Digital Commons Network^™

Comm-Entary, Spring 2010 - Full Issue

Comm-entary

In this issue:

Voluntary Surveillance: Privacy, Identity and the Rise of Social Panopticism in the Twenty-First Century by Jake Nevrla

Dialogic Advancements in Psychotherapy by Michelle Laffoon

Corey Johnson: A Football Captain and a Gay Male by Nina DiCenso

Dexter: Multiple Personalities by Dustin Somero

Intersexuality in Women’s Sports: The Case of Caster Semenya by Kayla Timmons

Perspectives: The Culture of Underage Drinking at UNH by Sabrina Clark, Kelley Stenberg, Hope Fortier, & Camille Quarles

Performing Maternity: Limiting the Role of the Individual Woman in Abortion Discourses by Katie Ramsay

The Mass Media Deity: the Repercussions of Barack Obama’s Campaign …

Diabolical Ventriloquism: A Case Study In Rhetorical Transcendence With C. S. Lewis’S Infamous Imp Screwtape, Daniel J. Coyle

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Most religious discourse is predicated on the assumption that our choices in life have eternal implications. For those who subscribe to a belief in an afterlife, rhetoric which exploits eternity to form attitudes and induce actions can be especially persuasive. This study performs a detailed analysis of a particularly compelling case of the rhetoric of eternity during the twentieth century: C.S. Lewis‘s fictional demon Screwtape. In The Screwtape Letters and ―Screwtape Proposes a Toast,‖ Lewis offers readers an eternal, though diabolical, perspective of the ―modern‖ intellectual climate during the twentieth century. By puppeteering a demon in prose, Lewis satirically lampoons …

The Evolution Of Revolution: The Dilemma Of Censorship And Fifth Generation Filmmakers, Elizabeth C. Urban

Honors College Theses

China’s Fifth Generation Filmmakers brought forth a burst of transformative cinema, but it could not be done without the strong historical antecedents of cultural turmoil and official censorship steered by the singular political course of the Chinese Communist Party. This group of filmmakers, particularly Chen Kaige (b. 1952), Tian Zhuangzhuang (b. 1952), and Zhang Yimou (b. 1951), produced a national cinema that was defined by censorship. It became their dilemma to define a course within the confines of censorship that not only absorbed the duality of censorship, which serves to both condemn and to promote, but also defied and altered …

School Public Relations: Relating With Lep Families, Annette Serventi Garcia

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The purpose of this paper was to examine newsletters disseminated by school public relations programs to their community in districts where Spanish is the primary home language. A content analysis examined district newsletters of school districts located in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The examination of district-issued newsletters determined the percentage of stories written in English or Spanish to compare with the demographic make-up, specifically the percentage of the non-English speaking parents of the district and the percentage of Limited English Proficient students. Stories were also analyzed to determine whether there were recurring themes in the English versus Spanish …

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

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 134, Issue 42

Cultural Identity And Ethnic Newspapers In Las Vegas, Paul J. Traudt, Michele A. Ferm

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Research suggests cultural identity is a fluid process characterized by individuals’ unique cultural, ethnic, and racial needs. Media are now known to reinforce ethnic group identity, language, beliefs, and customs. What are these relationships for ethnic groups living in Southern Nevada? Do media provide opportunities for cultural pluralism or for cultural assimilation? First phase results, reported last year, found ethnic radio and television in Las Vegas assimilated into larger, Anglo media business models despite programming that reinforced some aspects of ethnic cultures. This year we present second-phase results, assessing the role played by ethnic newspapers in the region. Analysis is …

Spartan Daily April 12, 2010, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 134, Issue 35

Spartan Daily April 8, 2010, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 134, Issue 34

The Antelope, University Of Nebraska At Kearney

The Antelope

No abstract provided.

The Art Of Governing The Self And Others In The Christian Philippines, Pak Nung Wong D.Phil.

Journal of International and Global Studies

Through an ethnographic depiction of cultural creolization, this paper will detail the ways in which traditional Filipino values have been successfully mixing with and eventually lodging into the intersubjective landscape of Cagayan Valley, where the Chinese, Ibanag, Ilocano, and Itawes ethnic groups dwell. This cultural creolization process informs the ways in which the imagined social reciprocity between the self and others has been governed by a historically constituted power/knowledge system: the padrino system. This system is mainly composed of the symbiotic codes and social practices of (1) Catholicized ritual kinship and (2) the Tagalog ethics of “debt of gratitude” (utang …

Mastering The Midas Touch: The Indo-Trinidadian Diaspora In North America And England, 1967-2007, Jerome Teelucksingh Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

This article will assess the experiences of the Indo-Trinidadian immigrant population during 1967 to 2007. The displaced Indo-Trinidadians residing in North America and Britain were challenged to define themselves in relation to Afro-Caribbean and Asian-Indian immigrants. The broad categories used to determine the success or failure of migration included culture, social mobility, identity and religion. The research will prove that the Indo-Trinidadian diaspora in North America and England have experienced considerable social mobility and acculturation.

