Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Lawson Fusao Inada, Shawn Holliday

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

On February 19, 1942, approximately ten weeks after Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of all people of Japanese descent from vulnerable areas of the United States’ west coast. Meant as a security measure to protect the dams, power plants, harbors, railroads, and airports from spies who would attempt to compromise America’s vulnerable infrastructure, this order eventually led to the complete removal of all Japanese from Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington, relocating 120,000 people by mid-1942 (Only What xi-xii). Such actions …

Never Let The Truth Stand In The Way Of A Good Story: A Work For Three Voices, Bronwyn T. Williams

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Describes how the author's habit of fabrications and stories as a 10-year-old became a source for writing fiction. Notes how he pursued journalism as a profession, but was frustrated by its limitations. Considers how as a professional field, composition continues to contemplate and struggle with issues of power and representation in research and writing. Addresses the issues of power and representation and the ethical concerns that such issues entail.

Michael Mcclure, Rod Phillips

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

The author of more than twenty volumes of poetry, over twenty plays, two novels, and three collections of essays, Michael McClure is one of the most prolific and enduring figures to emerge from the Beat movement. As one of the five poets to begin his career at the Six Gallery reading in 1955, the reading which launched the Beat movement, he shares a long and rich history with Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, and many other writers of San Francisco’s Beat period.

Reading Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, James H. Maguire

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

“Marilynne Robinson has written a first novel that one reads as slowly as poetry—and for the same reason: The language is so precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn’t want to miss any pleasure it might yield up to patience” (Schreiber 14). Many other reviewers, critics, and general readers agree with reviewer Le Anne Schreiber that Robinson’s novel is beautifully written. And since Housekeeping’s virtual poetry echoes the beauty of the language found in works of nineteenth-century American writers such as Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson, it comes as no surprise that Robinson’s favorite authors are the American Romantics.

J. Ross Brown, Peter Wild

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Caught by his own whimsical pen often used to illustrate his books, the writer sits on a log with sketch pad in hand. He’s in the midst of a vast, wild country. Behind him are mountains and, closer, an apparently abandoned adobe. Beneath a sans-souci floppy hat, he gazes over spectacles comically slid down his nose with that look of the artist in the intense act of considering a scene or of a schoolmarm about to scold. Yet there’s also a different kind of tension to his body. One eyebrow is raised, almost as if he’s listening for something behind …

Reading Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, P. Jane Hafen

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

The writings of Louise Erdrich not only reflect their author’s multilayered, complex background but they also confound a variety of literary genre and cultural categories. Although Erdrich is known primarily as a successful contemporary Native American writer, her finely polished writing reveals both her Turtle Mountain Chippewa and Euroamerican heritages. Nevertheless, her diverse imageries, subjects, and textual strategies reaffirm imperatives of American Indian survival. She prescribes the literary challenge for herself and other contemporary Native writers in her essay “Where I Ought to Be: A Writer’s Sense of Place”: “In the light of enormous loss, [contemporary Native writers] must tell …

Not Mere Rhetoric: On Wasting Or Claiming Your Legacy, Justice Scalia, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of the article is that the Court’s enterprise is centered on preserving community through an ethics of warranted trust, and that Scalia’s rhetoric often rejects such an ethic. A modern democratic citizen, along with his whole community, instead finds himself in the situation of necessary trust in democratic institutions like the Supreme Court. The willingness of a political community ultimately to place its trust in authority is partially dependent on that authority’s commitment to, and skill at, creating a convincing argument. The practice of rhetoric recognizes the dynamics of a relation of trust: the rhetor must put his …

Wpas And/Versus Administrators: Using Multimedia Rhetoric To Promote Shared Premises For Writing Instruction, Rebecca Moore Howard

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Writing The Lives Of Others: The Veterans Project, Sandra Young

English Faculty Publications

This essay describes an advanced composition course in which the students studied the ethics, politics, history, and rhetorical strategies involved in writing the lives of others. The heart of the course was a service-learning project that introduced college juniors and seniors to veterans of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The students interviewed, wrote brief biographies, and transcribed the wartime stories of a group of veterans from a local American Legion post and its women’s auxiliary. The stories were collected in a volume made available to local American Legion posts, veterans hospitals, and libraries in Connecticut.

