Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Bad Rhetoric: Towards A Punk Rock Pedagogy, Michael Utley

All Theses

This research is an analysis of early 1980s American hardcore through the lens of rhetorical theory in an effort to learn lesson from punk rock that can be applied to composition pedagogy. It relies heavily on the Kenneth Burke's Language as Symbolic Action and A Rhetoric of Motives, Lloyd Bitzer's The Rhetorical Situation and Michel Foucault's Discourse on Language. The theories are applied the genre of punk rock in an effort to expose the rhetorical strategies employed by the movement to actively question and resist the dominant norms and values of the era. Two case studies are presented - an …

"This Is Just, Like, A Random Article?": The Reading Resources Of Six First-Year College Composition Students, Alex Goochey

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

For students enrolled in First-Year Writing courses, reading is an important aspect of the writing process; for this reason, reading has been discussed and researched in a variety of ways by composition scholars. Departing from the long and ongoing debate about what types of texts should be read by composition students, this thesis explores both the ways that students read when they arrive at their first-year composition courses and how they make sense of the new, and often difficult, things they are asked to read there. Using verbal protocols, a research method developed by Michael Pressley and Peter Afflerbach, I …

Rhetoric And Composition Constructs “The Veteran”: An Examination Of The Student Veteran Identity As Found In Ccc And Tetyc Since September 11, 2001, Linda Gail Smith

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on David L. Wallace’s assertion that the field of rhetoric and composition needs to interpret and present our research into cultural communities in ways that no longer tacitly assume our rhetorical choices are neutral, I present a critique of 19 articles from College Composition and Communication and Teaching English in the Two-Year College that contained one or more instances of five keywords and direct references to student veterans. Using a theoretical framework built from theory by James Berlin, Thomas Huckin, and Marguerite Helmers, I expose various stereotypical and problematic tropes we rely on and re-create in our scholarly writing …

What I Mean When I Say Autism: Re-Thinking The Roles Of Language And Literacy In Autism Discourse, Bernice M. Olivas

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Literacy studies are deeply intertwined with issues of identity. Olivas explores the ways that public discourses of autism have constructed an autism “Identity kit,” as defined by James Paul Gee, which harms autistic students and communities more than it helps. This is particularly true for adult autistics. Considering the growing presence of the autistic learner in the composition classroom, it is important to understand how public discourse influences classroom dynamics. Drawing heavily on her own experience as the mother of autistic sons and on Melanie Yergeau’s “Circle Wars: Reshaping the Typical Autism Essay,” Olivas explores how her children have been …

Nonprofit Ethos And Identity: An Interdisciplinary Analysis Of People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals' Websites, Jessica Marie Kokinos-Havel

Theses and Dissertations

Research in the field of nonprofit studies tells us that nonprofit organizations have the inherent ability to provide communities with a distinctive kind of social capital in the form of collective identity and group participation. This identity function is one of the defining characteristics of the nonprofit sector. This study involves a rhetorical analysis of four websites maintained by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Each website (PETA.org, PETA Prime, peta2, and PETAKiDS) is aimed at reaching different age groups. This provides us with a unique rhetorical perspective into how the ethos of a nonprofit organization can …

The Police/Civilian Communication Dynamic: How To Not Create More Problems Than You Were Called To Handle, Sean M. Berryman

Theses and Dissertations

This project examines how police officers communicate with civilians they come into contact with on a routine basis. First is examined how young recruits are taught to take charge by using voice commands and command presence. The fact that this type of personal action overtakes one's character during this training is also discussed, as well as the fact that officers have a hard time "turning off" this command presence type of personality. The second section of the project is written directly to the officers on the street in an effort to teach them how to communicate effectively without talking to …

One Woman Writing: A Case Study, Linda Marie Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

After struggling to learn academic writing in college and taking a leave of absence because I could not learn it fast enough, after listening to other Black women who also struggled to learn academic writing in college and who also took a leave of absence because they could not learn it fast enough, and after watching Black female students in my college composition classes struggle to learn academic writing and the technology associated with it and dealing with their resistance and their literal or figurative withdrawal from my classes, I decided to talk to three Black women about their experience …

