Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Deliberation Versus Dispute: The Impact Of Argumentative Discourse Goals On Learning And Reasoning In The Science Classroom, Mark Felton, Merce Garcia-Mila, Sandra Gilabert

Faculty Publications

Researchers in science education have converged on the view that argumentation can be an effective intervention for promoting knowledge construction in science classrooms.However, the impact of such interventions may be mediated by individuals’ task goals while arguing. In argumentative discourse, one can distinguish two overlapping but distinct kinds of activity: dispute and deliberation. In dispute the goal is to defend a conclusion by undermining alternatives, whereas in deliberation the goal is to arrive at a conclusion by contrasting alternatives. In this study, we examine the impact of these discourse goals on both content learning and argument quality in science.

Words Of Hate, Words Of Love, Constance K. Lundberg

Vol. 2: Service & Integrity

This devotional address was given to the BYU student body on March 11, 2003.

Seeing Through The Clouds, Sandra Louise Bakke

Theses and Dissertations

A memoir written in vignettes shows how the writer's childhood, family, and faith connect the past with the present. In searching for words to express memory, the writing uncovers and discovers what needs to be said. The selected narratives attest to events and influences that reveal the ever hovering shadow of the past as I see it. Through the clouds of memory, the stories mold themselves until they become the truth, a portrait of the author's self identity as daughter, mother, wife, Christian, and storyteller.

Setting Expectations And Finding Respect And Job Satisfaction As A Technical Writer, Heather Iacobacci-Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Out of an unhappy work experience as a lone technical writer, I became curious about the experiences of other technical writers. Were they similar to mine? If not, what did they know that I did not? What does the literature say? I answered these questions using my personal experiences, literary research, and a three-part study that included an initial survey, an in-depth survey, and personal interviews. I found three common themes: 1) varied definitions and job descriptions for technical writers, 2) a common feeling that many employers do not understand what technical writers do, and 3) a common need to …

Storied Things: A Memoir In Possessions, Erin Pennington

Theses and Dissertations

Storied Things: A Memoir in Possessions is a personal essay collection comprised of stories behind objects of importance to the author. The subjects of the essays range in scope from family heirlooms and artifacts to those objects intended for consumption. The objects explored reflect the author's identity, become the touch points for present and past, indicate connection and disconnect, and serve as catalysts for the author's imagination.

El Concepto De Audiencia Y La Colaboración Entre Iguales En La Revisión De Textos Escritos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

And They Lived Happily For All Eternity, Kyndra Price

Communication Studies

This paper focuses on the four novels of Twilight and what it is about it that has made it become so popular. Also looks into Stephenie Meyer's religion, Mormonism, and the influences and parallels from it in Twilight.

Prosthetic Configurations: Rethinking Relationships Of Bodies, Technologies, And (Dis)Abilities, Amanda Booher

All Dissertations

This work rethinks configurations of and relationships between bodies and prosthetics, emerging from a gap between three particular theoretical perspectives. The first perspective builds from Gender and Disability Studies theories; the second operates within the frame of post–humanity and cyborgean theories, specifically though Bernard Stiegler, Katherine Hayles, and Donna Haraway; the third is a practical/medical perspective, demonstrated through the experiences of people with amputations and medical prosthetics, as well as through the influence of medical visualization technologies. While offering productive and compelling means of complicating and deconstructing boundaries of bodies and prosthetics, these perspectives often operate independently; an integrative perspective …

The Breath We Walk On, Sean Matthew Tribe

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

"The Breath We Walk On" is a collection of poems written during my time at UNLV, instructed by the poetic works of George Oppen, DH Lawrence, William Blake, Alice Notley, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and John Donne, as well as, The Greek Anthology, The Bible, and The Gnostic Gospels. The major ideas forming this collection detail issues of self in relation to the world. The poems that were most instructive from these books explore this idea in the best of their works. Other questions addressed are how can human beings live in a way that inflicts minimal harm to the …

Defining The Role Of Citizens In Dialogic Environmental Risk Communication, Holly Lynn Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

Risk communication has evolved into an interdisciplinary study involving the work of communication specialists, psychologists, attorneys, and rhetoricians. Of particular interest has been the interaction between government and citizens in environmental risk communication. This interaction has been characterized by citizen outrage in response to dictatorial governmental decision-making. In response, researchers have called for true two-way dialogue between government and the public. This project addressses risk communication during the permitting of hazardous waste management facilities under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, identifying the failure to implement two-way dialogue. The project addresses two concerns: (1) the impact of existing legal barriers, …

Composing In A Global-Local Context : Careers, Mobility, Skills., Min-Zhan Lu, Bruce Horner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

When composition students look to their teachers for vocational guidance, both groups should acknowledge that the contexts of such terms as career, mobility, and skills have radically changed. In particular, the economy now links the global with the local, and capitalism has shifted from the fordist model, dominant through much of the twentieth century, to a newer, “fast” model.

