Social problems emerge when a behaviour, individual, or group is collectively defined as problematic. Online child solicitation is explored as a behaviour that has been defined as a social problem. This paper analyzes and explores the claims and claimsmaking process of one advocacy group, Perverted Justice. Their use of rhetorical strategies designed to persuade are of particular importance. In addition, the definitions, examples, and estimates they use to construct the problem are explored. Perverted Justice constructs the Internet as an inherently dangerous space, asserts that all children are at risk, and that online solicitation is a significant social problem. Furthermore, law enforcement, parents, and advocacy groups cannot protect children. Criticisms are rendered illegitimate through the use of rhetorical strategies. The way in which Perverted Justice constructs online child solicitation and their role in solving this issue incorporates elements of neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, and vigilantism, reflecting the wider regulatory framework.

<p> My dissertation, <i>An Ecology of Place in Composition Studies</i>, proposes a place-based approach to teaching writing in community engagement. My project addresses contemporary criticisms of ecocomposition by uniting the ecological foundations of the movement with pedagogical strategies used in philosophy and geography to teach students about place. Why is this needed? Students going to college resituate themselves, and often find themselves needing to adjust their compasses to find their place at the university. This contributes to a longstanding question that has been answered via rhetorical situation in rhetoric. It offers a practice of inquiry that serves to engage our students not solely with community partners, but also with the places inhabited by both the students and the partners they work with. In undertaking an immersive reflection of these places, students stand to move beyond a superficial consideration of situation and context, gaining an understanding of the nuance and details that encompass these ecological relationships.</p><p> But it also has a practical origin in that students who are leaving their families and going to college must renegotiate their understanding of place in order to be successful in both the writing classroom, and as students and people.</p><p> I contend that infusing writing instruction with a study of place is a step towards helping our students establish an ecological mindset, a mindset which recognizes how our actions interact with the actions and reactions of others, ultimately leading to outcomes that we cannot easily foresee. An ecological mindset favors empathy, understanding, and an acceptance of our role as constructive members of the communities in which we live. My dissertation reflects on the importance of an understanding of place in developing these attitudes as a writer, as a student, and as a citizen.</p>

<p> Writing plays an important role in the academic and professional success of each UL Lafayette student&mdash;whether he or she is in the sciences, business, education, or liberal arts. It is not enough for a student to be a writer, he or she must to be the best possible writer in his or her discipline of study and in his or her career after college. In my research, I have explored the possibility of maximizing writing abilities of students by proposing what I call the genre method for knowledge transfer, where the Writing Center collects and stores, in a database, writing samples from all academic levels and disciplines of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The genre and knowledge transfer method is an avenue for any student of the University to study writing samples that are unique to his or her area of study and to use such knowledge in relevant writing situations in order to develop the individual student&rsquo;s writing potentials to the fullest.</p>

This project presents an analysis of the rhetorical practices of famed radio host Mary Margaret McBride as examined through a selection of her recorded radio broadcasts and written works. Following the tradition of feminist rhetorical histories, this work seeks to expand the canon of rhetors studied to include an overlooked but significant female rhetor and the understudied medium of radio. In this thesis, I pose the questions: 1) What rhetorical practices characterize Mary Margaret McBride’s performances of sonic rhetoric? 2) How do these practices and her medium of radio intersect? 3) How did McBride’s practices align with or diverge from her gendered identities, especially in regards to private and public boundaries? Through this project, I characterize McBride’s rhetorical practices as: (1) a conversational style and direct address; (2) indirect questions with digression and self-deprecation; (3) memory and anecdote; and (4) vivid description and emotive language. From this analysis, I posit that McBride’s practices show her awareness of radio’s position between public and private spheres, allow her to connect with her audiences, challenge the public and private binary, and foster new norms for feminine discourse. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the Master of Arts. / Spring Semester 2017. / April 24, 2017. / feminist rhetorical history, Mary Margaret McBride, radio / Includes bibliographical references. / Kristie Fleckenstein, Professor Directing Thesis; Kathleen Yancey, Committee Member; Tarez Graban, Committee Member.

