Filtering by
- All Subjects: Science Fiction
- Creators: Department of English
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
The use of discourse markers (DMs) is present in speech to both structure and organize the discourse (Fung & Carter, 2007). However, despite the different studies about the use of DMs, less attention has been paid to specific Spanish DMs such as pues, ‘so, well’ luego, ‘then, therefore’ and entonces ‘so, then’ about their reduction. The focus of this study is on the phonetic variation of these DMs from a corpus of speakers of Mexican Spanish from Salinas, California (Brown & Alba, 2017). This paper analyzed dependent and independent variables to show their influence on the reduction of DMs. Also, chunking phenomena and special reduction were part of the study as they can reflect patterns of change in the language.
More specifically, this play works within the cross-section of religion/spirituality, mental illness, and UFO and other extra-terrestrial related anomalies to ask such questions as: What does it mean to be Human? What does it mean to be "alien" or Other? How do we internally and externally construct a binary between Humanness and Otherness, between Self and Other? How do we construct reality? In what ways does this anthropomorphize our conceptions of the Human or the Other? In what ways, specifically, may this affect our understanding or manifestation of mental illness, in ourself and others?
The play you see here is a final draft for the thesis, but is still in development elsewhere. Here is a brief log line (i.e. a short description of the general plot and conflict of a script) for the piece: Four sisters from a broken home must deal with the sudden discovery of their late father's communication with an extra-terrestrial race bearing a message of Love-and-Peace. When they, too, begin to communicate with the E.T.'s, they must juggle issues of mental illness, memory, and trauma all while outrunning a shadow government that will stop at nothing to uncover their secret.
A creative project seeking to incorporate rhetorical theory into speculative fiction. Tales From Beyond the Breach is a series of five stories set in a post climate apocalypse, all dealing in some way with rhetorical understandings of truth. Each chapter or story draws on a different philosopher, though there is some overlap and reflection of my own personal beliefs. The project is meant to entertain as well as provoke thought, taking what we know and imagining what could be.