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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies

“It’S About The Two Selves”: Experiences In Code-Switching Between Home And Academic Environments, Travis Wolven Dec 2022

“It’S About The Two Selves”: Experiences In Code-Switching Between Home And Academic Environments, Travis Wolven

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative research study is an exploration of how college students navigate code-switching between their home and academic environments. Data were collected from five participants using interview and small group methods. Through the lenses of Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) and Memorable Messages (MM) frameworks, the researcher explores how key MMs affect how participants coordinate and manage meaning in communications with others in their home and college environments. Findings were fourfold: 1) participants chose between following established and creating new rules when code-switching; 2) participants shared experiences and strategies regarding knowing when and how to code-switch; 3) preparing audiences for …


Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen Aug 2022

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …


Civil Religion And The Second Amendment, Shivaun Corry May 2021

Civil Religion And The Second Amendment, Shivaun Corry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The American approach to legal hermeneutics emerged from the covenant theology of the Puritans. American civil religion understands the Constitution to be based in natural laws: a secularized conception of God-given rights. To change the text would collapse the epistemological framework of the nation. When a nation sees its constitution as a sacred text, then the answer to contemporary problems cannot be to change that text; rather, it must be to return to the text with an even more fundamentalist hermeneutic. Both gun rights advocate Charlton Heston, and gun control advocate Barak Obama, argued their cases using a fundamentalist hermeneutic, …


A New Materialist Rhetoric: Theorizing Movement From A Rhetorical Ethnography Of Hiking, Bryan Picciotto Aug 2019

A New Materialist Rhetoric: Theorizing Movement From A Rhetorical Ethnography Of Hiking, Bryan Picciotto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the field of rhetoric, conventional concepts of movement depend on dialectical theories of materiality that posit matter is not rhetorical until acted upon by human sign or symbol systems. New materialist philosophy, which considers the dynamism of matter without situating materiality in dialectical relationship to language, provides a theoretical context for reconceptualizing the rhetoricity of movement. Working from a nondialectical approach to materiality, this dissertation theorizes how movement functions rhetorically, specifically within cultural practices of hiking. For this project, I participated in 15+ hikes at state and national parks in Maine, and generated a multimodal archive of 1,000+ audio, …


Identity Negotiation, Saudi Women, And The Impact Of The 2011 Royal Decree: An Investigation Of The Cultural, Religious, And Societal Shifts Among Women In The Saudi Arabian Public Sphere, Maha Alshoaibi Dec 2018

Identity Negotiation, Saudi Women, And The Impact Of The 2011 Royal Decree: An Investigation Of The Cultural, Religious, And Societal Shifts Among Women In The Saudi Arabian Public Sphere, Maha Alshoaibi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historically, Saudi Arabian culture has been deeply rooted in tradition, religious customs, family-oriented structures, and gender derived expectations for men and women alike. Saudi Arabian culture emphasizes a patriarchal family structure where men financially provide for their family whereas women are expected to manage internal household duties such as raising children, upholding household affairs, and working within a limited scope of employment. The concept of Saudi Arabian women integrating into the public workforce has been a source of contention and debate for the last several hundred years. Due to recent changes in political and economic events, a royal decree issued …


Grassroots Diplomacy And Vernacular Law: The Discourse Of Food Sovereignty In Maine, John Welton May 2017

Grassroots Diplomacy And Vernacular Law: The Discourse Of Food Sovereignty In Maine, John Welton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine, a coalition of small-scale farmers, consumers, and citizens building an alternative food system based on a distributed form of production, processing, selling, purchasing, and consumption. This distribution occurs at the municipal level through the enactment of ordinances. Using critical-rhetorical field methods, I argue that the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine develops a ‘constitutive’ rhetoric that composes rural society through affective relationships. Advocates engage the industrial food system to both expose its systemic bias against small-scale farming and construct their own discourse of belonging. Based upon agrarian values such as …


Implicating Bitzer's Rhetorical Situation In Comparative And Non-Violent Rhetoric: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Three Ecofeminist Movements From East To West, Shahreen Mat Nayan Jan 2012

Implicating Bitzer's Rhetorical Situation In Comparative And Non-Violent Rhetoric: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Three Ecofeminist Movements From East To West, Shahreen Mat Nayan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the study of social movement rhetoric, scholars often focus on movements based in Western nations, foregoing study of social change in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of the world. Similarly, the focus on non-violent rhetoric has also been lacking, despite its use by great leaders such as Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King. This dissertation contributes to the study of social change in a globalized world, by taking a comparative approach to non-violent rhetoric in three diverse case studies. As sub-areas, both comparative rhetoric and non-violent rhetoric require further deliberation due to the numerous debates concerning …