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Unraveling Identity Signifier Literacy: A Case Study Of First-Year Composition Students' Communication Practices, Bailey Mcalister

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Identity signifier literacy is defined as one’s ability to accurately read – via personal interactions or via visual, verbal, written, or digital communication – the signifiers others display in direct and indirect ways and interpret these signifiers to gain understanding of others’ identities. In this study, 22 first-year composition students were surveyed about their communication practices in order to see how their identity signifier literacies influence and are influenced by digital environments and composition. These results are meant to improve first-year composition pedagogy by making connections between students’ informal composition practices and their academic composition courses.

The Third World Women’S Alliance: History, Geopolitics, And Form, Ariane Vani Kannan

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation focuses on the work of the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), a women-of-color-led activist organization that maintained active chapters in New York City and the Bay Area between 1971-80. Drawing on archival research and qualitative interviews, I reconstruct how the group invoked, constructed, and circulated intersecting Third World histories and geopolitical analyses through political education, publications, and cultural events. In addition to this historical study, I seek to understand the ongoing presence of the TWWA in educational spaces through interviews with archivists and professors across disciplines. This project makes three contributions to the field of Rhetoric and Composition: …

Trauma And The Credibility Economy: An Analysis Of Epistemic Violence And Its Traumatic Functions, Gina Stinnett

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I argue that the work done in philosophy on epistemic injustice can put pressure on the assumptions driving the work of both trauma theory and rhetorical theory. In addition to arguing how epistemic injustice can reinforce trauma, I argue that epistemic injustice has its own power to traumatize. I refer to this as “epistemic trauma,” or a trauma to one’s ability to know their experience and to make a claim based on this knowledge. Research on epistemic injustice states that when one encounters repeated epistemic injustice, they become less likely to share their experiences at all—they fall …

Fiqws Language And Literacy: Mine/Yours/Ours/Theirs, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus is for a Freshmen Inquiry Writing Seminar, which is a two-section, collaboratively taught course wherein one of the two courses engages students in critical thinking, reading, and writing about the issue of language and literacy, while the other introduces students to conventions of academic writing and mentors them in social and rhetorical writing processes. Thus, this course draws on the topic of language and literacy as a vehicle for critically analyzing students' own languages and literacies and developing especially their academic and information literacies.

The Rhetorical Canons Of Construction: New Textualism's Rhetoric Problem, Charlie D. Stewart

Michigan Law Review

New Textualism is ascendant. Elevated to prominence by the late Justice Antonin Scalia and championed by others like Justice Neil Gorsuch, the method of interpretation occupies an increasingly dominant place in American jurisprudence. Yet, this Comment argues the proponents of New Textualism acted unfairly to reach this lofty perch. To reach this conclusion, this Comment develops and applies a framework to evaluate the rhetoric behind New Textualism: the rhetorical canons of construction. Through the rhetorical canons, this Comment demonstrates that proponents of New Textualism advance specious arguments, declare other methods illegitimate hypocritically, refuse to engage with the merits of their …

Rendering Reliance: Consuming Coloniality In The Global North, Victoria L. Brown

Dissertations

In this dissertation, I offer a theoretical lens for understanding how the Global South is imagined by the Global North. The Global South has become a popular cause that for-profit companies use in order to engage in what Samantha King terms cause-marketing. While individuals in the South are certainly helped by these campaigns, they are harmed through Northern consumers being empowered by private companies encouraging them to adopt a colonizing gaze that subjugates those in the South with adhering to stereotypes. I develop three rhetorical devices that fulfill stereotypes long-held about those who are “other.”

First, I offer the endangered …

Speaking Sober: Program Language As A Mechanism For Community Creation In Alcoholics Anonymous, Talya Wolf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) is a fellowship of more than two million members in 180 countries worldwide who are joined by their common desire to achieve and maintain sobriety. A.A. is comprised of small, self-sustaining groups of individuals who meet, typically weekly or biweekly, to share their successes and struggles and to provide support to their fellow alcoholics. There are no dues or requirements for membership other than the wish to stop drinking. The organization is not evangelical; it does not recruit, but rather welcomes those who wish to participate. The open nature of this program attracts individuals of all ages, …

Best Practice: Bringing The Elements Of Effective Practice To The College Writing Classroom, Jonathan Montgomery Green

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Studies of college writing students suggest that many students associate writing ability with innate talent rather than sustained, deliberate practice. As a result, these students may lack the motivation to improve their writing abilities, leading to a vicious cycle in which they come to increasingly resent writing as a curricular and extracurricular activity. This dissertation argues that the elements of effective practice as outlined by cognitive psychology are equally applicable to writing as they are to skills such as music and that convincing students of the “practice-ability” of writing may improve their motivation to improve their writing abilities.

