Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Gore's Science The Kairos Of An Inconvenient Truth And The Implications For Science Writing, Carolyn M. Glasshoff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern Americans are exposed to scientific and technical information on a daily basis that urges them to react as well as learn about new ideas. The popular science writing that circulates this information must be portrayed in a way that makes it easy for lay people to understand complicated ideas while at the same time remaining complex enough to convince readers that the information is reliable, accurate, and worth learning. In making decisions about how to accomplish this balancing act, science writers make decisions that influence the audience's opinion about new scientific ideas, how easily the audience will accept or …

Using Narrative To Improve Reflection In Technical Communication, Carrie Brkich

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores why instructors should use narrative intentionally and effectively with reflection to better understand adult students' perceptions of experiential learning activities in technical communication. The frequent use of narrative in technical discourse reminds us that the tone of technical texts is often appropriately informal, personable, and reflective. A closer analysis of narratives provides instructors with valuable opportunities to learn more about the motivations for and barriers to learning for adult students and to better understand how these students situate themselves in larger social and cultural narratives. Narrative serves many purposes in technical communication. Not only does narrative add …

A Burkean Analysis Of Jehovah's Witness Apocalyptic Rhetoric, Katherine Elizabeth Kacarab

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis uses principles from Burke's Rhetoric of Identification to examine how apocalyptic prophecies foster and maintain an apocalyptic group identity. Jehovah's Witnesses were used as a sample apocalyptic group because they comprise a group with a heavy textual and symbolic focus on the apocalypse.

The Cultural Self: The Novel As Griot In African American Fiction, Eric Christian Atkinson

Theses Digitization Project

This paper addresses the Western African oral concept of griot, as it utilizes nommo, the Bantu term which denotes the magical power of words to cause change, as a critical African American lexical lens. It will foreground the fiction of Octavia E. Butler and John Edgar Wideman through the critical lens of griot as a means to construct African American community and culture through narrative by utilizing nommo. Nommo is an "African concept in which the word is a life force; the word is creator rather than created" even after it has been spoken or written. Traditionally the griot is …

International Graffiti And The Israeli Separation Barrier, Veronica Evangelina Miranda

Theses Digitization Project

This purpose of this study is to show that graffiti can be more than mere vandalism and can be a powerful way of communicating resistance to injustice when used as protest. Graffiti on the Israeli Separation Barrier is one way people can speak against an oppressive force that alters their physical environment, which can be a site of continuous argument.

Cyborg Rhetoric And Revelation Of Self: Identity, Writing, And The Instantiation Of The Cyborg In Digital Texts, Thomas Keywon Cho

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis examines three "digital texts" and explores the ways writing, technology, and narratives embedded in popular culture reveal cyborg language.

A Burkean Analysis Of Anti-Immigration Websites: Recurring Scapegoating Rhetorical Moves, Aldo Quiroz Lewis

Theses Digitization Project

There are numerous websites emphasizing the idea that immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants from Latin American countries, are to blame for the decline of the United States. What allows these sites to be so persuasive is that they created a united U.S. front by erasing the differences between different groups, thereby construcing a united "American" identity. At the same time, in opposition to this identity, the sites created an 'illegal' that groups Hispanics. This author argues that attempts to discuss immigration have more to do with enacting a scapegoat that may be blamed for America's ills.

Politics, Power, Agency And The End Comment Genre, Cynthia Ann Ruthford

Theses Digitization Project

The author examines a corpus of teacher end commentary written to first-year writing students' essays. It is looked at as a genre-the end comment genre-in order to perform a rhetorical genre analyis.

Access Denied: The Rhetorical Construction Of Undocumented Students In Postsecondary Education, Yanira Estrada Figueroa

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis analyzes rhetorically the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyer v. Doe, sections of the Welfare Reform Act and the Illegal Immigratiom Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, and the 2011 version of the proposed Development, Relief and Education for Minors (Dream Act) in order to trace the underlying beliefs and assumptions that justify refusing undocumented students support for and thus access to postsecondary institutions.