This dissertation addresses the problem of teacher self-efficacy theory being largely absent as a concept of study in composition studies, despite the field maintaining a primary focus on issues like teacher development and effective composition pedagogy. This absence of the study of teacher self-efficacy, defined as “a [teacher’s] judgment of [her] capabilities to bring about desired outcomes of student engagement and learning” (Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy 783), is consequential; if composition teachers are largely unaware of teacher self-efficacy, they are unable to actively cultivate it, which means that they could miss opportunities to reach their full potential by becoming more persistent, resilient, confident, and productive in their teaching. If one of the key goals of composition studies is to hone the writing abilities of composition students, the field is unable to achieve the greatest result for this goal if composition teachers, who are the major players attempting to execute the goal, are not functioning according to their greatest potential. I use this dissertation as a vehicle for exploration in order to address this problem. That is, I examine 1) how self-efficacy emerges and evolves across teachers' classroom lives, 2) how teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and teaching behaviors converge or diverge across their professional lives, and 3) how teachers’ lives outside the classroom affect their self-efficacy beliefs in the classroom, all in an effort to learn more about composition teacher self-efficacy in particular, as well as make the construct of teacher self-efficacy more present and prominent in our field. In brief, this study increases awareness of the construct in composition to the extent that composition teachers are prompted to cultivate their self-efficacy in constructive ways, ultimately leading to greater fulfillment of their professional potential. In order to conduct this exploration, I collect, transcribe, and analyze oral histories from three teachers of composition. The oral histories constitute three interview sessions (per teacher subject) in which each composition instructor shares a comprehensive story of their formative professional experiences as a composition teacher, while also focusing on their perceptions of their classroom teaching as well as their teaching practices and other life experiences. Specifically, the three participants include Dana, a teaching assistant at a large, public research university; Willow, an adjunct working at a handful of institutions in a metropolitan city; and Miriam, a professor just beginning a tenure-track position at a public research university. The results of the analysis suggest several insights about teacher self-efficacy in composition contexts. First, teachers’ modes of entry into the field of composition teaching can greatly impact their teacher self-efficacy perceptions as novices. Second, and relatedly, training regimens to which teachers are exposed can likewise impact their teacher self-efficacy perceptions. Third, teachers’ familiarity with composition theory can help them feel more efficacious in teaching composition. Fourth, extensive sociality in composition teaching [which I understand to be the heightened degree of communication and interaction between composition teachers and students in comparison to the degree of communication and interactions found in other types of college student-teacher relationships] poses distinct challenges for more introverted teachers in terms of the formation of their composition teacher self-efficacy. This is because participating in social activities can be naturally more difficult for introverted types of people and traumatic experiences resulting from that difficulty can impact teacher self-efficacy beliefs. Finally, the use of mandated textbooks can either empower or disempower teachers (based on the quality of the textbook), leading respectively to feelings of efficacy or inefficacy in teaching. This study provides an initial, important step in considering the role of teacher self- efficacy in composition teachers’ lives, both in the beginning of those lives and throughout the longevity of those lives. Overall, it is my hope that this study will not only improve the teaching experiences of composition instructors in our field, but also inspire composition scholars to look more closely at the construct of composition teacher self-efficacy in order to empower and embolden teachers to reach their greatest potential as they share their knowledge and passion about writing with their students. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / June 19, 2017. / college, composition, teacher self-efficacy, writing / Includes bibliographical references. / Kristie Fleckenstein, Professor Directing Dissertation; Vanessa Dennen, University Representative; Kathleen Blake Yancey, Committee Member; Michael Neal, Committee Member.

