Digital Commons Network^™

Rhetorical Connotations Of “ʔInnamaa” In The Prophetic Discourse Context, Munerah Marai Al-Zahrani Dr.

Journal of Arabic Sciences and Humanities

This above-titled research has an introduction including the current study significance, scope, and structure, objectives, and methods (descriptive-analytical), and previous studies; a preface about the Prophet’s eloquence -peace be upon him- and his stylistic characteristics in hadith; a section addressing the style of briefness among the fundamentalists and linguists, and a section addressing the connotations thereof in the prophetic discourse context; and a conclusion with the most prominent results. The grammarians and rhetoricians did not state the term “briefness” or its types and methods; it was referred to as specialness, exclusiveness, and exception. The basic meaning of “ʔinnamaa” is exclusiveness, …

Placebos, Rhetoric, And The Power Of Expectation, Jennifer M. Reeher

Theses and Dissertations

Placebos, Rhetoric, and the Power of Expectation examines the relationship between persuasion and health to determine what interventions rhetoric could make in the interdisciplinary field of placebo studies. This exploration of the relationship between rhetoric and placebo responses relies on non-anthropocentric definitions and theories of rhetoric as well as a multifaceted archive that includes patient narratives, clinical intake forms, and peer-reviewed scientific studies of condition-specific placebo responses. The impact of this investigation spans the practical and the theoretical. First, rhetorical study highlights the importance of a patient’s perception of care in patient recovery. To this end, rhetoric offers audience-focused methods …

Recuperative Rhetorics: A Novel Framework For Rhetorical Analysis, Nicolas Palumbo

Masters Theses (Archived)

This thesis details the creation of the Recuperative Rhetorics analytical framework, which is a scalable, transdisciplinary framework for analyzing rhetorical texts, from individual speeches to societal understandings of legacy and history. It discusses the framework’s theoretical underpinnings, explains how to utilize it in analyzing rhetoric and rhetorical works, and provides examples of the framework in action across multiple mediums. The framework takes inspiration from the theories and praxes of Situationist International, primarily those of the spectacle, ready-made objects, détournement, and recuperation. The framework uses these ideas, and then builds upon more established analytical frameworks to establish a base from which …

Ecologies Of Medieval Latin Poetics, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The concept of literary ecology is developed as an instrument for large-scale literary study by Alexander Beecroft (2015), for whom the metaphor emphasizes the great diversity of world literatures and the possibility of organizing this diversity into cultural types, analogous to the biologist’s ecotypes. For a study of Latin poetics, the most important typological distinction is between cosmopolitan and vernacular languages. Latin acquired an articulated body of stylistic norms (“poetics”) in antiquity as a vernacular language; subsequent developments in Latin poetics were conditioned by the language’s acquisition of cosmopolitan characteristics. I explore the consequences of that shift; texts discussed include …

Law As A Liberal Art, Francis J. Mootz Iii

The Journal of Law Teaching and Learning

Law is a liberal art. Unfortunately, this fact is often forgotten by legal educators, legal practitioners, and citizens. This collective amnesia does not just pose a problem of proper academic categorization. Our inattention to law’s character as a liberal art of law has a profound effect on the full realization of the rule of law in contemporary constitutional democracies. Reclaiming law as a liberal art is critically important, and this effort should be at the center of our approach to legal education.

In this short essay, I begin by providing a brief overview of what I mean by saying that …

Talking To The Patriarchy: A Linguistic And Rhetorical Investigation Into The Language Of Feminism, Allison Hauser

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on how those who self-identify as feminist, or more generally as in support of gender equality, use language to define gender equality and to describe people who identify as woman, non-binary and man. Through analysis of fifty-nine interviews conducted in the Spring of 2022, this project articulates how those who support gender equality might be using language in particular patterns when gendered categories are mentioned to emphasize—or unintentionally undercut—a change in social practice related to gender. In highlighting these recurring constructions, this project suggests that supporters of gender equality might be using language in particular ways that …

“Bad Hombres”: Trump Era Politics And Media In Shaping The Perceptions Of The Mexican Diaspora In The United States, Angelica Soria

Master's Theses

My research delves into the anti-Mexican immigrant rhetoric spread throughout the United States under Donald Trump’s presidency by himself, mainstream media news outlet Fox News, and the U.S. government. Furthermore, examining the social identity of ethnic Mexicans in the United States in response to and as a consequence of the negative rhetoric. This thesis analyzes discourse including the harmful rhetoric and its impact on policy formulation, public perception, and the lived experiences of Mexican immigrants and ethnic Mexican communities. By looking at existing discourse, this research provides a critical discourse analysis of political speeches, media coverage, and ethnic Mexican testimonios. …

Faculty And "Teams": Academic Literacies In The Post-Lockdown, Digital University., Morgan Suzanne Blair

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The increased presence of disruptive digital technologies in academia has been a subject of multidisciplinary scholarly conversation and public speculation over the past few decades. Many literacy studies scholars have contributed to this discourse, examining topics like multimodal literacies and perceptions of agency among students. These scholars have noted with skepticism that such technologies may mask operations of power, surveillance, and control which serve the demands of an increasingly “corporate” or “neoliberal” university. Building upon this scholarship, my study contends that the evolving literacy environment of the digital university requires a closer examination of corporate-sponsored narratives and literacy practices implicating …

Inbreds & Cannibals & Savages, Oh My!: A Genre Analysis Of Appalachian Atrocities, Kerri Farley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis is an analysis of the representation of the Appalachian region in horror films. It examines the representations of the region in films such as The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jug Face, and the representations of the inhabitants of Appalachia in films such as We Are What We Are. The analysis is conducted through a rhetorical analysis of the genre’s most core elements, such as the substance of the movie, the situational and stylistic, and the sensory aspects of the movies.

A Rhetorical-Sociological Understanding Of Emotion, Amy Boone

All Dissertations

This project presents a rhetorical-sociological understanding of emotion while foregrounding the place and role of language. Born from Sara Ahmed’s work in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, it presents a simplified equation (contact + orientation = emotion) as both a prescriptive and descriptive formula for making sense of human emotional experience. Starting with an exploration of the difficult-to-understand affect system, this dissertation identifies both rhetoric and affect as energies which cannot be understood apart from their traces, the things they move, produce, and become. As a way to get at these often-invisible forces, two trace studies are conducted which explore …

Drama: A Burlesque And Melodramatic Frame Analysis Of The January 6Th Committee Final Report, Makayla Chadwick Lindsay

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

On January 6^th, 2021, former president Donald Trump stated "...if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore". Following his speech thousands of Trump supporters marched to the United States capitol under the belief that they were stopping nationwide voter fraud. In the months following, the U.S. congress created The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol with the goal to investigate those responsible for the insurrection that took place at the U.S. capitol. This paper examines the committee's communication as they attempted to hold Trump …

Reclaiming The Symbol: Ethics, Rhetoric, And The Humanistic Integration Of Gai - A Burkean Perspective, Daniel Plate, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

This study delves into the intersection of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) and the Humanities, guided by the critical insights of Kenneth Burke, a seminal figure in the study of rhetoric and a vocal critic of scientism and positivism. The skepticism of the American literary theorist towards an uncritical embrace of science and technology, and his concerns over the inclination of the Humanities to adopt scientific methodologies at the expense of traditional forms of inquiry, provide a critical framework for examining the new role played by GAI within the Humanities. By framing these tools in the context of Burkean rhetorical theory, …

Engl110 Course Syllabus (Composition), James Andrew Grammer

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for Freshman Composition Course/Intro to Writing.

Decoding And Generating Poetry: Using Feminist Theory And Digital Media To Demonstrate Maya Angelou's Writing As Activism, Emery Beckman

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

This thesis will demonstrate how rhetorical strategies can present social change through descriptive elements of persuasion. Using foundational rhetorical concepts, including ethos, logos, and pathos, it will connect concerns of inequality to the work of Maya Angelou, who can validate the impact intersectionality has within the use of rhetoric. Having been a victim of racism, sexual abuse, and economic disadvantages, she used her voice to break the silence for women. This thesis will showcase the impact of rhetorical techniques through digital media by creating a website featuring visual data and mapping by decoding Maya Angelou's work to demonstrate the power …

Confronting The Conflation: The Use Of Christian Nationalist Rhetoric At The Insurrection On January 6th, 2021, Sophia Barnes

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This project considers the rhetoric of Christian nationalism on display before, during, and after the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6^th, 2021. I will show how Christian nationalism on Jan 6^th can be framed using Jenny Edbauer’s ideas of rhetorical ecologies and Thomas Rickert’s ideas of rhetorical ambiance by considering the speakers at the insurrection and a pastor who has been publicly vocal about his motives. Next, I will consider the images used by major media outlets covering the insurrection and how they chose to frame the events visually by considering Kellie Sharp-Hoskins’s ideas …

Improvisations: Methods And Methodologies In Lifespan Writing Research, Ryan J. Dippre, Talinn Phillips