Liberation Is Not Always So Liberating: Rethinking Paulo Freire's Critical Pedagogy For The Writing Classroom, Joshua Daniel Shinn

Theses Digitization Project

The goal of this project is to reconsider the ways in which liberatory and/or critical pedagogy, and its desire to combat the "banking" method of education, can unintentionally create some of the same institutional and ideologically oppressive classroom conditions that more traditional methods of instruction have been charged with creating. This thesis first discusses the origins of liberatory pedagogy and its effect upon education, the writing classroom, and critical pedagogues.

Transmission Overhaul: Negotiating The Shift In Information And Knowledge Construction Among Generation M, Thomas Timothy Hite

Theses Digitization Project

This research draws upon recent research in the area of digital semiotics and offers a framework of remediation in the attempt to encourage the acceptance of digital composition as a valid space of rhetorical production.

Attending To Local And Diverse Communities: Toward A Theological Learning Community For A Missional Era, Patricia Taylor Ellison, Patrick R. Keifert

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Revising Thesis Statements, Leah Kind

Writing Bootcamp Unit

Allows students to see the potential for revision in their own thesis statements. Encourages both revision and avoiding “falling in love” with the first draft of a thesis. Activity assumes some prior knowledge of good conventions for thesis statements.

Visual Rhetoric And The Promotion Of Scientific Ideas: The Strange Case Of The Prion, Carol Reeves

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In the field that investigates infectious brain diseases such as mad cow disease, the verbal and visual packaging of scientific visuals associated with identifying the agent, prion, its processes, and structure served the community ritual of establishing belief in a highly unorthodox phenomenon. Visual promotion fed into cultural expectations of single agents and simple processes, even though the actual agency and disease process have proven highly complex and perhaps unknowable.

Language Difference In Writing : Toward A Translingual Approach., Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, John Trimbur

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Arguing against the emphasis of traditional U.S. composition classes on linguistically homogeneous situations, the authors contend that this focus is at odds with actual language use today. They call for a translingual approach, which they define as seeing difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a resource for producing meaning in writing, speaking, reading, and listening.

Thesis Group Activity, Margaret T. Cain

Writing Bootcamp Unit



This is not an introduction to the thesis statement, but serves well as a second or reinforcing lesson. This activity asks students to practice, in the comfort of a group, drawing out and expressing complete, coherent statements from an essay. These statements will be in four areas of criticism: intention, tone, world view and skill; the teams of students will shape these statements into theses. This activity requires one entire class of at least 60 minutes.

Crossing Literate Worlds Exploring How Students With Rich Identities As Writers Negotiate Multiple Writing Contexts, Autumn Phelps Shrum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the literate identities of college students who engage in various school and non-school writing practices simultaneously. In case studies of three student writers, the researcher seeks to explore how the discourse community roles, selfperceptions, negotiation of multiple writing processes and development of authority impacted the students’ identities as writers. Triangulated research methods included weekly interviews with the student participants, observation of the students in their writing classrooms and analysis of the students’ school and non-school texts over one semester. Students experienced several conflicts and synergies between contexts. Main findings indicated that writing across many academic and extra-academic …

Basic Writers And The Echoes Of Intertextuality, Cheryl Hogue Smith

Publications and Research

This article explores how basic writers tend to compartmentalize their thinking, which makes it difficult for them to think intertextually.

Healing The Cartesian Split: Understanding And Renewing Pathos In Academic Writing, Travis Washburn

Library Research Grants

No abstract provided.

Social Media At Academia's Periphery: Studying Multilingual Developmental Writers' Facebook Composing Strategies, Kevin Eric Depew

English Faculty Publications

This article focuses on the writing strategies second-language students use to compose on social media sites. These alternative and unconventional sites for learning provide language learners opportunities to acquire language by using multiple modalities to respond to various rhetorical situations. In comparison to these sites, academic writing contexts, particularly the developmental-writing course, impose monolingual norms and deficient identities on students. Where these courses articulate these language learners as possessing inadequate skills to perform well in mainstream writing courses, the students' social-media compositions demonstrate that these students have the potential to respond to communicative situations in rhetorically complex ways. This study …

Liminal Practice In A Maturing Writing Department, Louise Wetherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

[First Paragraph]