This dissertation explores the ways writing assessment manifests within everyday writing, a category of writing wherein writers write for their own purposes and under their own volition, in order to provide an alternate approach to theorizing writing assessment. Research into the processes and impact of writing assessment has been primarily developed by observing dominant scenes of writing, focused largely on writing located in or designed and administered by various educational institutions (e.g., College Board, classroom grades, state testing). Turning attention to a concept of everyday writing assessment—the systems of interpreting and judging written texts that lead to decisions, actions, or changes in everyday writing—this dissertation is able to broaden knowledge about how writing assessment is a social action that can shape, define, and permit kinds of writing, processes, and identities in our society. Using case study methods, this dissertation works toward a fuller theory of writing assessment by observing how assessment manifests in the everyday writing of four writers, each a participant in one of two local communities of practice: Ham and Billy are key volunteers for The Vine, an activist, community outreach organization. Granny and Autumn are members of the Home Club, a religious women’s group. The findings of the research—drawn from field observations, time-use diaries, and follow-up interviews—provide a map of research areas that everyday writing is able to make more legible for writing assessment research: (1) how everyday writing assessment is implicated in how writers build, understand and maintain social bonds and (2) how writers conceive, perceive, and construct writing assessment intertextually. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / June 26, 2018. / Audience, Community, Everyday Writing, Literacy, Social Media, Writing Assessment / Includes bibliographical references. / Kathleen Blake Yancey, Professor Directing Dissertation; Don L. Latham, Jr., University Representative; Michael R. Neal, Committee Member; Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Committee Member.

Soy Morena: Identity Performance on Black Twitter analyzes how people of color utilize the social media platform Twitter to perform their cultural and racial identities. Through the use of critical race theory, digital rhetoric, and cultural rhetoric, this project looks at tweets from the author’s personal Twitter account, noting the ways her hybridity has come to the forefront of her identity on that space. This project also weaves the author’s personal narrative throughout in an effort to claim her story and highlight how nuanced identity truly is. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester 2019. / April 15, 2019. / Black Twitter, identity, intersectionality, language, race / Includes bibliographical references. / Rhea Lathan, Professor Directing Thesis; Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Committee Member; Alisha Gaines, Committee Member.

This dissertation responds to several overlapping exigencies. First, online writing instruction is on the rise, and with that rise comes a need for substantive research into methods of online writing support. Writing center scholarship has attempted to keep pace with the growth of OWI; however, stakeholders in online writing instruction, such as the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (2019), suggest that the field needs further sustained and substantive work, both theoretical and empirical, including the “disembodiment of the [online writing classroom].” This leads to the second exigency: embodiment, the unified experience of mind, body, and environment, has been demonstrated to be an important consideration for digital technology and online communication, digital composition studies, and writing centers. Because these interests intersect in the online writing center, the online writing center is a necessary site of such examination. Thus, this dissertation asks how embodiment manifests in the online writing center for tutors, the practitioners in the space. Specifically, it examines the following questions through a multiple-case study of three tutors in an audio-video-textual tutoring setting: 1) How, if at all, does technological mediation, including matters of interface and the presence of the mediated bodies of student clients, impact tutors’ experiences? 2) How, if at all, do tutors consciously represent their bodies, desire their bodies to be understood, and understand the student clients’ bodies during online tutoring sessions? 3) How, if at all, do tutors’ embodiments, including embodied acts and experiences, manifest in and affect online tutoring sessions? This study finds that, first, for these online writing tutors, place and embodied habits were primary components of the ways in which tutor embodiment shaped and was shaped by their experiences with the technological mediation of the tutoring sessions. Second, tutors desired visible bodies in their representations of self; bodies were a way for tutors to cultivate a sense of authenticity in the appointment, to develop a professional ethos, and to assess the ongoing effectiveness of the session. The final way tutors’ embodied experiences manifested in the online tutoring center was that tutors experienced anxiety regarding the material spaces from which they tutored online. Despite often being invisible outside of breakdown, embodiment is an essential part of the constellation of effective online writing support practices. As a result, it requires not only further theoretical study in online writing center practices but also further integration into tutor preparation. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2019. / March 29, 2019. / audio-visual-textual tutoring, composition studies, embodiment, online writing center, online writing instruction, writing center / Includes bibliographical references. / Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Professor Directing Dissertation; Allan Jeong, University Representative; Tarez Samra Graban, Committee Member; Michael Neal, Committee Member; Stephen J. McElroy, Committee Member.

