Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Building A (Great) Wall: A Semiotic Analysis Of The Rhetoric Of President Donald J. Trump, Lauren Gilmore

Honors Theses

When Donald J. Trump announced he was running for president of the United States, the country was thrown into division. He was an abnormality as a presidential candidate and a rhetorical oddity since so many of his messages were ones of ignorance and bigotry rather than understanding and inclusion, the expected rhetoric of a president. Through a semiotic analysis, this study aims to understand who the people were that supported Trump, why his rhetoric appealed to them, the ways in which Trump talked about America and its people, and how his supporters interpreted his language. Semiotics is the study of …

Presidents And Populist Politics, Brooke Sobo

Honors Theses

Populist language is a common rhetorical practice of United States Presidents. There is a breadth of literature on the study of populism and populist language, yet few studies identify populist language as reimagining the relationship between president and people. This paper identifies populist language as a political tactic of presidents and links the tactic’s use to the cultivation of authority and legitimacy. A central theoretical foundation of this paper rests on Skowronek’s concept of political time and authority structures. Through the use of four case studies spanning the presidencies of Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump, this …

Writing Program Administration At Public Liberal Arts Colleges., N. Claire Jackson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study provides a focused look at the possibilities of WPA work at public liberal arts colleges. Through surveys of and interviews with WPAs and critical discourse analysis of public documents, I identify common structures of writing programs at public liberal arts colleges (PLACs), explore WPAs’ perceptions of what distinguishes writing program administration and writing instruction at these institutions, and distill the common values of public liberal arts colleges. I analyze the ways these values are articulated in mission statements and writing program websites and examine how WPAs draw on and, in some cases, resist institutional values as they develop …

Prageru As A Parasite Public., Ryan A Corso-Gonzales

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the media corporation PragerU as a parasite public, using the framework provided by Larson and McHendry (2019). Parasitic publics are “reactionary discursive spaces formed residual and institutionalized affectively through the invention, circulation and uptake of demagogic rhetorics” (Larson & McHendry, 2019, p. 517). The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyze the argumentative tactics used by PragerU in the public sphere. I argue that PragerU utilizes its extensive network to resist counterpublicity and influence the dominant public sphere. This thesis demonstrates the ways in which this PragerU utilizes its unique position in the public sphere …

Acting On What We Hear: The Impact Of A Listening Methodology In A Community Literacy Program., Megen Farrow Boyett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Calls for better listening, especially to racially and linguistically marginalized populations, are popular and necessary in community literacy studies. However, while scholarship has clarified the need for attending to a range of voices across the life of a community program and demonstrated clear results of good listening, it has not sufficiently outlined a methodology for listening, especially as it applies to community-engaged action. Even less scholarship has focused on attending to current listening practices, so that scholars and community partners hoping to practice active listening interpret participants’ input through a soundtrack of other, unnoticed, “voices,” and have no way of …

From Starter To Finish: Learning The Literacy Of Sourdough, Molly Mcconnell

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Using the New Literacy Studies and the work of James Paul Gee, the process of making sourdough bread is conceptualized as a literacy, which is then located within food literacy. The literacy of sourdough offers an alternative to neoliberal discourse. The literacy is linked to the rise in popularity of sourdough during the COVID-19 pandemic and is used to explore Bourdieu’s cultural capital. It also connects, rhizomatically (Deleuze and Guattari), and is used to explore concepts of interdependence and time. After establishing this literacy, a pedagogically- focused essay draws upon ecocomposition to expand on what a composition process would look …

Motivation And The Young Writer: Reimagining John Dewey's Theory Of Experience, Billy Cryer

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Issues of motivation remain a perennial topic among teachers of English Language Arts and first-year college composition courses. While modern evidence-based research in educational psychology has yielded fruitful avenues for harnessing motivation in writing instruction, in recent decades, industrious composition scholars have also turned to history for insights on composition pedagogy. In this study, I also embark on a historical excavation to glean from our composition forebears regarding motivation in writing instruction. In particular, I examine how the educational writings of John Dewey were translated into the English classroom during the Progressive Era. More specifically, I seek to recover how …

The Role Of Translation In Multilingual User Experience, Tetyana Zhyvotovska

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Examining the intersections of technical communication, user experience, and translation, this study focused on the contexts of a user experience (UX) research center as a site where these intersections occurred and on practices of multilingual users while encountering translated information. In order to explore translation practices in relation to UX and cover the gap in understanding multilingual UX, the study examined how multilingual users worked with translated content, how they acted and reacted to it, and what they experienced during this process. Based on the existing scholarship in translation and usability studies in technical communication, this Dissertation undertook empirical research …

Big Community In Little Chinatown: How Asian Americans (Re)Present Their Community Today, Meghan Morrison

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper looks at a series of modern Asian American pieces of media in order to analyze how women and LGBT+ depict and create their community, especially in relation to another marginalized ethnic group. By examining the relationship between these groups within popular media, we can uncover how Asian Americans choose to represent themselves and gain a deeper understanding on how marginalized groups choose to portray themselves.

