Beginning with an inquiry into the tension between modernism and postmodernism, the dissertation claims that the essay is and always has been postmodern in its uncanniness--its refusal of generic and disciplinary boundaries, its capacity to bring together multiple voices and discourses, its skepticism, and its personal, experiential epistemology. Part I concludes with rhetorical analyses of late modern (in content and residual formal attributes) and postmodern essays. The affinities and contradictions between the normalized essay originating with Montaigne and feminist essays focuses the three chapters of Part II, "Gender and the Essay." In the first chapter, "Logos, Montaigne, and Feminism," I explore the tensions between the essay as Montaigne created it and the appeal of that form to contemporary feminist writers. In the second chapter, "The Essay's (Feminine?) Form," I show how the essay has functioned as both a vehicle for the oppressive logocentrism of its traditionally male, genteel authors and as a vehicle for women writers striving to disrupt or overthrow that tradition. In the third chapter, "Rhetoric and the Practice of Style: A Gathering of Essays by Women," I pursue the rhetoric of the other aesthetic into the realm of psychoanalytic theory, where the foundation of Lacanian symbolic order troubles the "other" aesthetic's claim to an alternative discourse. To close this extensive chapter I provide an array of essays written by women that are particularly innovative. My own creative nonfiction is the subject of Part III. "What Rhetoric Means" brings postmodern elements into an academic essay. On the other hand, "Life Drawing" does not address an academic subject or employ academic conventions. Instead it offers charcoal drawing as an analog to writing, with both acting as ways to revise and reclaim my life from my father's troubled legacy. Finally, in "Reflection," the third chapter of Part III and the dissertation's closing chapter, I claim that the essay, postmodernism, and rhetoric share a deep affinity for one another. In that the three terms signify freedom from absolutes, they also force us to contend with ethical responsibilities.

Reading Walden with an eye for contemporary issues in rheorical and composition theory, I contend that this work has much to offer a theory of dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic pedagogy advances a view that knowledge is situationally negotiated and contingent upon the limitations and exigencies of these situations. A pedagogy based on this theory should advance a self-reflective resistance to and critical awareness of socially organized knowledge and ideology; it should contribute to student awareness of knowledge as an "event" rather than static content. My thesis is that a re-reading of Walden can reveal another voice to add to the discussion of such a postmodern pedagogy. I read Thoreau as an advocate of an epistemology of qualified, experiential claim. This perspective claims a relationship between the authority of experience and that of specified, academic professional communities, relying on something like Burke's "identification" for rhetorical power rather than perceptions of the "air tight" logic of hegemonic discourse.

<p> This research investigates the discourse around the terms web 2.0 and cloud computing, which are used as metaphors for information technology. In addition to the disruptive technologies and applications to which they refer, both of these terms have affected information technology, its use, and the way it is perceived. This research examines how this impact has varied over time and by audience. The usage of the terms is examined through a rhetorical analysis of a sampling of articles from the general publications The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today, and the professional publications InformationWeek and CIO Magazine. The research is an analysis of these artifacts using critical methods influenced by metaphoric analysis, symbolic interactionism, and Burke's concept of symbolic action. Metaphors serve as cognitive tools in discourse communities for understanding new domains, the tenor or target of the metaphor, through references to shared symbols, the vehicle or source of the metaphor. Metaphors may be mostly descriptive, as epiphors, or persuasive, as diaphors. This research shows that the web 2.0 and cloud computing metaphors served a persuasive purpose for helping people understand disruptive technology through familiar experiences. Rhetors used the metaphors in persuading audiences whether or not to adopt the new technologies. As the new technologies became accepted and adopted, problems arose which were obscured in the original metaphor, so new metaphors emerged to highlight and conceal various aspects of the technologies. Some of these new metaphors arose with systematicity in the same domain of the original metaphor, while others came from different domains. The ability of the metaphor to be used in various rhetorical situations as the technology evolves affects the usefulness of the metaphor over time. The usage of web 2.0 shortly after the dot com boom and bust cycle of the late 1990s and early 2000s allowed rhetors to frame web 2.0 as an economic phenomenon, casting the collaborative aspects of the technology as tools for making money in a perceived second dot com bubble. The failure of the second dot com bubble to materialize, along with user frustration with the emphasis of the economic aspects of collaboration and the limited usefulness of the software release cycle in representing continuous technical change, led to infrequency of the use of web 2.0 as a metaphor. Other metaphors, like social networking and social media, arose as a new source domain to represent some of the collaborative aspects of the original technologies. Some minor referents of web 2.0, like software as a service and data centers, became referents of cloud computing, which uses a natural archetype of clouds as the source domain to reference the target domain of hosted information technology services accessible through multiple devices. As a natural domain, the cloud metaphor is more extensible than web 2.0 and as a result may have more longevity than web 2.0. The cloud computing metaphor also became associated with lightning, electricity, experimentation, and utility through a fuzzy semantic relationship. The utility metaphor worked with cloud to emphasize the ease of implementation of cloud based solutions. As practical problems arose with implementing cloud solutions, new metaphors arose. Some of these worked within the cloud domain, such as the idea of storms, to emphasize the downsides of cloud computing. Other metaphors arose in new source domains to emphasize territory and private ownership in hosted solutions. By providing an in-depth rhetorical analysis of these IT metaphors, this research can serve as a guide for evaluating rhetorical and metaphoric responses to future disruptive technical changes.</p>