This dissertation investigates and conceptualizes the sources of motivation that inform international ESL graduate students’ tutoring sessions focused on academic writing. In doing so, the study draws on Bonny Norton’s investment theory of motivation as a framework, which offers a theory of motivation from a sociological perspective that accounts for the relationship between the language learner and the social world in which they operate, and the changing nature of motivation in the writing process. Examining international ESL graduate students’ sources of motivation through the framework of investment illuminates the dynamic and shifting nature of students’ sources of motivation over time between material resources such as error-free polished texts, and symbolic resources, such as writing fluency and academic writing expertise. The research questions focusing this study ask (1.) What are international ESL graduate students’ motivations for utilizing the Graduate Writing Center? (2.) What do international ESL graduate students expect to gain during sessions at the Graduate Writing Center? (3.) How satisfied are international ESL graduate students with the knowledge or understanding they gain from their experiences at the Graduate Writing Center? To answer the research questions focusing this study, I use a two-part methodology: a recorded observation of each participant’s tutoring session and a retrospective, post-tutoring session interview with each participant. First, through the observation, I documented aspects of the tutoring sessions that did not come across aurally but could be helpful for understanding the tutors response practices, the tutee’s reception of the tutor’s feedback, and the power dynamic between the tutor and participant. Second, through the interviews, I gathered background and demographic information on the participants, inquired into the participants’ sources of motivation and expectations for utilizing the writing center over time, and ascertained the participants’ satisfaction with their writing center experiences. After synthesizing and interpreting these two datasets, I constructed a case study of each participant’s motivations for utilizing the Graduate Writing Center at FSU. Through the case studies, the research resulted in the following four claims: (1.) The participants had dual motivations (both material and symbolic); (2) the participants’ sources of motivation for utilizing the GWC over time were dynamic; (3.) the participants’ sources of motivation for utilizing the GWC shifted back and forth in relation to and were constrained by their needs, abilities, identities, assignments, and the stage of their PhD programs; (4.) With the dynamic shifts in their motivations and expectations, the participants expected their tutors to take on correspondingly dynamic roles and adjust their practices to accommodate the participants’ shifting sources of motivation and expectations. The results from this research can be used towards developing and articulating a more linguistically relevant theory of tutoring and tutoring practices that is more responsive to the dynamic motivations international ESL graduate students bring to the university writing center. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / June 20, 2017. / Composition, ESL, Graduate Students, International Students, Motivation, Writing Center / Includes bibliographical references. / Kathleen Blake Yancey, Professor Directing Dissertation; Don Latham, University Representative; Tarez Samra Graban, Committee Member; Michael Neal, Committee Member.

Social problems emerge when a behaviour, individual, or group is collectively defined as problematic. Online child solicitation is explored as a behaviour that has been defined as a social problem. This paper analyzes and explores the claims and claimsmaking process of one advocacy group, Perverted Justice. Their use of rhetorical strategies designed to persuade are of particular importance. In addition, the definitions, examples, and estimates they use to construct the problem are explored. Perverted Justice constructs the Internet as an inherently dangerous space, asserts that all children are at risk, and that online solicitation is a significant social problem. Furthermore, law enforcement, parents, and advocacy groups cannot protect children. Criticisms are rendered illegitimate through the use of rhetorical strategies. The way in which Perverted Justice constructs online child solicitation and their role in solving this issue incorporates elements of neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, and vigilantism, reflecting the wider regulatory framework.