Matching Items (18)
Description
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
Description
Attack of the Fake Geek Girls: Challenging Gendered Harassment and Marginalization in Online Spaces applies feminist, gender, and rhetorical theories and methods, along with critical discourse analysis, to case studies of the popular online social media platforms of Jezebel, Pinterest, and Facebook. This project makes visible the structural inequities that underpin the design and development of internet technologies, as well as commonplace assumptions about who is an online user, who is an active maker of internet technologies, and who is a passive consumer of internet technologies. Applying these critical lenses to these inequities and assumptions enables a re-seeing of commonplace understandings of the relationship between gender performativity and digital cultures and practices. Together, these lenses provide a useful set of tools for methodically resisting the mystique of technologies that are, simultaneously, represented as so highly technical as to be opaque to scrutiny, and as ubiquitous to everyday life as to be beneath critical examination.
Through a close reading of the discourses surrounding these popular social media platforms and a rhetorical analysis of their technological affordances, I documented the transference of gender-biased assumptions about women's roles, interests, and competencies, which have historically been found in face-to-face contexts, to these digital spaces. For example, cultural assumptions about the frivolity of women's interests, endeavors, issues, and labors make their way into digital discourse that situates the online practices of women as those of passive consumers who use the internet only to shop and socialize, rather than to go about the serious, masculine business of making original digital content.
This project expands on existing digital identity and performativity research, while applying a sorely needed feminist critique to online discourses and discursive practices that assume maleness and masculinity as the default positionality. These methods are one approach to addressing the pressing problems of online harassment, the gender gap in the technology sector, and the gender gap in digital literacies that have pedagogical, political, and structural implications for the classroom, workplace, economic markets, and civic sphere.
Through a close reading of the discourses surrounding these popular social media platforms and a rhetorical analysis of their technological affordances, I documented the transference of gender-biased assumptions about women's roles, interests, and competencies, which have historically been found in face-to-face contexts, to these digital spaces. For example, cultural assumptions about the frivolity of women's interests, endeavors, issues, and labors make their way into digital discourse that situates the online practices of women as those of passive consumers who use the internet only to shop and socialize, rather than to go about the serious, masculine business of making original digital content.
This project expands on existing digital identity and performativity research, while applying a sorely needed feminist critique to online discourses and discursive practices that assume maleness and masculinity as the default positionality. These methods are one approach to addressing the pressing problems of online harassment, the gender gap in the technology sector, and the gender gap in digital literacies that have pedagogical, political, and structural implications for the classroom, workplace, economic markets, and civic sphere.
ContributorsTekobbe, Cindy (Author) / Miller, Keith D. (Thesis advisor) / Rose, Shirley K. (Committee member) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the literate practices of women reading and writing in the press during the civil rights movement in the 1950s/60s. Through a textual analysis of literacy events (Heath) in the memoirs of Sarah Patton Boyle (The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition), Anne Braden (The Wall Between), Daisy Bates (The Long Shadow of Little Rock) and Melba Pattillo Beals (Warriors Don't Cry), this dissertation highlights the participatory roles women played in the movement, including their ability to act publicly in a movement remembered mostly for its male leaders. Contributing to scholarship focused on the literate lives of women, this study focuses on the uses of literacy in the lives of four women with particular emphasis on the women's experiences with the literacy they practice. Drawing on ideological views of literacy (Gee, Street) and research focused on the social, cultural and economic influences of such practices (Brandt), the women's memoirs served as the site for collecting and analyzing the women's responses and reactions to literacy events with the press. Through an application of Deborah Brandt's notion of sponsor, literacy events between the women and the press were recorded and the data analyzed to understand the relationship the women had with the literacy available and the role the sponsor (the press) played in shaping the practice and the literate identities of the women. Situated in the racist climate of the Jim Crow South in the 1950s/60s and the secondary role women played in the movement, the women's memoirs and the data analyzed revealed the role the women's perception of the practice, shaped by personal history and lived experiences, played in how the women experienced and used their literacy. This dissertation argues that their responses to literacy events and their perceptions of the power of their reading and writing highlight the significant public role women played in the movement and argues that, although the women remain relatively unremembered participants of the movement, their memoirs act as artifacts of that time and proof of the meaningful public contributions women made to the movement.
