Rhetoric Commons^™

Extending Story Listening As A Practice Of Communal Formation At The Lake Orion Church Of Christ, Eric R. Magnusson

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project that explores the potential for extending a practice of story listening as a way of forming community across social circles at the Lake Orion Church of Christ in Lake Orion, Michigan. The intervention involved guiding a group of six participant-researchers, each of whom had previous experience in story listening, through six sessions in the fall of 2011. Each phase of the project was informed by a participatory social Trinitarian theology. The first three sessions were designed to empower participant-researcher pairs to facilitate story listening groups of four to five …

Rhetoric And Composition Constructs “The Veteran”: An Examination Of The Student Veteran Identity As Found In Ccc And Tetyc Since September 11, 2001, Linda Gail Smith

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on David L. Wallace’s assertion that the field of rhetoric and composition needs to interpret and present our research into cultural communities in ways that no longer tacitly assume our rhetorical choices are neutral, I present a critique of 19 articles from College Composition and Communication and Teaching English in the Two-Year College that contained one or more instances of five keywords and direct references to student veterans. Using a theoretical framework built from theory by James Berlin, Thomas Huckin, and Marguerite Helmers, I expose various stereotypical and problematic tropes we rely on and re-create in our scholarly writing …

Disciplinary Permeations: Complicating The "Public" And The "Private" Dualism In Composition And Rhetoric, Erica E. Rogers

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As Composition and Rhetoric rose in disciplinary status and academic legitimacy the discourse practice of negation, the positioning of texts in oppositional binaries that set the “new” over the “old,” the “novel” over the “familiar,” became embedded in academic tradition, seeming to be an inherited part of scholarship instead of an individual’s rhetorical choice and deliberate ethos strategy. Negation, when one idea or set of ideas constructed by another is critiqued, advocated, and/or redeveloped by another scholar, is a discourse practice firmly established in the Rhetorical Tradition as part of Socratic dialogues, reappears in “modern rhetoric”, and remains today as …

Toward A Working Theory Of Neurorhetorics, Jeffrey L. Honnold

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This piece makes the claim that rhetoric is first philosophy--before philosophy, epistemology, ontology, or any other field--or that rhetoric is, at the least, on equal footing as these fields because:

empathy--and thusly the impulse for communication--is physiologically hardwired into humans; special distinctions between human and animal are largely artificial constructions, as is evidenced by neurosciences; "hard" science, in the form of neurosciences, is providing entrance points & opportunities for rhetoric to raise its status within the academy; and said neurosciences, in addition to empathy studies, have shown strong evidence supporting linguistic and evolutionary links between humans and other species, thereby …

Flavor Of Slo 2012: An Application Of Communication Principles In Event Planning, Allison Sasscer

Communication Studies

Flavor of SLO is a fundraising event put on by Cal Poly students to raises thousands of dollars to benefit the local non-profit United Way. In the almost year long process of planning and implementing the event, the basics of small group, persuasion, and organizational communication played a part of the shaping and execution of the event. This paper recounts how various aspects of the communication discipline played a part in making the event successful and how it contributed to achieving the goals of improving education, income and health for San Luis Obispo County.

Gasland: The Rhetoric Of Images In The New Media Landscape, Christopher T. Thaxton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Josh Fox's film Gasland, released in 2010, started the national debate concerning the process of hydraulic fracturing and launched the term "fracking" into the public consciousness. Gasland, nominated for four Emmy Awards, was the winner of the 2010 Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary, the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, and the Yale Environmental Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. Using the momentum from the film's popular reception, Fox and the Gasland team successfully established a grassroots movement that was responsible for helping create the Frack Act and a moratorium of fracking in the Delaware River Shed. …

The Initiation Of Growth-Focused Relationships Involving Healthy Accountability At The Carbondale Church Of Christ, Stephen Shaffer

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

After several years of transition, the Carbondale Church of Christ is in the early stages of becoming a spiritual growth-focused community. However, the emerging growth community appears to reflect the prevailing cultural assumptions that growth is a personal, private, and an individual task. To shape this emergent growth culture, this project initiated a group of congregational opinion leaders, organized in pairs, into the practice of growth-focused relationships involving healthy accountability. The initiation involved a theological orientation followed by a four-week healthy accountability praxis.

The theological framework of the project involved three main aspects. First, the project used the body image …

Mother Knows Best: The Rhetorical Persona Of Michelle Obama And The "Let's Move" Campaign, Monika Bertaki

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Some first ladies are often condemned for being too involved with the presidents' power in politics while other first ladies find themselves condemned for the lack of involvement. First ladies, it seems, are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Consequently, Michelle Obama faces rhetorical problems that in some respects are similar to those of previous first ladies and in other respects are quite different. Along with the criticisms encountered by previous presidential wives, Obama faces the stereotypes African American women have endured since the inception of the nation. Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign serves as a rhetorical …

August 28, 1963: Building Community Through Collective Discourse, Jennifer Nestelberger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The August 28, 1963 March on Washington is often remembered primarily for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, which serves as the pinnacle of civil rights movement oratory. This thesis, in contrast, examines speeches of the leaders of the "Big Six" organizations that preceded King's well-known words in order to shed light on the complexities of the movement and the outcomes that can result from meaningful dissent. Occurring at a time of division, the March emerged as a symbol of hope for change in the nation. The addresses of the day reflected this hope and helped build …

