Digital Commons Network^™

“Burned At The Stake”: Unpacking Disinformation In The Story Of A Coach Allegedly “Terminated” For Expressing Anti-Transgender Women Athlete Beliefs, Ellen J. Staurowsky

Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics

On August 29, 2023, a video testimony entitled ‘Burned at the Stake’: One NCAA Coach’s Battle to Protect Women’s Sport was released. The film was part of a “female athlete storytelling series” developed and funded by the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) designed to support the IWF’s stated agenda to “fight to save women’s sports and counter the radical agenda that seeks to erase women” by allowing transgender girls and women on teams that match their identities. The central figure in the video is Kim Russell, then head women’s lacrosse coach at NCAA Division III Oberlin College, who claimed her right …

“Call It What You Want” Analyzing Taylor Swift’S Communication Strategies During Public Controversies, Isabella Cuello

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines Taylor Swift’s crisis communication strategies during public controversies, particularly her disputes with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian between 2016 and 2019. Using Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT), this research employs qualitative analysis to assess media framing, symbolic narrative construction, and the role of digital engagement in reputation management. Through a thematic analysis of 72 lifestyle journalism articles (in U.S. based publications from 2016-2019), the findings reveal that Swift strategically navigated public scrutiny by reclaiming negative imagery, such as the snake symbol, and leveraging social media to reframe her public persona. The study …

The Impact Of Visual Brand Identity On Consumer Response In Rebranding: A Case Study Of Burger King, Andressa De Ungaro Dos Santos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This case study investigates consumer perceptions of rebranding through the lens of visual brand identity (VBI) and brand associations, focusing on Burger King’s recent rebranding. Using the Aaker Model as the theoretical framework, the study analyzes how brand awareness and associations influence consumer responses to visual identity changes. The research involves two focal areas in which comparative study will be applied by: (1) analyzing rebranding awareness by evaluating media coverage of Burger King’s new branding; (2) examining consumer-brand relationships through social media interactions to understand responses to the rebranding and to measure emotional and associative responses to visual elements. Through …

Competitive Language Use: A Linguistic Analysis Of Speech And Debate, Gina Iberri-Shea

Studies in Debate and Oratory

This study explores linguistic variation in competitive debate and prepared speech. A corpus of competitive public speech was collected and the situational characteristics of two contexts were analyzed. The linguistic characteristics of texts in each category were calculated along five dimensions of variation found across texts in English, and placed among other types of texts. Results show that three of the dimensions were able to distinguish between the two registers. The results indicate a clear direction for future work and implications for English for Academic Purposes instruction.

La Intensificación En Los Comentarios De Noticias: La Prensa Deportiva Digital, David Sanchez-Jimenez

Publications and Research

Las plataformas digitales de los periódicos permiten una comunicación más fluida y dinámica con y entre la audiencia, que refleja algunos patrones de la comunicación oral (Briz, 1997, 1998; Yus, 2001, 2010; Albelda, 2004; Albelda y Estellés, 2021). Entre ellos, se encuentran los recursos lingüísticos de intensificación que refuerzan la fuerza ilocutiva de los comentarios emitidos, en una clara apuesta por dotar al texto de una mayor interactividad con sus potenciales receptores. El objetivo de esta investigación consiste en conocer cómo se relacionan entre sí los participantes de estas plataformas en la prensa deportiva. En particular, se prestó especial atención …

Personal Pronoun Comprehension In Addressed And Non-Addressed Situations In Autistic And Nonautistic Preschoolers, Jonet Artis, Rhiannon Luyster, Lily Carroll, Angela Xiaoxue He, Sudha Arunachalam

Emerson Authors, Researchers, & Creators

This research paper explores the role of speaker, listener and real-time social attention for pronoun comprehension in autistic and nonautistic children in the northeast United States. We assessed the pronoun comprehension of 22 autistic children (average age of 62 months, range 46–80 months) and 22 nonautistic children (average age 44 months, range 30–57 months) matched on expressive vocabulary scores. We evaluated the first- and second-person possessive pronoun comprehension (“my” and “your”) using a game in which two experimenters hid stickers and provided clues to their location by providing a verbal clue (e.g. “It’s in your box”) with accompanying gaze to …

