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This research conducts two methods of rhetorical analysis of State of the Union Addresses: 1. Computational linguistic analysis of all State of the Union Addresses from 1790-2007, and 2. Close-readings and rhetorical analyses of two addresses: one by President Truman and one by President Reagan. This research shows the following

This research conducts two methods of rhetorical analysis of State of the Union Addresses: 1. Computational linguistic analysis of all State of the Union Addresses from 1790-2007, and 2. Close-readings and rhetorical analyses of two addresses: one by President Truman and one by President Reagan. This research shows the following key findings: 1. I am able to see general shifts in the authors' approaches to the State of the Union Address through historical computational analyses of the content of all speeches, and 2. Through close readings, I can understand the impact of the author's ethos and the historical context on the addresses, something that would not be readily revealed in a computational analysis. This study starts with a historical computational linguistic analysis of all State of the Union Addresses between 1790 and 2007. The study follows with close-readings of two State of the Union Addresses from the early and late Cold War period in-context: 1. Harry Truman's 1951 Address and 2. Ronald Reagan's 1986 Address. The main conclusions drawn from this research are that close-readings of State of the Union Addresses cannot be replaced by computational analyses, but can work in tandem with computerized text analysis to reveal shifts in rhetorical and topical features. This paper argues that there must be more close analyses in coordination with large-scale text analysis in order to understand the complexities of rhetorical situations.
ContributorsWegner, Peter (Author) / Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Goggin, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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This dissertation theorizes nineteenth-century public performance of spiritual media as being inherent to the production of autobiography itself. Too often, dominant social discourses are cast as being singular cultural phenomena, but analyzing the rhetorical strategies of women attempting to access public spheres reveals fractures in what would otherwise appear to

This dissertation theorizes nineteenth-century public performance of spiritual media as being inherent to the production of autobiography itself. Too often, dominant social discourses are cast as being singular cultural phenomena, but analyzing the rhetorical strategies of women attempting to access public spheres reveals fractures in what would otherwise appear to be a monolithic patriarchal discourse. These women's resistant performances reap the benefits of a fractured discourse to reveal a multiplicity of alternative discourses that can be accessed and leveraged to gain social power. By examining the phenomena of four nineteenth- century Spiritualists' mediumship from a rhetorical perspective, this study considers how female spirit mediums used their autobiographies to operate as discursive spaces mediating between private and public spheres; how female mediums constructed themselves in the public sphere as women and as spiritual authorities; how they negotiated entry into volatile and unpredictable publics; how they conceived of the vulnerability of the female body in the public sphere; and how they coped with complications inherent to Victorian era constructions of feminine corporeality. In conclusion, this dissertation offers a highly situated performative theory of subaltern publicity.
ContributorsLowry, Elizabeth (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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DescriptionA look into the historical significance of clothing and clothing construction to self-fashioning.
ContributorsLee, Elizabeth Kristina (Author) / Facinelli, Diane (Thesis director) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / TerBeek, Kendra (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2013-05
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This study analyzes syllabi for first-year college composition courses and interview responses to examine how the choices made by instructors affect online course design. Using the Syllabus Assessment Instrument designed by Madson, Melchert and Whipp (2004), this dissertation looks specifically at attendance and participation policies, course behavior policies, contact information,

This study analyzes syllabi for first-year college composition courses and interview responses to examine how the choices made by instructors affect online course design. Using the Syllabus Assessment Instrument designed by Madson, Melchert and Whipp (2004), this dissertation looks specifically at attendance and participation policies, course behavior policies, contact information, required material choices, course organization decisions and tool decisions to reveal how instructors do or do not accommodate online class pedagogies. This study finds that the choices instructors make in syllabus design provide significant information about the overall online course design itself. Using Selber's multiliteracies as a frame for understanding the choices made by instructors, this study finds that instructors focus primarily on functional literacies in their discourses and in the way they communicate their choices to students. Instructors vary in how they inform students of the mechanics of how to interact with tools, how often to interact with the online course, and how to use the tools within the online course. While these aspects of online courses are important, focusing on these aspects of the online course overshadows alternative perspectives on tool use that could encourage critical reflection by both instructors and students. To help instructors and departments design more effective syllabi and courses, this study raises questions and offers observations about how instructors communicate policies and how they understand these policies and pedagogies in online courses. In providing general guidelines for syllabus design and course design, this study will help writing instructors and composition programs better understand the significance of the choices they make in online course design.
ContributorsPfannenstiel, Amber Nicole (Author) / Goggin, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Committee member) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Institutions of higher education pride themselves on their commitments to access, inclusion, and care. However, when motivated by neoliberal goals of productivity, such initiatives may confuse inclusion with normative assimilation by attempting to align all individuals with an ableist status quo. In other words, neutral documents, discourses, and design practices