The Urban Garden Discourse Community: An Organic Form Of Technical Writing, Adrea Etta Coley

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to inform the audience about the methods used to process food in America and the importance of urban gardening. Technical writing skills were used to create a manual and a storyboard for a video game to teach novices how to create a home or community garden. The Basic Foundations for Organic Gardening is a manual produced from the journal notes during the author's first year of training in the garden. This project also explores the theory of video games as a tool for teaching. A storyboard was developed for a future interactive video game, …

Disciplinary Permeations: Complicating The "Public" And The "Private" Dualism In Composition And Rhetoric, Erica E. Rogers

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As Composition and Rhetoric rose in disciplinary status and academic legitimacy the discourse practice of negation, the positioning of texts in oppositional binaries that set the “new” over the “old,” the “novel” over the “familiar,” became embedded in academic tradition, seeming to be an inherited part of scholarship instead of an individual’s rhetorical choice and deliberate ethos strategy. Negation, when one idea or set of ideas constructed by another is critiqued, advocated, and/or redeveloped by another scholar, is a discourse practice firmly established in the Rhetorical Tradition as part of Socratic dialogues, reappears in “modern rhetoric”, and remains today as …

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Are You A Writing Bully? Considerations For Teachers And Students, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article focuses on discussing the implications of bullying in writing when teaching professional writing in English classrooms. It states some of the forms of bullying include through memorandums with threatening and aggressive languages, forwarded emails aiming to embarrass, and general directives. The authors relate their experiences of being bullied and as a bully to others. It presents examples to help students consider issues related the audience, format, and timing in writing.

Toward A Working Theory Of Neurorhetorics, Jeffrey L. Honnold

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This piece makes the claim that rhetoric is first philosophy--before philosophy, epistemology, ontology, or any other field--or that rhetoric is, at the least, on equal footing as these fields because:

empathy--and thusly the impulse for communication--is physiologically hardwired into humans; special distinctions between human and animal are largely artificial constructions, as is evidenced by neurosciences; "hard" science, in the form of neurosciences, is providing entrance points & opportunities for rhetoric to raise its status within the academy; and said neurosciences, in addition to empathy studies, have shown strong evidence supporting linguistic and evolutionary links between humans and other species, thereby …

Flavor Of Slo 2012: An Application Of Communication Principles In Event Planning, Allison Sasscer

Communication Studies

Flavor of SLO is a fundraising event put on by Cal Poly students to raises thousands of dollars to benefit the local non-profit United Way. In the almost year long process of planning and implementing the event, the basics of small group, persuasion, and organizational communication played a part of the shaping and execution of the event. This paper recounts how various aspects of the communication discipline played a part in making the event successful and how it contributed to achieving the goals of improving education, income and health for San Luis Obispo County.

Book Review - The Publish Or Perish Book: Your Guide To Effective And Responsible Citation Analysis, Michael K. Barbour

Education Faculty Publications

Book review by Michael K. Barbour.

Harzing, Anne-Wil. The Publish or Perish Book: Your Guide to Effective and Responsible Citation Analysis. Melbourne, Australia: Tarma Software Research Pty Ltd., 2011.

Food For Thought: Sustainability, Community-Engaged Teaching And Research, And Critical Food Literacy, Dianna Winslow

Writing Program – Dissertations

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Marion Nestle's Food Politics. Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. The films Food, Inc. and The Future of Food. Debates over the industrialized food and farming system currently circulating in nonfiction books, documentaries, and public forums have immediacy for college students--and for anyone who eats. Food for Thought: Sustainability, Community-Engaged Teaching and Critical Food Literacy argues that fostering the development of critical food literacy is necessary for college students to have a voice in current and future public conversations on food politics and environmental sustainability, and the social …

The Persistence Of Vengeance From Early Modern England To Postmodern New York, Dominic M. Sevieri

