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Rhetoric and Composition Commons™

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2009

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Articles 31 - 60 of 84

Full-Text Articles in Rhetoric and Composition

Lines Of Nation, Lines Of Flight : Retroping Immigration Policy, Jessica Thaller May 2009

Lines Of Nation, Lines Of Flight : Retroping Immigration Policy, Jessica Thaller

Honors Theses

This thesis studies the rhetoric of U.S. immigration policy, specifically as related to Mexican immigration to the United States. Using Kent Ono and John Sloop’s theory of discourse, it examines the rhetoric employed in the Secure Fence Act (SFA) of 2006 and its turns towards wartime rhetoric, immigrant dehumanization, and immigrant deviance. It then contradicts these turns to those seen in the rhetoric of Hometown Associations (HTAs), “outlaw” discourses that operate by systems of logic different from the dominant logic of the SFA. HTAs emphasize family/cultural connections, unique financial considerations, and the liminal existence of the immigrant. More importantly, they …

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Accommodating Death: An Examination Of The Role Of Scientific Accommodation In Forensic Anthropology, Christina D'Elia May 2009

Accommodating Death: An Examination Of The Role Of Scientific Accommodation In Forensic Anthropology, Christina D'Elia

All Theses

Scientists have strong motivations to communicate with the public, yet this communication is often ineffective. As Ann Penrose and Steven Katz explain in Writing in the Sciences, there are three major reasons why scientists communicate with the public: moral, economic, and political (177). Despite these reasons for scientists to communicate with the public, it is not always easy for this communication to take place, due to divisions of audience and discourse community, as well as the scientists’ biases against communicating with the public. Scientific accommodation helps to bridge this gap.
In some fields, like forensic anthropology, scientists write their own …

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Visual Argument Reconsidered: 'Objective' Theory And A Classical Rhetorical Approach, Daniel Richards May 2009

Visual Argument Reconsidered: 'Objective' Theory And A Classical Rhetorical Approach, Daniel Richards

All Theses

Visual argument is a relatively new discipline within the field of visual rhetorics. Consequently, visual rhetoricians have presented new theories of visual argumentation without fully considering the possibilities of existing textual methodologies as explanatory tools—especially classical rhetorical devices. This thesis presents a methodology for examining and creating visual arguments based on the concepts of topoi and figures of speech. I contend that these classical rhetorical devises embody an “objective” understanding of visual communication that shows one way of bridging the empiricism/rationalism debate in epistemology. By demonstrating that knowledge comes from the necessary interplay of perception and conception, I attempt to …

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Rhetorical Inventions/Inventional Rhetorics: Opening Possibilities, Justin Hodgson May 2009

Rhetorical Inventions/Inventional Rhetorics: Opening Possibilities, Justin Hodgson

All Dissertations

This work seeks to open possibilities for rhetorical invention, or perhaps more accurately, to indicate how changes in technology (and the essences of technology) are opening radical possibilities not just for rhetorical invention but also for how we speak, how we think, or even how we live in our worlds. It traces shifts in rhetorical invention: beginning from primary oral cultures, which made linkages via a process of 'AND' or divine inspiration, represented by the +, to literate cultures (or print-cultures), which predominantly invent via analogy and discovery, represented by the =, and to electronic cultures, which revel in the …

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Some Change, John Oddo Apr 2009

Some Change, John Oddo

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This short essay compares the war-time rhetoric of George W. Bush with the rhetoric of Barack Obama. The eerie similarities between the two lead me to question Obama's promise of change.

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Who Are You What Are You Why?, Christopher Higgs, Caitlin Newcomer Apr 2009

Who Are You What Are You Why?, Christopher Higgs, Caitlin Newcomer

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

The two of us created "Who Are You What Are You Why?" together, as an experiment predicated on Wittgenstein's statement: "Do not forget that a poem, even though it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information." We began this experiment by separately composing a series of non-contiguous questions and then "mashing" them together to form a virtual dialogue that provides only questions, never answers. What are the effects of composing using recognizable language in unrecognizable configurations? Where is the demarcation between sense and nonsense? How can we form meaning from seeming …

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Toward Death And Violence – Rhetorical And Creative Potential; A Reader's Text, Giovana Driussi Apr 2009

Toward Death And Violence – Rhetorical And Creative Potential; A Reader's Text, Giovana Driussi

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

I wrote this essay for readers, hoping to provoke, inspire, enrage and enjoy. Death and violence have been painful and productive forces in my life, and specifically in my writing. In this essay I share some of these experiences and relate them directly to writing, as well as public, political, rhetorical, and historical topics. My desire is to affect personal and public reflection, and to display rhetorical agency in both spheres, thus demonstrating that such divisions, and most if not all binaries, are social constructs that beg for challenge.

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Harlot's Progress, Harlot Editors Apr 2009

Harlot's Progress, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This is an introduction to the second issue of Harlot -- a revealing look at the arts of persuasion.

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Comic Fans And Convergence Culture: Community Of Readers In The Master Of Kung Fu, David Edward Beard, Kate Vo Thi-Beard Apr 2009

Comic Fans And Convergence Culture: Community Of Readers In The Master Of Kung Fu, David Edward Beard, Kate Vo Thi-Beard

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

As a member of several fan cultures, I have an interest in the processes that fan audiences use to construct and reconstruct the texts they consume. Additionally, I think of the way (written, oral, and musical) texts construct the individuals who constitute their audiences. Examining Master of Kung Fu provided the perfect combination of these two interests. -- David

My fascination with representations of Asians in the media began with The Destroyer book series that I read as a teen. While the character Remo at first resisted his fate, he quickly embraced his identity as the next Master of Sinanju. …

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Speaking In Translation: Obama's Interview With Al Arabiya, John C Landreau Apr 2009

Speaking In Translation: Obama's Interview With Al Arabiya, John C Landreau

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This is a response to the Obama interview with Al Arabiya on January 26. I highlight the contrast between Obama's rhetoric now and the war talk that characterized the Bush years.

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The Annotated Obama Poster, Ben Mccorkle Apr 2009

The Annotated Obama Poster, Ben Mccorkle

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

For this piece, I wanted to share some observations about Shepard Fairey's iconic poster given the timeliness of the text, not only in the wake of the 2008 presidential campaign, but also because of the still-pending Fair Use lawsuit against the Associated Press, the recent installation of the poster in the Smithsonian, and the debut of Fairey's "Supply and Demand" exhibition currently on display at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. Additionally, I wanted to comment on the piece in a way that was not only visually interesting -- thus the annotated break-out commentary -- but also in a way that …

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I, Barack Hussein Obama: Virtual Crowds And Participatory Politics In The 2009 Inauguration, Elizabeth Losh Apr 2009

I, Barack Hussein Obama: Virtual Crowds And Participatory Politics In The 2009 Inauguration, Elizabeth Losh

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Pundits in the mainstream media have a tendency to chastise Internet users for making their private lives public and for putting the most intimate or mundane details of their personal experiences into digital files for all to gawk at online. As a scholar of rhetoric, my fear is that these practices won't be public enough now that so many people rely on corporate cloud computing to store and share photos, videos, and journal entries, and social network sites often function as the Internet equivalent of gated communities. At the same time corporate copyright regimes are claiming intellectual property rights to …

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Patriots, Plumbers, And Our Better Angels: The Establishment Of Ethos In The Rhetoric Of The 2008 Presidential Campaigns Of Sens. John Mccain And Barack Obama, Ryan Matthew Hehner Apr 2009

Patriots, Plumbers, And Our Better Angels: The Establishment Of Ethos In The Rhetoric Of The 2008 Presidential Campaigns Of Sens. John Mccain And Barack Obama, Ryan Matthew Hehner

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The focus of this thesis will be the rhetoric of the candidates for the two major parties—Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic President Barack Obama (who in this thesis will be referred to under the title he held during the campaign, Senator Obama). This thesis will examine the various ways in which the two candidates attempted to establish ethos during their respective campaigns.

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Zu Nietzsches Stil, Babette Babich Apr 2009

Zu Nietzsches Stil, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Das Thema von Nietzsches Stil ist hier sowohl von Bedeutung als Frage nach dem Wesen jenes Stils wie auch als Frage danach, was er in philosophischer, nicht einfach in asthetischer oder literarischer Hinsicht erreicht hat. Hier wird nachgelegt, dass die Kunst des Lesens, die technische Kunst des hörens als eine Art des Hörens in einer philosophischen Seinsweise zu verstehen sei. Damit setzt sie nicht allein eine diskursive Kunst musikalischen Gespürs seitens des schreibenden, sondern eigentlich auch seitens des Lesenden voraus. Untersucht wird vor allem, Nietzsches Aphorismos im Rahmen des Antisemitismus. Diese außerordentlich komplexe innere Ausrichtung von Nietzsches Stil ist die …

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Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, Priscilla Finley Apr 2009

Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, Priscilla Finley

Library Faculty Research

A worthwhile update to the first edition (2004), this volume combines a dictionary-style thesaurus with notes, comparisons, and brief essays from notable contemporary writers and editors that clarify complexities and ruminate on points of contention.

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Leigh And Lorne: Lost In The Credit Maze, Tatanya Stewart Mar 2009

Leigh And Lorne: Lost In The Credit Maze, Tatanya Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Leigh and Lorne: Lost in the Credit Maze is a tool designed to teach teenagers, ages 15-17, about key consumer credit terms and concepts. Included in this document is the "Leigh and Lorne Credit Adventure Series," which is a collection of short stories introducing adolescents to key credit terms and concepts. The document also consists of the storyboard for an interactive video game, "Leigh and Lorne: Lost in the Credit Maze," the rules for the interactive game, initial questions for the game. A reflective essay notes the theories consulted when designing the project and explains how they influenced the final …

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Communication Handbook For Beginning Entrepreneurs, Janet Emanuella Harris-George Mar 2009

Communication Handbook For Beginning Entrepreneurs, Janet Emanuella Harris-George

Theses and Dissertations

This document is an unpublished book manuscript termed Communication Handbook for Beginning Entrepreneurs. It consists of step by step instructions to assist students to compose documents they will encounter in a business setting.

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Wing Beats And Rice Fields, Tommy Alan Bennett Mar 2009

Wing Beats And Rice Fields, Tommy Alan Bennett

Theses and Dissertations

"Wing Beats and Rice Fields" is my story about my outdoor adventures that took place in the fields of Stuttgart and across the Grand Prairie of Arkansas. These fields helped me realize my greatest triumphs as a hunter and as a human being. My memoir reflects my respect and admiration for nature and the waterfowl I hunted. It also provides a message of hope through one of life's toughest challenges.

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Professional Writing Studies Research Guide, Mary Wilson Mar 2009

Professional Writing Studies Research Guide, Mary Wilson

Research Guides & Subject Bibliographies

Subject guide for researching issues in professional writing using the resources of the Sturgis Library.

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Bonding, Bridging, And Social Change, Nancy L. Nester Mar 2009

Bonding, Bridging, And Social Change, Nancy L. Nester

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the efficacy of using Robert Putnam’s theory of social capital as the framework for forming long-term reciprocal relationship amongst Writing students, faculty, clients and staff of a community-based agency. In particular, I explore the ways the bonding and bridging relationships that Robert Putnam describes provide a conceptual framework for harnessing the gravitational push and pull we experience daily, as we cooperate and collaborate in various ways depending on circumstance and purpose. To illustrate my point, I provide an account of an on-going relationship between my students and the clients and staff of the James L. Maher Center, …

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Textual Machinery: Authorial Agency And Bot-Written Texts In Wikipedia, Krista Kennedy Jan 2009

Textual Machinery: Authorial Agency And Bot-Written Texts In Wikipedia, Krista Kennedy

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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Dangerous Writing: Understanding And Political Economy Of Composition, Tony Scott Jan 2009

Dangerous Writing: Understanding And Political Economy Of Composition, Tony Scott

All USU Press Publications

Building on recent work in rhetoric and composition that takes an historical materialist approach, Dangerous Writing outlines a political economic theory of composition. In addition to work by others, Tony Scott also draws from two of his own studies--a classroom ethnography of an upper division writing class that was focused on labor and institutionality, and a qualitative study of the function of textbooks within a writing program. The book connects pedagogical practices in writing classes to their broader political economic contexts, and argues that the power of students' writing is prevented from reaching its potential by pressures within the academy …

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Organic Writing Assessment: Dynamic Criteria Mapping In Action, Bob Broad, Linda Adler-Kassner, Barry Alford, Jane Detweiler Jan 2009

Organic Writing Assessment: Dynamic Criteria Mapping In Action, Bob Broad, Linda Adler-Kassner, Barry Alford, Jane Detweiler