Transnational Writing Program Administration: Mobility, Entanglement, Work., Joseph Franklin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advances the global turn in writing studies by examining academic mobilities through an ethnographic study of transnational writing program administrative (TWPA) work outside of the United States. The literature review reads global writing studies scholarship through a critical-transnational lens to locate the gap for new knowledge in TWPA work. Influenced by Dorothy Smith’s Institutional Ethnography, this dissertation grounds the findings of its interview-based study in the terms of everyday lived experiences by internationally mobile scholars currently doing WPA work in order to construct more nuanced narratives of navigation and sensemaking. Participants discussed the consequences and limitations of us/them …

Rewriting Web 2.0 Discourses Of The Local For Socio-Spatial Literacy Theory, Erin Daugherty

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to provide a framework for engaging with two spatial concepts that have been foundational to theorizing literacy across time but have often been taken for granted as passive backdrops to the social action of literacy practice: the notions of “the local” and “the global.” By interrogating the histories, both past and ongoing, of these two spatial concepts as they are interwoven into the sociocultural paradigm of literacy theory, research, and pedagogy, this project identifies new ways that literacy researchers and educators can attend to spatial concepts so as to promote and encourage literacy research and learning that …

Personification In Advertising: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Digital Video Ads In The Insurance Industry, Dorm Kpedor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Major companies in the insurance industry—notably Allstate, Progressive, and Farmers—often employ personification as a creative rhetorical tool in digital video advertisements. By leveraging brand characters in various ways, these companies seek to establish trust and engender emotional impact in customers. Allstate ascribes destructive characteristics that are associated with house cats to its Mayhem character; in doing so they evoke the desired emotional responses of humor and fear. Progressive creates and deploys the Motaur character, a visual personification and play on the Centaur; in this case, the company’s rhetorical strategy is to evoke humor and nostalgia that resonate with motorcycle owners. …

Memory And Rememory: Critically Cultivating An Appropriate Response Through A Storied Approach To Listening, Katie W. Powell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues for a storied approach to listening from the perspective of a white Southern woman. To do this, I carefully followed the work of two community groups. One, the Washington County Community Remembrance Project, is working to install a marker venerating Aaron, Anthony, and Randall, three enslaved people who were lynched in our area in 1856. The other, the James H. Berry United Daughters of the Confederacy, is responsible for installing a Confederate statue on the Bentonville Square in 1908 that was removed in 2020. As illustrated by the use of archival research and embedded participation in interracial …

Colonization Of The Philippines: An Analysis Of U.S. Justificatory Rhetoric, Johansen Christopher Pico

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The term “Filipino” offers more than a call to nationality; it also recalls the genesis of colonization in the Philippines. This thesis explores the colonial interventions of the United States in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, homing in on the Filipino education system as the United States’ primary method of colonizing the Filipino mind. Drawing from texts by Senator Alfred Beveridge, President William McKinley, the Philippine Commission, David Barrows, and Dr. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, I offer an ideological criticism that demonstrates a cyclical nature between both justificatory rhetoric and ideology. Working with “ideological clusters,” this …

Deodand, Brian L. Frye

Seattle University Law Review Online

Deodands are a delightful example of a common law doctrine that caused something to happen: the Crown was enabled to tax tortfeasors. But not in a way anyone expected at the time or anyone understands today. Look on their logic and despair. You’ll never figure it out, no matter how hard you try. And that’s what makes them so lyrical. The concept of the deodand is beautiful even though we can’t understand it. Or rather, it’s beautiful because we can’t understand it. If we understood deodands, surely they would be as prosaic as life insurance and conceptual art.

In 1964, …

Olivia Burke Master's Portfolio Spring 2021, Olivia Burke

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

The following is my final portfolio for my master’s in English with a specialization in Professional and Technical Writing and Rhetoric. It includes an analytical narrative and four projects that best demonstrate my growth and diversity as a writer throughout my time in the program at BGSU. The four pieces are titled: “Transformative Learning at the Secondary and College Level,” “Accessibility in Technical Communication,” “Sharp Objects: Violence and the Need for Control,” and a “7th Grade Survival Guide.”

Final Master's Portfolio, Elaina Halverstadt

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Practical matters of teaching college writing are the primary focus of this portfolio. Specific topics include an exploration of best practices in preparation for teaching an online college writing course, a rationale for introducing technical writing into an institution as a co-taught interdisciplinary course, a four-week teaching unit for teaching grammar concepts through creative writing, and a resource guide for teaching an introductory technical writing course at the college level.

Exhibitions Of Impact: Introducing The Special Issue, David H. Lee

Publications and Research

The Exhibitions of Impact (EOI) special issue of American Behavioral Scientist consists of six articles from authors in communication studies and rhetoric, public health, medicine and bioethics, memory studies, and art therapy. Each article profiles some exhibition or memorial related to a pressing social issue, including gun violence, racist terrorism, domestic violence, religious fundamentalism, corporations selling harmful products, and how society treats those regarded as cognitively and behaviorally different. First, examples from today’s headlines show a global outcry over racist monuments and artifacts, and a global pandemic, which casts doubt on the future of exhibitions. Historical examples and explanatory concepts …

Engl 102: Research Paper, Alex Way

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

Engl 102: Infographic And Writer’S Memo, Brittany Smart

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

Engl 102: Writing About Bad Ideas About Writing, Charlotte Asmuth

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

Engl 102: Major Writing Assignment: Research Project, Charlotte Asmuth

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

Engl 101: Writing Multimodal Arguments, Tim Johnson

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

Response To Jennifer Cunningham: Code Switching Has Nothing To Do With Racism, Zaniah Shobe

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

Black Language, Social Identity, And The “Gap”, Ariel Perkins

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

3_Black Unicorn (Artwork), Amaiya Crawford

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

Exploring Bilingual Student Experiences In American Education, Rachel Raymer

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Writing About Linguistic Diversity And Linguistic Racism, Charlotte Asmuth

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

Othered (Poetry), Samantha Lamkin

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.

A Note From The Art & Poetry Editor, Taylor Riley

Cardinal Compositions

No abstract provided.