black studies and its relationship with the Black Power Movement in the late 1960s. Using Foucault’s method of genealogy, I will highlight the distinct epistemological assumptions that inform Black studies as a discipline by looking at the material conditions and moment in which the discipline was created. In order to do this, my thesis will interrogate three interrelated discourses of Black studies at the university level: first, the larger history of student activism and its relation to Black studies; second, my own approach …

The Contextualization Of Myth: Identification Of Myth In The Propagation Of Narrative Across Generational Boundaries, Joseph G. Ponthieux

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis demonstrates the unique correlation between myth and the propagation of narrative across generational boundaries. It argues that myth occurs in the intersection of belief, semiotics, and context, and further enables a way of re-encoding a narrative with a dual contextuality. This dual context preserves a narrative’s literal context while endowing it with a new or modified myth context and affords the audience a selection of choices for how to receive a narrative experienced as myth. To demonstrate this correlation a Myth Context Reception Model is designed for the purpose of identifying ascendent, obscure or emergent myths evident in …

The Communicative Constitution Of Environment: Land, Weather, Climate, Leanna K. Smithberger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My project examines the communicative constitution of environment: how we mediate environment in discursive practice, and arrange chaotic and complex timeplaces into organized relationships of agents and objects which act and are acted upon. Climate scholars across disciplines are calling for a paradigm shift in how we understand, study, inhabit, and relate to Earth’s varied environments. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how communication practices do the work of constituting the environment as we know it, and therefore conclude with the hopeful suggestion that these same practices can be used to do the work of a paradigm shift — that is, …

Mental Illness Diagnosis And The Construction Of Stigma, Katie Lynn Walkup

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how mental health legislation and related policy documents contribute to identification, diagnosis, and stigmatization. Using a mixed methods approach including content and stylometric text analysis with R as a heuristic for close and critical reading, I demonstrate how these documents normalize mental health concerns as a public threat. To do this work, I analyze how the Florida Mental Health Act (Chapter 394) and the Florida Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act (SB 7026) circulate and sustain dominant narratives about mental illness. I trace where these narratives are distributed into Florida school districts’ mandatory mental health …

07. Songs, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes his work as a song writer and publisher: 75 stand-alone songs, approximately 40 booklets of his songs, and 18 books he published with his own songs and those of other artists. There are also approximately 420 song books (336 unique titles) from other publishers, 23 of which contain at least one of Cummings' songs. Information about each of these songs--295 in all--is provided in the User Guide.

All of these songs, along with the relevant front- and backmatter in the books, are posted here as a single PDF. It is nearly 140 MB; to make …