Rhetoric Commons^™

A New Field Of Dreams: A Study Of The Writing Major, T J Geiger

Writing Program – Dissertations

Within Writing Studies, the tension between pedagogy and theory, between teaching and disciplinary status receives much commentary. This dissertation explores that tension within the context of the undergraduate Writing major. I begin by reviewing scholarship about advanced composition, advanced Writing, and the Writing major. I read this literature in light of concerns about student subjectivity, authorship, and disciplinary participation. Through that reading, I explore the conflicted status of the student subject imagined within this literature. The subject I discern contains elements of what Susan Miller describes as the normative subject of composition as well as elements of a revised and …

The Piratical Ethos: Textual Activity And Intellectual Property In Digital Environments, Justin A. Lewis

Writing Program – Dissertations

The Piratical Ethos: Textual Activity and Intellectual Property in Digital Environments examines the definition, function, and application of intellectual property in contexts of electronically mediated social production. With a focus on immaterial production - or the forms of coordinated social activity employed to produce knowledge and information in the networked information economy - this project ultimately aims to demonstrate how current intellectual property paradigms must be rearticulated for an age of digital (re)production. By considering the themes of "Piracy", "Intellectual Property", and "Distributed Social Production" this dissertation provides an overview of the current state of peer production and intellectual property …

Contentious Conversations, Missing Voices: The Ongoing Debate About Style, Megan Yates Grizzle

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As I began to investigate the concept of style in Composition curriculums, I quickly realized two things: style is difficult to define, and student input about style is virtually absent from the previous scholarship on style theory and pedagogy. This project, therefore, does not seek to end the debate about style. It seeks to do exactly the opposite. I want to extend the ongoing conversation about style even further, this time to include student voices. My project seeks to triangulate discussions about style to include voices from scholars, practitioners, and students. Students are too often an afterthought, receiving instruction based …

The Residual Resistance Of The Individual Within The Rhizomatic Hegemony Of The Internet, Emma Katherine Wolfe

English Theses & Dissertations

Networked cyborgs that exist within the non-hierarchical rhizomatic network of the Internet risk losing the concept of their individuality as our identity becomes less important than the group. However, if the rhizomatic network is thought of as a hegemony that exists on the Internet, we can resist this through the residual notion of individual identity. Since cyborgs must perform in order to exist on the rhizomatic network, they can become aware of and perform their individuality through awareness of the computer medium. There are three methods for networked cyborgs to assert their individuality discussed in this thesis.

The first is …

Exploring Metaphor In The Great Gatsby, Dan Gleason

The Great Gatsby Unit

In this lesson, students engage with one approach to metaphor and then apply that learning to metaphors in Great Gatsby. To start, students learn about I. A. Richards’s definition of metaphor as the link between tenor (topic) and vehicle (way of thinking about it). They then generate some metaphors by randomly combining tenors and vehicles in order to understand how the parts interrelate. Finally, the class interacts with the messier, more beautiful face of metaphor by working through, in groups, some key metaphors from the novel. Students identify the components of each metaphor (tenor, vehicle) and also consider what subtle …

Visual Rhetoric Through The Years, Leah Kind

Rhetoric Unit

This exercise gives students an introduction to some of the language and terminology of visual rhetoric in a brief teacher-guided discussion. Following the discussion, students, in small groups, will find both a vintage print advertisement and a current print ad within the same general category and examine how different forms of appeals have evolved through time, how ads now target their specific audiences, and, in general, how ads have changed, and why. Groups will present their findings to the class. Having the opportunity to see what in advertising has changed (as well as what has not changed) will allow students …

(Re)Constructing A Landmark: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Brown V Board Of Education At Fifty, Christine A. Geyet

Writing Program – Dissertations

This dissertation examines the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary with emphasis on its civic and social rhetorical functions. The analysis focuses on the two week period leading up to the fiftieth anniversary and the dedication of the Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka. Data was gathered from various web sites related to the National Historic Site and the events in Topeka on the weekend it was dedicated, and from database records of national and international news sources. These materials were analyzed in three categories beginning with the …

