Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

"That Doesn't Sound Like Me:" Student Perceptions Of Semiotic Resources In Written-Aural Remediation Practices, Jennifer Johnson Buckner

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines students' composing practices when working with unfamiliar modalities, attending to students' messy material and cognitive negotiations prior to their production of a polished multimodal project. Working from a conceptual vocabulary from composition studies and semiotics, I frame composing as an act of semiotic remediation, attending to students' repurposing and understanding of written and aural materials in composition and their impact on their learning. Specifically, this research uses a grounded theory methodology to examine the attitudes, experiences, and composing practices of first-year writing students enrolled in a composition II course at a private, liberal arts institution in the …

From Viva La Revolutión-Ish To The Free Space: Toward A Theory Of Guerrilla Rhetoric, Cheri Lemieux Spiegel

English Theses & Dissertations

This project addresses the need for a rhetorical theory that is appropriate to the unique needs of certain groups who "write" (in a broad sense of the word) from a position of desperation that results from some kind of tension between their needs or values and the dominant culture. These rhetors demonstrate a suspicion toward mainstream channels through which they might have their voices heard, are often subversive, and tend to be community-oriented.

To develop an appropriate rhetorical lens for studying these groups, I bring notions of guerrilla warfare from a precise point in the historical narrative of the guerrilla …

Stuck In The Last Ice Age: Tracing The Role Of Document Design In The Teaching Materials Of Writing Courses, Erin Duffy Pastore

English Theses & Dissertations

Teaching materials play vital roles in writing classrooms, yet they are understudied genres in English Studies. Teaching materials are inherently visual genres; the document design choices made by teachers illuminate values held about writing and writing classrooms. They are understudied genres, in part, because of the feminized position of composition. A professional writing investigation of the document design of teaching materials offers opportunities to rectify this. I developed a technofeminine genre tracing methodology focused on exploring the visual convention choices made by teachers and how these visual conventions are interpreted by students across the three levels of activity: the activity-driven …

Analyzing Students' Perceptions Of Their Examination Of Writing Competency (Ewc) Readiness In Online First-Year Composition Courses, Harry Pendleton Styles Ii

English Theses & Dissertations

Due to its flexibility and convenience, online instruction is increasingly becoming an attractive, viable option for many students. In 2008, Norfolk State University began promoting online course and program development as a means of "growing the university." Thus, academic departments have increased the number of available online courses and online degree programs. All degree-seeking students are required to pass the Examination of Writing Competency (EWC) which they are eligible to take after completing two semesters of first-year composition. This study, utilizing a survey and site (course) "observation," analyzes the perceptions of students who have completed or nearly completed two semesters …

The Residual Resistance Of The Individual Within The Rhizomatic Hegemony Of The Internet, Emma Katherine Wolfe

English Theses & Dissertations

Networked cyborgs that exist within the non-hierarchical rhizomatic network of the Internet risk losing the concept of their individuality as our identity becomes less important than the group. However, if the rhizomatic network is thought of as a hegemony that exists on the Internet, we can resist this through the residual notion of individual identity. Since cyborgs must perform in order to exist on the rhizomatic network, they can become aware of and perform their individuality through awareness of the computer medium. There are three methods for networked cyborgs to assert their individuality discussed in this thesis.

The first is …

The User Experience Of Participation: Tracing The Intersection Of Sociotechnical Design And Cultural Practice In Digital Ecosystems, David L. Jones

English Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, I combine methods from Technical Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, and User Experience Design to trace the social and creative practices of social web participants. Using actor network theory, I explore the concept of participation as social and creative practice that demands coordinative knowledge work enacted within a cultural space. Leveraging the insight gained from this research, I develop the user experience of participation as a research and design methodology that privileges the movement of people and information in order to structure and re-structure social connections.

I explore this methodology through three intersections between people and technology. …

The Effects Of Digital Technology On Basic Writing, Leslie Denise Norris

English Theses & Dissertations

At this study's research site—a small, Virginia community college—faculty, staff and students use digital technology to share information daily, which could cause a problem for some students: students may need digital literacy instruction before the college requires those courses. Another potential problem is that scholars (Stephens, Houser, and Cowan) indicate that some instructors across the academy treat students negatively if students do not demonstrate digital, rhetorical dexterity when communicating—particular digital skills that some students lack.