ContributorsAdams, Kelly R (Author) / Goggin, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
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
Description
This research examines four stateswomen fashion icons—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Diana, Princess of Wales, Michelle Obama, and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge—and the way these stateswomen used clothing and personal style to create a public identity. Dress is a powerful tool of personal expression and identity creation and when we look at stateswoman style, we see the ways that dress gives them agency to negotiate the “official” identity that’s being placed on them. Personal style is the way we use personal adornments (clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, etc.) to form messages about who we are, who we dream we could be, and what our personal values are. It is a system of communication with rhetorical influence on others that, in return, offers a way to embrace, challenge, or subvert societal expectations and cultural norms. The choice to embrace, challenge, or subvert to the expectations is fluid, and the women continuously move back and forth between these states. I argue for the ways the selected women in this analysis make choices and negotiate such expectations on the national stage through their clothing choices.
While personal style does not construct our identities on its own, our dress is often the first indicator of our identity and personality. Dress, therefore, becomes one way to express our identity, even in situations where we are otherwise silenced. Stateswomen are “not body as advertisement”—as celebrities are—but “body as a source of agency.” For every woman, stateswomen included, clothing is a rhetorical statement that they make every day. These women exemplify the way choices can be made powerfully—because they are “like us” more than fashion icons. These stateswomen icons show the public evolving negotiations between personal and public style and identity. They demonstrate the ways that clothing choices can be empowering ways to construct identity and use clothing as an identity statement. This is instrumental in helping average women of the public learn how they can use clothing as a rhetorical statement that creates agency and identity.
While personal style does not construct our identities on its own, our dress is often the first indicator of our identity and personality. Dress, therefore, becomes one way to express our identity, even in situations where we are otherwise silenced. Stateswomen are “not body as advertisement”—as celebrities are—but “body as a source of agency.” For every woman, stateswomen included, clothing is a rhetorical statement that they make every day. These women exemplify the way choices can be made powerfully—because they are “like us” more than fashion icons. These stateswomen icons show the public evolving negotiations between personal and public style and identity. They demonstrate the ways that clothing choices can be empowering ways to construct identity and use clothing as an identity statement. This is instrumental in helping average women of the public learn how they can use clothing as a rhetorical statement that creates agency and identity.
ContributorsSeverson, Andrea J (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Lamp, Kathleen (Committee member) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
More than 260 million people suffer from an anxiety disorder worldwide, with 40 million in the U.S. alone—18% of the American population. And that label includes everything from Social Anxiety and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder to phobias and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Thus, people with anxiety may not have a singular cause for their worry, but a myriad number of them that influence every aspect of their lives. And, that doesn’t include people who’ve never been formally diagnosed and don’t receive proper medication or therapy.
Unfortunately, medication has many possible side effects, and both medication and therapy are often expensive. However, there are alternatives for someone dealing with anxiety. This book proposal offers a range of solutions for anxiety management, from do it yourself techniques like guided imagery and yoga, to biofeedback devices like HeartMath, to research trials on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, as well as Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. The idea was not to outline every potential solution for anxiety, but to educate people on available opportunities and empower them to take control.
Though anxiety can be managed and reduced, there is no cure. That’s because anxiety is a normal part of life, and in most cases a helpful evolutionary tool to keep people on track. But, when this anxiety becomes a burden on someone’s life, there is a plethora of alternative solutions available. Understanding anxiety and learning to manage it is not an impossible task. This thesis provides an introduction to the idea and then allows the reader to move forward on their own path as they choose.
Unfortunately, medication has many possible side effects, and both medication and therapy are often expensive. However, there are alternatives for someone dealing with anxiety. This book proposal offers a range of solutions for anxiety management, from do it yourself techniques like guided imagery and yoga, to biofeedback devices like HeartMath, to research trials on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, as well as Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. The idea was not to outline every potential solution for anxiety, but to educate people on available opportunities and empower them to take control.
Though anxiety can be managed and reduced, there is no cure. That’s because anxiety is a normal part of life, and in most cases a helpful evolutionary tool to keep people on track. But, when this anxiety becomes a burden on someone’s life, there is a plethora of alternative solutions available. Understanding anxiety and learning to manage it is not an impossible task. This thesis provides an introduction to the idea and then allows the reader to move forward on their own path as they choose.
ContributorsSchneider, Sage Ann (Author) / deLusé, Stephanie (Thesis director) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
My grandmother, Mickey Gilbert, is the daughter of Italian immigrants, Clemente Saulino and Anna Moccia, who married in Italy and moved to a small mining town called Lynch, Kentucky in 1928, the year before my grandmother was born. Her family moved to an apartment in Cumberland, Kentucky where Clemente started a dry-cleaning business. Grandma's sister, Berenice, was born in 1931 and then her mother had a child every five years for 15 years, adding Joanne, Joe, and Tom to the family. Her family was religious and attended church every Sunday and holy day. Grandma went to a Catholic boarding school called St. Camillus Academy in Corbin, Kentucky from third grade through high school, spending holidays and summer vacations at home in Cumberland. She graduated in 1946 and attended Villa Madonna College in Covington, Kentucky that fall. She lived with three girls \u2014 Mary Catherine, Sara Lou, and Eulalie \u2014 at St. Joseph Heights, which was run by nuns. She spent a good amount of her holidays at Mary Catherine "Juggie's" home in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky which was closer than her own home in Cumberland. That is where she met my grandpa, Colly Gilbert. She graduated from Villa Madonna in 1950 with a B.A. in history and a secondary education teaching certificate. She married Allen Carlton "Colly" Gilbert, the youngest of seven children and a World War II veteran, in 1951 and they moved to Phoenix, Arizona where they had seven children: Anne, Carlton, Kelly, Monica, Marydith, Eileen (my mother), and Mark. Unfortunately, Colly lost a battle with kidney cancer in 1971 when their youngest child, Mark, was only ten years old. Grandma raised their children on her own after that and never remarried. She kept busy even after her children moved out by taking up gardening, knitting, and volunteering. She also spent time playing the piano and reading books. All of her children married, and all had at least one child except Carlton. Grandma has thirteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren who all adore her. Anne, Carlton, Kelly, Monica, Marydith, and Mark eventually settled in different cities or states. My mother, Eileen, was the only one that stayed in Phoenix. She actually bought the house that her dad had built \u2014 the house that she grew up in \u2014 from my grandmother in 1992, and my grandmother moved to a patio home at Arcadia Green, less than a mile away. My grandma is an inspiration to our family. She taught us all the importance of enjoying the simple things in life and doing what we can for people. The values that she has passed on to us and the activities that she has inspired us to love make us healthier and happier people. Her parents instilled in her a love of family, friends, and life that she passed on to her children, and her children passed on to their children. Our family is close because of her \u2014 she is our lifeline. Her legacy is the tight bonds our family has woven.
ContributorsWorkman, Anna Michela (Author) / deLusé, Stephanie (Thesis director) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
This dissertation discusses how Twitter may function not only as a tool for planning public protest, but also as a discursive site, albeit a virtual one, for staging protest itself. Much debate exists on the value and extent that Twitter (and other social media or social networking sites) can contribute to successful activism for social justice. Previously, scholars' assessments of online activism have tended to turn on a simple binary: either the activity enjoyed complete success for a social movement (for instance, during the Arab Spring an overthrow of a regime) or else the campaign was designated as a failure. In my dissertation, I examine a Twitter public-relations campaign organized by the New York Police Department using the hashtag #MyNYPD. The campaign asked citizens to tweet pictures of themselves with police officers, and the public did, just not in the way the police department envisioned. Instead of positive photos with the police, the public organized online to share pictures of police brutality and harassment. I collected six months of tweets using #MyNYPD, and then analyzed protestors' rhetorical work through three lenses: rhetorical analysis, analysis of literacy practices, and social network analysis. These analyses show, first, the complex rhetorical work required to appropriate the police department's public-service campaign for purposes that subverted its original intent; second, the wide range of literacy practices required to mobilize and to sustain public attention on data exposing police abuse; and third, the networked activity constituting the protest online. Together, these analyses show the important work achieved within this social justice campaign beyond the binary definition of successful activism. This project shows that by increasing our analytical repertoires for studying digital rhetoric and writing, scholars can more accurately acknowledge what it takes for participants to share experiential knowledge, to construct new knowledge, and to mobilize connections when engaging online in public protest.
