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The Adult Basic Education/Literacy (ABEL) system in America can suffer critique. In a system that is staffed mostly by volunteers and plagued by funding woes, the experience of adult learners as participants within the institutional structure can be easily overlooked. Adult students are described as transient and difficult to track.

The Adult Basic Education/Literacy (ABEL) system in America can suffer critique. In a system that is staffed mostly by volunteers and plagued by funding woes, the experience of adult learners as participants within the institutional structure can be easily overlooked. Adult students are described as transient and difficult to track. Even so, and maybe because of this characterization, leaders within the local ABEL discourse make it their mission to reach these students in order to assist them to a better quality of life. However, there is more than one discourse circulating within the system. A discourse of outreach and intervention is one strand. The complex relationships education centers engage with more powerful government institutions causes another, more strident political discourse that constrains and influences the discourse within ABEL education centers, down to the classroom level. Within the vortex of motivations and needs created by institutional discourse, an institutional critique may give voice to those who experience the discourse in a way that hinders their education. This paper pursues critique, not through direct reconstruction, but through the encouragement of alternative discourses as additional institutions enter the system. AmeriCorps is presented as an institution that allows for more democratic participation through its distinct organizational features. The features that emerge in AmeriCorps projects offer hope for alternative models of participation within the highly politicized ABEL discourse.
ContributorsFoy, Christine (Author) / Long, Elenore (Thesis advisor) / Daer, Alice (Thesis advisor) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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The aim of this study was to investigate the issue of Saudi women’s right to drive through a critical analysis of the Saudi online discourse on women’s right to drive. In the study, the attempt was made to provide a critical contrastive analysis of the online debate for and

The aim of this study was to investigate the issue of Saudi women’s right to drive through a critical analysis of the Saudi online discourse on women’s right to drive. In the study, the attempt was made to provide a critical contrastive analysis of the online debate for and against Saudi women’s right to drive. A review of the literature indicated that very little research has been done about critical discourse analysis (CDA) of online texts focusing on the representation and rights of Saudi women. Employing Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework, a corpus of written posts on the right to drive, written by Saudi women, was analyzed at three levels: (a) textual analysis, (b) discursive practice analysis, and (c) sociocultural practice. The findings of the analysis on the textual and discursive practice levels showed that the theme of ingroup and outgroup presentation was significant in the data. The findings also indicated that ideologies were expressed linguistically by means of naming, presuppositions, predication, and intertextuality. At the sociocultural practice level, the controversial struggle about the right to drive was situated in its broader sociocultural context, in which the complexity of the sociocultural practice of the Saudi Society was revealed.
ContributorsAlharbi, Badr (Author) / Adams, Karen L (Thesis advisor) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Warriner, Doris (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
This dissertation posits that a relationship between a feminist rhetorical pedagogical model and autobiographical theoretical tenets engage students in the personal writing process and introduce them to the ways that feminism can change the approach, analysis, and writing of autobiographical texts. Inadequate attention has been given to the ways that

This dissertation posits that a relationship between a feminist rhetorical pedagogical model and autobiographical theoretical tenets engage students in the personal writing process and introduce them to the ways that feminism can change the approach, analysis, and writing of autobiographical texts. Inadequate attention has been given to the ways that autobiographical theory and the use of non-fiction texts contribute to a feminist pedagogy in upper-level writing classrooms. This dissertation corrects that by focusing on food memoirs as vehicles in a feminist pedagogical writing course. Strands of both feminist and autobiographical theory prioritize performativity, positionality, and relationality (Smith and Watson 214) as dynamic components of identity construction and thus become frames through which this class was taught and studied. I theorize these “enabling concepts” (Smith and Watson 217) as identity pathways that lead to articulation of identity and experience in written work.

This study posits that Royster and Kirsch’s four feminist rhetorical practices— Critical Imagination, Social Circulation, Strategic Contemplation, and Globalizing Point of View (19)—taken together offer a model for instruction geared to help learners chart identity pathways in the context of one semester of their undergraduate rhetorical education. This model is operationalized through a writing classroom that focused on feminist ideals, using a food memoir, The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber, as the vehicle of inquiry. This study offers a starting point for analysis of food memoirs in university writing classrooms by focusing specifically on the ways that students understood and applied the framework, model, and vehicle of the study. This dissertation prioritizes the composition and valuing of individual and communal lived experiences expressed through the articulation of identity pathways. Teachers and scholars can use the knowledge and takeaways gained in the study to better support and advocate for the inclusion of the students lived experiences in writing classrooms and pedagogy.
ContributorsBruce, Kayla Ann (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
This thesis argues that celebrities and celebrity studies should be taken more seriously in writing studies as productive sites for writing instruction in the composition classroom. Historically, celebrity culture has been overlooked for ostensibly lacking in substance or relevance to critical thought. However, academic disciplines, such as cultural studies and

This thesis argues that celebrities and celebrity studies should be taken more seriously in writing studies as productive sites for writing instruction in the composition classroom. Historically, celebrity culture has been overlooked for ostensibly lacking in substance or relevance to critical thought. However, academic disciplines, such as cultural studies and celebrity studies, are paving the way for celebrities having a more significant rhetorical relevance as figures in the public. This thesis explores celebrities as cultural figures who are advantageously positioned in the public realm as rhetorical agents. Their increased visibility and the increase in observation of celebrity culture in the public sphere are contributing to how people form opinions and make judgments about the world around them. Yet, despite some of the connections between the public, writing, and celebrity rhetoric, there has been little work in the field aligning celebrity rhetoric as a site for public writing instruction within academia. This thesis seeks to address this gap by aligning celebrity rhetoric with scholarship on public writing pedagogy in composition studies. To model how students might approach analyzing and writing about celebrity rhetoric in the composition classroom, this thesis offers a critical look at the celebrity rhetoric of Taylor Swift. The case study rhetorically analyzes sites of public writing that work intertextuality across various mediums to construct her celebrity as a representation of modern feminism. This thesis concludes with a discussion about the pedagogical implication of implementing celebrity rhetoric in the composition classroom. It concludes that celebrity rhetoric is useful for students in composition classrooms for making personal connections with their work, negotiating an understanding about culture and public issues, and influencing the production of rhetoric, writing and their own identity as scholars.
ContributorsHorton, Kathryn (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Hannah, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021