For this study, I surveyed basic writing (BW) instructors and students at the research site to learn more about their digital experiences. The surveys yielded …

Sifting The Commonplace: Topoi And The Grounds For Argument In Classical And Modern Rhetoric, Daniel Verlo Cutshaw

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is a reminder that how we consider reasoning to work and its end is very much bound up with how we think about people, what they are, what they can be, and how they do and should live together. Part of the end of the human being is to understand, to understand the Good or God and thus understand herself and her relation to others and her obligation to others; this is something we see in Aristotle's somewhat-spiritual understanding of Ethics and the Human Being. Focusing on reasoning (and its connection to being) in general, instead of accenting …

Woman At The Top: Rhetoric, Politics, And Feminism In The Texts And Life Of Annie Smith Peck, Hannah Scialdone-Kimberly

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this focuses on the autobiographical rhetoric and public identity of Annie Smith Peck, a scholar, mountain climber and woman rhetor from the turn of the century. My qualitative case study of Peck examines how she worked as a woman rhetor to create a popular identity for herself in both mountain climbing and scholarship. I also focus on how Peck worked to identify herself with her audience; here, I use Burke's concept of "identification," as a way of adding to (rather than substituting for) traditional rhetoric. My project brings new findings in that I examine data on Peck …

Facebook And Its Users: Using Grounded Theory To Understand Perceived Interactivity As A Constraint In The Rhetorical Situation, Katie Lee Retzinger Pruitt

English Theses & Dissertations

The general term interactivity has been used in a variety of disciplines to describe phenomena that occur in website interfaces; however, definitions and explanations about what constitutes interactivity and how it functions do not consider the specific ways in which interactivity can function and be perceived by users in specific rhetorical situations. In this study, I address the problems with the literature about general interactivity in writing studies and in other disciplines such as computer science, advertising, marketing, and communication studies by distinguishing between two types of interactivity—functional and perceived. I situate the different types of interactivity rhetorically, which can …

Writing Program Design For Esl Writers, Kacie M. Kiser

English Theses & Dissertations

Research and scholarship in the field of second-language writing have suggested that English as second language students (ESLs) require different modes of instruction than their native English speaking peers within the composition classroom (Matsuda, 1996; Silva, 1994). Yet ESL students are commonly marginalized in institutions' writing programs due to several commonplace beliefs shared by administrators that ESL students can be taught according to the same standards as mainstream students. Therefore, writing program administrators and instructors often do not have specific knowledge of ESL writing issues and, thus, do not know how to pedagogically accommodate these students or design a program …

Memory, Identity, And The Rhetoric Of Quilts, J. Jane Amelon

English Theses & Dissertations

Quilts have been documented as artifacts of past experiences and social circumstances, but the rhetorical aspects have been largely unexplored. In this study, I establish quilting as a form of knowledge about memory, one of the canons of rhetoric. This task requires a rhetorical framework of memory to accomplish its end.

In order to create a rhetorical framework for the study of memory, I examine preservative and generative memory as represented in women's quilts. Previous quilt studies have not addressed these two facets of memory, and previous memory studies have paid little or no attention to quilts. Additionally, this study …

Missing Our Own Audience: The Perceptions Of Audience In The Composition Classroom, Chelsea R. Swick

English Theses & Dissertations

Although considered a critical part of the writing process by scholars such as Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford, the concept of audience is elusive when actually looking for its presence in composition classrooms. Many instructors believe that they provide a framework for understanding and valuing audience awareness in writing but then do not understand when student writing does not show these connections. This raises the question of how audience is being taught in the classroom. The purpose of this study is to determine how audience is being addressed as a pedagogical framework in first year composition classrooms by instructors as …

Questions Of Transfer: Writers' Perspective On Familiar/Unfamiliar Writing Tasks In A Capstone Writing Course, Heather G. Lettner-Rust

English Theses & Dissertations

Understanding what students bring from one writing context to another may the central concern for teachers of writing from elementary school to adult learning. Research from the field of composition studies offers knowledge about writing as process(es) (Emig, 1971; Shaughnessy, 1979; Russell, 1999), as socially constructed performances (Flower & Hayes, 1980; Bartholomae, 1985; Bloom, 1985), and as part of a larger activity system (Russell, 1997). This dissertation ties together theories of writing as an activity in a broader system of tools and outcomes and current research on transfer in writing in order to illustrate writers' perspectives on particular writing tasks. …