ContributorsHayes, Tracey (Author) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Thesis advisor) / Long, Elenore (Thesis advisor) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation presents reflective teaching practices that draw from an object-oriented rhetorical framework. In it, practices are offered that prompt teachers and students to account for the interdependent relationships between objects and writers. These practices aid in re-envisioning writing as materially situated and leads to more thoughtful collaborations between writers and objects.
Through these practices, students gain a more sophisticated understanding of their own writing processes, teachers gain a more nuanced understanding of the outcomes of their pedagogical choices, and administrators gain a clearer vision of how the classroom itself affects curriculum design and implementation. This argument is pursued in several chapters, each presenting a different method for inciting reflection through the consideration of human/object interaction.
The first chapter reviews the literature of object oriented rhetorical theory and reflective teaching practice. The second chapter adapts a methodology from the field of Organizational Science called Narrative Network Analysis (NNA) and leads students through a process of identifying and describing human/object interaction within narratives and asks students to represent these relationships visually. As students undertake this task they can more objectively examine their own writing processes. In the third chapter, video ethnographic methodologies are used to observe object oriented rhetoric theory in practice through the interactions of humans and objects in the writing classroom. Through three video essays, clips of footage taken of a writing classroom and its writing objects are selected and juxtaposed to highlight the agency and influence of objects. In chapter four, a tool developed using freely available cloud-based web applications is presented which is termed the “Fitness Tracker for Teaching.” This tool is used to regularly collect, store, and analyze data that students self-report through a daily class survey about their work efforts, their work environment, and their feelings of confidence, productivity, and self-efficacy. The data gathered through this tool provides a more complete understanding of student effort and affect than could be provided by the teacher’s and students’ own memories or perceptions. Together these chapters provide a set of reflective practices that reinforce teaching writing as a process that is affective and embodied and acknowledges and accounts for the rhetorical agency of objects.
Through these practices, students gain a more sophisticated understanding of their own writing processes, teachers gain a more nuanced understanding of the outcomes of their pedagogical choices, and administrators gain a clearer vision of how the classroom itself affects curriculum design and implementation. This argument is pursued in several chapters, each presenting a different method for inciting reflection through the consideration of human/object interaction.
The first chapter reviews the literature of object oriented rhetorical theory and reflective teaching practice. The second chapter adapts a methodology from the field of Organizational Science called Narrative Network Analysis (NNA) and leads students through a process of identifying and describing human/object interaction within narratives and asks students to represent these relationships visually. As students undertake this task they can more objectively examine their own writing processes. In the third chapter, video ethnographic methodologies are used to observe object oriented rhetoric theory in practice through the interactions of humans and objects in the writing classroom. Through three video essays, clips of footage taken of a writing classroom and its writing objects are selected and juxtaposed to highlight the agency and influence of objects. In chapter four, a tool developed using freely available cloud-based web applications is presented which is termed the “Fitness Tracker for Teaching.” This tool is used to regularly collect, store, and analyze data that students self-report through a daily class survey about their work efforts, their work environment, and their feelings of confidence, productivity, and self-efficacy. The data gathered through this tool provides a more complete understanding of student effort and affect than could be provided by the teacher’s and students’ own memories or perceptions. Together these chapters provide a set of reflective practices that reinforce teaching writing as a process that is affective and embodied and acknowledges and accounts for the rhetorical agency of objects.
ContributorsHopkins, Steven Wayne (Author) / Rose, Shirley K. (Thesis advisor) / Goggin, Maureen (Committee member) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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 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.
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