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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, Rebecca Oliver Nov 2023

Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, Rebecca Oliver

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This activity seeks to explain to undergraduate students how to craft a proper attack and defense in argumentation and debate, persuasion, or political communication courses. The activity teaches students 1) the parts of a basic argument structure and 2) how to construct a rebuttal using a basic argument structure. Students will argue against their true political typology by selecting an opposing typology from the Pew Research Typology Quiz. Broadly, this exercise is designed to encourage students to engage in dialogues with people who disagree with their political positionality. Specifically, the activity accomplishes this by teaching students the value of basic …


Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, Daniel L. Foster, Ashley D. Garcia Nov 2023

Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, Daniel L. Foster, Ashley D. Garcia

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Drawing objects and concepts, such as cats, trees, love, democracy, and family, is probably the last activity students expect to do in a communication course. Although this sounds like an introductory art activity, creating visual representations provides a nuanced understanding of the encoding and decoding processes. Encoding and decoding are the most hidden and often the most unfamiliar and complex fundamental components of communication for students to comprehend. By engaging in this activity, students translate their decoding process into drawings, which serve as personal artifacts representative of their encoding and decoding. Students come to better conceptualize this cognitive process with …


“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, Nancy Bressler Nov 2023

“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, Nancy Bressler

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This activity demonstrates communication competence and allows students to observe, assess, and ultimately utilize the model of communication competence to engage with other people successfully. To understand how to engage in communication competence, students must recognize that appropriateness and effectiveness are crucial aspects of their communication. Through the communication competence model, students examine how to achieve effectiveness in their communication by setting goals for specific contexts; they also consider to what extent their goals are achievable given the particular situation. Using a 2014 MTV Video Music Award example, students can analyze why Miley Cyrus allowed a homeless man to accept …


Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, Karla M. Hunter, Joshua N. Westwick Nov 2023

Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, Karla M. Hunter, Joshua N. Westwick

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Despite numerous quantitative assessments of teaching interventions that have helped mitigate public speaking anxiety (PSA), this common barrier to public speaking persists. In addition, quantitative measures may not be appropriate for all instructional goals, especially with students from across a variety of cultures. To enrich educators’ capacity to help diverse bodies of students overcome the challenges presented by PSA, this qualitative study asked students to “Please describe yourself as a public speaker” at the beginning and the end of a freshman-level, general education public speaking class. Thematic analysis identified a two-dimensional pattern within student responses (N = 51) (a …


Front Matter Nov 2023

Front Matter

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

No abstract provided.


Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), The Speech Communication Association Of South Dakota Nov 2023

Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), The Speech Communication Association Of South Dakota

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

No abstract provided.


“They Hurt Me Pauley:” Applying Queer Performance Theory Within L.B. Hamilton’S Play A Midnight Clear To Understand Gendered Violence And Prejudice Against Feminine Msm, Skyllar M. Schoening Jan 2023

“They Hurt Me Pauley:” Applying Queer Performance Theory Within L.B. Hamilton’S Play A Midnight Clear To Understand Gendered Violence And Prejudice Against Feminine Msm, Skyllar M. Schoening

Schultz-Werth Award Papers

This essay uses the theoretical lens of queer performance theory to analyze L.B. Hamilton’s play, A Midnight Clear, to increase awareness of gendered violence and prejudice against feminine men-seeking-men (MSM). I first contextualize existing literature about sexual assault and the limited research about feminine men regarding sexual violence and assault. Then, I examine the components of queer performance theory, positing a metaphorical equation of combining both queer theory and performance theory to further understand the roots of queer performance theory. In this section, I also suggest the importance of representation and identity within a dramaturgical and theatrical-based lens from both …


Front Matter Dec 2022

Front Matter

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

No abstract provided.