President Barack Obama And The Commencement Of A New Perspective On Epideictic Speeches, Milene Ortega Ribeiro

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Commencement speakers are typically expected to praise students and motivate them. When the commencement speaker is a President, the expectation is different. This thesis investigated the functions of epideictic address in light of the rhetorical presidency doctrine. Close textual analysis of the three most controversial commencement speeches delivered by President Barack Obama revealed that the challenge of fulfilling the expectations of a commencement address, while responding to rhetorical problems, required the President to adopt complex rhetorical strategies. The predominant strategies included humor, strategic use of rhetorical presence, and ideological identification. The President used strategies that allowed him to be the …

Schulz's Religion: Exploring Faith In The Mainstream Media Through The Peanuts Franchise, Stephen James Lind

All Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploration of various theoretical and cultural issues surrounding depictions of religion and spirituality in mainstream entertainment media properties. Such portrayals cultivate particular cultural norms that dictate the conditions of public and private discourse on religion, and in this study, these issues are approached through a mixed-method study guided by the Peanuts franchise. The Peanuts franchise is a provocatively rich launching point for analysis of dominant media cultures, given its colossal success in the secular mainstream entertainment industry and its explicit references to and even affirmations of Christian theology. Throughout the study, the references to religion manifested …

Finding Nowhere, Nathan Edwards

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

My audio/visual presentation, Nowhere, was a personal challenge to create a persuasive yet openly-interpretable message through a fully non-narrative presentation, leaving focus purely on the sound design, visual imagery, and the interaction between the two.The presentation and accompanying article explore questions surrounding the ways in which an artistic medium effects how our senses absorb an artistic presentation and how a message is most effectively conveyed.

Two Sound Pieces, Keith Dorwick

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

These two sound works gathered here ("At the Edge of Sleep" and "For Voices, No Longer Human") were assembled out of ordinary, even mundane sounds. In each, I slowed down the tempo of the original sound cues such as a cat eating kibbles or a voice uttering nonsense. Further manipulation of the sounds to make entirely new pieces created abstract sound landscapes, if you will, that take on (I hope) a mythic quality far removed from their original sources. In the case of "For Voices, No Longer Human," Harlot's review process resulted in a whole new (and much stronger) work, …

Sonic Rhetorics: A Mashed-Up Introduction In Sound, Jon Stone, Steph Ceraso

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Welcome to the special-themed Sonic Rhetorics issue of Harlot. Putting this issue together was a thoroughly collaborative process that involved a lot of back and forth with authors about their work, creative visions, and sonic rhetorics. For months we have been sounding out, experimenting with, and synthesizing these pieces until they seemed to hit the right note. So, rather than giving an authoratative summary of individual pieces, we thought it made more sense for contributors to speak (and sound) for themselves--and together. When you press play, you will hear a mashup of the sounds and soundbites from many of this …

Audiobiography: A Sonic Memoir Of The 1960s, John F. Barber

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This essay and its accompanying sound file speak to a personal narrative of the author's life in the 1960s, a time of tremendous social, political, and cultural change. By creating a narrative of his life at the time, sampled from period radio and television reports/programs, the author attempts to recreate the rhetorical context of his life at that time. The desired end result is a personal narrative with a broader appeal. Not a typical radio documentary, however, nor a narrated history, the intent of Sounds of My Life: A sixties radio narrative is instead to remix the medium of its …

Making Meaning In Musical Mixes, Kyle D. Stedman

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

SIDE A

Growing Meanings :: From Arrangement... :: ...To Development :: This Project :: My Mix

SIDE B

Developing Sounds :: Developing Expectations :: Digital Tools :: Developing Moods :: Transitions Developing Ideas/Voices :: The Self as Audience :: Fulfilling Promises :: Conclusions for Mix-Makers :: Credits

This piece explores the musical rhetorics at work in a mix CD I created for two (at times contrasting) purposes: as a gift for friends, and as an accompaniment in the car as I moved across the country. I suggest that in a linear, musical mix, the term "development" as used in music …

Recitative: The Persuasive Tenor Of Jazz Culture In Langston Hughes, Billy Strayhorn, And John Coltrane, Andrew Vogel

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Jazz is more than music. Jazz is a culture defined by a progressive ethos encoded in sound. By putting the poetry and music of Langston Hughes, Billy Strayhorn, and John Coltrane into conversation, this essay demonstrates the versatility and vitality of jazz culture. However, jazz culture has come to be drowned out in America today, and so I argue for a return to the voices of jazz's past so that we can give a new ear to jazz artists working today. Such listening should be seen as a means to reinvigorate progressive values today and in the future.

The Oral Aural Walter Ong, Abigail Lambke

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This is a transcription of Abigail Lambke's words during the audio piece “The Oral Aural Walter Ong." During the piece, Abigail intersperses her own commentary with excerpts from two of Ong's recorded lectures: “The End of the Age of Literacy," and “The Future of Literacy." Walter Ong explicitly barred transcription of one of these lectures, exclusively granting permission for the piece to be reproduced in audio. To honor that request, none of Ong's words will be transcribed here. The Oral Aural Walter Ong Music: Kevin MacLeod “Peace Of Mind" Hello. I am Abigail Lambke and this is “The Oral Aural …

"The Quiet, Wintry North": Digital Folk Of The Upper Peninsula, Dan W. Lawrence

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

In America's most "remote" of locations, a digital-centric music scene flourishes. But it's not electronic music that the folk of Michigan's wintry Upper Peninsula find interest in: it's a rootsy, quiet, lo-fi, experimental Americana that is self-produced and self-distributed. With no major venues or recording studies, and not even a well-founded independent record label, musicians of the Upper Peninsula turn to the Internet to organize musical performances and events, plan collaborative recording sessions using limited resources, and share their thoughtful, introspective music. The author reflects on these issues of independent folk music and self-production, as well as the digitization of …

The Readability Of Historical And Modern Writing, Sophia Chong

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

This research explores the difference in readability of historical and modern writing. The goal of this project is to determine if modern academic rhetoric is easier to comprehend than a historical primary source about the same topic. This has been done using a variety of quantitative methods widely used to analyze the accessibility of writings to compare sections of “The Confederate Reader” by Richard B. Harwell. Upon examination, it can be seen that despite the widely perceived convenience in comprehending modern writing that in fact, a primary Civil War period source is more readable than its current day academic counterpart.

Nietzsche’S Zarathustra And Parodic Style: On Lucian’S Hyperanthropos And Nietzsche’S Übermensch, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

It is well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’s Übermensch derives from Lucian of Samosata’s hyperanthropos. I argue that Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman acquires new resonances by reflecting on the context of that origination from Lucian’s Kataplous – literally, “sailing into port” – referring to the soul’s journey (ferried by Charon, guided by Hermes) into the afterlife. The Kataplous he tyrannos, usually translated Downward Journey or The Tyrant, is a Menippean satire of the “overman” who is imagined to be superior to others of “lesser” station in this-worldly life and the same tyrant after his (comically unwilling) …

19th Century American Rhetoric: Figures, Techniques, And Informational Texts, Adam Kotlarczyk

Rhetoric Unit

Ward Farnsworth writes in his 2011Classical English Rhetoric “figures sound splendid when used to say things worth saying,” and nineteenth century Americans, it seems, had many things worth saying. The nineteenth century was a high-water mark for oral and written rhetoric in English; this was especially true in America. Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison wrote eloquently and passionately on abolition, even as the nation plunged into Civil War. Abraham Lincoln articulated his vision for the reunification of a country shattered by that war, while Henry David Thoreau explained the ethical need for the occasional disobedience to civil law …

Elder Selection: Engaging The Monterey Church Of Christ In A Collaborative Elder Selection Process, Benjamin D. Pickett