Cognitive Warfare In The South China Sea: Analyzing Media Influence And Public Opinion In Taiwan, Wyatt F. Blatti

Theses and Dissertations

In a time where conflict extends beyond traditional battlefields, cognitive warfare emerges as a powerful tool to influence perceptions and gain strategic advantages. This study investigates China’s cognitive warfare strategies against Taiwan through trend analysis, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis of news media articles from March 2013 to August 2024 to uncover evolving techniques and mitigation efforts. The findings highlight the potential for tracking cognitive campaigns overtime but will require more than news media alone and suggests future research to better understand indicators of cognitive warfare.

Are Emojis The New Words? A Sentiment Analysis Of Social Media Brand Conversations, Yashodhan Karulkar, Dev T. Vora, Siddharth Vaddepalli, Yash Thakur

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Emojis have become an increasingly important aspect of consumer-brand interactions in the Indian subcontinent. However, the impact of emoji use on brand image and mental health remains underexplored, particularly in emerging economies like India, where structured research on this topic is limited. To address this gap, the present study analyzes over 4,600 consumer tweets related to 19 prominent brands across eleven industries. Using VADER sentiment analysis, the research develops a metric to assess consumer sentiment and brand engagement in relation to emoji usage. The findings indicate that effective integration of emojis contributes to positive consumer sentiment and enhanced brand engagement. …

Tekotok’S Digital Satire And Public Sentiment In Response To The Realities Of Work In Indonesia, Ahmad Farid Fanani

Jurnal Politik

Inequities within Indonesia's labor system remain a prominent issue, particularly in terms of fair access and protection for all segments of the workforce. As digital media continues to evolve, critiques of labor policy are increasingly expressed through new mediums, including satirical animations. This study aims to explore how the satirical animated videos from the YouTube channel Tekotok represent critiques of labor policy using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and public sentiment analysis. A mixed-methods approach is employed, combining Fairclough’s three-dimensional model for narrative analysis with the IndoBERT model to classify sentiment in 875 YouTube comments. The results demonstrate that Tekotok’s animations …

The Ability Of Chatgpt To Aid In The Rapid Development Of Inoculation Message Treatments: A Case Study And Recommendations, Alicia Mason, Josh Compton, Griffin Cooper

Faculty Submissions

One of the most widely known types of AI technologies in recent years is ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art language model that has revolutionized natural language processing by generating human-like text with context and coherence, enabling new possibilities for human-AI interaction (Brown et al., 2020). This case study reports on a 10-week conversational AI training initiative to assess whether ChatGPT4 can (a) identify the structural elements and features of conventional inoculation messages (i.e., forewarnings and preemptive refutations); (b) augment inoculation message design features (i.e., linguistic signatures, language, and length); (c) adapt messages for specific audiences (i.e., younger populations, experts); and …

Navigating Trauma: A Linguistic Exploration Of Bilingual Trauma Expressions, Amira Mahmoud Othman

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between language, trauma, and emotional expression among bilingual Arabic-English speakers, focusing on code-switching patterns and euphemisms, and more broadly the emotional roles of native and non-native languages in trauma narratives. Through qualitative interviews with 20 Egyptian participants, the research reveals that code-switching serves as both a linguistic and emotional tool, allowing speakers to navigate trauma by creating distance or engaging more intimately. Such codeswitching patterns include the integration of English content words within Arabic structures, morphosyntactic innovations, and gender agreement applications, reflecting the creative adaptability of bilingual speakers in emotionally charged contexts, in line with …