Disclosing For Closure: Negotiating Boundaries For Self-Expansion After Violence, Jadah M. Morrison Jan 2022

Disclosing For Closure: Negotiating Boundaries For Self-Expansion After Violence, Jadah M. Morrison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The #MeToo movement has brought the narratives of survivors of sexual assault center stage. As we begin to understand the intricacies of these narratives, we must remember them in their first iteration, their initial disclosure. This study aims to understand the motivations behind the first disclosure of sexual violence. Through looking at these motivations through the lens of self-expansion theory, we can better support survivors of sexual violence in this initial process. Self-discrepancy theory was also used to understand survivors’ sense of self, and the motivations of how survivors seek refuge in their receiver. Thus, privacy management lends itself to …


Critical Thinking As A Pedagogical Approach: Using Critical/Cultural Studies To Analyze Music Videos, Lukas John Pelliccio, Timothy Brown May 2021

Critical Thinking As A Pedagogical Approach: Using Critical/Cultural Studies To Analyze Music Videos, Lukas John Pelliccio, Timothy Brown

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Teaching undergraduate students how to critically analyze a text is an important experience. However, it is not easy to do this because readings are often dense, and the process of writing and presenting a critique can be challenging for some students. In light of this, we have developed an assignment where students critically analyze music videos for their ideologies. In the assignment, students select three specific overt or latent content pieces from a music video and explain how those manifestations influence a particular ideology in a paper. Then they are asked to show the music video to their peers and …


Men’S Rights Activists And The Ray Rice Domestic-Violence Case: Using Critical Communication Pedagogy To Counter Hegemonic Masculinity, David H. Kahl Oct 2017

Men’S Rights Activists And The Ray Rice Domestic-Violence Case: Using Critical Communication Pedagogy To Counter Hegemonic Masculinity, David H. Kahl

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Some groups in society communicate in ways that attempt to marginalize others. One such group is the Men’s Rights Activists (MRA) who use language to attempt to normalize the subjugation of women through its rejection of feminism. This activity is designed to engage students in a dialogue about MRA’s response to the domestic-violence incident involving Baltimore Ravens’ running back Ray Rice and his fiancé, Janay Palmer, in a hotel elevator. Specifically, the activity allows students to learn about MRA members and their hegemonic ideology, to examine/view the domestic-violence incident, and to use critical-communication pedagogy (CCP) as a means to examine …


A Guilty Conscience: Barack Obama And America’S Guilt In “A More Perfect Union”, Scott Anderson Oct 2017

A Guilty Conscience: Barack Obama And America’S Guilt In “A More Perfect Union”, Scott Anderson

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

On March 18, 2008, Barack Obama addressed the status of racial equality in America in a speech titled “A More Perfect Union.” The speech came on the heels of a media firestorm that erupted around Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s religious advisor and friend, whom media accused of harboring allegedly racist and anti-American sentiment. The association with Wright undermined Obama’s status as the post-racial candidate and threatened to derail his presidential bid. Using Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic process (the guilt-purification-redemption cycle), this article argues that Obama’s use of guilt may have contributed to his success. In the speech Obama elucidated three types …


Re-Examining “In A Different Voice” For The New Millennium, Brittany Morris Jan 2011

Re-Examining “In A Different Voice” For The New Millennium, Brittany Morris

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1982) first presented the concept of different moral reasoning as key to understanding how men and women seem to arrive at different conclusions in similar situations. Contrasting her work with the influential model of Kohlberg, Gilligan argues that women’s concept of moral decision-making is inherently relational, rather than reflecting the acceptance of abstract justice deemed to be the highest level of decision-making by Kohlberg. Here, I explain this contrasting perspective, and then examine modern integration of Gilligan’s perceptions as seen through print and broadcast media.


Gender Portrayal In J.K. Rowling's “Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix”: A Feminist Rhetorical Criticism, Nicole Ackman Jan 2007

Gender Portrayal In J.K. Rowling's “Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix”: A Feminist Rhetorical Criticism, Nicole Ackman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined J.K. Rowling’s (2003) novel entitled, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Although this novel has not yet been classified as a fairy tale, it does contain fairy tale elements. This study reviewed literature in the field of folklore, fairy tales, and feminism. Foss’ (2004) four-step feminist criticism model was employed to analyze gender portrayals in the novel. According to Foss’ model, the novel was analyzed for masculine or feminine perspectives of the world, effects on the audience, improvement of women’s lives, and impact on rhetorical theory. Although Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix …