Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

How The Other Half Continues To Live: A Rhetorical, Nuanced Redefining Of The Colonia Phenomenon, James Michael Nielsen

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

â??Coloniasâ?? is a colloquial term used along the U.S.-Mexico border to simply mean informal housing practices. This Thesis uses critical discourse analysis theory to analyze the way the media, government, and law theorists perceive and legitimize the colonia phenomenon through discursive texts, leading to a discussion of hegemonic oppression and racism spelled out in a rhetoric of the colonias section. This Thesis also details the history of the colonias with a focus particularly on El Paso County, Texas, looking primarily at the law-based history of this phenomenon. The critical discourse analysis (CDA) conducted was influenced by rhetorical theory, particularly Bitzerâ??s …

Rewriting, Recapturing, Reenvisioning: Writing Assessment Revisited In The Hermeneutic Sphere, Judith Ann Fourzan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation explores the use of hermeneutics in reconsidering the role of writing assessment in composition. The traditional view of writing assessment is negative. In order to change this traditional view and enable composition faculty to utilize writing assessment and a valuable and necessary tool, a hermeneutic sphere offers the best framework upon which to recast writing assessment as part of composition and writing. A hermeneutic sphere is an interpretive methodology that allows for the investigation of any and all aspects of the subject at hand - in this case, writing assessment. The hermeneutic sphere works much like a heuristic …

A Critical Analysis Of The Rhetoric Of Education Reform In The United States, Melanie R. Salome

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation is grounded in research that examines the current education reform policy in the United States through a lens of rhetorical analysis, specifically Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The implication in this study underscores the significance of language and power and how these social constructs synergistically shape changes in policy within society. Specifically, this critical analysis deconstructs the use of language through speech acts and uncovers the reproduction of hegemony by exposing how segments of student populations are marginalized. Exploration conducted within this context explicates the historical significance of reform policy rhetoric, along with a scrutiny of rhetoric from current …

A Rhetorical Theory Of Institutions, Paul Jay Vierra

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

How an institution remembers itself affects its practices and the ensuing knowledge produced. This is a result of the differences between truths and knowledge, which are based on beliefs. Beliefs are defined using either pragmatic language, which is based on observations and can be justified, or fictive language, which cannot be justified. The practices of an institution can be affected by the beliefs of the institution, which in turn affects scholarship. Modern research universities, such as the University of Texas at El Paso, must turn their research gaze not only outward, but also inwards in order to better serve society. …

Animating Composition: 3d Computer-Generated Imaging And Technical Communication Classes, Nikki Ann Agee

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This project examines the rhetorical nature of 3D computer-generated imaging (CGI) and investigates how technical communication instructors can integrate it into their classrooms to foster rhetorical awareness of digital and multimodal composing practices; to foster technical communication competencies; and to teach technical communication genres. To justify 3D CGI's study and use in technical communication classes, the Dissertation first overviews 3D CGI's complex, interdisciplinary history; discusses how professionals across disciplines rhetorically use it; and reviews the lack of scholarship on 3D CGI in Rhetoric and Writing Studies. 3D CGI is next conceptualized as a rhetorical information ecology with micro-, meso-, and …

Responding To Writing Fluency: An Activity Theory Analysis Of Teacher Preparation And Practices, Daliborka Crnkovic Padon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This case study examines eight first-year writing teachers’ practices, philosophies, and preparation with a specific focus on responding to students’ writing fluency. The data is illustrated through the theoretical framework of Activity Theory (Engeström, 1987, 2005), showing various contradictions between the expectations of the Composition Studies field and the actual responding practices. To understand these contradictions, I also examine the position statements issued by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), as well as the bestselling writing teacher preparation books and first-year writing …

Exploring The Institutional And Programmatic Support Systems In Writing Studies For The Non-Traditional Student In California State Universities, Cassandra Dulin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study surveys the learning characteristics of non-traditional students aged 24 years and older. Since the California State University (CSU) system enrolls a significant non-traditional student demographic, understanding the needs of this student base is a critical component to its success. This Dissertation seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the CSU system: its history in the state of California, the context of its students and their needs, the policies and support structures it has in place to support the non-traditional student, how it defines the non-traditional student and how this definition is manifested in its goals and outcomes for …

The Storytelling Of Public Spaces: Rhetoric, Community, And Social Change, Lindsay Kathryn Hamilton

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation examines how public art, broadly defined, contributes to the dialogue of public places. It assumes that public places are filled with rhetoric--from commercial, governmental, private, and other sources. This rhetoric is mainly concerned with the public as audience, receivers of information who are then expected to act in certain ways - following the directions of street signs or entering shops when a window display attracts their attention, for example. Public art, particularly community-based art, can be used to make public places more democratic, providing platforms for people and communities to talk back and reassert their identities. The case …

Translingual Practice & Identity Performance: A Study Of Mongolian Youth On Facebook, Sara Bartlett Large

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study explores the translingual practices and identity performances of five participants on the social networking site, Facebook. The participants in this study are five young adults from Mongolia who participated in the U.S. State Department sponsored English Access Microscholarship program, an intensive English language program for disadvantaged youth in developing countries, from 2009 - 2011. Using a qualitative methodology based on constructivist grounded theory and relying on interviews, questionnaires, and observations of the participants' Facebook pages, this study considers the participants' use of translingual practices to build and maintain capital - linguistic, cultural, and social - as they develop …

Video Composition: Tracing Multimodal Assemblages, Zachary Aaron Warzecka

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Video Composition: Tracing Multimodal Assemblages questions and complicates current approaches to integrating digital videography, and new media at large, within academic environments. Given the field of Rhetoric and Writing Studies' persistent desire, if not struggle, to take on alternative modes of composing, the project provides an exploration of the distinct affordances, composing practices and rhetorical principles of digital videography. In particular, the Dissertation traces how videographic composing processes are taught, taken up, and even paved over within two distinct first year-writing classrooms.

In conducting grounded case studies of multimodal classrooms, the Dissertation draws disciplinary and pedagogical commonplaces into conversation with …

Exploring The Contexts Of U.S.-Mexican Border Writing Programs, Beth Brunk-Chavez, Kate Mangelsdorf, Patricia Wojahn, Alfredo Urzua-Beltran, Omar Montoya, Barry Thatcher, Kathryn Valentine

Selected Works Temporary Series

This chapter reports on the results of a study on the writing programs at New Mexico State University and the University of Texas at El Paso, with particular emphasis on administrative structures for multilingual students. The concept of a transnational writing program is developed and refined. This book won the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Exploring The Contexts Of U.S.-Mexican Border Writing Programs, Beth Brunk-Chavez, Kate Mangelsdorf, Patricia Wojahn, Alfredo Urzua-Beltran, Omar Montoya, Barry Thatcher, Kathryn Valentine

Departmental Papers (English)

This chapter reports on the results of a study on the writing programs at New Mexico State University and the University of Texas at El Paso, with particular emphasis on administrative structures for multilingual students. The concept of a transnational writing program is developed and refined. This book won the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Constructing Negotiated Meaning And Knowledge For The Sol Y Agua Project's Role-Playing Adventure Game Focused On Sustainability Problems In The El Paso-Rio Grande Area, Claudia Chihiro Santiago

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Video games that address environmental sustainability issues could engage students. However, video games make simplifications and establish idealistic expectations that do not resemble real life sustainability challenges and settings. Game developers and scholars believe that depicting the complexity of the real world could help video games become effective educational tools. They call for additional procedures that incorporate information from actual settings and real life situations. Furthermore, scholars have argued that video games addressing sustainability issues can be improved or made more meaningful with the participation of youth from underrepresented populations, e.g., Latinos. The Sol y Agua project at The University …

Peer Review In A Graduate Writing Class: Case Studies Of First-And Second- Language Students, Petcharat Saenpoch

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research explored peer review strategies of L1 (native speakers of English) and L2 (non-native speakers of English) graduate student writers from different disciplines. The focus was on how they revised their writing and which strategies they used. The study was conducted in a Graduate Writing Workshop class at a public university on the U.S. - Mexican border in the United States of America. Five participants were selected as case studies. The researcher collected data by recording face-to-face peer review sessions, observing the class, interviewing the instructor and students, collecting the students' reflections, and gathering the students' writing drafts. The …

Gauging The Alignment Between School And Work: An Activity Theory Analysis Of Police Report Writing Instruction, Marianna R. Hendricks

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation is based on a fifteen-month study of police report writing instruction at one agency, connecting the curriculum at the training academy, field training, and the needs and expectations of multiple report audiences and users. It draws from Rhetorical Genre Studies (Miller, 1984; Russell, 2009), Activity Theory (Engeström, 2008), and Situated Learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Dias, Freedman, Medway, and Paré, 1999) to explore how novices learn a new genre through activity, and how this is complicated by a transition between school and work outside of a university context. Specifically, it focuses on the role of andragogical (rather than …

The Notion Of Cultural Assimilation Into An American Identity: Abstract Or Concrete?, Julie A. Rivera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Assimilation is believed to be the process immigrants follow to become "American." To be American is to be equal to other Americans in societal, employment, and educational opportunities. But this is not and cannot be an outcome of the assimilation process in the United States. There are multiple definitions and expectations of assimilation; too many to allow a clear outcome. This project addresses the complexity associated with all versions of assimilate, the multiple definitions, processes, and outcomes associated with this term, and demonstrates that there is no concrete resolution to an assimilation process due to the multitude of definitions attached …

Inviting Citizen Designers To Design Learning Management System (Lms) Interfaces For Student Agency In A Cross-Cultural Digital Contact Zone, Rajendra Kumar Panthee

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Inviting Citizen Designers to Design Learning Management System (LMS) Interfaces for Student Agency in a Digital Cross-Cultural Contact Zone assesses how FYC students from periphery cultural and linguistic backgrounds perceive Blackboard Learn and other learning management system (LMS) interfaces. The report of an empirical study shows that the current LMS design does not provide writing students in general and writing students from periphery cultural and linguistic backgrounds in particular an opportunity of a higher-level interactivity with the LMS. The current design neither includes periphery students' cultural and linguistic norms and values, nor does it allow them to affect the existing …

Presidential Rhetoric: From The War On Drugs To The Battle Over Legalization, Manuel Antonio Gutierrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis analyzes the rhetoric executed by different presidents in order to sustain the battle against drugs. The war on drugs is one of the longest battles the United States has fought. From its inception under President Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, the war on drugs has become an institutionalized presidential program responsive to public demands for action against the spread of illegal drugs. Over the airwaves, presidential rhetorical overtures on the matter go hand in hand with the drug war on the streets. However, although presidential rhetoric remained largely consistent on combating and criminalizing drugs over much of the …

Constructing A Participatory Citizenship: Rhetoric And Agency Of The Revolutionary Association Of The Women Of Afghanistan, Lauren M. Connolly

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This project addresses the various constructions of citizenship and considers the concept of a participatory citizenship. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) is an example of how citizenship activities are performed by a transnational feminist organization and how the members' actions contrast with the frames about Afghan women provided by the United States government and news outlets. Feminist critical discourse analysis is used to analyze texts from these groups in order to consider how citizenship is constructed and/or denied to othered women. The texts analyzed demonstrate how colonial concepts impact Afghan women and feminist rhetorical studies demonstrates …

The Rhetorical Making Of A Personhood: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey Into Literacies And Subjectivities, Viethang Thi Pham

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the form of an autoethnography, an examination of "the private troubles of individuals" and their connection to "public issues and to public responses to those troubles" (Denzin viii), this Dissertation demonstrates the impact of a country's history on its people's lives. According to Bourdieu's theory, changes in field trigger changes in habitus and capital; this interrelatedness "offers an epistemological and methodological approach to a historicized and particular understanding of social life" (Thomson 81). From an eyewitness' perspective, this writer/ethnographer narrates her stories/experiences in Viet-Nam and in America to shed light on her cultural and linguistic struggles, her transitions through …

Toward A Theory Of Productivity Problems In Graduate Student Writing, Craig Wynne

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This case study focuses on the productivity problems that faced the dissertation/thesis writing practices of fourteen graduate students at a public university on the U.S./Mexico border. The author facilitated a series of group sessions designed to help graduate students in various disciplines cultivate awareness of Donald Murray's notion of "writing as process," as well as knowledge of writer's block and writing anxiety. Sessions also served to cultivate positive self-talk with relation to the writing process, an introduction to mindfulness meditation, and basic time management skills. Four types of data were collected: 1. field notes from participant discussion during workshop sessions; …

Theoretical Communities Of Praxis: The University Writing Center A Cultural Contact Zone, Randall William Monty

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The fundamental purpose of Theoretical Communities of Praxis: The University Writing Center as Cultural Contact Zone is to investigate the situatedness of Writing Center Studies, defining it as an autonomous (sub)discipline and interdisciplinary contact zone within the larger discipline of Rhetoric and Composition. In order to meet this objective, a "Communities of Praxis" methodological and theoretical framework, based on scholarship of Critical Discourse Analysis, ecocomposition, and Contextualist Research Paradigm, is applied in the analysis of a variety of WCS discourses. In doing so, WCS is repositioned as a series of interrelated, triangulated contact zones that are based on collaborative interactions …

Bureauspeak: Discovering How Elected Officials Perceive Municipal Employees' Dis/Respectful Rhetorical Practices, Teresa Quezada

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Bureauspeak analyzes bureaucrats' rhetorical practices within municipal governments. This project asserts that respectful rhetorical practices have always been implicit in traditional notions of rhetoric, but have not been explicitly addressed. This project describes the political epistemic field (PEF), formed by discourse, audience, reality and rhetor, that is created within a municipal environment where policy deliberations occur. The PEF allows for interactions among the four elements and results in changes to all the elements as the interactions occur. The policy-making audience in the PEF expects their bureaucrat-rhetor to enact respectful rhetorical practices, but in many instances those expectations are also implicit …

Analyzing The Effectiveness Of Al Qaeda's Online Influence Operations By Means Of Propaganda Theory, David K. Lyons

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis sought to explore the use of propaganda by al Qaeda through the lenses of established propaganda theorists and theories. Through analyzing former al Qaeda releases and case studies in the context of propaganda theory this thesis established a clearer understanding of the effectiveness of al Qaeda's propaganda. After analyzing the propaganda and case studies it was discovered that the rate of those engaging in attacks based on al Qaeda's online influence operations is insignificant. The concerns that al Qaeda is recruiting numerous individuals to engage in attacks based on its online propaganda operations might be overstated and while …

Rewriting Revision: A Case Study Of First Year Composition Students, Myshie M. Pagel

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This case study focuses on the revision practices of seven first year composition students at a U.S./Mexico border community college. The analysis of revision practices is framed by the negotiation of dissonance between gist and intention. Three types of data were collected: screen captured writing sessions, instructor comments, and participant interviews. The data was analyzed through a grid based on Faigley and Witte's taxonomy grid of revision changes. This included three major categories: surface level, meaning preserving, and text base level changes. As in past studies on revision, the participants in this case study followed a similar trend. A majority …

(Re)Mapping The Rhetorical Situation: Toward A Transactional Networked Ecology, Ramesh Kumar Pokharel

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The existing theories of the rhetorical situation that focus on and around Bitzer's theory define the rhetorical situation as something "real," "genuine," "objective" based on historic reality. I believe that this modernist containment to perceive the rhetorical situation as fixed entities limit our understanding about it in a broader sense, because it cannot capture the changed meaning that naturally exists with the impact of new media and technology. With the advent of new media and technology, the notion of rhetorical situation also has changed and thus there is an exigence of a new theory of the rhetorical situations that better …

The Service-Learning Writing Classroom: A Safe Haven For Articulating Difficult Stories About Whiteness And Race, Adam Webb

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Service-learning is an educational method that is usually examined for its practical applications and outcomes, and can help instructors and students to realize the connective aspect of classroom discussions, assignments, activities and discourses that occur within the community. In this respect, "connective" refers to more than just bridging the distance between the classroom and community using service-learning. Instead, it acts like the "connective human tissue" that unites individuals together. Individuals as biological beings themselves are the connective tissue that unites them linguistically, physically and emotionally. In essence, the connective human tissue that unites individuals together creates an intertwined community through …

Writing Across Institutions: Studying The Curricular And Extracurricular Journeys Of Latina/O Students Transitioning From High School To College, Todd Ruecker

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is based on a year and a half multi-institutional study of seven Mexican American students transitioning from high school to a community college or a university. It explores the differences between high school, community college, and university literacy environments, focusing on the following: the impact of standardized testing at the high school level, the role of rhetoric and composition disciplinary expertise in shaping first-year composition (FYC) curricula, writing in the disciplines, and the digital divide between institutions. Seven case studies examine students' literacy experiences across institutions as well as both challenges and sources of support in and beyond …

The Historical Context During The 1964-1984 Period Of The National Writing Project: Its Importance To The Fields Of Rhetoric, Composition, And Teacher Education, Kay Lester Mooy

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Historical Context of the National Writing Project (NWP) is a broad inquiry into the core values and importance of theory-driven pedagogical "best practices." This dissertation situates the teaching of writing within societal changes as well as changes in the disciplines. The researcher interviewed six primary sources (all participants in the first summer institute of the NWP) in a total of nine interviews. The research also reviews secondary sources and examines the personal documents of Gray twice, once before they were archived and once after archival procedures were begun. Results indicate that in the early days of the NWP theory …

Era[C]Ing Diversity: A Critical Rhetorical Approach To Race And The New Citizen, Theresa Donovan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Era[c]ing Diversity is guided by a broad question of inquiry regarding the formation and reformation of subjectivity through the filling out of "blank" forms such as the application for naturalization. This dissertation examines how the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service uses and distributes race, and how subjects participate in the social reproduction of the dominant ideology to create a society where individuals think: I am White; He/she is Black, or Asian, or Native American etc. Era[c]ing Diversity examines how the N-400 constructs the new citizen and the ways that permanent legal residents of Mexican origin disrupt or reify this construct. …