Institutions of higher education pride themselves on their commitments to access, inclusion, and care. However, when motivated by neoliberal goals of productivity, such initiatives may confuse inclusion with normative assimilation by attempting to align all individuals with an ableist status quo. In other words, neutral documents, discourses, and design practices may contribute to the rhetorical and material circulation of systemic ableism by encouraging compulsory alignment with able standards and norms. To examine how the systemic force of neoliberal ableism may move across higher educational spaces, this dissertation engages understandings of rhetoric as complexly circulating across trans-situational, everyday sites in universities. Further, I show that neoliberalism relies on the rhetorical circulation and normalization of ableist rhetorics across seemingly neutral university documents, discourses and design practices like those aimed to promote access, inclusion, and care. This dissertation thus follows the social justice call in technical and professional communication to interrogate participation in documentation, design, and discursive practices that may contribute to larger systems of oppression. Specifically, I apply a mixed-methods, qualitative approach of corpus linguistic analysis, semi-structured interviews grounded in user-experience design, and thematic, concept, and in vivo coding to examine and disrupt the circulation of ableist rhetoric across composition program mission statements, self-care documents, and digital classroom interfaces. Drawing from technical and professional communication, rhetoric and composition, disability studies, rhetorics of health and medicine, social justice, and disability justice scholarship, this dissertation explores theoretical frameworks for interrogating ableism’s material-discursive implications and provides guidelines for university stakeholders to engage in more equitable communications. Ultimately, I offer a theory of “cripistemological coalition” that calls for transdisciplinary, coalitional measures that position disability as integral to university inclusion, access, and care.
ContributorsBennett, Kristin (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Hannah, Mark A. (Committee member) / Rose, Shirley K. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
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Description
This dissertation explores findings from a year-long investigation of the context-driven practices, strategies and beliefs of five multilingual Cultural Health Navigators (CHNs) working in a local pediatrics clinic serving large numbers of refugee families from a variety of cultural backgrounds who are experiencing a range of healthcare challenges. Grounded in

This dissertation explores findings from a year-long investigation of the context-driven practices, strategies and beliefs of five multilingual Cultural Health Navigators (CHNs) working in a local pediatrics clinic serving large numbers of refugee families from a variety of cultural backgrounds who are experiencing a range of healthcare challenges. Grounded in a methodology of engagement (Grabill, 2010), this inquiry systematically documents and analyzes the range of ways in which the CHNs assist refugee families and their healthcare providers, their rationale for the decisions made and actions taken, and their concerns about the challenges they encounter. I show that while much of what the CHNs do to assist refugee families and their healthcare providers is routine and can be expected, CHNs also tend to manage complex work involved in mediating refugee families’ interactions with healthcare providers and the healthcare system in ways that cannot always be anticipated in advance. Through a close analysis of their practices and reflections, I show how their various interactions, actions and decisions are responsive to specifics of the situation at hand, informed by their lived experiences as CHNs and immigrants/refugees, and influenced by a dynamic, emergent and embodied notion of context. The findings of this study demonstrate how the CHNs’ collective and distributed knowledge production work shapes experiences with acquiring health literacy, and the material consequences of such efforts and practices.

Drawing on ethnographic research methods and critical-incident methodologies that involved the CHNs in the inquiry process, this study provides a nuanced analysis of the different kinds of work they do, the constraints they encounter, and how they creatively respond to such constraints in real time. The findings demonstrate that a collaborative engagement with critical incidents as a method of intercultural inquiry facilitates a more robust and dynamic understanding of the distributed nature of decision-making practices and ways of knowing. Embodying sensitivity to situated ways of knowing and dynamic practices in institutional settings, this study demonstrates the value of combining social science methodologies with rhetorical inquiry methods to conduct interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research to address pressing social problems in ways that benefit historically marginalized groups.
ContributorsMorelli, Katherine Elizabeth (Author) / Warriner, Doris (Thesis advisor) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Goggin, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Transnational feminist scholars have increasingly recognized the need to interrogate the dominance of the US and the global north in transnational transactions. Chandra Mohanty argues that transnational feminist scholarship needs to “address fundamental questions of systemic power and inequities and to develop feminist, antiracist analyses of neoliberalism, militarism, and heterosexism

Transnational feminist scholars have increasingly recognized the need to interrogate the dominance of the US and the global north in transnational transactions. Chandra Mohanty argues that transnational feminist scholarship needs to “address fundamental questions of systemic power and inequities and to develop feminist, antiracist analyses of neoliberalism, militarism, and heterosexism as nation-state-building projects” (2013, p. 968). Following this call for analyzing power from feminist, anti-racist stances, this dissertation interrogates Title IX as a nationalist discourse with global reach. As a law created in the era of liberal feminism, Title IX still operates today in neoliberal times and this dissertation makes sense of Title IX as an instrument of neoliberalized feminism in transnational sporting contexts. The following three case studies focus on Title IX as it travels across nation-state borders through 21st century ideas of equity, empowerment, and opportunity.