The dissertation …

The Myth Of Southern Atonement: Constructed Forgiveness In Public Spaces, Elizabeth Ashley Clayborn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a rhetorical analysis of public space in Arkansas and examines the ways in which the myth of Southern Atonement is constructed within those spaces. Three formal elements characterize Southern Atonement: absolution from the past, distinctiveness in constructed authenticity, and hope for a post-racial future. The analysis develops over three case studies which I argue contribute to the construction, engagement, and actualization of this cultural myth. The first chapter looks at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and The Unexpected art project as a source of identity construction and place attachment. Then I examine The Billgrimage, or the monuments and museums …

Invention In The Age Of Innovation: Writing Studies, Creativity, And Social Change, Erick Piller

Doctoral Dissertations

Creativity, innovation, disruption, and other such concepts have become central to much scholarly and popular literature on economics, entrepreneurship, and management. Other influential discourses—psychology, urban design, and higher education policy—have followed suit, taking a similar interest in these concepts. As a result, creativity has ascended to the status of something like a core cultural value—ubiquitous, always referred to positively, but frequently stripped of any specific meaning, or else understood in narrowly individualist and economic terms. With signs of “creativity creep” now appearing in composition studies, my dissertation examines other disciplines’ scholarship on creativity and related concepts and considers how creativity …

Re-Embodying Our Discipline, Chelsea Dryer

Theses

This Master's Thesis uses personal narrative and scholarly works to examine the benefits of embodiment in literary studies. Special attention is given to how lived experience can provide legitimate sources of academic evidence when examining texts and that texts can be used to integrate, examine, and reframe lived experiences.

Becoming A Woman Of Isis, Zoe D. Fine

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine how terrorism is produced and consumed in communication. Using discourse analysis, I investigate how terrorism is constituted in the accounts of four women described in online news reports as having joined, or almost joined the so-called Islamic State (IS): “Alex,” constructed as having been lonely and flirted with IS; “Khadija,” presented as a schoolteacher turned member of IS’s all-women’s brigade; Laura, described as a woman whose partner abandoned her, who met a man online, and who brought her son with her to join IS; and Tareena, referred to as a health worker who brought her …

Schools Of Identity: Rhetorical Experience In The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Rachel Elizabeth Winkel

Theses and Dissertations

In the following pages I assert that important rhetorical work is being carried out by aesthetic means in museums and memorials in order to facilitate experiences of identification. I describe in rhetorical terms how that work is done, especially within my primary artifact of study, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Specifically, this paper explores concepts developed in studies of epideictic rhetoric, the rhetoric of place, and museology. The theoretical framework of this paper is founded on the ideas of John Dewey and Kenneth Burke. Deweys theories discuss how we learn from experience and the role of the aesthetic in …

Literacy Education Across Languages In Writing Centers., Lance M Gibson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Literacy education in writing carried out through writing centers (WCs) is a practice that occurs beyond one individual language; rather, almost every developed country provides some extent of education regarding written communication in an alternate language, whether facilitated through a WC or a classroom. Many of these countries’ methods for writing education have been documented in either self-reported evaluation or surveys; however, this documentation of methods is only the beginning of a larger conversation about how these international writing methods have evolved into discussions on topics related to these methods. Writing education that occurs in multiples languages within the same …

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Campaign Songs In Modern Elections, Lottie Elizabeth Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Since the U.S. presidential election of 1800, candidates have selected campaign songs to underscore their political platforms. The literature on politics and music suggests that in modern campaigns, the significance of music rests not in the song itself but in the artist behind the song and the image associated with that particular artist. This analysis sought to convey how the very process of selecting a campaign song is a profound rhetorical act, and that songs chosen even in modern elections have a specific meaning and purpose tied to the political contexts in which they are embedded. Using an adaptation of …

Bursting The Filter Bubble: Information Literacy And Questions Of Valuation, Navigation, And Control In A Digital Landscape, Komysha Hassan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The evolution of social media platforms and other public forums in the digital realm has created an explosion of user-generated content and data as a component of the already content-saturated digital landscape. The distributed, horizontal nature of the internet as a platform makes it difficult to ascertain value and differentiate between texts of varying validity, bias, and purpose. In addition, the internet is not an inanimate interface. As Pariser (2011) argues, content aggregators, such as Google, actively filter, personalize, and therefore limit each individual's access to information, in both range and type. This has created a crisis of information valuation …

Composition Pedagogy For The 21st Century : A Culturally Inclusive Model, Stephanie Hassan Richardson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

As cultural and racial demographics continue to diversify across college campuses, the First Year Composition (FYC) classroom becomes a site wherein faculty can engage in transformative pedagogical strategies to maximize ways in which students’ culturally diverse backgrounds can influence their rhetorical strategies in meaningful ways. However, a critical analysis of FYC and factors influencing its design and impact demonstrate that, to a large degree, faculty are not implementing pedagogical strategies that incorporate cultural rhetorics in strategic ways. This critical analysis sought to understand the significant factors hampering faculty desire and ability to deliver Culturally Inclusive Pedagogy (CIP), which is a …

Gender Justice: The Role Of Stories And Images, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Scholarly Works

In this book chapter, Professor Berger argues for thoughtful metaphor-making and storytelling in legal writing. Exploring legal rhetoric with an eye for gender justice, she argues metaphor and narrative shape perspective and ask the reader to join the writer in the imaginative work of seeing one thing as another. The same shift in perspective that leads to re-conception—a shift that takes advantage of metaphor and narrative’s ability to say what only they can say—is what writers aim to achieve when they use metaphor and narrative for feminist and social justice advocacy.

Mobile Rhetorics: Laptop Stickers, Emplacement, And Circulation, Kathleen Kryger

All ETDs from UAB

This thesis proposes that a new materialist rhetorical investigation of stickers placed on mobile objects of personal use allows scholars to recognize a semiotic and rhetorical connection between human rhetors and the objects of their daily lives. To explore this connection, I analyze stickers situated on laptop computers through their materiality, their geosemiotic emplacement, and their potential rhetorical circulation patterns. Stickers placed on such mobile objects capitalize on their rhetorical consequentiality through their situatedness in the physical world and their connection to the human rhetors positioned in relation to the objects. This work hopes to shift the perception of objects …

Literacies Of The Disaster Zone: New Media Genres And Participatory Rhetorics After The 2010 Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill, R. J. Lambert

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

On April 20, 2010, explosions at the British Petroleum (BP) Macondo Project in the Gulf of Mexico initiated what would become the world's largest accidental release of oil into the ocean. This ecological disaster, a unique combination of natural and human causes, is one of many significant traumas over approximately the last two decades that various stakeholders have documented, participated in, and responded to largely through the expanding and increasingly ubiquitous media of the internet, computers, cell phones, and other networked communicative technologies, which both enable and constrain the variety of responses to traumatic events.

This Dissertation improves our understanding …

“As The Occasion Demands”: Constraint-Based Practice In Rhetoric And Composition, Erica Kerstin Fischer

Theses and Dissertations

In their 2010 Composition Studies article, Laurie Gries and Collin Brooke observe, “constrained writing has been underappreciated” in the composition classroom (21). Taking seriously the potential value of constraints in pedagogical practice, this project executes a cross-disciplinary examination (drawing from design theory, experimental poetry, literary theory, composition, and rhetorical theory) of the various occurrences of, and approaches to, constraints and their influences on the ways we think and write. This investigation reveals that constraints create the conditions under which students can become productively defamiliarized to their thinking and writing habits, encouraging them to encounter alternatives otherwise left unnoticed.

I suggest …

Investigating The Causes And Cures For Unclear Scholarly Writing, Marlene Ingrid Mahony

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative dissertation investigated possible causes and cures for unclear scholarly writing. For this study, a stipulative definition of unclear scholarly writing, or “academese,” is that the language tends to be vague and verbose. The problem, according to the included literature, is that people who use or accept vague language have less academic, social, professional, and civic power. Academese, some say, can detach readers and that can accordingly diminish collective exchange. Because higher education is meant to share knowledge, promote agency, and prepare students to communicate powerfully within and beyond the university, this study researched the causes and cures of …

Attaining Scientific Literacy Through A Rhetoric Of Science Composition Pedagogy, Stephen C. Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

For the past sixty years, acquiring scientific literacy has proven to be a daunting task in education, especially for undergraduate nonscience majors. Although some education scholars have recognized the importance and use of arguments to teach science, these pedagogical practices often are aimed at primary school children rather than college students or involve reporting science experiments rather than actually studying or constructing arguments about issues related to science.However, in this dissertation, I contend that educators often neglect a more available tool that not only examines arguments concerning scientific issues but also demonstrates the very heart of scientific literacy: critical thinking. …

Shaping The Image Builders: The Birth And Rise Of The American Association Of College News Bureaus And A New Rhetorical Arena In Higher Education, Gregory D. Cook

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on a qualitative review of historical artifacts, the author explores the birth and rise of the American Association of College News Bureaus and its successive organizations. The author performs a historical study, interlacing an interpretive biographical lens and rhetorical theory. The study seeks to determine what formative events and narratives shaped the Associations progression from 1915 until 1950 and to what extent, if any, the Association and its successor organizations established a new rhetorical arena in Americas higher Education landscape. The expansive horizontal network launched by the group better served colleges and universities with more robust dialogue and public …

The New Sexy: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Sherlock, Krystal A. Fogle, Toni Maisano

Conversations: A Graduate Student Journal of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology

In recent history, there have been movements advocating for conversation and change regarding traditional gender roles. As a central part of culture, British television has not escaped this scrutiny. BBC's crime drama Sherlock directed by Steven Moffat has received both critical acclaim and attention from the general public for its portrayal of women. In this essay, we venture into this conversation, and explore portrayals of existing gender roles and how the writers of the show choose to dissent with the audience's expectations of gender portrayal. We examine connections between past and present portrayals of the classic character, Sherlock Holmes, and …

The Rhetoric Revision Log: A Second Study On A Feedback Tool For Esl Student Writing, Natalie Marie Cole

Theses and Dissertations

A common pattern in teacher feedback to ESL writing is to provide students feedback on primarily grammar, often sidelining content (Ferris, 2003). This research is a second study of an original study done by Yi (2010) on a rhetoric revision log. This Rhetoric Revision Log (RRL) helped teachers and students track content errors in writing. This research further studies the success of the RRL with some minor changes made based on previous research results. Data consists of the Rhetoric Revision Log (RRL) given to 42 students in three different ESL writing classes at the same level with four different teachers. …

Paving The Path For Sex Education: An Analysis Of Journey Metaphors In Political Rhetoric, Tara Mcqueen

University Honors Theses

This paper analyzes four key political texts regarding access to comprehensive and abstinence-only sex education in the United States, beginning in 1919 and culminating in 2016. The aim being to draw attention to the relationship between political rhetoric on sex education and the metaphorical language that is utilized to discuss the matter. Presented here is the argument that discourse on sex education revolves around journey metaphors and most often reflect the underlying conceptual metaphors that LIFE IS A JOURNEY and/or POLITICS IS A JOURNEY. This framing of the debate began in 1919 when a pamphlet distributed by the United States' …

Incorporating Confucius And Ancient China Into A Rhetorical Theory Course, Sara A. M. Drury

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

In our globalized world, students of communication benefit from experiencing diverse cultures and perspectives throughout the curriculum. One way to encourage twenty-first century global learning is to infuse the study of Chinese discourse into rhetorical theory courses. This essay first provides a rationale for the importance of comparative rhetoric and a review of relevant literature on ancient Chinese rhetoric. Then, the essay details a three-week module on ancient Chinese rhetoric with readings and activities, and an appraisal of the activity, with the goal of demonstrating the necessity and feasibility of introducing undergraduate students to globalized rhetorical studies.

Prisoner Of Context: The Truman Doctrine Speech And J. Edgar Hoover’S Rhetorical Realism, Stephen Underhill

Communications Faculty Research

In this project, I argue that J. Edgar Hoover’s style of political realism should be studied by critics because it long preceded that of President Harry S. Truman. Thestyle belonged to a stockpile of anti-Communist imagery that helped to shape how the Truman Doctrine speech was drafted and how audiences interpreted its meanings in more local domestic politics. When Truman fınally announced that the Soviet Union had challenged international protocol, I argue that he confırmed the vision that his Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director and other detractors had developed throughout the New Deal to discredit reformers who challenged issues …

Part-Of-Speech Tagged Corpus Search, Jacob Tootalian

All Digital Pedagogy Resources

This assignment encourages students to explore language patterns found in literature and scientific texts (or other genres). It tasks them with finding a phrase of interest from a text, translating it into a search query with part-of-speech variables, and analyzing instances of that language pattern in other texts. The assignment includes a plan for an in-class digital workday to prepare students for the corpus search platform.