All USU Press Publications

Educators appropriately strive to create "assessment cultures" (Huot 2002) in which they integrate evaluation into teaching and learning and match assessment methods with best instructional practice. But how do teachers and administrators establish the values that underlie their evaluations? Bob Broad's 2003 volume, What We Really Value, introduced dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) as a method for eliciting locally-informed, context-sensitive criteria for writing assessments. The impact of DCM on writing assessment practice is just beginning to emerge as more and more writing departments and programs adopt, adapt, or experiment with DCM approaches. For the authors of Organic Writing Assessment, the DCM …

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A Burkean Method For Analyzing Environmental Rhetoric, John Stewart Jan 2009

A Burkean Method For Analyzing Environmental Rhetoric, John Stewart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The work of Kenneth Burke provides a method of rhetorical analysis that is useful in terms of bringing features of texts to the surface that are not readily apparent, such as how they produce identification in their audiences, and in revealing rhetorical factors related to but outside the text, for example the authors' motives. Burke's work is wide-ranging and open to many interpretations, so it can be difficult to apply. This study condenses some of his more important concepts into a simplified method which has several practical applications; it focuses on how Burke's theories can be applied to analyzing environmental …

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Welcome To The World Of Tomorrow Today: Matt Groening's Futurama As Posthuman Mediator, Amanda Jill Taylor Jan 2009

Welcome To The World Of Tomorrow Today: Matt Groening's Futurama As Posthuman Mediator, Amanda Jill Taylor

Theses Digitization Project

In this thesis an explanation of posthuman theory along with a close analysis of both Fry and the robot Bender. These analyses respectively show how we are already posthuman as well as the material limitations of posthuman subjectivity.

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Ballads As "Poetic" Rhetoric In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Norma Jeanne Peterson Jan 2009

Ballads As "Poetic" Rhetoric In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Norma Jeanne Peterson

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis explores the rhetorical effect ballads have had as a medium of argument for those who were "free of literary influences and fairly homogeneous in character." The ballad, speaks to us poetically and by tradition reveals human interests emerging from distress and frustration. Three men (John Lomax, Alan Lomax and Harry Smith) were instrumental in collecting and recording early ballads before they were lost; this effect has lingered from an early period in time to the 1960s, and beyond when the value of ballads was rediscovered.

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Inviting Trouble: The Subversive Potential Of The Outsider Within Standpoint, Jane Hindman Jan 2009

Inviting Trouble: The Subversive Potential Of The Outsider Within Standpoint, Jane Hindman

Publications and Research

Jane E. Hindman’s “Inviting Trouble” makes the case for the collection of disparate approaches to critical disruption by reinforcing critical reflection as a generative practice that challenges subordinating silence. Hindman asserts “inviting troublesome questions enhances a healthy system” (100). She argues that anger, as a part of the trouble provoked by critical introspection, has a useful function in the struggle against the silencing of colonial influence.

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Ritual Rhetoric In Ancient Near Eastern Texts, James W. Watts Jan 2009

Ritual Rhetoric In Ancient Near Eastern Texts, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

Many ancient Near Eastern texts reflect a concern for ritual accuracy. They depict ancient kings justifying their ritual practices on the basis of supposedly invariable tradition and, frequently, on the basis of old ritual texts. They also invoke ritual acts and omissions to explain the course of past history and to promise future punishments and rewards. In fact, very many texts assert that ritual performance is the most determinative factor in the success or failure of rulers and nations. The rhetoric of ritual therefore pervaded royal propaganda as well as temple texts. It also provided the principal rationale for criticizing …

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Manhattan Beach Cleaners: A Teacher’S Misreading, Cheryl Hogue Smith Jan 2009

Manhattan Beach Cleaners: A Teacher’S Misreading, Cheryl Hogue Smith

Publications and Research

This article explores the value of understanding student misreadings.

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Storytelling As Soul-Tuning: The Ancient Rhetoric Of Valmiki's Ramayana, Mari Lee Mifsud Jan 2009

Storytelling As Soul-Tuning: The Ancient Rhetoric Of Valmiki's Ramayana, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In this essay, I illuminate rhetorical dimensions of storytelling as soul-tuning in Valmiki's Ramayana. I explore how the story's historical, reflexive, and paratactic rhetoric invites experiencing it not just as Rama's story, but as the telling of Rama's story. The telling is the tuner of the soul, as it creates an indelible impression on human memory of divine revelation.

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