Oppressed, Empowered, Compatriot Woman: Rawa's Online Construction Of Gendered Ideographs, Heather L. Floyd

English Theses & Dissertations

In this paper, I define the ideograph and explain its central role in the strategic communication of two very different entities invested in the advancement of women' sights in Afghanistan: the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an Afghan feminist organization, and the Bush Administration, during the early years of the war in Afghanistan. I employ the rhetorical conceptions of Lloyd Bitzer (1966) and Richard Vatz (1999) to explore the Bush Administration's and RAWA's intentions by analyzing textual and visual ideographs in the context of the rhetorical situation.

In its mission and goals, RAWA repeatedly champions women as …

Document Design And Emergency Management Plans, Emily Elizabeth Price

English Theses & Dissertations

Document design is a hybrid field of study that emerged &om both graphic design and professional writing. Emergency management planning occurs at all levels of government and documents processes, procedures and responsibilities of responding agencies to a disaster situation. An examination of the rhetorical elements of audience, context and purpose enables application of appropriate document design in any type of document, including emergency management plans, because the rhetorical situation of a document helps to determine appropriate design cues appropriate for the specific audience, context or purpose of that specific document.

Through relevant research into document design theory and practice, currently …

Fin De Siecle 3.0: Cybernetic Anxieties In Posthuman Science Fiction, Jessica L. Dambruch

English Theses & Dissertations

The examination of technological metaphors as pervasive descriptive structures sustained in the genre of science fiction is most apparent in an analysis of the dialogue between posthuman discourse and science fiction. The literary posthuman, jointly derived from a rich history of socio-cultural anxieties of embodiment and identity dating back to Victorian Gothic literatures, is most recently manifest within the sphere of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk fiction of the late 20th century. A third wave feminist analysis of posthuman technological metaphors is valuable for its potential to apprehend essentialist ideological constructions of gendered identity within science fiction which N. Katherine Hayles and …

Found In Transition: Orality-Literacy Cues Discovered In A Rhetorical Examination Of Platonic Dialogues, Barbara Jane Clopton-Blackwell

English Theses & Dissertations

The shift from an oral society to a literate one occurred in Ancient Greece with the advent of the alphabet (Ong, Orality 90). The Greek culture is generally considered to be a unique example of a culture which developed literacy internally (Havelock Muse 1), Details of the cultural transformation remain unclear, just as the history of the development of the Greek alphabet is rife with rumors of foreign influence and predecessors. The shift was, nevertheless, a strongly internal process, an evolution of culture as much as of technology.

The transition from orality to literacy brought many conflicts. As a philosopher …

Understanding Powerpoint Through Rhetoric, Andrea K. Murphy

English Theses & Dissertations

PowerPoint has been described by critics and proponents alike as ubiquitous. This tool, created primarily for the business world, is now found everywhere from elementary school classes to the highest levels of government. Critics of PowerPoint, like Edward Tufte, charge the software with such crimes as the corruption of data and changing the way that people think. Meanwhile, PowerPoint proponents such as Cliff Atkinson and Richard E. Mayer assert PowerPoint's value as an excellent tool that, if designed properly, can take advantage of the promise of research into multimedia theory.

Even as we reconcile these diverse views within a larger …

Conspiracy Rhetoric In Cyberspace: Jim Condit And The 9/11 Attacks On America, An Analysis Of The Voice And Appeals Used In Condit's Rhetoric, Kreg Allan Kinney

English Theses & Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the voices and appeals used in conspiracy rhetoric which is distributed via the internet. The voices, one measure of the argument's authority, are analyzed and described in depth, with eleven voices identified. These voices and their significance to Condit's text as a whole are discussed. Following the voice analysis, an Aristotelian analysis of the text's appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos is performed to examine the persuasive force of Condit's argument. Finally, the correlation between the voices and the appeals is examined to determine the strength of the correlation between the two constructs and to determine whether …

Human Research Participant Protections: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Two Key Documents, Lisa R. Ballance