Familiarity Of Psychiatric Terms Among College Students, Julia Pekala

CAFE Symposium 2025

Recently, there has been an increase in the usage of psychiatric terminology used among internet users. Terms such as autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are thrown around without an understanding of these words and their true meaning. These words are picked up and used in a similar context as any other internet lingo, in an ironic, joking manner, without proper consideration of their origins and meaning. Due to most content on the internet being unmoderated and seemingly endless, users are often faced with misleading information about real clinical disorders. The use of these words follows the …

The Significance Of Social Media Neologisms Across The Globe, Molly Bushong

CAFE Symposium 2025

Social media neologisms, new terms coined through digital platforms, have drastically altered human communication, and will only continue to do so as technology rapidly advances. These words and phrases develop alongside society as innovative technology, experiences, and phenomena are continuously introduced into everyday life. Although neologisms have been present throughout all time and social media's existence, research has identified that their popularity has exponentially increased in recent years. My research builds upon previous research while exploring how social media neologisms have evolved over the past five years, their impact on language formality, and the familiarity of these terms across various …

Zombie-Auras: Genai And Hybrid Text Production, Joshua Nieubuurt

English Faculty Publications

This paper explores the iterative evolutions of textual production and their impact on the “aura” of texts, as conceptualized by Walter Benjamin. The study identifies three key phases of textual production: the natural, the mechanized, and the digitized, each progressively displacing the “cult value” of texts. This cult value is lost through increased ease of creation, reproduction, dissemination, and dislocation of creators and audiences in time and space. The advent of Generative AI (GenAI) marks the latest evolution, transforming the “aura” into a memetic “zombie” form—familiar yet opaque, evoking both the sublime and fear. By examining Benjamin’s notion of “aura” …

Black English For Lawyers: A Primer, L. Alexander Walker Iii

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers do not know as much about Black English as they should, and people’s freedom hangs in the balance. Differences between language varieties in sounds and grammar can change and have changed the outcome of cases: “He at work” and “He be at work” mean two completely different things. To reduce misinterpretation and therefore wrongful outcomes, this Article provides a primer on the sounds, words, grammar, and social context of Black English targeted directly at legal practitioners. It begins by explaining key concepts in linguistics and making the case for why lawyers must foreground accurate description over normative prescription when …

The Guardian The Month Of February 2025, Wright State Student Body

The Guardian Student Newspaper

News articles from The Guardian for the Month of February 2025. The Guardian is the official student-run newspaper for Wright State University. It has been published regularly since March of 1965.

Hyphenated Journeys: Identity Negotiations Of Multiethnic Vietnamese Americans Through The Lens Of Hybridity, Rheyna Leilahn Biu

Masters Theses

This study explores how Vietnamese Americans with mixed heritage navigate their identity. Through interviews and autoethnography, it examines how multiracial/multiethnic Vietnamese Americans maintain their Vietnamese identity while constructing their multiracial/multiethnic identity. The findings underscore the importance of several factors of identity maintenance, including seeking cultural security outside the home, language as a key to culture, and the importance of connection through cultural sharing in shaping and expressing multiracial/multiethnic identity. It uses Homi Bhaba's theory of hybridity to understand how these individuals view their hyphenated identities. The research highlights the role of verbal and nonverbal communication in this process. The researcher …

Seeing Through Solid Words: Using Gebser’S Concept Of Transparency To Understand A Gnostic Poem Expressing Integral Consciousness, Lisa Maroski

Journal of Conscious Evolution

It is difficult to express integral consciousness using ordinary language because of the inherent tendency of language to separate and distinguish. Jean Gebser, in The Ever-Present Origin, suggested concepts such as transparency and diaphaneity as ways to access integral consciousness, and the Gnostic text The Thunder, Perfect Mind (TPM) is written from the perspective of a being with integral consciousness. I use Jean Gebser’s concepts of transparency and diaphaneity to explicate TPM, an enigmatic, paradoxical poem in the Nag Hammadi Library. Because TPM is written from the perspective of an integral being, one who is All-of-It (i.e., paradoxical completeness rather …

