Forgiveness is viewed as a major factor in maintaining healthy romantic relationships. But couples involved in long-distance relationships experience a different set of challenges than geographically-close couples when it comes to maintaining and enjoying satisfying and stable relationships. Many long-distance couples rely on increased empathy and intrapersonal communication in the form of imagined interactions to release tension, rehearse conversations, and review and analyze conflicts. While forgiveness has been studied extensively in a variety of interpersonal settings, it has not been explicitly studied in relation to the usage of imagined interactions or in maintaining long-distance relationships. Moreover, even though a correlation between empathy and forgiveness has long been established, the interplay between these two constructs and intrapersonal communication and relational satisfaction has not been explored. The overarching goal of this study is to bridge the theoretical and conceptual gaps between forgiveness theory, empathy, imagined interactions (Symbolic Interactionism/schema, script or cognitive theory), relational satisfaction and relational maintenance strategies (Dialectical Theory). This study sampled participants in either a long-distance or geographically close romantic relationship (n=181). Although proximity did not discriminate for forgiveness, imagined interactions (IIs), empathy, conflict management as a relational maintenance strategy or relational satisfaction, use of IIs did significantly predict forgiveness and relational satisfaction. Additionally, forgiveness and use of imagined interactions together significantly predicted relational satisfaction. Finally, IIs were shown to be positively correlated with empathy, a significant finding considering the lack of research into that area of the otherwise well developed field of IIs.

This analysis probes the unique nature of the American Literary Humorist by looking at three exemplary cases of this type of figure: Mark Twain, James Thurber, and David Sedaris. Rather than dissecting their works to the point that they become unfunny, this piece examines their interaction with the times and publics that form their audiences. Doing so allows us to better understand their resonance both during their own times and today and gives us a better look at what really makes them stand out in the history of American letters.

Suicide contagion is a real phenomenon. The stigmatization of suicide attempters, completers, survivors of suicide loss, and the idea of suicide itself is at least partly to blame for these outbreaks. Regarding suicide as an analyst, journalist, witness, responder, or bereaved family member or friend can be a devastating form of metaphorical and literal looking. Through a psychoanalytic understanding of constitutive rhetoric, this dissertation offers a textualized way of considering the difficult process of giving individuals who have completed suicide ones regard. Beyond just suicide, this rhetoric of regard presents the disconstituent as the lost persona that withdraws from identification practices. In so doing, this work offers a methodology which articulates the painting technique known as the vanishing point through the Lacanian subject positions of the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real. This dissertation argues that identification can be understood as a demand for a false confession of a subject that does not really exist through Kenneth Burkes notion of the negative and self-abnegation. The disconstituent is the persona lost to and by the subjective practices of identification. Disconstitutive rhetoric is the false confession and interrogation that creates the state of disconstituency which resides within the regarded disconstituent. This dissertation concludes by arguing for an ambivalent regard which mirrors the disconstituent withdrawal while still allowing for the one regarding to feel for the regarded.

The presence of expertise resonates across our daily lives. Experts are called upon to consult us about which candidate is ideal for office, which type of wood is the best choice for a carpentry project, which scientist has optimal data on the effects of air pollution, which speech teacher is the best one to take for proper credit hours, and more. An expert is typically conceived as an individual who knows more about a given topic and can create stronger identification than an average person. The struggle to achieve expert status is one that is fundamentally tied to power and is reliant on the establishment of authenticity and legitimacy from audiences. It is, at its core, a struggle that utilizes rhetoric. Begun in 1984, the TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference has become a critical player in an architectonic movement to manufacture expertise. Modeled on the Lyceum and Chautauqua movements of the early American 20th century, the TED conferences have spread rapidly into public culture, but most notably in field of education via social media and online video. TED talks are classroom artifacts. They are teaching tools and aid in increasing learning for a more digital native student population. Likewise, the TED conferences have become models of community engagement that work rhetorically to demonstrate the attribution and manufacturing of expertise amidst a 21st century digital world. In short, we have acknowledged TEDs growth and expansion as credible and sanctioned their identity as the harbinger of expert and inspirational ideas. The democratization of digital media, particularly video, has made it possible to increase the sharing and collaboration of ideas faster than ever before, and as our world becomes more reliant on digital devices for the receiving and sending of information, the consumption and production of information, and the attribution of expertise, the precise role of technology within pedagogy becomes increasingly complex. My dissertation posits that TED employs current uses of digital media technologies in order to manufacture its ethos of expertise within public culture.

Dignity is the measure of people's worth determined through social interactions (Neal, 2012). As people must enjoy core capabilities to possess dignity (Ward & Syversen, 2009), work is one activity through which core capabilities provide a sense of worth (Venkatapuram, 2013). Workplace managers must enact dignity affirming discourse so their workers perceive ownership of core capabilities that afford a sense of worth and fulfillment. Dignity disaffirming (or violating) discourse obstructs core capabilities, leaving work unsatisfying and workers physiologically, psychologically, and emotionally damaged. Not only do such people suffer, but so do their organizations (Ghoshal, 2005). This study reveals that women and people who have worked at least four years are more likely to recognize dignity violating discourse, being sensitized to such discourse through several possible phenomena. Also, people tend not to recognize certain dignity violating discourses, which could hamper control efforts. Finally, people perceive they treat or are treated with dignity by others only moderately and dignity is only moderately important to them. This study culminates in a university-level course intended to raise awareness of dignity violating discursive behaviors and their consequences, and to offer training in dignity promoting discourse that nurtures worker dignity while supporting organizational productivity and profitability.

Advancing the environmental movement requires overcoming a number of rhetorical challenges. Rhetors must negotiate the significant dichotomies of environmental rhetoric including human/nature, public/private, and science/experience. Moreover, they face the challenge of educating and mobilizing uninformed citizens to take action. This analysis focuses on how Sandra Steingraber, an ecologist, writer, and environmental activist, negotiates these challenges. I argue that Steingraber negotiates these challenges by turning to three interrelated rhetorical strategies: the feminine style, autobiography, and synecdoche. I illustrate this through an analysis of two texts Steingraber wrote after becoming a mother: Having Faith: An Ecologists Journey to Motherhood, and Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis. I argue that Steingrabers rhetoric aids her in overcoming a dichotomous approach to environmental issues, and that Raising Elijah is especially effective in positioning her target audience of parents to take action on the individual, collective, and political levels.

This study examined the links between affectionate communication expressed within family dyads and affectionate communication expressed among other dyads, as well as individual reports of satisfaction with family life and mental well-being. Overall, the study showed that a childs report of affectionate communication exchanged in the child/father subsystem is associated with mothers satisfaction with family life. Additionally, mother reports of affectionate communication exchanged in the spousal relationships were positively associated with child reports of child/father affectionate communication exchanged. Finally, both perceptions of affectionate exchange in dyads outside and inside of ones direct experience correlated with satisfaction with family life and mental well-being. The results offer new insights into the nature of affectionate relationships in families.

In response to the ever growing number of complex, multi-party, environmental disputes occurring over at least the past half-century there has been a growing call for increased voice for citizens in any government policy or action that affects the health of the environments in which they live. In response to criticisms of the most widely used mechanisms for public participation, such as public comment periods and public hearings, the past few decades have seen a rise in the popularity and use of collaborative decision-making approaches. While such approaches may vary widely they tend to hold in common the belief that multiple community stakeholders with varied and sometimes contradictory interests can come together to work to find common ground on seemingly divisive issues. While such approaches have met some criticism from scholars, practitioners, and citizens, the fact remains that collaborative approaches are currently very popular forums of public participation in environmental decision-making. The current study examined a collaborative decision-making group, the Local Collaborative Group, utilizing a tension-centered perspective in order to gain insight into the challenges faced by stakeholders as well as management strategies they employed in an attempt to mitigate those challenges. What emerged was a picture of an organization facing a tension inherent in its mission, as well as a set of management strategies utilized by members which, in some cases, may have been more problematic than the tension itself. Further this study utilized Senecahs (2004) Trinity of Voice theory to evaluate collaborative approaches and situate them within the landscape of public participation.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, has been championing neoliberal and neoconservative bills relatively unnoticed in statehouses across the country for years. Using the populist frame, I contend that ALEC creates a new subject position for its corporate and legislative members as small business owners and virtuous entrepreneurs. This rhetoric is also on display in Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker utilizes populist rhetoric to constitute "the people" as workers.

Until the late twentieth century, courses in voice and diction were a staple of the field of communication studies. Increasingly these classes are disappearing from departments around the country, largely over concerns regarding the prescription of strict speech standards. At the same time, an interest in vocal training has increased in BFA and MFA actor training programs. This study looks to the shared history of voice training between the fields of communication studies and theatre instruction to provide a critical pedagogy for vocal performance, specifically for the area of performance studies, but also for use in other disciplines. Informed by feminist and queer theory, this dissertation examines the history of vocal instruction in the U. S. from the publication of Dr. James Rushs Philosophy of the Human Voice in 1823 to the present. The study examines the major works of the elocution and expression movements in the U.S., recovers the voice instruction of twentieth-century theatre practitioners Konstantin Stanislavski and Jerzy Grotowski, and explores training in the natural voice as described by Kristin Linklater. Grounded in such a lineage of vocal pedagogy, the study provides an outline for voice instruction that honors the unique vocal qualities of the student performer while providing the student with tools for being heard, understood, and for maintaining healthy vocal usage over multiple rehearsals and performances.