Digital Commons Network^™

Statutory Meanings: Deriving Interpretive Principles From A Theory Of Communication And Lawmaking, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Case Study Of The Impact Of Filmmaker Decisions In The Construction Of A Documentary: Helen Whitney's (2007) The Mormons, Elizabeth Joy Mott

Theses and Dissertations

Informed by theories of media framing, exemplification, and non-fiction film production, this case study used as its sample for textual analysis the typed transcripts from the final cut of Helen Whitney's (2007) documentary film, The Mormons, and the interview transcripts of the 15 key commentators interviewed for the documentary. These theories suggest that (a) media producers condense topics in the media by selecting information that connects news stories to a larger context and imbues them with symbolic value; (b) verbal and visual examples have been shown to be more easily retrieved in memory than abstract ideas and are consequently …

Citizen Participation, Metadiscourse And Accountability: A Public Hearing On A Zoning Change For Wal-Mart, Richard Buttny

Communication and Rhetorical Studies - All Scholarship

During a contentious public hearing on a zoning change for Wal-Mart, participants at times moved to a metadiscursive level with utterances such as, “expect to be listened to,” “I have a question,” or reading quotes of Town Board members from the newspaper. Such metadiscursive references allow participants to attempt to structure, or depart, from the public hearing format. Metadiscursive references also work to criticize their opponents’ speech or the process. Metadiscourse has the consequence of contextualizing the participation framework of the hearing as to topic, length of presentation, and mode of interaction. From a normative perspective, metadiscourse is used to …

"Natural Male Enhancement": A Semiological Approach To Enzyte's Marketing Scheme, Michelle (Shelley) Mckendree

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Disambiguating The Sublime And The Historicity Of The Concept, Vrasidas Karalis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Disambiguating the Sublime and the Historicity of the Concept" Vrasidas Karalis explores the notion of sublime or sublimity as the field of colliding signifiers and of experiential frameworks in conflict. Instead of treating the traditional notion as a structural element of style of ideology, he analyses it from the point of its contextual validation and its very historicity: what makes sublimity emerge is the extra-lingual unease, the existential dysphoria of the world outside the text, as refracted through specific works of art. Such dysphoria is expressed through ungrammatical language or/and through the attempt in specific moments in …

Barriers To Computer Use And Internet Competency Among Homeless Women And Low-Income Women At Risk Of Becoming Homeless, Sondra L. Wildman

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

As our society relies more and more on digital communication methods, the consequences of not having access to computers and the internet will further erode the ability of homeless women to effectively navigate mainstream venues for social and economic interaction. This study strives to explore the barriers that prevent homeless women, and low-income women at risk of becoming homeless, from optimizing their access to computer and internet resources. A group of fifty homeless women was observed using a computer lab at a daytime shelter, and of this group, five women were interviewed. The theoretical framework of the study utilizes Pierre …

Quilts As Visual Texts, Marcia Inzer Bost

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

I argue that quilts should be considered as visual texts, one to which theories of visual rhetoric and rhetoric in general can be applied. In drawing together the worlds of academia and quilting, I will use a variety of theoretical lens to explore quilts as texts. As a text, quilts contain units of meaning much like words. These units of meaning will be explored in Chapter 2 “Quilt Talks: How Quilts Communicate.” In this chapter I will follow the model of Elsley and propose a semiotics of quilts, one that can then be applied to any quilt. This semiotics is …

Introduction To Ambiguity In Culture And Literature, Paolo Bartoloni, Anthony Stephens

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Still Flying: The Communicative Constitution Of Browncoat Fandom As Culture, Jonathon Nicholas Lundy

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In contemporary western culture, fandom is common. Many academics and members of the general public alike conceive of fandom as outside the norms of spectatorship; to be a spectator is to enjoy an interest individually and passively. However, others contend that fandom is a more significant cultural achievement.

This study qualitatively investigated how Browncoats, or fans of the cancelled television series Firefly , communicatively construct their fandom culture. Methods included participant observation, semi-structured interviews, data analysis through Grounded Theory, and a comparative thematic analysis of the original Firefly source texts and Browncoat cultural data in order to discover meaningful themes …

Deadly Discourse: Negotiating Bureaucratic Consensus For The Final Solution Through Organizational And Technical Communication, Mark Ward Sr

All Dissertations

The Final Solution was largely accomplished in eleven months; its executors, the Nazi SS, faced the constant problem that as killing and plunder escalated so did internal competition and corruption; and the SS deliberately cultivated an intensely competitive and polycratic organizational culture that fit the Nazi worldview of life-as-struggle. By tying these three observations together—that the Final Solution was punctuated, entropic, and polycratic—the problem arises: How did SS organizational communications manage, just barely long enough, to create a temporary social reality that regulated the internal contradictions of its genocidal project and fragmented bureaucracy? This study contends that through its organizational …

Beyond Ethnocentrism In Communication Theory: Towards A Culture-Centric Approach, Eddie C. Y. Kuo, Han Ei Chew