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As a passing glance at the popular texts of any given period reveals, the subject of vengeance is nearly inescapable; on billboards, websites, and year end lists, revenge represents a curious constant even amid disparate media. This study explores the cultural commonalities that align revenge texts of the English Renaissance and exploitation films of late 20th century America. As in-depth inquiry reveals, numerous ideas and narrative tropes popularized during the Early Modern period are pushed to their logical extremes in these films. The central factor that aligns London during the Renaissance and New York at the cusp of the 1990s …

Gasland: The Rhetoric Of Images In The New Media Landscape, Christopher T. Thaxton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Josh Fox's film Gasland, released in 2010, started the national debate concerning the process of hydraulic fracturing and launched the term "fracking" into the public consciousness. Gasland, nominated for four Emmy Awards, was the winner of the 2010 Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary, the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, and the Yale Environmental Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. Using the momentum from the film's popular reception, Fox and the Gasland team successfully established a grassroots movement that was responsible for helping create the Frack Act and a moratorium of fracking in the Delaware River Shed. …

The Emergence Of Language As A Function Of Brain-Hemispheric Feedback, Eric Alexander La Freniere

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This text posits the emergence of language as a function of brain-hemispheric feedback, where “emergence” refers to the generation of complex patterns from relatively simple interactions, “language” refers to an abstraction-based and representational-recombinatorial-recursive mapping-signaling system, “function” refers to an input-output relationship described by fractal algorithms, “brain-hemispheric” refers to complementary (approach-abstraction / avoidance-gestalt) cognitive modules, and “feedback” refers to self-regulation driven by neural inhibition and recruitment. The origin of language marks the dawn of human self-awareness and culture, and is thus a matter of fundamental and cross-disciplinary interest. This text is a synthesized research essay that constructs its argument by drawing …

How A Nonprofit Maintains And Builds Relationships: The Role Of Social Capital And Rhetorical Identification, Megan Garver

All Theses

The focus of this study is to investigate how one affiliate is situated in a particular context in order to understand, modify, and maintain its mission in the community, a process that this affiliate calls 'community impact.' The study of this Susan G. Komen affiliate will provide insight into how nonprofits build social capital in order to convince a target audience to invest, whether through volunteering, partnering, or donating monetarily. Further, this study will examine how relationships are created, as well as maintained, and the role of identification within these partnerships. Lastly, this study will explore how a nonprofit localizes …

Grammar Workshop: Systematic Language Study In Reading And Writing Contexts, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Responding to claims that grammar instruction has become too limited, Zuidema describes field notebooks, mentor text, show-and-tell essays, and other strategies for engaging students in systematic language analysis.

Anxiety And The Newly Returned Adult Student, Michelle Navarre Cleary

School of Continuing and Professional Studies Faculty and Staff Works

Based on interviews with students who had recently returned to school, this essay demonstrates the need for, challenges of, and ways to respond to the writing anxiety many adults bring with them back to school.

The Initiation Of Growth-Focused Relationships Involving Healthy Accountability At The Carbondale Church Of Christ, Stephen Shaffer

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

After several years of transition, the Carbondale Church of Christ is in the early stages of becoming a spiritual growth-focused community. However, the emerging growth community appears to reflect the prevailing cultural assumptions that growth is a personal, private, and an individual task. To shape this emergent growth culture, this project initiated a group of congregational opinion leaders, organized in pairs, into the practice of growth-focused relationships involving healthy accountability. The initiation involved a theological orientation followed by a four-week healthy accountability praxis.

The theological framework of the project involved three main aspects. First, the project used the body image …

Out Of The Heart Springs The Communication Of Leadership, Jodi A. Kohut

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This study is based on the philosophical and biblical notions that words are a sacred gift from God and should be used with care. This study is concerned with how a leader uses these words in the organizational context. Edification is presented as a performative speech act by connecting its intention, “to build” to the rhetorical functions of the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Using Sullivan’s (1988) foundation for extending these language functions to the organizational context, the author proposes that edifying language has functions across three dimensions: 1.) Perlocutionary, subordinate building properties 2.) Illocutionary, relationship building properties and 3.) …