This dissertation begins by exploring at how transnational sporting policy regarding the participation standards of transgender and intersex athletes operates under the neoliberalized feminism of Title IX. It then moves to a discussion of a Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) project--Women Win’s digital storytelling project. In analyzing SDP projects, I map the cultural logics of Title IX’s neoliberalized feminism in the context of training girls and women to record their stories sport participation. Finally, the dissertation connects the context of the first Saudi female Olympians to Oiselle’s branding campaign of Sarah Attar, one of the first Saudi Olympians. It traces her image as an import-export product for the Olympic Committee and Oiselle through equity, opportunity, and empowerment.

Finally, these case studies are bridged by networking the discourses of investing in a girl (commodifying girls becoming autonomous actors through education and economics) to Title IX’s focus on gender equity in order to show how these discourses simultaneously increase and negatively impact participation in sports by women from the global south. Moreover, it offers how future research in women’s transnational sports can more ethically incorporate the standpoint of women from the global south in sport policy, SDP projects, and branding campaigns.
ContributorsStevenson, Paulette (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Switzer, Heather (Committee member) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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This dissertation is a detailed rhetorical analysis of interviews with rice farmers in central Java, Indonesia and documents published by the global NGOs United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and CGIAR. Using theories of materiality, literacies, and environmental rhetorics, I examine how seemingly distinct and disparate humans, organizations, and

This dissertation is a detailed rhetorical analysis of interviews with rice farmers in central Java, Indonesia and documents published by the global NGOs United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and CGIAR. Using theories of materiality, literacies, and environmental rhetorics, I examine how seemingly distinct and disparate humans, organizations, and inanimates are actually entangled agents in a dynamic conversation. I have termed that conversation the discourse of rice farming. Studying local and global together challenges conventional dichotomous thinking about farming and food. Looking at this conversation as an entanglement reveals what Karen Barad has defined in Meeting the Universe Halfway as the intra-relatedness of all agents. I focus on rice farming because rice is a food staple around the world and a major component of global agriculture initiatives by FAO and CGIAR. I argue that farmers construct their jobs in terms of production, food sovereignty, and community. The NGOs construct agriculture in terms of consumption, food security, and poverty alleviation. In my project I emphasize the need for global agents to better account for how farmers construct agriculture. Accounting for how all agents impact the discourse of rice farming is the only way to come to an objective understanding rice farming's impact on local and global scales. My argument adds to the field of environmental rhetorics because most published case studies are about the United States and thus are limited in their applicability. And it enriches global conversations about food security and food justice because it shares accounts from actual farmers who are often conspicuously absent from literature on those topics.
ContributorsCooney, Emily (Author) / Goggin, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Hannah, Mark (Committee member) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Both law and medicine are interpretive practices, and both systems have historically worked in tandem, however ineffectively or tumultuously. The law is, by social mandate, imagined as a "fixed" system of social control, made up of rules and procedures grounded in a reality that is independent of language; although we

Both law and medicine are interpretive practices, and both systems have historically worked in tandem, however ineffectively or tumultuously. The law is, by social mandate, imagined as a "fixed" system of social control, made up of rules and procedures grounded in a reality that is independent of language; although we know that law is both revised and interpreted every day in courtroom practice, to imagine the law, the system that keeps bad people behind bars and good people safe, as indeterminate or, worse, fallible, produces social anxieties that upend our cultural assumptions about fairness that predate our judicial system. This imaginary stability, then, is ultimately what prevents the legal system from evolving in consonance with developments in the mental health professions, as inadequate as that discursive system may be for describing and categorizing the infinite possibilities of mental illness, specifically where it is relevant to the commission of a crime. Ultimately, the insanity plea raises the specter of the endless interpretability of the law and mental illness and, therefore, the frailty of the justice system, which makes each insanity defense trial emblematic of larger social anxieties about social control, fairness, and susceptibility to mental illness or the actions of mentally ill people.
ContributorsAlden, Andrea Lisa (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, A. Cheree (Committee member) / Roberts-Miller, Patricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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In June 2013, United States (US) government contractor Edward Snowden arranged for journalists at The Guardian to release classified information detailing US government surveillance programs. While this release caused the public to decry the scope and privacy concerns of these surveillance systems, Snowden's actions also caused the US Congress to

In June 2013, United States (US) government contractor Edward Snowden arranged for journalists at The Guardian to release classified information detailing US government surveillance programs. While this release caused the public to decry the scope and privacy concerns of these surveillance systems, Snowden's actions also caused the US Congress to critique how Snowden got a security clearance allowing him access to sensitive information in the first place. Using Snowden's actions as a kairotic moment, this study examined congressional policy documents through a qualitative content analysis to identify what Congress suggested could “fix” in the background investigation (BI) process. The study then looked at the same documents to problematize these “solutions” through the terministic screen of surveillance studies.

By doing this interdisciplinary rhetorical analysis, the study showed that while Congress encouraged more oversight, standardization, and monitoring for selected steps of the BI process, these suggestions are not neutral solutions without larger implications; they are value-laden choices which have consequences for matters of both national security and social justice. Further, this study illustrates the value of incorporating surveillance as framework in rhetoric, composition, and professional/technical communication research.
ContributorsYoung, Sarah (Author) / Goggin, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Wise, J. MacGregor (Committee member) / Rose, Shirley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017