Harlot's House, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

From just a concept, Harlot has grown into a space with a character of its own, one that doesn't lie still but continues to move and change and take on the attributes of every new reader, every new creator, every new reviewer, and every new word, image, and sound. It's alive! And it's definitely making good on its reputation as the harlot of the arts. (It doesn't always obey us, either.) This is Harlot's house — we just play here.

Why The Duke Lacrosse Scandal Mattered — Three Perspectives [Reflections On The Duke Lacrosse Case -- Toward An Ethic Of Empathy], Heather Lee Branstetter

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

When a controversial event forces the contemporary American public to engage with important socio-political issues that intersect with constructions of race, gender, and class, the underlying social conditions too often remain unexamined. Our public discourse instead works to sensationalize and polarize discussion of such events; as an effect, participants in the discourse engage in rhetorical strategies that rely on the emotions of indignation, anger, and blame. This essay looks back to the discursive exchanges that arose in response to the Duke lacrosse scandal of 2006. I analyze three "representative" patterns of public response, while also interpreting the cultural conditions that …

Harlot Of The Hearts, Kaitlin Dyer

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This Creative Nonfiction piece, written two years ago and before my promotion to the Harlot editorial board, describes the personal growth I experienced through this project and the wonderful people involved with it during that time. I'm hoping that I can get you to read it without being teased absolutely relentlessly for it, but I know the chances of that are fairly slim. It's worth a shot anyhow, don't you think? Here's to making a fool out of myself.

From "Thank You For Your Support", Brian Russell Hauser

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This excerpt from the first chapter of a memoir-in-progress is an attempt to capture my thoughts and emotions at the moment I realized I was being called to war. I left the U.S. Army to attend graduate school in 1999 only to be involuntarily called back into active military service one year into the War on Terror. Instead of painting a static picture of what I must have felt like when I received the news, I use my mobilization orders (the document itself) as the focus of a sort of running rhetorical critique that allows those thoughts and feelings to …

The Irony Of Youtube: Politicking Cool, Jessie Blackburn

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

In an effort to understand how the internet was used to bring the youth voter to the polls on Election Day and why it is not being used to bring that same constituent into the healthcare reform debate, this article examines one of the most intriguing pieces of online political dialogue to circulate YouTube during the last few weeks of the presidential campaign. The widely circulated YouTube video known as "5 Friends" features high-profile celebrities ironically encouraging viewers to see the act of voting as a "trendy," even "hip" behavior. In this article, I refute the assumption that youth voters …

Frank Donoghue On The Last Professors, Frank Donoghue

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Video in four parts; part 1 embedded; original article with all parts/transcripts are listed below as additional files.

In 2008, Frank Donoghue, associate professor of English at The Ohio State University, published The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities, a no-holds-barred examination of the history and future of humanistic education in the U.S. Donoghue eschews the commonly touted position that the humanities are in a crisis. Corporate influence, he argues, has had the humanities in a defensive position since at least the late 19th century, and we are now on the ropes. Since its …

Surviving Your First Library Job Search, Or, An Explanation Of What I Had To Learn The Hard Way, Re-Produced Here, For You, So That You Are Not Driven To Drink As Well, Steven Hoover

Library Faculty Research

Searching for a library job can be a life-changing ordeal, but try not to let that bother you. The scars that it will leave on your psyche are likely to heal in time. When I was starting the job search process, I found that the professional literature had a lot to say about writing good cover letters and developing solid interview skills but not a lot of information about what searching for a job was really like on a daily basis. Hopefully, after reading this article, you have a little better sense of what to expect during your search, pick …

Twenty-First-Century Writing/Twentieth Century Teachers?, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

"My students are writing in their everyday lives—indeed, their everyday lives are written—but we (teachers—writing teachers, in particular--and education administrators, no doubt nudged by politicians and “the public”) have to a large extent failed miserably in embracing and capitalizing on that writing: email, text messaging, instant messaging, blogging, twittering, responding, video gaming, Second Lifeing. Andrea and Karen Lunsford’s recent longitudinal study of Stanford students has shown the lie to the given that students today don’t write as much as they used to (they are writing much more). Are we becoming the stodgy, ungenerous, rigid English teachers that we ourselves were …

Grades 2-4 Publishing Writing, Maria Cirello

English

This is an English language arts lesson for second through fourth graders (Grades 2-4) on publishing writing. Through this lesson, students will be able to respond to literature by socially interacting with their peers, gain an understanding of a tagline story through this lesson. In addition, they will come up with their own tagline story/poem/song/script. The lesson is tiered into three levels where students are grouped by ability. In each level students will receive a task card and can choose the activity that is of most interest to them.