<p> There are a growing number of mainstream films and television shows which include gay characters or same-sex families as central figures: <i>A Single Man, The Kids Are Alright, Will &amp; Grace, Mad Men, Two and a Half Men,</i> and <i>Modern Family.</i> This thesis sets out to determine if the film <i>Interview with the Vampire,</i> which preceded the above named films and television shows by more than five years, is a cite of queer cinema that focuses on gay themes while proposing a same-sex family. In coupling Seymour Chatman's rhetorical theory of narrative in fiction-literature and film with Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin's theory of Queer Cinema, the study focuses on locating and citing specific instances where gay themes of identity and identification along with the theme of the same-sex family emerge. The study utilizes the novel <i>Interview with the Vampire</i> by Ann Rice as a critical touchstone and draws from Roland Barthes' concept of "Rhetoric of the Image" to evaluate the strength of the themes found within the adapted film <i>Interview with the Vampire.</i> The research finds several examples of the re-presentation of individual gay lives and uncovers evidence of a cinematic representation of a same-sex family. The researcher concludes that while the film <i>Interview with the Vampire </i> is certainly an example of queer cinema, it also presents a same-sex family unit that may be the first of its kind.</p>

<p> In this critical rhetorical analysis, I examine the contemporary avenging-woman narrative in popular television and film. As a rhetorical text, the avenging-woman narrative can be read as a representation of cultural constructions of female empowerment. In this project, I situate the contemporary avenging-woman narrative within the context of a contemporary third wave feminist culture, in order to articulate how the representations of female empowerment in the texts may be a negotiation of cultural tensions about feminism. The four primary texts chosen for inclusion within this study are made up of two television shows, <i> Revenge</i> (2011-present) and <i>Veronica Mars</i> (2003-2007), and two films, <i>The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</i> (2011) and <i> Colombiana</i> (2011). Each text features a woman depicted as transgressing social norms of traditional female behavior, usually through violence and with the purpose of exacting some form of revenge.</p><p> Throughout this dissertation, I argue that although the image of the avenging-woman can be read as representative of female empowerment, the narratives simultaneously portray her as a cautionary tale against subversion within the system. I critique the depiction of female empowerment at the intersection of violence, a lack of homo-social relationships, a representation of sexualized feminine strength, and the objectification of the female body via fetishized technology. An analysis of each theme shows the complications that arise with the linking of women and power in the avenging-woman narrative. The representation of female empowerment is thus ultimately hegemonic, serving to reinforce the system the protagonist is depicted in the narrative as attempting to subvert. Although offering a pleasurable tale of justice and revenge, the avenging-woman text is also an example of how a rhetoric of female empowerment is problematic when it does not support political changes within a patriarchal system.</p>

Grammar can be described from a positioned rather than a universal perspective. My main point in this thesis is absolutely synthetic: the rhetorical calibrations of trope and figure unify the communication of speaker and hearer in the same way that two languages can be understood to vary. In dialogue, subtle expressions are developed (energeia) which impact on the referential and non-referential systems of a language (ergon). However, as these innovations lose their efficacy, they sediment into a grammaticalized system which appears, through translation--i.e., from an "overly-literal" glossing into English, no doubt--to be a creative and artistic product rather than an epiphenomenon of a structural template. My contention is that this appearance, stemming as it does from an aesthetic stance, is at least as real as any formal unity holding among all languages simultaneously. Finally, I gloss Mandarin in English to demonstrate how languages can be compared bi-laterally.

