Bureauspeak: Discovering How Elected Officials Perceive Municipal Employees' Dis/Respectful Rhetorical Practices,
2013
University of Texas at El Paso
Bureauspeak: Discovering How Elected Officials Perceive Municipal Employees' Dis/Respectful Rhetorical Practices, Teresa Quezada
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Bureauspeak analyzes bureaucrats' rhetorical practices within municipal governments. This project asserts that respectful rhetorical practices have always been implicit in traditional notions of rhetoric, but have not been explicitly addressed. This project describes the political epistemic field (PEF), formed by discourse, audience, reality and rhetor, that is created within a municipal environment where policy deliberations occur. The PEF allows for interactions among the four elements and results in changes to all the elements as the interactions occur. The policy-making audience in the PEF expects their bureaucrat-rhetor to enact respectful rhetorical practices, but in many instances those expectations are also implicit …
The Internet, Anonymous, And Our Public Identities Recreating Democracy,
2013
California State University, San Bernardino
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 …
Eco-Terrorism Or Eco-Tage: An Argument For The Proper Frame,
2013
Linfield College
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 …
An(Other) Rhetoric: Rhetoric, Ethics, And The Rhetorical Tradition,
2013
University of South Florida
An(Other) Rhetoric: Rhetoric, Ethics, And The Rhetorical Tradition, Kathleen Sandell Hardesty
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Rhetoric as a discipline is still touched by the shadow of ancient Greece. Rhetoric was defined famously by Aristotle as the "available means of persuasion," codified into five canons in classical Rome, and has since been a central part of Western education to train speakers and writers to effectively move their audiences. However, particularly beginning in the mid-20th Century, the discipline's understanding of rhetoric as a means of persuasion (or even manipulation) passed down from our ancient roots began to shift to a sense of rhetoric as matters of ethics and a concern for the other. It begs the question: …
Dead Man's Switch: Disaster Rhetorics In A Posthuman Age,
2013
University of South Florida
Dead Man's Switch: Disaster Rhetorics In A Posthuman Age, Daniel Patrick Richards
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
When a disaster the magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill takes place, is it natural for the news media stories, investigative reports, and public deliberation to focus almost exclusively on finding the person or group responsible for such a horrendous scene. Rhetorically speaking, the discourse surrounding the event can be characterized as a reductive form of praise and blame rhetoric (epideixis). However, these efforts, while well-intentioned, are troublesome because searches for the one technical cause and the sole personal culpability are thwarted by the sheer complexity of the ecological, technological, scientific, institutional, and communicative network required for …
Disciplinarity, Crisis, And Opportunity In Technical Communication,
2013
University of South Florida
Disciplinarity, Crisis, And Opportunity In Technical Communication, Jason Robert Carabelli
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
In this thesis I argue that technical communication as an academic curricular entity has struggled to define itself as either a humanities or scientific discipline. I argue that this crisis of identity is due to a larger, institutional flaw first identified by the science studies scholar Bruno Latour as the problem of the "modern constitution." Latour's argument, often referred to as Actor-Network Theory (ANT), suggests that the epistemological arguments about scientific certainty are built on a contradiction. In viewing the problem of technical communication's disciplinarity through the lens of ANT, I argue that technical communication can never be productive if …
Unbearable Weight, Unbearable Witness: The (Im)Possibility Of Witnessing Eating Disorders In Cyberspace,
2013
University of South Florida
Unbearable Weight, Unbearable Witness: The (Im)Possibility Of Witnessing Eating Disorders In Cyberspace, Kristen Nicole Gay
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This thesis argues that the recent erasure of digital pro-anorexia ("pro-ana") narratives by websites such as Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram represents an attempt to silence female self-starvers and reify the authority of medical associations to speak for female bodies. I draw parallels between these attempts and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's theory of epistemic violence, since the experiences of women are effectively discredited, through metaphors that render the thin body dangerous, to shore up professional medical authority. As an attempt to privilege the experiences of the self-starvers, I analyze one Tumblr blog with eating disorder content to listen to the letters users …
Unhinged: Kairos And The Invention Of The Untimely,
2013
CUNY New York City College of Technology
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 …
Rewriting Revision: A Case Study Of First Year Composition Students,
2013
University of Texas at El Paso
Rewriting Revision: A Case Study Of First Year Composition Students, Myshie M. Pagel
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
This case study focuses on the revision practices of seven first year composition students at a U.S./Mexico border community college. The analysis of revision practices is framed by the negotiation of dissonance between gist and intention. Three types of data were collected: screen captured writing sessions, instructor comments, and participant interviews. The data was analyzed through a grid based on Faigley and Witte's taxonomy grid of revision changes. This included three major categories: surface level, meaning preserving, and text base level changes. As in past studies on revision, the participants in this case study followed a similar trend. A majority …
The Service-Learning Writing Classroom: A Safe Haven For Articulating Difficult Stories About Whiteness And Race,
2013
University of Texas at El Paso
The Service-Learning Writing Classroom: A Safe Haven For Articulating Difficult Stories About Whiteness And Race, Adam Webb
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Service-learning is an educational method that is usually examined for its practical applications and outcomes, and can help instructors and students to realize the connective aspect of classroom discussions, assignments, activities and discourses that occur within the community. In this respect, "connective" refers to more than just bridging the distance between the classroom and community using service-learning. Instead, it acts like the "connective human tissue" that unites individuals together. Individuals as biological beings themselves are the connective tissue that unites them linguistically, physically and emotionally. In essence, the connective human tissue that unites individuals together creates an intertwined community through …
Witnessing The Web: The Rhetoric Of American E-Vangelism And Persuasion Online,
2013
University of Kentucky
Witnessing The Web: The Rhetoric Of American E-Vangelism And Persuasion Online, Amber M. Stamper
Theses and Dissertations--English
From the distribution of religious tracts at Ellis Island and Billy Sunday’s radio messages to televised recordings of the Billy Graham Crusade and Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, American evangelicals have long made a practice of utilizing mass media to spread the Gospel. Most recently, these Christian evangelists have gone online. As a contribution to scholarship in religious rhetoric and media studies, this dissertation offers evangelistic websites as a case study into the ways persuasion is carried out on the Internet. Through an analysis of digital texts—including several evangelical home pages, a chat room, discussion forums, and a virtual church—I investigate …
Pluralistic Nonoriginalism And The Combinability Problem,
2013
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Pluralistic Nonoriginalism And The Combinability Problem, Mitchell N. Berman, Kevin Toh
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Structure Of Narratives In Political Theories,
2013
University at Albany, State University of New York
The Structure Of Narratives In Political Theories, Wesley Dan Nishiyama
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
In this dissertation, I use the ideas of Kenneth Burke and Wolfgang Iser to understand how narrative types, including: novelistic, historical, biographical, and hypothetical, are used as rhetorical devices to persuade the reader of the theory at hand. I will begin by
Upvoting The Audience: A Burkean Analysis Of Reddit,
2013
Eastern Illinois University
Upvoting The Audience: A Burkean Analysis Of Reddit, Doug Urbanski
Masters Theses
My thesis examines the Internet community Reddit through the rhetorical framework of Kenneth Burke, specifically his work with identification between individuals and how identification shapes communities. I focused on three sections of Reddit: World News, Ask Reddit, and Politics, and analyzed the best-voted comments of top posts from each section, focusing on how anonymous users communicate with one another and how their anonymity might influence the ways they interact. Additionally, I propose a method for instructors to use Reddit in the classroom, taking advantage of the medium's systematic anonymity.
Recapturing Our Minds, Reclaiming Higher Learning: A Review Of R. P. Keeling’S And R. H. Hersh’S “We’Re Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education”,
2012
Illinois State University
Recapturing Our Minds, Reclaiming Higher Learning: A Review Of R. P. Keeling’S And R. H. Hersh’S “We’Re Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education”, Brandon Hensley
Brandon O. Hensley
Situating their conversation within a growing weltanschauung that the world is becoming “flat" and intellectual capital is integral to a changing globalized marketplace with emerging superpowers, Keeling and Hersh (2012) lay forth a bold claim in We’re Losing Our Minds: undergraduate education in the U.S. is sapping minds because learning is no longer the primary focus or essence of colleges and universities. “Intoxicated by magazine and college guide rankings, most colleges and universities have lost track of learning as the only educational outcome that really matters” (p. 13). The authors advance that this systemic crisis, though well documented (even before …
Beautiful Evil: (Re)Covering The Subversive Rhetorics Of Adah Isaacs Menken,
2012
Kennesaw State University
Beautiful Evil: (Re)Covering The Subversive Rhetorics Of Adah Isaacs Menken, Jeanne Bohannon
Jeanne Law Bohannon
No abstract provided.
Spirit Injury And Feminism: Expanding The Discussion,
2012
University of Central Florida
Spirit Injury And Feminism: Expanding The Discussion, Nick J. Sciullo
Nick J. Sciullo
To discuss spirit injury, it is at first necessary to articulate a space in the theoretical diaspora to conceptualize spirit injury as a concept deeply tied to the historical tradition of several theoretical frameworks. “Spirit injury” is a phrase popularized by critical race feminist Adrien Katherine Wing. It is a term utilized in critical race feminism (CRF) that brings together insights from critical legal studies (CLS) and critical race theory (CRT). Wing’s training is as a lawyer and legal scholar, not as a communication scholar, yet her work may help communication scholars more keenly theorize harm and violence. Her scholarship …
Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris,
2012
University of Central Florida
Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris, Nick J. Sciullo
Nick J. Sciullo
Willie Morris was in many ways larger than life. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he moved with his family to Yazoo City, Mississippi at the age of six months. He attended and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where his scathing editorials against racism in the South earned him the hatred of university officials. After graduation, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. He would join Harper’s Magazine in 1963, rising to become the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history. He remained at this post until 1971 when he resigned amid dropping ad sales and a lack of …
Kuehl - Book Review Rhetoric And Public Affairs Spring 2013.Pdf,
2012
South Dakota State University
Kuehl - Book Review Rhetoric And Public Affairs Spring 2013.Pdf, Rebecca A. Kuehl
Rebecca A. Kuehl
No abstract provided.
“100% Authentic Pittsburgh”: Sociolinguistic Authenticity And The Linguistics Of Particularity,
2012
Carnegie Mellon University
“100% Authentic Pittsburgh”: Sociolinguistic Authenticity And The Linguistics Of Particularity, Barbara Johnstone
Barbara Johnstone
As Bucholtz (2003), Coupland (2007, pp. 25-26), and others have pointed out, what counts as an authentic linguistic variety or an authentic speaker depends on who is counting and why. Sociolinguists have often unthinkingly privileged as their object of study the most unselfconsious, “vernacular” speech in relatively closed, homogeneous communities like traditional working-class neighborhoods, with their dense, multiplex social networks, and in the relatively self-contained symbolic economies of schools. This has allowed us to explore social correlates of variation and processes of change in communities where these things appear least muddied by outside influences, and doing so has given us …
