Rhetoric Commons^™

Talking About Talk: The Problem Of Communication As An Object Of Study In Public Participation Research, Lauren Leigh Cutlip

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When citizens participate in risk assessment and decision-making for environmental and other issues that affect members of the public, more robust decisions may be made. Public participation in policy decisions is not only more democratic, but it also enables members of the public to contribute valuable expertise to the decision-making process. However, the development of an effective forum for such participatory projects has been difficult. Participation mechanisms that foster dialogue and interactive exchange between participants have been regarded as the most beneficial, but the practical application of these mechanisms has been observed to be problematic. The goal of this study …

The Rhetoric Of Evidence In Recent Documentary Film And Video, Steven W. Schoen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Documentary is a genre of film that portrays "real" events using depictions that connote the objectivity and facticity implied by the processes of photorealism. Many contemporary documentary theorists and critics observe a constitutive problem in this ethos: despite the apparent constructions and agendas of documentary filmmaking, the framing and assumption of documentary as a window on the world tend to naturalize its own constructions as "real." Critics who engage documentary trace the multitude of ways this problem plays out in particular films. These projects yield many important insights, but they most often approach documentary as a form of inherently deficient …

Placing Birds On A Dynamic Evolutionary Map: Using Digital Tools To Update The Evolutionary Metaphor Of The "Tree Of Life", Sonia Stephens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation describes and presents a new type of interactive visualization for communicating about evolutionary biology, the dynamic evolutionary map. This web-based tool utilizes a novel map-based metaphor to visualize evolution, rather than the traditional "tree of life." The dissertation begins with an analysis of the conceptual affordances of the traditional tree of life as the dominant metaphor for evolution. Next, theories from digital media, visualization, and cognitive science research are synthesized to support the assertion that digital media tools can extend the types of visual metaphors we use in science communication in order to overcome conceptual limitations of traditional …

Prudence And Decorum And The Invention Of American Democracy: An Examination Of The Ratification Debates For The Federal Constitution In 1787-88, Robert Bryan Brito

Wayne State University Dissertations

Abstract

This dissertation examines the ratification debates for the federal constitution in 1787-88. The goal of this project has been to examine the use of the rhetorical strategies of prudence and decorum as they are employed within the debates in Massachusetts, Virginia and New York.

In Massachusetts, classical notions of representation are challenged by the use of binding instructions given to delegates sent to the ratification debates. In addition, Massachusetts federalists had to overcome objections to the proposed constitution based on the system of representation, as well as the absence of a Bill of Rights. Federalists Challenged these views, and …

Reading Between The Numbers: The Colonial Rhetorics Of Fantasy Football And The Illusion Of Control, Robert Kyle Kellam

Wayne State University Dissertations

In this project, I build on existing research in the critical intersection of media, sport, gaming and race to explore how fantasy football, an entertainment byproduct of the National Football League (NFL), rearticulates and recontexualizes the colonial ideology already prolific in the NFL and other products of American media culture. I investigate how fantasy football may represent an innocuous, yet exigent place to study the commodification and consumption of bodies in our contemporary media landscape because of the way that the increasingly popular game operates in a capitalistic logic, where NFL players are almost exclusively valued for their statistical production …

Facebook And Its Users: Using Grounded Theory To Understand Perceived Interactivity As A Constraint In The Rhetorical Situation, Katie Lee Retzinger Pruitt

English Theses & Dissertations

The general term interactivity has been used in a variety of disciplines to describe phenomena that occur in website interfaces; however, definitions and explanations about what constitutes interactivity and how it functions do not consider the specific ways in which interactivity can function and be perceived by users in specific rhetorical situations. In this study, I address the problems with the literature about general interactivity in writing studies and in other disciplines such as computer science, advertising, marketing, and communication studies by distinguishing between two types of interactivity—functional and perceived. I situate the different types of interactivity rhetorically, which can …

Writing Across Institutions: Studying The Curricular And Extracurricular Journeys Of Latina/O Students Transitioning From High School To College, Todd Ruecker

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is based on a year and a half multi-institutional study of seven Mexican American students transitioning from high school to a community college or a university. It explores the differences between high school, community college, and university literacy environments, focusing on the following: the impact of standardized testing at the high school level, the role of rhetoric and composition disciplinary expertise in shaping first-year composition (FYC) curricula, writing in the disciplines, and the digital divide between institutions. Seven case studies examine students' literacy experiences across institutions as well as both challenges and sources of support in and beyond …

Tracing Boundaries, Effacing Boundaries: Information Literacy As An Academic Discipline, Grace L. Veach