In Spring 2011 I was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Grant to "consult, collaborate, and inform" on the future of the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg, located in the city of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. The Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications department (hereafter, RWC) was a pioneer in writing instruction in Canada, where it became the first unit to establish itself independently as a department with a full-‐time faculty committed to both teaching and scholarship in writing and rhetoric. It remains a rare phenomenon on the Canadian higher education scene, where studies …

Jane Addams: Spirit In Action By Louise W. Knight, Mari Boor Tonn

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The common temptation to perceive greatness as imprinted at birth, however, is skillfully disabused in Louise Knight’s meticulous, insightful,and often poignant biography, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, which traces the complicated odyssey of a well-heeled idealist—initially conflicted by her material privilege, disappointed by gender-codes confining her ambitions, and haunted by familial ghosts and duties—into the pantheon of U.S. political idols. Of particular interest to rhetorical scholars, Knight weaves into Addams’s arresting tale her early baptism into public speaking, writings that shaped her expression in public forums, rhetorical strategies she employed, and platform failures as well as successes. A prolific speaker, …

Ua3/1/3 President's Office-Cherry - Scrapbooks, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings, articles and publications of interest to WKU President Henry Cherry. These include education religion, state and national politics, prohibition and Western Kentucky University.

Remediating Composition : Landmark Pedagogies Meet New Media Practices, Jennifer Marlow

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

ABSTRACT

Response In Real Time : Bringing Context To A Semester's Responses To Student Writing, Scott James O'Callaghan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Within the field of Composition, research into responding to student writing has most frequently studied individual responses outside the material contexts in which those responses were produced. Advice given to teachers of writing on how best to respond to large amounts of writing--perennially a feature within the reality of the work writing teachers do--has tended to be similarly acontextual. However, further research into response must take into account writing teachers' material conditions and situatedness.

The Bridge, Volume 8, 2011, Bridgewater State University

the bridge

Volume 8 Staff

Stephen Plummer, Editor-in-Chief
Josh Savory, Editor-in-Chief
Maggie Bouchard
Kate Camerlin
Liz Childs
Evan Dardano
Alexandrea Matthews
Kit McFarland
Alex Pawling
Matt Scott
Craig Sirois

Melanie McNaughton, Faculty Advisor
John Mulrooney, Faculty Advisor
Linda Hall, Alumni Consultant
Jillian Moore, Student Consultant
Courtney Parece, Student Consultant

Group Membership And Its Adverse Psychological Effects In The Ox-Bow Incident, Casey Plach, '15

Outstanding Gateway Papers

This paper examines and analyzes the causes and motivations of groups in the book The Ox-Bow Incident.

The Grimm Brothers As Editors, Blair Wright '15

Outstanding Gateway Papers

In almost all circumstances, copying the work of others has a strongly negative connotation. In fact, from a very early age, children begin to understand the consequences of mimicking others’ original ideas. It is not uncommon for a little girl to sneak across the street with a neighbor to pick flowers even though her parents had specifically instructed her to stay in their own yard. Upon confrontation, this little girl will likely defend herself by saying, “Well, Jessica was doing it too!” The little girl’s parents would then say, “Will you always just do what Jessica does? If Jessica jumped …

Studium And Punctum: The Duality Of Photography, Karen Thul '15

Outstanding Gateway Papers

What defines greatness? What element can change something from being mildly interesting to extraordinary? Details, emotion, back-story, and message can all add to the power of a photo, but these are all reasonable answers to define something unreasonable. Recognizing something powerful is instinctive, which makes it hard to define. Barthes gives some guidance to this process by separating the vaguely interesting from the piercingly wonderful. Through studium and punctum, images are separated into these categories, allowing the viewer to analyze images with acute precision. What makes this interesting? Why do I care? These questions are slowly answered by looking …

Using Ezra's Time As A Methodological Pivot For Understanding The Rhetoric And Functions Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The Persian period saw the transformation of pentateuchal materials into a scripture, the Torah. The story of Ezra exemplifies that transformation by its description of his manipulation of the physical scroll, his oral reading of it before the people of Jerusalem, and his arrangement for its professional translation/interpretation by Levites. These rituals have characterized the function of the Torah (and other scriptures) from that time forward. The Persian period, however, also marks a major change in the nature of our evidence for the form, contents and meaning of pentateuchal materials. The only historical evidence from before the time of Ezra …