Writing Commons Open Access Books

Improvisations provides readers with insights and options as they develop new lifespan writing research projects or seek to re-orient existing projects to incorporate a lifespan lens. In Part 1 of this edited collection, contributors consider research methodologies that have been adapted to the particular demands of lifespan writing research, with each methodology given two chapters: one that outlines the process of taking up the methodology, and another that provides a detailed example of the methodology in action. In Part 2, contributors suggest new methodologies for lifespan writing research and highlight challenges that this line of inquiry presents as an ethical …

Analyzing The Use Of Plain Language In Brief Summaries On Clinicaltrials.Gov, Megan J. Eddington

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

ClinicalTrials.gov is a database designed to help clinical researchers make their research publicly available. The clinical trials registered on the database each include a brief summary, which is meant to be a short description that the public can easily understand. In September 2022, ClinicalTrials.gov published a "Plain Language Checklist for Lay Brief Summaries" on their website, which identifies plain language best practices intended to help investigators craft summaries that can be readily understood by the public. This thesis assesses the impact of the checklist on the language use in the brief summaries in the year following the checklist's publication. The …

The (Still) Unexplored Possibilities Of A Poetics Of Law, Naomi Mezey

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this contribution to the symposium celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of James Boyd White’s The Legal Imagination, I have accepted White’s invitation in the last chapter of his magisterial book to think about poems and judicial opinions as compatible acts of imagination and meaning making. White asks brilliant questions, and his book is full of them, each a nugget of insight and also a prod that asks the reader to think harder, think deeper, revisit her first thoughts, to perhaps change her mind, and above all, with guidance, to educate herself. In this chapter of the book, White is …

Comradery After Calamity: Bipartisan Rhetoric After 9/11, Sara A. Castro

Capstone Showcase

In the years following 9/11, bills concerning national security came out of Congress with a high bipartisan roll count vote rate. These are at the height of President George Bush’s approval rating.This thesis examines the bipartisan rhetoric during floor debate of the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Using content analysis, this thesis demonstrates how the President uses public support during a national tragedy to influence Congress to pass bills. Language will be identified using buzz words such as president, executive and …

Augustinian Composition Pedagogy And The Catholic Liberal Arts In The Time Of Generative Ai, Gavin F. Hurley

Journal of Catholic Education

This article proposes a theoretical basis of Augustinian composition pedagogy by tracing the symbiotic relationship between writing and knowing found within St. Augustine’s Letters, The Trinity, Soliloquies, and Confessions and connecting them to modern writing-to-learn composition pedagogies. Given today’s trying times of generative AI, this article argues that Catholic schools revitalize the writing arts in a manner proposed by Augustine—that is, to enrich inward contemplation and outward love for others. In embracing such philosophy of writing and applying it across the disciplines, Catholic schools can enrich their distinctively Catholic liberal arts mission—and ward off dangers found in …

Development, Voice, And Vulnerability: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Policy-Making Discourse Regarding The Paris Agreement As An Organizational Response To Climate Change, David Almanza-Canas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

On December 12, 2015, the Paris Agreement was officially ratified by 196 sovereign entities. This treaty represents a global call to action to ameliorate the impact of human activities on our environment, and it creates a means of cooperation through financial support and transparent industrial practices with the goal of promoting accountability across the world. This treaty and the discourse surrounding it present fertile ground for the academic understanding of persuasive practices in policy-making. By examining the rhetorical implications of the Paris Agreement as a global policy, scholars can gain new insight about the communities represented in the conversation as …

Goostly Coumforte In God: The Rhetoric Of Mysticism In The Cloud Of Unknowing, Clinton M. Sensat

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this paper I analyze the rhetoric of the Cloud of Unknowing by an anonymous fourteenth-century English Catholic mystic. First, I situate the Cloud in its tradition, both spiritual and rhetorical. Then, after analyzing the linguistic arts employed, I engage in a sustained examination of the Cloud’s rhetorical technique. Ultimately, I conclude that the author of the Cloud succeeds in his rhetorical goals, even if some of his strategies are less successful than he perhaps believes, and that he does so through the use of concrete language and an appeal to the ethos of Christian monastic friendship.

