Rhetoricians have long sought to improve our efforts and capacity to reason together, to achieve at the very least mutual understanding in the face of conflict and difference. In Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, for instance, Wayne Booth argues that the socalled rational-irrational split, in part, keeps us from doing this: achieving understanding of one another’s reasons. But despite this call to improve our rhetoric, there persists (especially in writing pedagogy) the sense that we must choose between reason and emotions like empathy. This dissertation explores whether empathic reasoning, an instance of the narrative imagination, helps us better understand, maybe even negotiate, conflicts of apparently incommensurable values. This dissertation argues that, by more fully considering, employing, and teaching empathic reasoning, we might usefully foreground (1) our apparent struggles sometimes to find common ground with others, especially our perceived adversaries; (2) the ways in which we structure our worlds through language, and omit from our world, through both language and force, “the other”; and (3) the subtle yet audacious ways in which we often fail to reason, equitably and charitably, with others. If, as many scholars in rhetoric argue, greater empathic reasoning is required to improve deliberation and public discourse, then what are the limits and possibilities of this form of reasoning? And what are the potential means by which we might model, cultivate, and improve our abilities to engage in, and analyze, this process of reasoning and moral inquiry? Finally, what does rhetorical instruction, practice, and theory offer by way of a means of cultivating these capacities for reasoned deliberation, reciprocation, and informed judgment? Throughout this project I explore some of these limits and possibilities of empathic reasoning; and in every chapter I come to the same basic conclusion. That despite the limits of empathic reasoning there is great need, still, for realizing and cultivating further its possibilities: for improving the ways we reason together, in part by expanding our capacities to imagine more fully -- charitably, responsibly, critically -- the contingencies that inform and the particulars that comprise our life stories, our interconnected narratives. / text

This study analyses students' use of formative feedback through a case study of a foundation-type academic literacy module at the University of Zululand. The research paradigm incorporates both a critical and a constructivist perspective, and a qualitative approach. The data collected were transcripts of interviews conducted with students towards the end of the third term, 2004, for the module. During the interviews the students described how they used respondent feedback on short, draft pieces of writing. They referred to their portfolio of writing which was with them. Students write short pieces, or end notes, after each lecture in order to show their understanding of academic concepts based on the content of Political Philosophy; they must rewrite after carefully noting respondents' comments on their work; and they, with tutor supervision, write group end notes for responders. The meta-level understanding underpinning the modules is an academic literacies approach. The transcripts were analysed using discourse analysis. Findings are that the students interviewed tend to use the feedback as if they are corrections, rather than what the feedback ideally aims at, which is by a writing dialogue, to help students to develop students' awareness of the discipline's conventions for academic writing, together and through construction of coherent meaning in their writing. The students' interpretive framing of their use of the respondent ii feedback are perhaps aligned with dominant institutional practices which tend to understand apparent student problems in learning in the university in terms of problems with student language, where language merely carries meaning, rather than being integral to the construction of meaning. The variable quality of the respondent feedback for the students interviewed also suggests some responders might also understand student writing in terms of problems in language as separate from construction of meaning. The implications of this study are to encourage an institutional understanding of the importance of using formative feedback to assist student access to the university and to success. Further, it challenges the dominant institutional and wider understanding of student difficulty as primarily stemming from lack of language proficiency. Finally, it recognizes the complexities of student selfreflexive understanding of the role of using formative feedback in their writing. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

The provision of written lecturer feedback at the draft stage of a draft-response-redraft process is an extensively used tool in the process genre approach to teaching academic writing. It is also regarded as an important vehicle for mediating access to the academic discourse community for students. This study has as its foundation the view that knowledge and learning is socially constructed and therefore, it is believed that the process of learning academic writing is closely related to a process of acculturation into the world of academic discourse (Quinn, 2000). There is a need to be aware that while students need these skills to succeed in the academic context, we need to be critical of the process of apprenticeship that takes place. Research has shown that although the process genre approach is widely used, the effectiveness of the intervention and the precise impact of this on the students and their essay writing skills have yet to be fully explored. This study uses a case study methodology, including an analysis of usable feedback points (Hyland, 1998) to evaluate the effectiveness of the draft-response-redraft process in facilitating the acquisition of academic writing skills and mediating access to the academic discourse community. The effectiveness of written lecturer feedback on student essays at the draft stage for twelve students doing a first year level tertiary Media Course (with the teaching of academic writing skills as a stated outcome) is explored. A survey of the responses of ninety students doing the course and a focus group discussion with nine students provide a context for a more detailed case study of the essays and responses of twelve students. These students were selected in order to obtain a range of age, gender, mother tongue, schooling background and marking lecturer in the data. The findings show that written feedback is perceived by the students to be valuable and most feel positive about participating in a draft-feedback-response process. However, the relationship between feedback points and improvement is not clear. Individual student factors and the dynamic interaction that takes place make every case unique. The evidence in this study supports the theory that re-writing facilitates improvement (Fathman and Whalley, 1990; Polio et al 1998 and Robb et al 1998) and shows that even brief or sketchy feedback does stimulate revision and can result in writing improvement, although whether this process assists in the long-term development of academic writing skills is the subject for another study. This study supports research which indicates that the dynamic interaction between lecturer and student in the draft-response-redraft process can facilitate the acquisition of academic literacy and mediate access to the academic discourse community. The data did, however, highlight aspects of the process that need to be implemented in order for the positive potential of the learning experience to be fully realised. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

