Philosophy Commons^™

What's In A Name? Plant Naming As Cultural Artifact And Story In The Midwestern United States, Sophie Wesseler

Undergraduate Theses

This project sought to collect and contextualize the historical and contemporary names given to plants by inhabitants of the Midwestern United States, understanding plant names as cultural artifacts that can offer insight into the communities in which they were created and evolved. Formatted as a series of entries, this collection gathered these names and contextualized them within other artifacts of cultural significance, such as art or poetry, and alongside historical research on their origins and cultural environments. Examining plant names through the fields of linguistics, semiology, anthropology, cultural studies, taxonomy, and ethnobotany, this work traces the names of various plants …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Organizing (Eternal) Identity And Identification: An Upward Glance Into Religious Institutions, Casey M. Stratton

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation disrupts at least two religious spaces: First, scholars religiously adhering to (social) scientific norms, and second, people identifying with religious organizations (i.e., churches). First, we begin constructing a theoretical lens using poststructural ideas offered by Foucault, Derrida, and Bakhtin to read and disrupt (religious) discourse. Second, we complicate organizational identification as a concept, deeming it fixed and fluid—a paradox within religious discourses that endorse Truth and Perfection. Here, we draw from the communication constitutes organization (CCO) approach. Third, we further curate the lens by applying poststructuralism, identification, and CCO in a specific context: The Church of Jesus Christ …

Strong Linguistic Relativity: A Continental Sense Of Language And Being, Ava Totah, Brian Treanor

Honors Thesis

The theory of linguistic relativity can be divided into two hypotheses: the strong argument and the weak argument. The strong argument, often called linguistic determinism, posits that one’s native language determines one’s thought in an inescapable manner. The so-called “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” demonstrates this, though many modern linguists now believe this principle – and linguistic determinism in general – to be implausible. The weak argument for linguistic relativity states that one’s native language merely influences their worldview, such that it struggles to maintain a connection that is more than trivial. In this work, I seek a “third option” that is both …

Robert Brandom On Semantics And The Objectivity Of Conceptual Norms, Jiayu Wu

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In arguing for an inferentialist understanding of conceptual contents, Robert Brandom claims that a fundamental feature of the norms that govern our concept-using practices is that they are objective. Brandom believes that the objective aspect of conceptual norms is grounded in the distinction between the normative status of a performance being a correct (or incorrect) application of a concept and the normative attitude of a performance being taken as a correct (or incorrect) application. In the first two sections of this thesis, I will offer an overview of Brandom’s inferential approach to semantics and his normative approach to pragmatics. In …

Black Codes Re-Envisioned: The Dred Scott Majority Opinion As An Antiblack Performative Speech Act., Tiffany Dillard-Knox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a discursive analysis of the decision in the Dred Scott v Sandford, 1857 case written by Chief Justice Roger Taney. It begins with an overview of the literature on performative speech acts, focusing on the aspects of performatives that relate to Louis Miron and Jonathan Xavier Inda’s thesis that race is a performative speech act. Breaking from their use of race as the analytic, this analysis is situated within a black/nonblack paradigm. This provides a framework that focuses on the unique ways in which the discourse of the text enacts, accumulates and renders blackness fungible. The …

Fighting Words: Slurs, Semantics, And The Law, Richard Stillman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Oppressive slurs like the n-word are fighting words par excellence. Their power to incite conflict and inflict emotional injury is unmatched by that of other, more commonplace insults. But what is it that makes oppressive slurs such potent verbal weapons? A commonplace view among both philosophers and legal theorists is that slurs make such potent insults because their uses convey extremely offensive, bigoted attitudes. This dissertation argues that this view is mistaken, and that its falsity has important implications for hate speech jurisprudence. I argue that, to grasp what makes slurs such potent verbal weapons, we ought conceive …

Language As The Medium: A Literature Review. Harnessing The Prolific Power Of Dramatic Language As A Therapeutic Tool In Drama Therapy, Edward Freeman

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Language in and of the theatre, with its palate of variegated writing styles and playwrights from throughout time, has the potential to be harnessed, focused, and systematized for use as a therapeutic tool within drama therapy – the field’s artistic medium. Drama therapy could benefit from having a specific medium germane to its artform which has the potential to provide practitioners with a common resource and means of communication, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning, as well as align the field with other creative arts therapies. Language encompasses all forms of human communication – speaking, writing, signing, gesturing, expressing facially – …

The Feeling Of Foam & Other Essays, Ryan Erickson

Graduate School of Art Theses

I create conceptual drawings, collages, sculptures, and installations to humorously destabilize and ultimately question how human language, formal methodologies, and social institutions function. While seemingly embracing an aesthetic of rationality, I undermine it with absurdity. In my work, I take a fundamentally dialectical position by skewering the rational to the illogical as neither can exist without the other.

Approaches To Narrative Instruction For Second Language Learners, Mathew Peters

MA TESOL Collection

Narratives have reemerged as a dominant form of rhetoric over the last fifty years. This dominant use of narrative discourse has only increased with the rise of social media. Walther Fisher (1987) proposed the narrative paradigm as a unifying theory of human communication. His major claim is that people are inherently storytellers and that people use a narrative rationality and a logic of good reasons to inform their beliefs, values, and actions. This paper utilizes his theories, along with recent findings in neuroscience, to establish an argument for greater inclusion of narratives into second language teaching. Narratives can have a …

On Polysemy: A Philosophical, Psycholinguistic, And Computational Study, Jiangtian Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Most words in natural languages are polysemous, that is they have related but different meanings in different contexts. These polysemous meanings (senses) are marked by their structuredness, flexibility, productivity, and regularity. Previous theories have focused on some of these features but not all of them together. Thus, I propose a new theory of polysemy, which has two components. First, word meaning is actively modulated by broad contexts in a continuous fashion. Second, clustering arises from contextual modulations of a word and is then entrenched in our long term memory to facilitate future production and processing. Hence, polysemous senses are entrenched …

The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk. On one level, I …

Lydia Cabrera Entre Líneas: Sociolingüística, Etnografía Posmoderna Y Realismo Mágico, Mauricio A. Cabrera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Los que estudian Cuba seguramente se han enfrentado con la metáfora popular que se usa para describir a los habitantes cubanos: “La isla de Cuba es un ajiaco.” Cuba, como muchos países latinoamericanos, es una mezcla compleja de varias culturas que finalmente terminan marcando la identidad cubana. Desde los principios del siglo XVI se puede notar la presencia africana en Latinoamérica y especialmente en Cuba. Una de las figuras más importantes que se dedicó a estudiar la cultura afrocubana fue Lydia Cabrera. Esta presentación es un acercamiento lingüístico, etnográfico y analítico hacia la obra de esta escritora cubana. A través …

Expertise And Expression In Second Language Acquisition: An Embodied Perspective, Mia Burnett

Senior Theses

In directing our attention to mundane aspects of the human experience, we can discover new ways of interacting with and understanding the world. One such formative experience, regularly seen as mundane in much of the world, is learning a second language. It is no exaggeration to say that second language acquisition is one of the processes which most influences and drives our globalized world, and yet we understand and study this process relatively little.

Continuing the trends of naturalizing phenomenological inquiry, this project attempts to evaluate phenomenological approaches to skill acquisition alongside second language acquisition theory and research through an …

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Opening Statements In Trial: Reconsidering The Classical Canon Of Invention, Andrew Chandler

Undergraduate Theses

This analysis of 21 opening statements probes at current persuasive practices employed by trial attorneys through the lens of mainstream legal advice and an expanded definition of rhetorical invention – one which includes both discovery and creation. An evaluation of such practice reveals the utility, and furthermore the duty of the advocate, to draw upon an expanded realm of available arguments.

Poetics, Not Pragmatics: Understanding Metaphors In A Poetic Context, Savannah Marciezyk

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this paper is to explain why the leading theories of metaphor fail when applied to metaphors which appear in poems. The ability to understand the true meaning of a metaphor in conversations relies on understanding speaker intention and extralinguistic context. This paper argues that because such material is not available to the reader of a poem, theories which rely heavily on pragmatics to explain metaphors cannot be successfully applied to metaphors which appear in poems. This paper makes use of the views on metaphor by John Searle and Paul Grice, and discusses how meaning is constructed in …

The Poetic Function Of Imagination: The Parallel Process Of Poiêsis, Angela Carlson

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

In the advent of Postmodernism, modern approaches to understanding the nature of things is being put into question. As the gap between objective and subjective realms of experiences is narrowing, there is an increased need for a more artful approach to science. This paper serves as my attempt to promote the field of Expressive Arts Therapy (ExATh) as a mode of poetic science for understanding the experience of ‘Being’ in the world. Through a critical review of the semantic development of the ancient Greek concepts poiêsis, noêsis, and aisthêsis, the imagination is identified as a function of alêthaic revealing, …

Why Study Language? Discussing Language And Its Influence On Gender Discrimination, Katelyn Eisenmann

Honors Projects

An applied research project, with the culminating piece being a panel discussion that focused on the ways in which language use and structure contribute to attitudes and perceptions of gender within our society, and the politics that surround concepts of gender.

Creating An Indigenous Multicultural Faith: The Russian Orthodox Mission In Alaska And The Centrality Of Cosmology, Niklaus Von Houck

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper applies letters, journals, history interviews, government-company contracts, international treaties, theological works, and images to examine the convergence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Alaskan Indigenous shamanism cultures to explicate the harmonizing of an Indigenous multicultural Christian faith in nineteenth-century Russian Alaska. Central to this examination is the evaluation of effects of Orthodox Christian missiology on native Alaskans and the Indigenous religio-cultural response to Russian missionaries. Not merely a historical overview of contact between natives and missionaries in Russian Alaska, this paper harmonizes the commonality of cosmology between native Alaskan shamanism and Orthodox Christianity. It analyzes the impacts of comparatively …