The Racial Rhetoric Of Cuteness As Decorative Decorum, Nicole Mcfarlane

All Dissertations

This work looks at the trope of cuteness as a means of investigating the topological phenomena of race and public space, particularly in regards to African American rhetorical modes of visual and spatial practice. By introducing a sociological coinage known as the 'teddy-bear effect,' this work explores how racialized expressions of cuteness give off the impression of a demurring civility surrounding the social expectations associated with the cultural norms of gender and class. As a preferred characteristic of information design and strategically deployed for the tactic of racialized passings in the face of increasingly regulated forms of 'post-racial' gate-keeping and …

Mother Knows Best: The Rhetorical Persona Of Michelle Obama And The "Let's Move" Campaign, Monika Bertaki

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Some first ladies are often condemned for being too involved with the presidents' power in politics while other first ladies find themselves condemned for the lack of involvement. First ladies, it seems, are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Consequently, Michelle Obama faces rhetorical problems that in some respects are similar to those of previous first ladies and in other respects are quite different. Along with the criticisms encountered by previous presidential wives, Obama faces the stereotypes African American women have endured since the inception of the nation. Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign serves as a rhetorical …

August 28, 1963: Building Community Through Collective Discourse, Jennifer Nestelberger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The August 28, 1963 March on Washington is often remembered primarily for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, which serves as the pinnacle of civil rights movement oratory. This thesis, in contrast, examines speeches of the leaders of the "Big Six" organizations that preceded King's well-known words in order to shed light on the complexities of the movement and the outcomes that can result from meaningful dissent. Occurring at a time of division, the March emerged as a symbol of hope for change in the nation. The addresses of the day reflected this hope and helped build …

The Effects Of Service-Learning On Student Writing And Research, Kimberly Anne Pierce

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Several researchers have investigated the outcomes achieved by service-learning; however, the primary focus of many of these studies is on student engagement or the development of civic outcomes. Edward Zlotkowski and Paul Feigenbaum have argued that researchers should look beyond these benefits to discover how service-learning might enhance course work and academic goals. Despite the calls for further research, studies investigating the academic outcomes of service-learning are limited, and those focused on writing outcomes are fewer still. This study, building off the concerns of Zlotkowski and Feigenbaum and utilizing student interviews and artifact analysis, investigates how service-learning affects student writing …

Building A Dream, Jenny Nestelberger

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

The August 28, 1963 March on Washington is often remembered primarily for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which serves as the pinnacle of civil rights movement oratory. This thesis, in contrast, examines speeches of the leaders of the “Big Six” organizations that preceded King’s well-known words in order to shed light on the complexities of the movement and the outcomes that can result from meaningful dissent. Occurring at a time of division, the March emerged as a symbol of hope for change in the nation. The addresses of the day reflected this hope and helped build …

Learning To Teach Argumentative Historical Writing By Analyzing Student Work, Chauncey Monte-Sano, Susan De La Paz, Mark Felton, Roderick Carey, Kelly Worland, Laura Yee

Faculty Publications

History education researchers have called for an emphasis on historical thinking in K-12 classrooms, for its authenticity in representing the discipline, for its potential to cultivate the critical thinking necessary to an informed citizenry, and for its relationship to advanced adolescent reading and writing skills (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Moje, 2008; Wineburg, 2001). Yet, such an emphasis requires that teachers understand the discipline and its structure, as well as the ways of thinking, reading, and writing that are its foundation. Although many regard history as the study of fixed information (VanSledright, 2008), teaching historical thinking emphasizes constructing arguments about the …

Cooking School, Allison Carr

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

As a writer and educator, I'm interested in the parts of our creative processes that aren't necessarily recognized as integral or valuable --the cleaning, cooking, organizing, exercising, screwing around on the internet... All the stuff we do around creation. I created this video, which splices together a double-blind interview between myself and my mother, to show how two totally different people (a scholar and a chef) talk about their creative processes. My contention is that studying the processes of people who do things OTHER than what we do can lend some insight into how we might think about or go …

A Rhetoric Of Bees: A Case Study Of Emergent Community Building Practices Within An Mmo Rule Set, Ben Mccorkle, Matt Howard

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This web text explores the various ways in which an online community of gamers builds and maintains its sense of community, including the production of game-related propaganda, a wiki account of the group's history, and an unconventional approach to game play.