Building A Dream, Jenny Nestelberger

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

The August 28, 1963 March on Washington is often remembered primarily for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which serves as the pinnacle of civil rights movement oratory. This thesis, in contrast, examines speeches of the leaders of the “Big Six” organizations that preceded King’s well-known words in order to shed light on the complexities of the movement and the outcomes that can result from meaningful dissent. Occurring at a time of division, the March emerged as a symbol of hope for change in the nation. The addresses of the day reflected this hope and helped build …

Cooking School, Allison Carr

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

As a writer and educator, I'm interested in the parts of our creative processes that aren't necessarily recognized as integral or valuable --the cleaning, cooking, organizing, exercising, screwing around on the internet... All the stuff we do around creation. I created this video, which splices together a double-blind interview between myself and my mother, to show how two totally different people (a scholar and a chef) talk about their creative processes. My contention is that studying the processes of people who do things OTHER than what we do can lend some insight into how we might think about or go …

A Rhetoric Of Bees: A Case Study Of Emergent Community Building Practices Within An Mmo Rule Set, Ben Mccorkle, Matt Howard

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This web text explores the various ways in which an online community of gamers builds and maintains its sense of community, including the production of game-related propaganda, a wiki account of the group's history, and an unconventional approach to game play.

Welcome To Issue 7 And The New Site! 3-2-1-Contact!, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Congratulations! You’ve made the best decision of your life and have chosen to visit Harlot on a very special day. On this day we can’t guarantee all your dreams will come true, but some of your mildest dreams about rhetoric and seeing the world a little bit differently will. With this, our seventh issue, we launch you into the rhedesign, the rhestructuring, and the rheimagining of Harlot.

Super Hardcore Subversion, Rob Pickering

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Geneviéve Goulet is virtually unknown, but her alter ego, LuFisto "the Super Hardcore Anime," is renowned to professional wrestling fans in Canada, Japan, and Mexico as a competitor who will face all challengers, regardless of gender. This resolve, along with her agency over how her image is distributed to the public, creates Goulet as a positive female role-model in the hegemonics of her chosen industry. I am a fat, twice-divorced male born and living in the American Midwest, so of course I'm a wrestling fan, but in spite of that, there is room in approaching wrestling for intellectual and feminist …

(Un)Covering The Story Of Judeo-Spanish: A Personal Exploration Of Language On The Margins, Lisya Seloni

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

In this reflective story of my family rhetoric, I describe the use of a small language, Ladino (Judeoespanyol--also known as Jewish-Spanish) in Istanbul, a cosmopolitan city of around 12 million people. I argue that languages and rhetoric used in families are more than a set of linguistic systems that can be readily passed on from one generation to another. In fact, they are a set of cultural symbols, ethnic representations, and ways of acting in the world, which help the family members create safe spaces, build identities and mark group membership. Through narrating the story of the use of Ladino …

Putting Words On Paper: A Technoautobiography, Andrew Treneer Pitman

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This project was originally created for a class called "Multimedia Authoring," which is sort of a whirlwind tour through graphic design, web design, and digital filmmaking from both a practical and theoretical perspective. Although the class as a whole is inherently very optimistic about new technologies, because it teaches students how to understand the exciting rhetorical possibilities afforded by them, I wanted to examine a specific case where I had found technological progress to be problematic. This piece explores my personal history with technologies that enable writing.

The Electrate Blues, Pearce Durst

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

The following piece articulates a connection between blues music and electronic literacy. I visualize this connection by harmonizing the three dominant chords of the blues (one-four-five) with the three dominant modes of electronic literacy (audio-text-images). The content on each page contextualizes this relationship between music and electronic literacy both historically and personally. The inspiration for this work derives from connections I began to note while simultaneously learning how to play guitar and teach a class on multimedia authoring.

Sifting The Commonplace: Topoi And The Grounds For Argument In Classical And Modern Rhetoric, Daniel Verlo Cutshaw

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is a reminder that how we consider reasoning to work and its end is very much bound up with how we think about people, what they are, what they can be, and how they do and should live together. Part of the end of the human being is to understand, to understand the Good or God and thus understand herself and her relation to others and her obligation to others; this is something we see in Aristotle's somewhat-spiritual understanding of Ethics and the Human Being. Focusing on reasoning (and its connection to being) in general, instead of accenting …

Sir Gawain And The Green Knight And The History Of Medieval Rhetoric., Joseph Turner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

During the Middle Ages, rhetoric and literature were thoroughly intertwined, whereas current notions of disciplinarity, in which literature and rhetoric are constructed as separate traditions, muddy our understanding of medieval practice. This essay reads Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an anonymous fourteenth-century poem, as engaged in a Ciceronian debate over the ramifications of legislative rhetoric on civic decision-making. Because of the paucity of information on medieval rhetorical practice, it concludes, literature is a resource that illuminates this neglected and misunderstood historical period.

Woman At The Top: Rhetoric, Politics, And Feminism In The Texts And Life Of Annie Smith Peck, Hannah Scialdone-Kimberly

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this focuses on the autobiographical rhetoric and public identity of Annie Smith Peck, a scholar, mountain climber and woman rhetor from the turn of the century. My qualitative case study of Peck examines how she worked as a woman rhetor to create a popular identity for herself in both mountain climbing and scholarship. I also focus on how Peck worked to identify herself with her audience; here, I use Burke's concept of "identification," as a way of adding to (rather than substituting for) traditional rhetoric. My project brings new findings in that I examine data on Peck …