The Routledge Handbook Of Discourse Analysis (2023), Fatima Moussa

Al-Kīmiyā

Handford, M., & Gee, J. P. (Eds.) (2023). The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Routledge

The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis includes articles written by prominent scholars in the field of Applied Linguistics. The articles are particularly helpful as they overlap in their approaches to understanding and applying discourse analysis. The book can thus be helpful to scholars and students alike, covering a wide range of topics and providing numerous examples that can provide a shortcut to the various ways in which discourse analysis could be practically applied in research. The handbook is divided into eight parts, each of which …

« Au Cœur Du Harem » Et Du Métissage Linguistique D’Elisa Chimenti En Italien : Comparaison Différentielle Et Décentrement Linguistique, Pierpaolo Amenta

Al-Kīmiyā

This article examines the literary language of Elisa Chimenti (1883-1969), which is full of xenisms, linguistic loans, metaphors, and idioms that stem from a transcultural and heterolingual imaginary. Her novel Au cœur du harem (Éditions du Scorpion, 1958), translated into Italian in 2000 under the supervision of Emanuela Benini (Edizioni E/O), is a striking example. Drawing on a differential comparative approach (Heidmann, 2017), we look at these texts to reflect on Elisa Chimenti’s literary language and to examine the translational stakes of her work and its heterolingualism (Grutman, 1997; Suchet, 2014).

English title
Au cœur du harem (In the Heart …

Les Origines Du Français Sur Objectifs Spécifiques : Regards Historiques, Mariam Sahraoui

Al-Kīmiyā

As a continuation of our research work on the teaching of French for Specific Purposes, we recommend to better define the specificities of this concept by going back to its origins as a means to understand its dimensions, its structures, its actors, etc. Indeed, the concept of French for Specific Purposes (FOS in French) appeared in the 1920s. FOS has undergone several phases of evolution that have marked its historical and methodological journey from military French to the language of specialization, to instrumental French, to functional French.
This article presents FOS’s journey through its history for the purpose of identifying …

Le Français Au Liban : Défis Contemporains Et Efforts De Revitalisation Dans Un Contexte Multilingue, Layali Rifai, Gina Abou Fadel Saad

Al-Kīmiyā

This article addresses the place of French in Lebanon as a foreign language, a language of education, and a second language, in a context marked by the rise of English. It insists on the importance of preserving the Arabic–French–English multilingualism, which constitutes a real cultural heritage in Lebanon. It highlights the revitalization efforts undertaken by French-speaking individuals and cultural projects aimed at preserving the relevance of French in an increasingly globalized world.

English title
The French Language in Lebanon: Contemporary Challenges and Revitalization Efforts in a Multilingual Context

Résumé
Cet article aborde la place du français au Liban en tant …

Introduction, La Rédaction De « Al-Kīmiyā »

Al-Kīmiyā

Le numéro 25 d’Al-Kīmiyā s’inscrit dans une réflexion interdisciplinaire et plurielle sur la diversité linguistique, culturelle et discursive, explorant les interactions entre langues, cultures et contextes historiques. Les contributions rassemblées mettent en lumière des enjeux variés, allant de la traduction et du métissage linguistique à l’analyse pragmatique, sociolinguistique et discursive [...]

Arguments D’Autorité Dans Les Éditoriaux Du Quotidien « Aujourd’Hui Le Maroc » : Analyse Des Périodes Pré Et Post Vaccination, Zakaria Ouallou

Al-Kīmiyā

The Covid-19 health crisis, which shook the world in 2020, aroused keen interest not only in the media, but also among citizens, at the international level. This study focuses on the analysis of arguments of authority, which are powerful tools in editorial rhetoric, used to support positions by relying on recognized sources, focusing specifically on editorials in the French-speaking Moroccan newspaper Aujourd’hui le Maroc, relating to two phases, that of containment and that of vaccination. This period was marked by major health, social, economic and political upheavals. In this context, we will examine the editorialists’ choice of arguments in …