<p> This study involves conducting a rhetorically configurative analysis of an architectural interior, where `configurative' is defined as a set of visual/spatial interrelations perceived within a given context or framework. Specifically, the purpose of this project is to re-animate not only awareness of context, but also the imagination in its role in the creation of human significance in designing spaces.</p><p> Technological changes in communication directly affect the relevance of rhetoric to the development and continuation of culture. Shifts in rhetorical modalities, therefore, may eventually constitute cross-cultural transitions in sharing experiences. Thus, to maintain continuity of meaning, it becomes incumbent on professional communicators to develop a working familiarity with contemporary socio-cultural changes, particularly those changes that involve a transition from one form of communicative form to another.</p><p> According to rhetorician Ernest Grassi (1980, 1994) culture itself is rhetorical, i.e., a by-product of the human need for the psyche to achieve and, more importantly, to <i>share</i> meaning. For Grassi, this adaptation of nature involves a metaphoric transfer of meaning from inner understanding onto the physical world. To do this, however, there must be some means, some venue, available to create a common connection between the two realms.</p><p> Language has been such a venue, and, print, until recently in the West, has been the predominant communicative modality for the maintenance and transmission of culture. One cultural consequence of this adaptation is that written/printed communications deliberately hold form constant so as not to interfere with the transparent dissemination of information, as content. Electronic modalities, however, complicate this cultural communicative assumption in that: (1) virtual form can no longer be routinely subordinated to content, and (2) `knowledge' when experienced as simultaneous pattern need not be distanced and `provable' to be valid,</p><p> Grassi's understanding of metaphor as the link between rhetoric and culture (1980, 1994), in effect, characterizes metaphor as a hybrid communicative form that bridges the gap between rational/linguistic and aesthetic/configurative forms via human ingenuity. This approach has been explored on the linguistic/rhetorical side as generative criticism (Foss, 2004) where the researcher must create and/or design/construct a singular critical framework through which to interpret an unusual artifact. On the aesthetic/rhetorical side, however, Bauhaus artist Wassily Kandinsky's analytical drawing process and correspondence color theory practicably elucidate design as a communicative system (Poling 1986). </p><p> This proposed visual/spatial analysis of the interior the lobby of the rotunda of Skeen hall is intended to depict an architectural interior as schematized space that will illustrate the processing inherent to Grassi's imagistic first principles, i.e., the <i>archai</i>, remnants of a primordial language (Grassi, 1994) where deductive reasoning fords its source, but that cannot, in and of themselves, be discovered via deduction (Grassi, 1980). In this view, the <i>archai</i> represent the collective sources of <i> ingenium</i> which allow humans to overcome their alienation from nature through the figurative development of human meaning that the rawness of the natural world alone cannot provide.</p>

<p> This dissertation describes an investigation of the practice of teaching argumentation in the undergraduate composition classroom in large part by examining a corpus consisting of 16 commonly used argumentation textbooks with publication dates from 2010 to 2014. The purpose of this project is to help advance the teaching of written argumentation by examining how it is defined, justified, and taught via textbooks, by ranking the textbooks on a 1-3 sliding scale according to how well the lesson plans within them are equipped to teach students how to write arguments according to what the authors and publishers describe as the ideal argument.</p><p> This study is conducted in two phases: The first is a process in which the textbooks are categorized into one of three types, or uses, of argumentation (academic/professional, advocacy, or exploration). The second phase is the evaluation of two chapters in each book to see how well the activities in them are developed as to help student learn to write the classified argument. The final chapter of this dissertation contains recommendations that can be adapted by future textbooks authors, editors, and publishers, recommendations that involve developing books that more clearly identify with one or more of the three categories making up this taxonomy, as well as adding sections that teach students to use a stasis-mapping formula to evaluate existing, as well as to create new, arguments.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study is to explore the rhetorical functions of references to God and the Bible in the first presidential inaugural addresses from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama. The Inaugural Address serves to reunite the nation after the division of an election. The language used in this address reflects the culture and identity of the nation it speaks to. Through a modern rhetorical analysis of the inaugural addresses from 1933-2009, this thesis aims to identify the trends in American religiosity, as can be seen through particular use of references to God and uses of biblical metaphor as a rhetorical and persuasive tool in the inaugural address.</p>

<p> "Might makes right," so the saying goes. What does this mean? What does it mean to say that humans live by this saying? How can this saying that is considered by almost all as an expression of injustice play a justificatory role practically universally and ubiquitously? How can it be repulsive and yet, nonetheless, attractive as an explanation of the ways of the world? Why its long history? </p><p> I offer a non-cynical explanation, one based on a re-interpretation of the saying and of both recognized and unrecognized related phenomena. This re-interpretation relies on the notion of a tacit justification for violence. </p><p> This non-cynical, re-interpretive explanation exposes the ambiguity of the saying and the consequential unwitting, self-deceptive, fallacious equivocations that the ambiguity makes possible under common conditions. While this explanation, furthermore, focuses on thinking factors&mdash;specifically on fallacious thinking, on humans' unwittingly and self-deceptively committing the fallacy of equivocation&mdash;it does not deny the possible role of non-thinking factors; it only tries to show that the thinking factors are significantly explanatory. </p><p> What is the ambiguity? "Might makes right" expresses two principles. The first principle is the common meaning, namely, that the dominance of the mightier over the weaker is right. This principle is generally considered to be not a definition of justice but an expression of injustice. The second principle, which is almost universally shared in a tacit and unreflective way, is a principle of life, namely, that it is right for any living being to actualize its potential. This second principle is originary and thus primary, while the first principle is derivative and thus secondary. The use of all powers, natural or social, can be ultimately derived legitimately or illegitimately from this primary principle. </p><p> A common manifestation of "might makes right" is the unwitting abuse of power, an abuse that is not recognized as such by the so-called abuser, but that is rather suffered by this latter, who misapplies the second principle in situations that fall under the first principle, thereby unwittingly living by the saying, tacitly justifying abusive ways by it. This unwittingness calls for critical control and forgiveness.</p>