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the outcomes of a project intended to foster greater collaboration at the Monterey Church of Christ in its selection of elders. The intervention involved the engagement of the Monterey Church in a process that involved multiple steps. These steps involved engagement with teachers in the context of a teacher training seminar, with Bible classes in a series of Bible lessons, and with elders, elder nominees, and their spouses in order to discern the perceived degree to which Monterey members participate in the elder selection process. The Bible lessons presented an alternative model for theological …

The Language Of Money: How Verbal And Visual Metonymy Shapes Public Opinion About Financial Events, Theresa Catalano, Linda R. Waugh

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Much recent work on metonymy has concentrated on its definition, properties and functions (Benczes, Barcelona & Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, 2011) but few studies have examined the combination ofverbal and visual metonymy or the benefits of multimodal metonymical analysis in issues of social justice. In this paper eleven news articles regarding issues in financial discourse such as the financial crisis, fiscal cliff, underwater homeowners and entitlements are examined visually and verbally from a variety of online newspaper sources. Results reveal intricate visual and verbal metonymies such as EFFECT FOR CAUSE, RESULT FOR ACTION, INSTITUTION FOR PERSON, DEFINING PROPERTY FOR CATEGORY …

The Use Of Rhetoric In Public Relations: Kenneth Burke's Theory Of Identification And Consubstantiality, Chonticia Y. Jackson

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

The purpose of this capstone portfolio is to demonstrate the importance and use of rhetoric in the field of public relations.

The User Experience Of Participation: Tracing The Intersection Of Sociotechnical Design And Cultural Practice In Digital Ecosystems, David L. Jones

English Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, I combine methods from Technical Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, and User Experience Design to trace the social and creative practices of social web participants. Using actor network theory, I explore the concept of participation as social and creative practice that demands coordinative knowledge work enacted within a cultural space. Leveraging the insight gained from this research, I develop the user experience of participation as a research and design methodology that privileges the movement of people and information in order to structure and re-structure social connections.

I explore this methodology through three intersections between people and technology. …

The Myth Of "Moonrise Kingdom": A Children's Tale, Laura Ragsdale

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

A Metaphor's Power Over Salience And Ideology, Aaron Mckinnon

Communication Studies

A look at the pathways of behavior influenced by the metaphor "Garbage Patch" that represents the accumulation of plastic marine debris in the world's oceans. The metaphor "plastic soup" is suggested as a solution to the rhetoric that surrounds the environmental ideology of the solution to the issue.

All You Need Is Capitalism?: An Ideological Criticism Of The Beatles-Jackson Auction Controversy, Arianna Marie Chopelas

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Uncovering Fallacies In Documentary Film, Nicole Trackman

Rhetoric Unit

This is an introductory activity that will familiarize students with eight essential fallacies. Students will be given a specific fallacy and its definition along with examples. Student will search for their fallacy in a twenty minute screening of a documentary film. Through small group and whole class discussion, students will leave class with an expert understanding of their own fallacy as well as a solid foundation of understanding for the other seven fallacies presented.

Change One Thing, Change Everything: Understanding The Rhetorical Triangle, Tracy A. Townsend

Rhetoric Unit

This lesson exposes students to the most fundamental rhetorical concept, that of the “rhetorical triangle,” a device for understanding and articulating audience awareness in persuasion. Provided here are suggestions for a brief and engaging mini-lecture, followed by an exercise using two classic pieces of American rhetoric, speeches by the suffragettes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Students will be challenged to learn the principles of the rhetorical triangle, close-read a text for rhetorical clues and cues, and make sound judgments about the speaker’s rhetorical process based on evidence. This lesson and activity are suitable for students in grades 9-12, …

Wandering About: Analogy, Ambiguity And Humanistic Mathematics, William M. Priestley

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This article concerns the relationship between mathematics and language, emphasizing the role of analogy both as an expression of a mathematical property and as a source of productive ambiguity in mathematics. An historical discussion is given of the interplay between the notions of logos, litotes, and limit that has implications for our understanding and teaching of Dedekind cuts and, more generally, for a humanistic notion of the role of mathematics within liberal education.