Meaning And Modality, Jesse Fitts

Doctoral Dissertations

I intended to write four papers whose topics faintly concerned separate issues in meaning and modality. As it turned out, chapters 1-3 all roughly concern the same topic: propositions. While I argue for two different theses in chapters 1 and 2, I try to understand the changing propositions literature in both. In addition to arguing for the respective theses in chapters 1 and 2, accounting for this change is a parallel goal for the chapters taken together. Chapter 3 examines particular propositional roles---the objects of the attitudes and the objects of credence. Finally, chapter 4 changes the subject to the …

Language, Literacy, And Conscientização In American Public Schools, Julie Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Language, Literacy, and Conscientização in American Public Schools synthesizes poststructural language theory to critique literacy teaching and assessment norms in American public schools in order to theorize a pedagogy of racial and economic justice that embraces globalization and immigration. Chapter I creates a theoretical framework for language that rests firmly on both Lev Vygotsky’s and Jacques Lacan’s sociohistorical approach to language acquisition and language use. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work demonstrates the heteroglossic nature of discourse, while Antonio Gramsci politicizes this framework through an understanding of hegemony. Chapter II sketches ethnographic research on teaching practices of various American communities, focusing on ideology …

Phenomenal Marks, Ruptured Spaces, Relearning Language, Crossing Cultures, Meelee Ahn

Graduate School of Art Theses

The form of my thesis is one of interruptions, or “Ruptures,” as I call them. These are events of my personal history, or stories from the lives of artists, that intervene against my narrative through graphic and language devices meant to be understood as equivalent to the material affects in my painting. Important artists and movements mentioned are Gerhard Richter, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenhauler, Lee Ufan, Doho Suh, and Abstract Expressionism. Writers and philosophers Maurice Merlou-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Joan Banach, Sigmund Freud, John Gage, Brian Massumi, Allen Weiss, Clement Greenburg, Shin-Chulgyu, and Yoon-Dongju are also discussed. The idea discussed include …

The Sounds Of Silence; Or, Isabella’S Counter Discourse In Measure For Measure, Gina Vivona

Theses and Dissertations

This argument reshapes the thinking about masculine dominance in Measure for Measure, and considers the patriarchy as a series of socially constructed, hence artificial, rules and regulations. It also explores how Isabella’s discourse and celibacy empower her to defy the constraints of early modern paradigms and achieve individual freedom.

Rethinking Reference: Towards A Holistic Approach To Linguistic Reference, Libby C. Chernouski

Open Access Theses

In this thesis, a review of linguistic reference identifies four entities (speaker, hearer, term, and object) and their interrelations as falling under the umbrella of reference. This review brings to light certain underdeveloped areas of research into linguistic reference, and the second chapter addresses these gaps by distinguishing between the experiences of speaker and hearer as regards linguistic reference, differentiating between the cognitive processes required by each interlocutor, asking how the speaker establishes reference pre-utterance, and drawing on various pragmatic, philosophic, and semantic approaches and theories to see how they could begin to approach for this important issue. …

The Sophist In The Cave: Education Through Names In Plato's Republic, Daniel Propson

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Cratylus is often considered an isolated dialogue in Plato’s corpus, and the major theses of the Cratylus are often seen as disposable and problematic elements in Platonic thought. When one carefully compares this dialogue, however, to Plato’s comments elsewhere about rhetoric and dialectic, a set of fascinating connections emerge. In this dissertation, I argue that the Republic ought to be read in light of the Cratylus. In the former dialogue, Plato is vitally concerned with the use of accurate language in his republic, a fact most clearly brought out by his accusation against demagogues: that they “give names” to …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

Radical Reflection: Toward The Transformation Of Everyday Teaching And Learning In English Composition, Royal Brevvaxling

Theses and Dissertations

Education is a necessary component in the emancipatory transformation of current capitalist society, with its exploitative social relationships, to one which is based on promoting and supporting human growth and potential. A libertarian education, as Paulo Freire writes of it, "must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students" (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 59).

An additional impediment to developing education useful for this transformation is the separation of thought from action in educational theory and practice. The field of composition studies similarly operates according to …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Speech Act Theoretic Semantics, Daniel W. Harris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I defend the view that linguistic meaning is a relation borne by an expression to a type of speech act, and that this relation holds in virtue of our overlapping communicative dispositions, and not in virtue of linguistic conventions. I argue that this theory gives the right account of the semantics-pragmatics interface and the best-available semantics for non-declarative clauses, and show that it allows for the construction of a rigorous compositional semantic theory with greater explanatory power than both truth-conditional and dynamic semantics.

Future Contingents, Freedom, And Foreknowledge, Mohammed Abouzahr

Wayne State University Dissertations

This essay is a contribution to the new trend and old tradition of analyzing theological fatalism in light of its relationship to logical fatalism. All results pertain to branching temporal systems that use the A-theory and assume presentism. The project focuses on two kinds of views about branching time. One position is true futurism, which designates what will occur regardless of contingency. The opposing view is open futurism, by which no possible course of events is privileged over others; that is, there are no soft facts.

A contextualist theory of temporal standpoints, standpoint inheritance, is designed to enhance Priorian temporal …