Pruning Mr. Wilson's Hedges: The Link Between Woodrow Wilson And George W. Bush, Joseph P. Richards

The Corinthian

This paper seeks to show that a connection exists between President George W. Bush's rhetoric sending America into war with Iraq and the rhetoric used by President Woodrow Wilson which led to America's entrance into World War I. The paper is broken into two major sections: the first is an analysis of Woodrow Wilson's 1917 address to Congress seeking a declaration of war against Germany. The remainder of the paper is dedicated to beginning the establishment of a link between Wilson's rhetoric during World War I and President Bush's rhetoric which drew America into war with Iraq.

In The Person Of Mankind Attempting To Depict Womanhood, Jessica Sedor

The Corinthian

Ben Jonson was by no means a minor character of the early seventeenth century. His writings ranged from plays like Sejanus and Every Man in His Humor to poems like "Song: To Celia" and "To the Memory of My Beloved", "The Author", "Mr. William Shakespeare", and "What He Hath Left Us." He was bold in his attempts. As a result, while many of his works are extremely popular, there are several that proved to be not so successful. Jonson's attempt at speaking as a woman in his "In the Person of Womankind (In Defense of their Inconstancy)" is one example. …

Prophecy And Anti-Popery In Victorian London: John Cumming Reconsidered, Robert Ellison, Carol Herringer

English Faculty Research

John Cumming (1807-1881) was the popular minister of the Crown Court Church of Scotland in London's Covent Garden. This article examines his views on the end times and the Roman Catholic Church, two of the favorite subjects of his preaching.

Rogerian Rhetoric As Negotiation: Does Its Dependence On Game Theory Pose Ethical Problems?, Stacy Fussell Thorne

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In the war game Diplomacy, players win by gaining control of Europe. In order to win, however, players must successfully negotiate with other players, make alliances with them, and sometimes gain the support of their ally's military resources, their armies or fleets. In the rules of the game, Diplomacy is described as

a game of negotiations, alliances, promises kept, and promises broken. In order to survive, a player needs help from others. In order to win the game, a player must eventually stand alone. Knowing whom to trust, when to trust them, what to promise, and when …

What We Write And Why, Michael Benton, Alan Clinton, Davin Heckman, Subhash Jaireth, Marc Ouellette, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

To ask why we write is also to ask why we read. The pragmatic answer is to find proof -- to find proof of like-minded thinkers, to find support for our own arguments, to discover that we are not alone in our thinking, our assumptions and problems. The transcendental answer is to educate -- to inspire our own thinking, to see new realities, to uplift ourselves through another writer's use of language. And the middle road: Because there is a need.

Spectrum 2003, Saint Mary's College Of California

The Undergraduate Spectrum

No abstract provided.

It's All In The Rhetoric: Using Affective Design To Change Users' Perceptions Of Online Help, Robert C. Stultz

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the role of affective design in online help systems. The thesis begins with a discussion of the current research related to online help systems and the rhetorical nature of technical communication. The thesis then provides a heuristic evaluation of two versions of procedural discourse for Microsoft Word 2000. Based on an analysis of the heuristic evaluation, five recommendations are given for improving the affective design of online help systems. The thesis concludes with a proposed usability test and consideration of a related area of study.

Shadow Of Death: A Fantasy Theme Analysis Of The Floyd Collins Tragedy, Leslie Witty

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Floyd Collins, a Kentucky caver who suffered a lengthy entrapment and eventual death inside Sand Cave in 1925, has had his story told repeatedly and in numerous forms. Although the countless genres (and their historical accuracy) vary, they are basically retellings of the same story—a story filled with drama, suspense, and heroics. Because of these characteristics, the rhetoric of the Floyd Collins ordeal lent itself to examination using Bormann's (1972) fantasy theme method. By using a fantasy theme analysis to explore the saga, I advanced beyond the retellings and gained a greater understanding of why seventy-seven years after he died …

Conspiracy Rhetoric In Cyberspace: Jim Condit And The 9/11 Attacks On America, An Analysis Of The Voice And Appeals Used In Condit's Rhetoric, Kreg Allan Kinney

English Theses & Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the voices and appeals used in conspiracy rhetoric which is distributed via the internet. The voices, one measure of the argument's authority, are analyzed and described in depth, with eleven voices identified. These voices and their significance to Condit's text as a whole are discussed. Following the voice analysis, an Aristotelian analysis of the text's appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos is performed to examine the persuasive force of Condit's argument. Finally, the correlation between the voices and the appeals is examined to determine the strength of the correlation between the two constructs and to determine whether …

Test Suites: A Tool For Improving Student Articles, Eugene Volokh

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Wedding Toast September 2, 2002, Edna Louise Saffy

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Wedding toast by Dr. Edna L. Saffy.