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Both librarianship and composition have been shaken by recent developments in higher education. In libraries ebooks and online databases threaten the traditional "library as warehouse model," while in composition, studies like The Citation Project show that students are not learning how to incorporate sources into their own writing effectively. This dissertation examines the disciplinary origins and current status of information literacy and makes a case for increased collaboration between Writing Studies and librarians and the eventual emergence of information literacy as a discipline in its own right. Chapter One introduces the near-total failure of information literacy pedagogy and the lack …

Mapping Injustice: The World Is Witness, Place-Framing, And The Politics Of Viewing On Google Earth, Joshua P. Ewalt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Working from assumptions that inequality is often spatially informed, a set of interactive cartographies has recently proliferated on Google Earth. In this essay, I analyze one of those interactive cartographies: The World is Witness produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). I read the map as an organizational rhetoric that frames place as "embedded injustice." I also argue that thorough analysis of the framing of local place on Google Earth must inherently question whether the map can create a disruption in the viewing subject. While the map presents vital information on excruciatingly despicable acts of injustice, and the …

Preaching Styles: Honey & Vinegar, Logan Tavelli

Communication Studies

A look into different preaching styles.

Discourse And Conflict: The President Barack H. Obama Birth Certificate Controversy And The New Media, Timothy Lee Adams

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A creative exploration of the consequences of public speech in the era of freely accessible, social media, as the author, a former elections official, records and explores the consequences of public dissent in the case of President Barack Obama’s eligibility controversy. This non-fiction narrative culminates with the author’s analysis and observations on both his personal experiences and the state of public speech and political power in contemporary America.

Implementing A Discernment Phase For Those Nominated In The Shepherd Selection Process At The Cinco Ranch Church Of Christ, Aaron Walling

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project that implemented a discernment phase for those nominated in the shepherd selection process at the Cinco Ranch Church of Christ. Occurring in the fall of 2010, this project involved nominees in a series of six one-hour, thirty-minute sessions designed to establish the theological foundations for shepherding and to explore its practical expression at Cinco Ranch. For the theological component, this project primarily utilized Ephesians 4:11-16, and for the practical side, it incorporated group interactions with those serving as shepherds along with the review of guiding leadership documents. The project‟s …

What Is Conservatism?, Heidi Peters

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

The re-branding of the right manifested itself in conservative movements and gatherings across the country in-between 2008 & 2010. One of those events included Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally on August 28, 2010. This research project is a case study that illustrates how the conservative political ideology is defined and rejuvenated after massive defeat.

Crafting A Congregational Narrative For The College Church Of Christ In Fresno, California, Jason W. Locke

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes a ministry project in the College Church of Christ in Fresno, California. In this project I led the congregation through a narrative crafting process in order to clarify the church’s identity and increase its capacity for mission. In recent decades, the College Church moved away from some of its founding characteristics yet failed to clarify a new sense of identity. It subsequently had difficulty acting with a unified sense of purpose and instead moved increasingly toward fragmentation.

Data for crafting the new narrative came from three weeks of group interviews. My research team conducted these interviews in …

Discerning A Vocational Theology Of Marriage For The Smyrna Church Of Christ, Daniel F. Camp

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this project was to discern a vocational theology of marriage for the Smyrna Church of Christ in Smyrna, Tennessee. Through a group discernment process, the participants studied Genesis 1-3 and 2 Corinthians 5 as a basis for understanding God’s design for marriage at creation, the effects of sin on the vocational aspect of the marriage relationship, and the call of Christ for husbands and wives to participate in the resurrection life through the ministry of reconciliation. At the end of the discernment process, the participants articulated a theology statement for the church that examined our current context …

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 …

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.

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.

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.

Hybrid Interactive Rhetorical Engagements In Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (Mmorpgs): Examining The Role Of Rhetors And Audiences In Generative Rhetorical Discourses, Yowei Kang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The dissertation explores the emerging rhetorical practices in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) in general and World of Warcraft (WoW) game in particular. The study applies Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theories and concepts to examine the persuasive processes employed by both game designers and players at various stages of their gameplay experiences. The author argues that the analysis of these interactive rhetorical discourses during gameplay helps rhetorical scholars to understand the emerging rhetorical practices where the rhetors and the audiences collaborate to co-generate their hybrid intensive rhetorical engagement (H.I.R.E.).