Communication Interculturelle : Regards Croisés Sur L’Expression De La Gratitude Dans Les Contextes Marocain Et Français, Salaheddine Belarbi, Mohamad El Jarari

Al-Kīmiyā

This study aims to compare the communicative practices between French spoken in France and Moroccan Arabic, focusing on the acts of thanking. The aim is to understand the underlying cultural differences through a comparative analysis of speech acts, particularly the acts of thanking, in both languages. The study falls within the field of contrastive pragmatics, which seeks to identify intercultural correspondences and dissonances in linguistic behavior. The results highlight that the comparison between the act of thanking in Morocco and in France reveals profound nuances in the way gratitude is expressed and perceived within these distinct cultures. Notwithstanding these differences, …

Les Fonctions Du Langage Dans « Lettres À Ses Amis » De Mouloud Feraoun, Rachida Sadouni, Fatiha Ramdani, Amina Tahraoui

Al-Kīmiyā

This article examines the epistolary correspondence in Mouloud Feraoun’s literary work Lettres à ses amis. It mainly aims to study the language functions employed in these letters according to Jakobson’s categorization (1963), as well as the traces of subjectivity and privacy. This paper analyzes the personality of Feraoun through his letters, and infers the characteristics of this writer’s epistolary. This article also examines Feraoun’s work from its conception to its final publication. We argue in this paper that the epistolary is not only a means of information and communication but also a revelation of secrets and disclosure of individual …

Recasting Gender Roles: A Study Of Indian Television Commercials (2011– 2020), Himika Akram, Alicia Mason

Faculty Submissions

On media, television commercials (TVCs) play a significant role in shaping societal perceptions of gender roles. This study examines gender depictions in Indian TVCs, focusing on key dimensions such as gender ratio in primary characters, voiceovers, settings (home, outdoor, workplace), and product categories. A content analysis of 120 TVCs from Indian brands (2011–2020) was conducted, with coding performed by the researcher. Findings reveal that men were primary characters in 54.6% of the advertisements, while women featured in 45.4%. Male voiceovers dominated at 70.1%, compared to 29.9% for females. Women were portrayed in home settings in 66.7% of TVCs, while men …

Riding The Wave: Tech Tsunami'S Rhetoric Enables Plain Anabaptist Adopters, Cory Anderson

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Arguably, no book has shaped plain Anabaptist discourse about technology more than Gary Miller’s Tech Tsunami. Since its 2016 publication, the book has achieved near-canonical status within certain Conservative and Old Order Anabaptist circles, particularly among business owners wrestling with technology adoption. The book’s influence extends beyond the original text—an audiobook and a youth edition (Tech Talk, 2021) circulate widely, discussion groups form around its ideas, and its vocabulary infiltrates conversations about church rules. The book’s success builds on Miller’s existing platform; his works Kingdom Focused Finances, Church Matters, and Life in a Global Village helped establish him as a …

Opening Pandora’S Black Box In The Nexus Of Media, Consciousness And Ai, Gad Karmi

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the intersection of media, artificial intelligence, and consciousness through an ethnographic analysis spanning 1940-2024. The study introduces the concept of "Darrative" as a framework for understanding how consciousness processes information, challenging traditional rational choice theory while extending beyond Fisher's narrative paradigm. A key contribution is the development of the "Thinking System" model, demonstrating how information processing occurs through darrative frameworks. The methodology employs Latour's actor-network theory to examine how scientific knowledge is constructed and stabilized through networks of human and non-human actors. Using a systematic Boolean search through academic databases, the study initially identified 15 relevant peer-reviewed …

La Importancia De La Comunicación No Verbal En La Interacción Humana, Bradley Wilson

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

Nonverbal communication is an essential element in human interaction, influencing how we convey and receive emotions, intentions, and messages beyond words. The studies reviewed in this paper explore how aspects such as facial expressions and gestures influence diverse contexts, from education to intercultural and professional interactions. Throughout, my sources emphasize the importance of nonverbal communication as a tool for communicating with or without speech.