English Only And U.S. College Composition., Bruce Horner, John Trimbur

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In this article, we identify in the formation of U.S. college composition courses a tacit policy of English monolingualism based on a chain of reifications of languages and social identity. We show this policy continuing in assumptions underlying arguments for and against English Only legislation and basic writers. And we call for an internationalist perspective on written English in relation to other languages and the dynamics of globalization.

Rethinking The Great Divide : A Rhetorical Study Of Orality, Literacy And The Human Experience, Danielle L. Joyce

Honors Theses

Our technologizing of the world has not only drastically been changing the way we live, work, and play but also the rhetoric that we employ within it to communicate with one another. "Cyberspace" and "virtual reality" have become commonplace descriptors of social forms where people do not have to live, meet, or work face-to-face in order to develop or maintain significant social relationships (Gackenbach, 227). We no longer only meet "in person" for important discussions or send hand written letters to loved-ones for reception weeks later. Instead, today, we talk into cameras attached to telephones to close multi-million dollar business …

Using Writing To Teach, Payal Banerjee, Kara Bopp, John Draeger, Hilton Hallock, Tobi Jacobi

Books

This text represents a year of research, dialogue, collaboration, and difference between teachers and scholars from at least nine disciplines at Syracuse University. The conversations and resources gathered here are intended to function as a practical and pedagogical tool for using writing in the university classroom. It is written in such a way that readers can use it as a linear text or as a sourcebook for specific questions, concerns, and teaching needs.

A Field Of Dreams: Independent Writing Programs And The Future Of Composition Studies, Peggy O'Neill, Angela Crow, Larry W. Burton

All USU Press Publications

One of the first collections to focus on independent writing programs, A Field of Dreams offers a complex picture of the experience of the stand-alone. Included here are narratives of individual programs from a wide range of institutions, exploring such issues as what institutional issues led to their independence, how independence solved or created administrative problems, how it changed the culture of the writing program and faculty sense of purpose, success, or failure.

The Old Man And The Sea: Hemingway, Heteroglossia, And The Hero's Voice, Carole Sue Spitler

Theses Digitization Project

In this subjective hero concept lies an intriguing aspect of Bakhtin's paradigm: A hero is not necessarily a living entity; a hero can be ideas, objects and locations. When viewed through the lens of traditional western rhetorical theory, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea appears as a monologue wherein Santiago seemingly speaks for the author about the subject of doom and man's relationship to the world.

(Re)Articulating Writing Assessment For Teaching And Learning, Brian Huot

All USU Press Publications

Brian Huot's aim for this book is both ambitious and provocative. He wants to reorient composition studies' view of writing assessment. To accomplish this, he not only has to inspire the field to perceive assessment—generally not the most appreciated area of study—as deeply significant to theory and pedagogy, he also has to counter some common misconceptions about the history of assessment in writing. In(Re)Articulating Writing Assessment, Huot advocates a new understanding, a more optimistic and productive one than we have seen in composition for a very long time. Assessment, as Huot points out, defines what is valued by a teacher …

Gunsmoke: An Investigation Of Conversational Implicature And Guns & Ammo Magazine, Kerry Lynn Winn

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

A Stylistic Analysis Of 2pac Shakur's Rap Lyrics: In The Perpspective Of Paul Grice's Theory Of Implicature, Christopher Darnell Campbell

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Connecting Composition And Literature Through The Rhetorical Situation, Maria Luisa Douglas Notarangelo

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis suggests that the idea of the rhetorical situation-a work's text (or language), author, audience, and social context-can serve as a connection between literature, literary theory, and composition studies. Criticisms of Emily Dickinson's Poem 754 are presented, and each is categorized according to the element of the rhetorical situation upon which it focuses.

The Challenges Of And Opportuniies In Using A Literature-Based Assignment In A Composition Class, Jeffrey Merrit Carman

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis explores issues surrounding the question of using a literature-based assignment to teach composition at the college freshman level. Following a review of the critical debate on the use of literature in the composition classroom, spanning the last five decades, a specific work of literature is used as the basis for a writing assignment to be given to a freshman composition class.