On the basis of the gaming sessions captured by the researcher …

Making Memory: Techne, Technology, And The Refashioning Of Contemporary Memory, Kimberly Lacey

Wayne State University Dissertations

My dissertation answers two questions: Does the tension between interactive technologies and rhetoric re-shape the nature and relevance of the canon of memory? Do interactive technologies affect the ways we remember and persuade? I argue that my interpretation of techne suggests possibilities for the creation and production of new types of memory in combination with digital media. To interrogate this connection, I suggest three interpretations of the Greek concept, techne: as a process that is inherently productive; as a force that renegotiates contemporary sources of social power; and as a skill that balances expert knowledge with instrumentality. I explore …

Recognition Of The Transgender Self: An Examination Of The Apologia Of The 'Pregnant Man', Erika Marie Thomas

Wayne State University Dissertations

In 2008, Thomas Beatie, a legally recognized male, transgender man, became pregnant with his first child and approached the American mass media to tell his story and defend his decisions. Shortly thereafter, the public fought against his image, attempting to normalize his body and gender. Beatie's unique gender blurring, his choice for exposure and social recognition, and the resulting public controversy surrounding the incident makes for an important test case to understand Beatie's discursive and visual strategies directed toward the American public.

This study, a rhetorical examination of the discourse and iconic visual image used by Beatie while his pregnant …

Era[C]Ing Diversity: A Critical Rhetorical Approach To Race And The New Citizen, Theresa Donovan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Era[c]ing Diversity is guided by a broad question of inquiry regarding the formation and reformation of subjectivity through the filling out of "blank" forms such as the application for naturalization. This dissertation examines how the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service uses and distributes race, and how subjects participate in the social reproduction of the dominant ideology to create a society where individuals think: I am White; He/she is Black, or Asian, or Native American etc. Era[c]ing Diversity examines how the N-400 constructs the new citizen and the ways that permanent legal residents of Mexican origin disrupt or reify this construct. …

The Border Mural In The Electronic Age: Xican@ Literacy As Rhetorical Agency, José Angel Maldonado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Border Mural in the Electronic Age is a project that responds to blanket statements, not only about a people's literacy (or illiteracy), but to the ways in which we define and measure literacy in the electronic age. In this study, literacy is located on the US-México border, and this specific location serves as the social, political, and economic grounds on which to study the types of literacies used by the local population. A cultural ecology approach is necessary when studying niche literacies, and in today's world, traditional literacies coexist among emergent forms of literacy most likely attributed to technological …

Saved By The (Alexander Graham) Bell: An Analysis Of Synchronous Communication And Student Satisfaction / Retention Rates In The First Year Online Composition Classroom, Jennifer Jane Lynch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Online first-year writing courses, with all of their promise, still maintain alarmingly low retention and student satisfaction rates, driving online curriculum designers to take another look at ways to increase both retention and satisfaction. To replicate the high rates of face-to-face classes, we must revisit and revise our approach to communication in the first-year writing online classroom. Think about it: The online classroom has abandoned a mainstay in education for thousands of years - synchronous communication. Why have we been so quick to dispose of it? Are we now paying the price?

This research will provide additional value to the …

Ua3/8/8 President's Office-Meredith Speech File, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Speeches written and delivered by Thomas Meredith.

Kairotic Strategema: A Rhetorical Investigation Of Barack Obama’S 2009 Health Care Address, Serena M. Sánchez-Wilson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines President Barack Obama’s address given on September 9, 2009 entitled “Remarks by the President to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care.” In order to address various situational and contextual elements such as legislative ambiguity, national expense, bureaucratic intrusion, abortion, euthanasia and illegal immigration, President Obama opportunely enters the conversation at a particular time so as to benefit his agenda of passing health care reform. Revolving around the notion of kairotic strategema, which includes the understating of deliberative address as well as the possession of kairos and phronesis, I assert that this aids President …

Plato’S Gorgias: Rhetoric, The Greatest Evil, And The True Art Of Politics, Paul A. George

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The interweaving of rhetoric, the greatest evil, and the true art of politics create the unity of the dialogue. Whereas Gorgianic rhetoric is pleasure seeking flattery which inspires belief without knowledge, noble rhetoric is refutative, inspiring the acknowledgment of falsity or ignorance. Moreover, it is self-refutation, meaning that the person being persuaded arrives at the conclusion of his ignorance by his own realization; the noble rhetor does not connect all the dots for them. The greatest evil is to have a false opinion about justice. A just penalty for suffering from the greatest evil is to face selfrefutation in hopes …

The Features Of The Voice Of African American Tradition: An Analysis Of African American Rhetoric For The Influence Of The Call Response Technique, Laura Venezia

Communication Studies

This project explicates the nature of the rhetorical strategies, especially the call response, used by various African American artists and orators (Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and Public Enemy). The techniques include the interplay of repetition and heightening emotion provided especially through 1. using the “call response” directly, 2. announcing jeremiad warnings and rallying cries, and 3. using potent images to arouse emotions—the objective correlative.