Trash, Fragments, And Breaking Things: Toward A Grotesque Cripistemology For Disabled Life Writing, Michelle Anne Lloyd

All Dissertations

Despite the boom of memoirs of mental health post-1997 and the first advertisements for Prozac, most of them follow the same formula and come from the same places of privilege. This privilege is evident in the author bios on the books themselves and the careers of the writers. The popularity of these books within both abled and disabled realms has therefore created a script that those with mental illnesses are expected to abide by. Following in the example of Margaret Price, Katie Rose Guest Pryal, Merri Lisa Johnson, and others, I resituate mental illness as mental disability and place it …

Force Displacement, Forced Perspective: The Rhetorics Of Refugee Experience, Jonathan Burgess

All Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the intersection of digital media, displacement, and human rights within the contemporary geopolitical landscape, with a specific focus on the MENA region. From a perspective firmly rooted rhetoric, it dissects the complex relationship between technology and displaced populations, emphasizing the role of transmedia storytelling in shaping refugee experiences and narratives and the potential for transmedia storytelling to facilitate greater insights into needs and gaps for displaced people. Central to the analysis is the paradox of digital tools both as emancipatory devices and tools of surveillance and control, which are further elucidated through case studies.

Engaging with thinkers …

“Neither Orthodox Nor Enlightened:” Dorothy Sayers And Classical Education In America, Jessica Richardi

New England Classical Journal

In 1947, accomplished author and intellectual Dorothy Leigh Sayers shared her unorthodox views on education with an audience at Oxford University. The concerns she expressed about the failings of modern schooling and her proposed remedy would catalyze the “classical education” movement in the United States decades later, a movement characterized by adherence to the medieval trivium as both a tool of learning and a model for child development. The transmission of Sayers’s ideas to America, variations in the classical learning movement, and Sayers’ continued influence are discussed.

Framing Effects, Rhetorical Devices, And High-Stakes Litigation: A Cautionary Tale, Marcus Moore

All Faculty Publications

Opposing lawyers frame the facts of a case to serve their client, craft leading questions, and exert pressure on the witness to go along with their desired answer. To counter this, counsel for the witness must anticipate this and prepare the witness to tacitly ask themselves before answering such questions: whether a frame is being employed?; and if so, they should respond in their own words, rather than in the terms put to them by the opposing lawyer. Courts might counsel themselves to employ similar caution when incorporating discussion taken from politics or related policy debate. They may not be …

Queer Crises: Movements From Queerness And Feelings Of White Religion In The United States, Austin Williams Miller

Communication ETDs

Anchored by contemporary crises surrounding queer and trans people in the United States, I employ movements from queerness within an affective queer phenomenological framework to understand how arrangements of “white religion” (Schaefer, 2015, p. 63), a process whereby U.S. American Christian forms escape ideology into religious affective economies in the United States, relegate queer people “to the background… to sustain a certain direction” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 31). I assemble a queer rhetorical context analyzing white religious space in documentary film, secular sexual regulation through contemporary U.S. legal contexts around marriage, and settler colonial Christian nationalist political imaginations to critique how …

Buried Forensics: A Rhetorical/Material Analysis Of Gendered Death, Sarah Richardson

All Dissertations

My dissertation, titled Buried Forensics: A Rhetorical/Material Analysis of Gendered Death, illustrates how othered women who did not adhere to societal norms have been silenced, excluded, forgotten, and erased in public memory. I examine the rhetorical means through which historical women have been gendered in death. Death rhetorics, I argue, illuminate the relationship between past and present violence in conjunction with memory practices. Depending on the reasons specific women were othered, death rhetorics elucidates how these women became, and continue to be, marginalized. Specifically, my three body chapters examine the lives and deaths of women who participated in sex …

Storytelling In Motion: Rhetorical Approaches To Autoethnography, Critical Pedagogy, And African Filmmaking, Sethunya Mokoko

All Dissertations

This dissertation exposes the marginalization in the education systems of my country Lesotho, South Africa, an injustice that still survives long after the plague of Apartheid. Drawing on the values in African epistemologies of storytelling, I describe and illustrate their principles, then show how storytelling can transform composition pedagogy and thus help eradicate the residue of colonization. The methodology draws from auto-ethnography, narrative, spoken word, traditional oral wisdom, and African filmmaking as counter-story and resistance to the ideologies plaguing the minds of colonized South Africans. The goal is to celebrate oral traditions while improving reading comprehension and writing. With an …

Public Mediations Of Accountability In The #Metoo Era, Amanda Brand

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Tarana Burke initially launched the Me Too movement to cultivate solidarity among sexual assault survivors in 2006, and public appropriations of this effort have resulted in a kairotic moment of accountability in sexual assault cases. Particularly, the 2017 hashtag, #MeToo populates media platforms as the public invokes it to make sense of sexual assault cases, bearing witness to victim-survivors, assigning blame, or disavowing culpability. Challenging legacies of public denial, #MeToo marks a cultural shift in which victim-survivors are not only speaking out, they are also being heard and believed. I argue that accountability is rhetorically-constructed, negotiated, and imposed through …