Research Collection Office of Impact

The renewal of attention on ethnocentrism in communication theory in recent years suggests an impending tipping point in the research direction of the field. That Communication Monographs, a mainstream communication journal, has published an Issue Forum on “Cultural Bias in Communication Theory” (Vol. 74, No. 2, 2007, pp. 256–285) (Craig et al. (2007)) is itself a timely testimony to the increasing concern among communication researchers on the inadequacy of the Eurocentric (read Euro-American-centric) paradigm which still dominates the field. The scholars involved in the issue forum were unanimous in their assessment that existing theories are insufficient to explain global communication …

Structure Of Narratives: Applying Propp's Folktale Morphology To Entertainment-Education Films, Divya Sreenivas

Communication ETDs

This study examines narrative strategies through which feature films accomplish the dual role of entertainment-education to shape social reality surrounding health issues. More specifically, exploring films' narrative structures and characterization, this study illuminates how a coherent HIV/AIDS narrative is woven into cinematic artifacts laden with specific cultural values, beliefs and practices. The entertainment-education literature has rarely undertaken a study of films to demonstrate their entertainment-education potential. Moreover, by taking a structuralist perspective and utilizing narrative theories this study uncovers underlying elements that cut across narratives. According to Fisher (1987), the proponent of narrative theory, narratives are moral constructs with values …

Silence, The Utmost In Ambiguity, Mario Perniola

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Silence, the Utmost in Ambiguity" Mario Perniola presents a historical perspective on the meanings and development of the term "ambiguity" from ancient Greek to the modern age. Perniola's perspective is not a review of different approaches and schools of thought; instead, he presents an alternative philosophical and aesthetic discourse he counter-poses to modern and contemporary cultural positions which he considers useful in order to explain the state of today's art and intellectual discourse. Perniola does so by stressing the significance of silence as the aesthetic attitude that combines contemplation and action. Drawing on the work of Pascal …

On Ambidextrousness, Or, What Is An Innovative Action?, Brett Neilson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "On the Ambiguity of Ambidextrousness, or, What is an Innovative Action?" Brett Neilson explores the significance of the fact that the technical equality of the hands is realized above all in the act of manual labor, revisiting an influential essay by Robert Hertz, a student of Emile Durkheim and associate of Marcel Mauss, published in 1909 and entitled "The Pre-Eminence of the Right Hand." In his text, Hertz argued that the basic spatial distinction between the left and right hand acquires the polarity of a social hierarchy owing not to the physiology or psychology of motor asymmetry …

Blanchot And Ambiguity, Paolo Bartoloni

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Blanchot and Ambiguity" Paolo Bartoloni investigates the enigmatic and ambiguous turn of the famous Blanchotian statement "existence without Being." The intention of the article is to locate Blanchot's remark in the context of a discussion on history and its possible end, famously initiated by Alexandre Kojève in a lecture on 4 December 1937 at the College of Sociology in Paris; and provide insights into the difference that distinguishes Kojève's reflection on the end of history, Bataille's subsequent interpretation of it, and Blanchot's original conceptualization of a state of being suspended between nature and culture, history and the …

Ambiguity Now, Martin Harrison

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Ambiguity Now" Martin Harrison focuses on the pivotal place which modernist critical theory ascribed to ambiguity in the definition of meaning and structure in poetry. In particular, Harrison considers the way in which the category of experience is deployed in the discourse of ambiguity but is limited to only certain narratives of so-called experience. Harrison argues for a contemporary practice less focused on ambiguity and more on notation and provisional structure, demonstrating key elements of such practice in the work of modern poets Leslie Scalapino and Frank Bidart and the poet-artist Alex Selenitsch.

Ambiguity, The Literary, And Close Reading, David G. Brooks

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Ambiguity, the Literary, and Close Reading" David G. Brooks approaches the matter of literary ambiguity from two directions: firstly by presenting the question of what we might learn if we look at ambiguity not so much from the angle of the author as that of the reader, a question which may appear obvious and inoffensive on the surface, but which becomes intricate and captivating as Brooks, arguing that literary ambiguity cannot be discussed without attention to the idea of close reading, peels layer upon layer of commonsensical assumptions away from reading practice, to arrive at the point …

Ambiguity, The Artist, The Masses, And The "Double Nature" Of Language, Elizabeth Rechniewski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Ambiguity, the Artist, the Masses, and the 'Double Nature' of Language" Elizabeth Rechniewski discusses the function of the European intellectual elite through a close reading of two very different yet related books, John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses, and Pierre Bourdieu's Les Règles de l'art. Through a contrapuntal reading of the arguments of these two critics, she argues that Symbolist experiments may actually be read as reactionist; in celebrating art's supposed conquest of independence and refinement, they are replete with nostalgia for a time when the artist and the intellectual were able to ignore the pressure …

Ambiguity And Morality In Jelinek's Bambiland, Andrea Bandhauer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Ambiguity and Morality in Jelinek's Bambiland" Andrea Bandhauer begins by noting that the language of Elfriede Jelinek's play Bambiland (2004) is characterized by experimentation and a propensity for complex and ambiguous word plays. In this play, her critique of the media is directed against the international, or rather, Western press and its role in the Iraq war. The text of Bambiland, conceptualized as a "work-in-progress," in which Jelinek posed as an "embedded writer," started to appear on her website at the beginning of the war and Jelinek continued writing it through 2003. In the text of the …

Style And Electronic Communication: The Accommodation Of Scientific Risks In The Sierra Magazine, Erin Dalton

All Theses

This thesis focuses on how style accommodates scientific risks for public audiences in Magazine articles. Language has previously been unexplored in risk communication; in accommodation research, style has not been investigated. Responding to these gaps in research, this study combines two unexplored dimensions--risk communication and accommodation--to show how syntax, diction, and metaphor resituate technical language and ideas in scientific risk studies for readers. First, interviews with editors and writers will provide a rich understanding of how their editing and composition practices influence accommodation processes. From there, an electronic communication analysis will illustrate how this medium can accommodate beyond text to …

Spartan Daily November 22, 2010, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 135, Issue 45

Spartan Daily November 17, 2010, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 135, Issue 43

The Prospector, November 9, 2010, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Border Research at Risk

Flexible Bootstrapping-Based Ontology Alignment, Prateek Jain, Pascal Hitzler, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

BLOOMS (Jain et al, ISWC2010) is an ontology alignment system which, in its core, utilizes the Wikipedia category hierarchy for establishing alignments. In this paper, we present a Plug-and-Play extension to BLOOMS, which allows to flexibly replace or complement the use of Wikipedia by other online or offline resources, including domain-specific ontologies or taxonomies. By making use of automated translation services and of Wikipedia in languages other than English, it makes it possible to apply BLOOMS to alignment tasks where the input ontologies are written in different languages.

Student Teaching Abroad Inter-Group Outcomes: A Comparative, Country-Specific Analysis, Binbin Jiang, Debra Coffey, Robert A. Devillar, Sandra Bryan

Journal of International and Global Studies

As student diversity becomes the norm in U.S. schools, future teachers must be comprehensively prepared to work with the increasingly diverse student population through application of informed instruction that enhances general and individual student learning and outcomes. Teacher Education programs increasingly promote student teaching in international settings as a substantive step to develop teachers who embody these new competencies and instructional practices. The proposed paper presentation offers a framework and analysis highlighting similarities and differences between two groups of student teachers in Belize (2005 and 2008). Findings are comparative and relate to the type and degree of (1) cultural-, professional-, …

Collaborative Researchers Or Cold Warriors? The Origins, Activities, And Legacy Of The Smithsonian’S Institute Of Social Anthropology, A. Peter Castro

Journal of International and Global Studies

International research collaboration is increasingly popular, providing many scholarly and practical benefits. These collaborative endeavors also encounter obstacles and costs, including ones involving issues of power and professional ethics. My study seeks to widen our understanding of international collaborative social science research by examining the complex origins, diverse activities, and clouded legacy of the Smithsonian Institution’s Institute of Social Anthropology (ISA). The ISA was an innovative collaborative teaching and research program founded by Julian Steward during World War II to meet many goals, including increasing social science capacity in Latin America, expanding knowledge about contemporary cultural change, strengthening area expertise …

Cross-Cultural Professional Development For Teachers Within Global Imbalances Of Power, Janelle Johnson

Journal of International and Global Studies

Many of the international, supranational, national, and grassroots development organizations working in the field of education channel their efforts into professional development for teachers. This type of cross-cultural educational development occurs on a massive scale, but the amount of scholarly critique and engagement are disproportionately small. As part of a larger study, this chapter on transnational teacher education draws upon development studies and critical and Indigenous decolonizing methodologies for its theoretical frame. This praxis-oriented framework is used to conduct a comparative case study analysis of two distinct models of cross-cultural professional development for teachers: a small locally based non-profit development …

Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought And Political Activism In Sixties Montreal. Montreal: Mcgill-Queen’S University Press, 2010., Jerome Teelucksingh Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

No abstract provided.

From The Sacred Canopy To The Civic Canopy: Social Transformation Through Dialogue, Collaboration, And Civil Society, William K. Fulton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The American creed of e pluribus unum--out of many, one--has proven to be an elusive aspiration for societies throughout history. Research suggests that as the diversity of a community increases, its stores of social capital decline. Yet, there exists a growing body of evidence that suggests under certain conditions, patterns of inclusion and collaboration are not only possible but predictable. This project explores theory on effective communication practices, grounded in Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action, as well as research on effective group interaction to suggest that certain communicative capacities and collaborative processes that successfully face the challenge of e …

Constitutive Discourse Of Turkish Nationalism: Atatürk’S Nutuk And The Rhetorical Construction Of The “Turkish People”, Aysel Morin, Ronald Lee

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This article explores the “Great Speech” Nutuk, delivered in 1927 by Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In analyzing Nutuk and its rhetorical features, we identify the mythic underpinnings Atatürk employed to construct a modern “Turkish people.” We use this case to further our understanding of the constitutive discourses of nationalism. We believe Atatürk’s Nutuk provides a profitable discourse to think with as we attempt to understand Muslim nations and their negotiation of modernity.