Jeroen Huisman (Ed.). International Perspectives On The Governance Of Higher Education: Alternative Frameworks For Coordination. New York: Routledge Press, 2009, Ryan Guffey Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

No abstract provided.

What Goes Around Comes Around - Improving Linked Open Data Through On-Demand Model Creation, Christopher Thomas, Wenbo Wang, Pankaj Mehra, Delroy H. Cameron, Pablo N. Mendes, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Web 2.0 has changed the way we share and keep up with information. We communicate through social media platforms and make the information we exchange to a large extent publicly available. Linked Open Data (LOD) follows the same paradigm of sharing information but also makes it machine accessible. LOD provides an abundance of structured information albeit in a less formally rigorous form than would be desirable for Semantic Web applications. Nevertheless, most of the LOD assertions are community reviewed and we can rely on their accuracy to a large extent. In this work we want to follow the Web 2.0 …

Linguistic Politics: Creating A Communication Canon Post World War Ii, Erin Miller

McNair Scholars Research Journal

What does it mean to communicate and how “best” can this action be accomplished? Perhaps the second part of this question, rather than the first, describes the history of approaches to ideas of communication and their practices. The first “official” textbook providing a window on this history reveals a remarkable consensus on what “communication” and related terms should mean, if not directly in models, then in their assumptions and, especially, their orientations—both of which grew out of World War II and migrated quickly into the 1950’s. The field of communication was nascent when, in 1954, The Process and Effects of …

Investigating Gricean Maxims In Conversations Among Malaysian Women., Lee Pei Ling

Student Works (2010-2019)

In this investigation into the conversations of Malaysian women friends, H.P. Grice’s conversational maxims are analyzed in terms of fulfillment and non-fulfillment. Included are the theoretical aspects and findings of both foreign and local researchers who have done studies pertaining to all female conversations (Coates, 1996; Hafizah Ahamad, 2004) and Grice’s maxims (Rundquist, 1992; Kulasingam, 2004; Brumark, 2006). Data is drawn from audio-tape recordings of different groups of women friends, transcribed and instances of fulfillment and non-fulfillment were singled out in the analysis process. To strengthen the validity of the findings, the recordings were triangulated with onsite observations, field notes, …

Media Representation Of The Disabled : A Critical Discourse Approach., Ang Pei Soo

Student Works (2010-2019)

This dissertation analyses the media representation of the social images of the disabled community in Malaysia using a critical discourse approach. It involves an analysis of 179 texts from a mainstream press, The Star, dated 1 July 2004 to 30 June 2005. Adopting Norman Fairclough’s 3-Dimensional framework (1995), the study examines the textual and intertextual features of texts. The former focuses on lexical choices namely euphemism, evaluative terms and metaphorical expressions; the latter reviews the inclusion of discourse representation and the texturing of charity discourse in news and articles published. Findings reveal that the disabled self has been misrepresented by …

Spartan Daily March 18, 2010, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 134, Issue 27

Spelling Errors In Children With Autism, Khalyn I. Wiggins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study was to examine the spelling errors of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) when asked to spell morphologically complex words. Specifically, this study sought to determine if percent accuracy across morphological areas would be similar to patterns noted in typical developing children, correlate with participant age, and correlate to performance on standardized measures of achievement. Additionally, the study wanted to highlight the types of errors made by children with ASD on homonyms and the specific linguistic patterns noted when spelling derivational and inflectional word types.

Participants included 29 children diagnosed with Autism, PDD-NOS, and Asperger’s …

Literary Studies From Hermeneutics To Media Culture Studies, Siegfried J. Schmidt

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literary Studies from Hermeneutics to Media Culture Studies" Siegfried J. Schmidt discusses aspects of hermeneutics, the systemic and empirical (contextual) approach to literature and culture, radical constructivism, and his postulates for the field of media culture studies. Schmidt describes his understanding of the transformation of literary studies towards media culture studies in the context of overall developments of society. His argumentation with regard to move from hermeneutics to media culture studies offers the postulate that research ought to be empirical and contextual in order to foster intuition, invention, innovation, and socially relevant scholarship. He concludes that the …

A Study Of Refusal Strategies Used By Malaysian Teenagers., Phaveena Primsuwan

Student Works (2010-2019)

The aim of this study is to identify the refusal strategies used by Malaysian students when they make refusals. The data was taken from 80 respondents in one of the universities in Malaysia, where conversations between the researcher and the respondents based on a task that was set by the researcher were recorded. The spoken data was analyzed based on Beebe et. al’s refusal strategies (1990) which consist of direct and indirect refusals. Data was then transcribed using Jefferson’s(1978) transcription conventions. This study found that most of the respondents employed the direct refusal when they refuse. Most of them tend …