English Theses & Dissertations

This case study explores the historical progress of written policy in the field of human research participant protections, leading up to the recent case of several influential suspensions of clinical research at several prestigious academic medical institutions. The IRB process is discussed, including the importance of documentation in the process of managing the board, and the case of suspension at Virginia Commonwealth University is reviewed with attention paid to the drafting of two key documents written for the purpose of reinstating the human subject research charter; (I) the Corrective Action Plan and (2) the Written Policies and Procedures. Each document …

Seeing The One-To-One Writing Conference Through Owl Eyes: Reimagining The Voice Of Tutor, Madeline Yonker

English Theses & Dissertations

The one-to-one, face-to-face writing conference has long been hailed a godsend for struggling writers. The traditional IRL ("in real life") tutorial takes many shapes: (professor and student in office, tutor and student in library, tutor and student in writing center, etc.). When this writing conference moves into the MOO (Multi-User Domain, Object-Oriented), how does the environment affect student-tutor interaction? More specifically, what sorts of adjustments from the "normal" writing conference must be made in order for an effective conversation to occur in the synchronous OWL?

This project brings the one-to-one writing tutorial to distance learning students at Old Dominion University …

Classical Montessori: A Study Of The Classical Rhetorical Canons In Early Montessori Writing Instruction, Deborah E. O'Neil

English Theses & Dissertations

This thesis begins by proposing that all five classical canons are an ideal theory for guiding any writing pedagogy. The majority of the thesis, then, details how Montessori writing instruction synergistically exploits these canons to create a powerful pedagogy. Devised by Maria Montessori in the late 1800s, her instruction displays standard and nonstandard applications of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Because Montessori writing instruction begins in preschool, this thesis concludes with an exploration of the potential benefits of introducing a classical curriculum before college.

Computer Networks And The Teaching Of English As A Second Language: How Networks Affect Second Language Acquisition, Kirstin J. Reed-Perez

English Theses & Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Contemporary Applications Of Classical Ethos, Sheri L. Helsley

English Theses & Dissertations

Ethos is a term from classical Greek rhetoric which, in its contemporary uses and translations, has a wide variety of meanings. Given the multitude and diversity of interpretations and contexts of ethos and other concepts from classical Greek rhetoric, contemporary scholars give serious attention to the relevance of ethos in a wide range of academic areas.

This thesis first explores a portion of the many interpretations of ethos offered by scholars from classical Greece to the present. These definitions are then applied to three areas of contemporary importance in scholarly and pedagogical work: ethos and its relevance to writers, ethos …

Gender, Reason, And Argument In Composition, Lee Ellen Knight

English Theses & Dissertations

Given that virtually all college and university students are required to complete courses in college composition, courses designed to prepare them to think and write in approved academic language, the field is a fertile one for feminist inquiry. Recent work on feminist epistemology and writing theory, combined with Richard Fulkerson's proposed four-part construct of any composition theory, can be used to examine the conventions of argumentative writing. Such writing typically uses adversarial metaphors, often privileges abstract conceptions of knowledge and, furthermore, may be based on metaphors for reason which denigrate emotion and exclude women. New techniques for writing about conflict, …

Teaching Rhetorical Delivery In Freshman Composition, Clayann Gilliam Panetta

English Theses & Dissertations

In recent decades the discipline of English has undergone a complete reexamination from a number of angles. Important pedagogical issues have been raised because of the growth of composition programs, and English departments have even witnessed the birth of several subspecialities within composition studies. Two of these subspeciality areas, rhetorical theory and computer-assisted writing, have received special attention. In this paper, I suggest. that, these two can powerfully coexist and can help students gain insights about writing.

From Aristotle To Ibm: Classical Rhetoric And The Teaching Of Technical Writing, Kathleen S. Scharf

English Theses & Dissertations

Over the past two decades, industry has placed increasing demands on higher education to produce students who can quickly adapt to a variety of writing situations. However, due to the relatively recent birth of technical writing as an academic discipline, technical-writing teachers tend to lack solid foundations on which to build their curricula. In their search for theoretical guidance, many teachers are turning to the classical rhetorical theories of Plato and Aristotle. Typically, teachers are applying Aristotle's notions of invention, arrangement, and style to the teaching of technical writing. Unfortunately, their approach tends to truncate Aristotle's five-canon system by deleting …