Grades 3-5 Genres In Literature, Angela Imbriano

English

This is an English language arts lesson for grades three through five on studying genres in literature. Through this lesson students will gain an understanding of the literary elements of each genre, improve comprehension by interpreting, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating written text in order to categorize. Students will also be able to identify characteristics of different genres, select genres that interest them, and be able to compare and contrast different works of literature with each other. This lesson spans over ten days and offers a variety of projects using a tic-tack-toe chart on three tiered levels where students can choose …

The Art In Teaching Writing, Sally Helene Tooley

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of the study was to determine how exceptional writing teachers utilize visual images in their teaching of writing. Specifically, the researcher was interested to discover how drawing might be used as a learning tool in the various stages of the writing process. Nine elementary teachers - recognized as exemplary teachers of writing, completed a detailed questionnaire in reference to their writing instruction. All of the teachers surveyed value visuals highly and recognize the potential impact that drawing can have on writing. However, not all of these teachers are utilizing drawing or visual strategies in their writing instruction on …

Talking Us Into War: Problem Definition By Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson And George W. Bush, Barbara Ellen May Warner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How presidents talk us into war merges the study of problem definition in public policy with the study of rhetoric in communications. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this research analyzes the key words used by two presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush, to persuade us into escalating a war in Vietnam and engaging in a pre-emptive war in Iraq, respectively. The findings indicate that presidents repeat words that are patriotic, emotive, metaphorical, symbolic and religious, tapping into American themes of Manifest Destiny and even predicting dire outcomes if we do not accept their definitions of the dangers …

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 …

Parsing The Plagiary Scandals In History And Law, Arthur Austin

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “In 2002 the history of History was scandal. The narrative started when a Pulitzer Prize winning professor was caught foisting bogus Vietnam War exploits as background for classroom discussion. His fantasy lapse prefaced a more serious irregularity—the author of the Bancroft Prize book award was accused of falsifying key research documents. The award was rescinded. The year reached a crescendo with two plagiarism cases “that shook the history profession to its core.”

Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin were “crossover” celebrities: esteemed academics—Pulitzer winners—with careers embellished by a public intellectual reputation. The media nurtured a Greek Tragedy —two superstars …

“The Negro Speaks Of Rivers” An African Centered Historical Study Of The Selfethnic Liberatory Education Nature And Goals Of The Poetry Of Langston Hughes: The Impact On Adult Education, Sarah E. Howard

Dissertations

The purposes of this historical study were to 1) document the Selfethnic Liberatory adult education nature and goals of the poetry of Langston Hughes (from 1921 to 1933); and 2) to document the impact this poetry had on members of the African Diaspora. In addition, the goal of this research was to expand the historical knowledge base of the adult education field, so that it is more inclusive of the contributions of African Americans.

This study addressed the problem that the historical and philosophical literature of the field does not to any significant degree include the intellectual and adult education …

The Rhetoric Of The Comment Box: Editorial Queries As Arguments And Relationships In Engineering Proposals, Ali Ferguson

All Theses

In today's academic engineering environments, securing funding has become a volatile process, requiring the hard work of and collaboration between many different people. Technical editors are one of these important forces in the proposal writing process, as they help engineer writers to develop their proposals and persuade reviewers of the value of their research. However, to date, there have been very few studies on how editors convince engineer writers to accept their proposed revisions. To fill this gap in the literature, this thesis offers an in-depth style analysis of six proposals in order to determine what technical editors do when …

Deus Ex Machinima: A Rhetorical Analysis Of User-Generated Machinima, Sean Callot

All Theses

Beginning with corporate demonstrations and continuously evolving into today, machinima has become a major expressive art form for the gamer generation. Machinima is the user-centered production of video presentations using pre-rendered animated content, as generated from video games. The term 'machinima' is a combination of 'machine' (from which the video content is derived) and 'cinema' (the ultimate end product). According to Paul Marino and other members of the machinima community, Hugh Hancock, the creator of Machinima.com, first coined the term in 2000. Video productions of this kind have been used in various capacities for the past several years, including instruction …

Totally Devoted: Developing A Holistic Spiritual Formation Course For Western Christian College, Stanley N. Helton

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reports research results from a learning community composed of faculty, support staff, ministry leaders, and students who collaborated in a professor’s development of a new course proposal in Christian spiritual formation at Western Christian College in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The professor used qualitative research methods in the analysis and evaluation of the data produced by the group. The outcome of the project was ethnographic data that informed the creation of the course proposal that included new course application, course syllabus with course schedule, planned activities, bibliography, initial classroom assignments, and initial assessment tools.

Communicative Violence In Romantic Relationships, Christina L. Moore

Honors Theses

Verbal abuse occurs in college relationships, but this form of abuse lacks a clear definition and definitive characteristics. I studied the dialogue that surrounds verbal abuse. I was interested in how verbal abuse was discussed instead of the specific details of the experiences. Verbal abuse was purposely studied separately from physical abuse. Prior research and legal statutes were reviewed before conducting this study. Through the use of focus groups, one-on-one interviews and key informant interviews a broader perspective of verbal abuse was gained. The six salient themes to emerge were (1) how to protect one’s identity, (2) characteristics of the …