Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

PDF

Doctoral Dissertations

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication Year

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies

Sexual Harassment As A Narrative Contest, Christine Vossler Aug 2022

Sexual Harassment As A Narrative Contest, Christine Vossler

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how stories shape both the perpetration of sexual harassment and the experiences of victims during and after sexual harassment. During and after the experience of sexual harassment, a narrative contest transpires between the harasser, victim, and others who contribute to the contest by engaging in the formal and informal conversations that follow known experiences of harassment in the workplace. I analyze 22 public statements, interviews, and investigative reports, including statements from men accused of sexual harassment, women who were sexually harassed, and bystanders. A narrative framework, including concepts of narrative believability and story credibility, is used to …


The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein Jul 2020

The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk. On one level, I …


Narratives Of Queerness: Queer Worldmaking (In) The Classroom With Undergraduate Students, Rachel Briggs Oct 2019

Narratives Of Queerness: Queer Worldmaking (In) The Classroom With Undergraduate Students, Rachel Briggs

Doctoral Dissertations

This research brings together education research, queer theory, and performance theory to consider the worldmaking potential of the queer classroom. Using students’ stories about queerness in the classroom and my own stories about the classroom, I ask what we can learn from students’ voices about how queerness is/can be performed in the classroom and through relations. This study uses critical ethnography, personal narrative, and performative writing to examine the production of subject positions in the classroom, to connect this to a queer theoretical framework, and to explore the worldmaking potential of the classroom. I interviewed seven undergraduate students at a …


The Aurality Of Rhetoric: A Critical Hermeneutic Of Cape Breton’S Rhetorical Music Community, Gregory J. Dorchak Mar 2016

The Aurality Of Rhetoric: A Critical Hermeneutic Of Cape Breton’S Rhetorical Music Community, Gregory J. Dorchak

Doctoral Dissertations

Although the field of rhetorical studies has expanded from the notion that rhetoric only applies to speeches, there has been little attention paid to the rhetoric of sound. This project focuses on the rhetoric of sound, specifically the musical rhetoric of the community of Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia, Canada. Cape Breton has a long history of maintaining a traditional music community, with its origins in Scotland. The fiddle music of Cape Breton is renowned as a genre of Celtic music. This project looks at the rhetorical acts of the musicians and investigates how these acts of vernacular rhetoric …


Democratic Potential For A Multiplicity Of Public Spaces: A Content Analysis Of Media-Hosted Discussion Boards, Bryan M. Baldwin Mar 2015

Democratic Potential For A Multiplicity Of Public Spaces: A Content Analysis Of Media-Hosted Discussion Boards, Bryan M. Baldwin

Doctoral Dissertations

Since their inception, online discussion boards have intrinsically appealed to proponents of deliberative democracy, and those appended to Web-based news sources have been recognized as possessing the potential – whether realized yet or not – to engender meaningful discussions by engaged citizens on a range of public issues. In contrast, ardent critics of such forums contend they are merely raucous and unstructured repositories of expressions reflecting the darker side of human nature (e.g. incivility, vulgarity, ad hominem attacks, racism, homophobia, etc.). This study assessed the deliberative quality of online postings made over a two- month period and affiliated with four …


Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent Aug 2014

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …


Unaided Factors Predicting Client-Assessed Hearing Aid Performance, Usage And Satisfaction, Hilary J. Crowley May 1994

Unaided Factors Predicting Client-Assessed Hearing Aid Performance, Usage And Satisfaction, Hilary J. Crowley

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if client-assessed hearing aid performance, usage, and satisfaction ratings could be predicted before hearing aids are purchased. Aided performance was represented by the Profile of Hearing Aid Performance, (PHAP, Cox and Gilmore, 1990), subscales. Based upon data from 46 subjects, multiple regression was applied to 16 unaided variables to determine if they could be used to predict the response variables of performance, usage and satisfaction. The 16 unaided variables included pure tone average, slope of hearing loss, the Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) test (Kalikow, Stevens & Elliott, 1977), dynamic range, comfortable …