Anti-Nationalism In Scott's Old Mortality, Montserrat Martínez García

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anti-Nationalism in Scott's Old Mortality," Montserrat Martínez García examines national identity through war in Walter Scott's Old Mortality in order to illustrate that war was one of the main catalysts of nationhood and show, simultaneously, the disparity between the institutional and the popular attitude toward war. Martínez García pays attention to the way Scott portrayed war and identity and to what extent this literary representation coincided with or faced the uniform ideology of nationalism. Based on the historical background of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Martínez García analyses Scott's novel to uncover focus his narrative of cracks …

The Motif Of The Patient Wife In Muslim And Western Literature And Folklore, Mounira Monia Hejaiej

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Motif of the Patient Wife in Muslim and Western Literature and Folklore" Munira Hejaiej examines the tale of modern Tunisian tale of "Sabra" told by women to an all female audience. Hejaiej's analysis includes some of the tale's analogues from various linguistic and cultural contexts, including readings of the medieval variant written in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. She argues that the comparative analysis provides us with a broader scope of interpretive paths in order to deconstruct essentialized readings of the tale, on the one hand, and to challenge previously accepted conventional boundaries between cultures on the other. …

Bibliography Of Siegfried J. Schmidt's Publications, Agata Anna Lisiak, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

White Bodies, Black Gaze: Constructions Of White Masculinity In White-Male Elite Discourses On Leadership And Diversity, Christopher Brown

Communication ETDs

This study examines white-male elite understandings of diversity and leadership to consider possibilities for exploring articulations of white masculinity. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with white-male leaders in their organizations who by virtue of their race, gender, class, and education, exercise much power and control in their organization. I used grounded theory methodology to highlight the communication strategies that white-male elites employed when talking about leadership and diversity. Techniques in grounded theory methodology yielded concepts, descriptors, and semantic moves that were articulated to intersecting discourses of race, gender, and sexuality. Through the intersectional matrix, I posited that multiple functions of …

Narrative As Self Performance: The Rhetorical Construction Of Identities On Facebook Profiles, Marianne Leonardi

Communication ETDs

New ways of creating and presenting the self in the "space" of the Internet are fascinating, but not yet fully understood. Framed in the theoretical literature of Goffman's presentation of the self, and Burke's conception of rhetoric, the study's primary concern is to explain and understand how Facebook users construct identities using narrative fragments on their profiles and the offline effects of these narrative performances. Specifically, this study argues that narratives are a type of rhetorical performance, and that both narratives and identities have symbolic meaning and rhetorical components. While the effects of online identities occur at the macro-level, the …

A History And Development Of The Intercultural Communication Field In Japan (1950-Present), Holly Siebert Kawakami

Communication ETDs

The history of the academic discipline of Intercultural Communication in Japan began at the end of the 1950s, in convergence with the historical context of Japan devastated by war and the social context of a population struggling to navigate a new identity and way forward. Both Japanese and American scholars contributed to the establishment and development of the Intercultural Communication field over the decades. Three research questions were posed for this study: one, why did the Intercultural Communication discipline become established in Japan as the first place after the United States, two, what was it about Intercultural Communication that resonated …

Class Blogs As New-Age Assessment And Feedback Tools., Norazrin Zamri

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study investigated the perceptions of Malaysian university students and educators regarding the use of class blogs as an assessment tool in ESL courses. The objective is to provide evidence for the feasibility of this issue. The participants’ perceptions, obtained from questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, were analyzed based on Carl Rogers’ Humanistic approach to language learning. The findings showed that there is a parallel relationship between the aspects of Humanistic approach and the perceptions of the participants in this study. The aspects analyzed were: motivation; active interactive learning; non-threatening environments; feedback; wholesome collaborative relationships; autonomous learning; assessment for life-long learning; …

Spartan Daily January 28, 2010, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 134, Issue 2

The Influence Of New Communication Technologies On The Acculturation Of Bhutanese Refugees In An American Community, Cheryl A. D'Mello

ETD Archive

This study examines the Bhutanese refugees, who are the newest group of refugees to arrive in the United States. It provides a detailed account of this community in the Cleveland-Akron area in Ohio. Research on this refugee population has only just begun, and they have been surveyed at an early time in the acculturation process. In 2007, their resettlement in the United States from camps in Nepal began, and by 2012, a total of 60,000 are expected to arrive in the United States. The research questions examine to what extent new communication technologies and media (ethnic and host) help the …

Authenticating Người Mỹ Gốc Việt: Vietnamese Americans And The Struggle For Identity, Jennifer Huynh Thi Anh Morrison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a critical investigation of the politics of identity among the U.S. diasporic Vietnamese community, in particular, the discourse of authenticity that has been prevalent in the community and its (in)adequacy as a means of displacing racialization and othering as a minoritized community. Using a critical phenomenological approach, the study consisted of interviews with 14 Vietnamese subjects currently living in the U.S. whose family heritage(s) are traceable, in part or in whole, to Vietnam and/or who are racially marked as bearers of Vietnamese culture. A thematic analysis of the interviewees' personal stories uncovered three ideological challenges to authenticating …