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The Evolution Of American Expository Prose Style As Exemplified By The Easy Chair Columnists Of Harper's Magazine, Cherie Rouse

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This thesis aims to describe the way American expository prose style evolved during the period 1851 to 1981 as exemplified by the Easy Chair columnists of Harper's Magazine. Major premises of the study are that style and meaning are the same, but that a writer chooses among various shades of meaning, sometimes on the basis of rhetorical strategy, and thus it is possible to make meaningful statements about a writer's style.

The research methods emphasized synthesis of many different kinds of information about each author's writing, rather than complete reliance on impressionistic judgement or on quantified data. For each author …