The continuing importance of literacy and the emergence of electronic text forms have incited interest in the use of technology in a number of domains, among them writing and multimedia authoring. The expectation is that technology will facilitate the writing process by supporting cognitive processes and align school instruction with real-world tasks by providing more meaningful learning environments. This study tracked middle school students' task representation as they participated in protracted multimedia design and writing tasks. Students were engaged in the creation of a literary magazine over several weeks, with both written and media products linked to a particular theme. Cognitive strategies and behaviours associated with problem solving and communication are described through joint design activities. Students' working activities and their competencies in English Language Arts and Computer Science were identified, and cognitive processes tracked in negotiating and defining the boundaries of the task. Teachers' task representations were also examined in terms of their ability to address student variability; strengths and weaknesses between members of a group as well as their inherent dynamics are brought to the fore. Results point to the need for a better understanding of complex cognitive activities in developing new and more sophisticated repertoires of practice to realize the vision of children 'constructing' their own knowledge. Consequently, educators will gain new insights into what students can achieve when given the opportunities and the tools to do so. The role of educators is seen as instrumental in providing structure and mechanisms for supporting students' engagement in complex tasks. Findings underscore the importance of adopting a broader framework for thinking about the impact of students' participation in literacy projects. Limitations of the study are addressed as well as the key variables in the research on written

"This study ... was undertaken as a thesis for the degree of master of arts in the University of London. It was successfully presented in June 1938"--Prefatory note.

Thesis--Auburn University, 2009. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-74).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 147-151).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-151). Also available in print.

"This study ... was undertaken as a thesis for the degree of master of arts in the University of London. It was successfully presented in June 1938."--Prefatory note.

Rhetoric, as the theory and practice of the discursive means of human influence, and science, as the observational study of the physical world, have traditionally been considered to exist in separate realms. In the past thirty years, however, theoretical convergences in the philosophy of rhetoric and the philosophy of science have yielded a discipline in the rhetoric of science—a discipline concerned with the discursive aspects of knowledge production and reproduction in the sciences. Rhetorical theory has argued convincingly in this century that all language in use is language for use and is therefore, to varying degrees, persuasive. The rhetoric of science begins from the assumption that persuasion is a factor in the construction of scientific knowledge, and from the belief that members of scientific communities (rhetorical communities in every sense) advocate versions of reality which are based in theory, formed in language, and dependent on the agreement of other scientists for their validation. This present project contributes to literature in the applied study of rhetoric of science by analyzing, from a rhetorical perspective, thirty-five scientific articles published in the last six years in major medical journals. (All of the articles are on the subject of primary—or functional—headache.) The project uses a methodology based on classical and contemporary theories of rhetoric to discover persuasive strategies in these scientific texts. It poses questions about how authorial intentions are actualized in scientific texts, how scientific texts have effects on readers, and how the texts affect the situations into which they are introduced. While scientific texts, like literary texts, could be analyzed from a variety of theoretical perspectives, rhetorical theory provides a particularly appropriate heuristic model for analyzing "real world" texts. The rhetorical analysis (which includes both an overview of the complete sample and three case studies) begins by questioning the extent to which the conventions of scientific prose (for example, use of the passive, of nominal iz at ions, of complex sentence structure; use of statistical reasoning and arguments from authority) actually produce a prose that is objective and disinterested in keeping with traditional ideals of science. The analysis shows that medical authors in fact use a variety of persuasive strategies in their articles (strategies which may be classified according to the classical canons of rhetoric), and that the writing in medical journals, is not simply objective and disinterested, although on initial reading, because of its impersonal style, it may appear to be so. The rhetorical analysis demonstrates that the use of textual features promoting an appearance of neutrality is itself a rhetorical strategy which argues for the acceptance of particular claims in scientific articles. The rhetorical analysis is significant for the theory and practice of science, for the discipline of rhetoric of science, and for the discipline of rhetoric itself. The analysis describes the complex rhetoric of scientific writing as a genre, probes the assumptions that underlie its conventions, and argues that scientific texts must be read critically, as rhetoric. To read scientific texts as rhetoric is to locate their arguments, scrutinize their forms, judge their authors, and evaluate their effects. The role of the rhetorician is to urge such reading, and everywhere to promote discussion of the ways of influence exerted especially by texts which appear at first not to be rhetorical. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate