This multiphasic study explored the narratives of five first-time Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrating during the historic confluence of conflicts in 2020 America. After positioning the liminal 2020 circumstances within an antiracist research lens, the author analyzed, first through grounded theory and then secondarily through poetic inquiry, how these five participants described their protest experiences. The grounded theory phase yielded an overarching theory that first-time protestors experienced a dual process of unsuturing and of calling-out, with three subthemes categorized within each of these two processes. The author moved into analysis with the poetic inquiry phase, crafting poems guided by six subthemes of empathy, silence, permission-seeking, identity, story uncertainty, and direct action, and yielding six total poems produced from participant words. The author concluded that poetic inquiry has promise as a tool toward a functioning antiracist identity, while advising on reflexive antiracist future directions for such work.

The Reagan administration launched a two term campaign to win support for the Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua. The rhetorical war began in secrecy and ended in scandal. With Reagan's reputation as a "great communicator" and the priority he assigned to the Contra cause it seemed surprising to find virtually nothing on the topic in a search of the communication journals through mid 1992. The central research question of this thesis is whether President Reagan used rhetorical strategies and similar depictions to other presidents in his prowar rhetoric against Nicaragua. A common theme of war rhetoric is the dehumanizing of the enemy in order to justify retaliation and to deflect the attention of the audience away from the realities of war. Robert 'vie, using Burke's dramatistic analysis, found over a hundred and fifty years of presidential rhetoric a predictable pattern of justifications for war. He found motives for war arranged in a hierarchy with "rights" as the primary god-term for purpose. Before a textual evaluation this study reviewed the history of the region the role of the rhetor and of the media. 'The data included a computer scan covering all of Reagan's statements on Nicaragua (59,000 words), a brief overview of 45 speeches and a detailed examination of three nationally televised speeches. The television speeches were analyzed in light of the following: a) Rhetorical exigencies surrounding the appeal were researched. b) Key players in the drama and their effect on the rhetoric were reviewed. c) Main arguments and counter-evidence were related to the speeches. d) A metaphoric analysis was conducted with particular emphasis on mega-images. e) Identification strategies in Burkeian terms were applied to the speeches. f) The speeches were subjected to a pentadic analysis to determine ratios and their relationship to motive. g) The effects were reviewed in terms of the press, Congress and polls.

This study focused on the persuasive efforts of Laura Clay (1848-1941) as they represented a particularly southern argument for woman suffrage as opposed to the northern, or National American Woman Suffrage Association, suffrage argument. As a Kentuckian, she believed she understood southern attitudes on the three major issues she encountered during her thirty-two years as a suffragist. The three issues were those of woman's traditional role, the race question, and state versus federal legislation. The arguments of Miss Clay concerning these issues were premised on justice and expediency, which formed the rationale of suffragist rhetoric. Her arguments, tailored to southerners, supported the national rhetorical position by advocating a new role for women equal to the status of men based on the Christian and natural rights doctrines and the changed society caused by industrialization. She argued the race issue by stipulating an educational prerequisite, rather than a color qualification, for female enfranchisement. With her rhetorical skills, she sought to bring her southern audience to embrace the national position on these first two issues. However, she could not accept the national association's decision to push solely for a federal amendment, to the neglect of states rights. Laura Clay's adherence to states rights ultimately set her at odds with the course of the national suffrage association, which she had served as first auditor for sixteen years.

What is comedy? Can someone learn to be funny? Are there rules or guidelines for the production of laughter, the universal language? This paper, which outlines an investigation of successful comedians and the production of a short film, determines to aggregate as many of the relevant prerequisites of inducing giggles as possible, especially as they relate to the audiovisual medium of cinema.

This thesis is meant to be a learning tool to help small businesses use free social media accounts as business marketing tools. The manual is broken down into chapters highlighting the importance of “Knowing your Audience,” “Branding,” “Constructing a Post,” “Using Visual Rhetoric,” and “Expanding your Audience.”. This thesis is inspired by scholars of English, internet linguistics, journalism, gender theory, professional writing, and rhetoric. It is also inspired by a survey of 18 small businesses in the Lafayette, Louisiana area. The survey helped to focus my research on the social media issues of small businesses in the southern region of the U.S. Little academic attention is given to the continued statistical analysis of language in social media from a critical compositional standpoint. I have written this thesis to inspire continued research in the area of internet linguistics and to help small businesses maximize profits by improving their social media impact.

Many researchers argue the increasing reliance on sit/lie ordinances to regulate homeless people's use of public space is one in a suite of neoliberal policies that shape the geographies of public space in cities to serve the needs of global capital. However, these policies are developed at the local, not global, level as specific actors make claims in the public sphere that communicatively shape policy formation. Through comparative case study, this research asks, how do different actors, situated in specific local and global contexts, influence the adoption of sit/lie ordinances? I examine two cases of policymaking in Portland and San Francisco. I use discourse analytic strategies and thematic coding of newspapers, archival documents, and key informant interviews to look at policy-making processes as they occur in their political, social, and economic contexts. I focus especially on the role of language in policy-making, policy-making arenas, and actions of grassroots actors, drawing from three interdisciplinary literatures to develop an explanatory theory of policy-making. I find the four interrelated explanatory factors in policy-making were: the actors (neoliberal and right-to-the-city); the tactics they use; the policy talk they use; and the policy arenas. First, political processes provide windows of opportunity and determine arenas for political activities. The different policy arenas (citizen election, committee, council led, litigation, etc.) influence the audience that the actors care about, and thus the policy talk. Additionally, elected officials have a determining effect on which arenas they use, which in turns structures the opportunities for policy talk. Second, the arena influences the depth to which resisters can discuss the issues with the wider public and decision-makers. This may explain why the right-to-the-city frame may not have been used as much as the academic literature might suggest. Resisters find it much harder to use this framing with the general public or elected officials because it takes too much time to explain to those unfamiliar. Instead, they rely more on concepts that may be more familiar like the dependent poor and unequal impact of the law on minority groups. Third, I find local actors have different positions in the global economy, however on the local level their different avenues and strategies of involvement are due to local conditions rather than global ones. The location in the global political economy seems to be less important than local political decision making contexts and the actions of individuals who are locally powerful due to their economic status and political connections. This suggests room for resisters to use local politics to resist these ordinances, without having to take on the entire global economy. Finally, actors use different narratives to influence decision makers and each other, responding and shifting to competing frames over time. The change over time is important, as it shows how policy debates change based on influences from different actors. My findings suggest the framing of the original necessity for the policy can influence the policy trajectory, but actors can and do respond and successfully shift policy talks over time. The dissertation concludes with additional implications for grassroots practice based on these theoretical findings.

Although intercultural scholars examine the differences in cultural values, beliefs, and attitudes between the U.S. and China, few specifically have studied cultural differences between U.S. and Chinese university classrooms. This study examines behavioral differences exhibited by U.S. teachers in U.S. university classrooms and Chinese teachers in Chinese university classrooms. This research addresses three areas of significance. First, Chinese students studying in the U.S. who read this thesis may be better able to cope with the U.S. educational system and communicate more effectively with both U.S. students and teachers. Second, this research may help U.S. university teachers to better understand the Chinese culture and Chinese students. Third, this research may increase U.S. teachers' awareness of and sensitivity to the increasingly multicultural classroom environment in the U.S. Three male university teachers in the U.S. and three male university teachers in China were observed and videotaped in this study. The data analysis was guided by categories establish by Gudykunst (1988), Hofstede (1986), and Lieberman (1993) as behavioral indicators of cultural styles. Several interesting findings occurred among overall descriptive observation and qualitative accounts of observations. First, a powerful trend of behavioral differences exhibited in the classroom by U.S. university teachers and Chinese university teachers was found. The findings in this search strongly support findings by Gudykunst (1988), Hofstede (1986), and Lieberman (1993) that U.S. university teachers exhibited far more individualist/direct communication styles and small power distance/personal communication styles than Chinese teachers, while Chinese teachers exhibited more collectivist/indirect communication styles and large power distance/contextual communication styles than U.S. teachers. Second, the results of this research provide valuable insights for both U.S. university teachers and Chinese university teachers; that is, culture reflects teachers' and students' values, assumptions, and behaviors. U.S. culture reflects values, assumptions, and behaviors, such as individualism, direct communication styles, small power distance, and personal communication styles. However, Chinese culture reflects collectivism, indirect communication styles, large power distance, and contextual communication styles.

Many events of the gold rush have been adequately narrated in numerous books and articles. The succeeding pages in this thesis will recall, historically by topic, important incidents of one phase of that period never before treated as a separate study that phase is the theatre of the Mother Lode region. The argonauts of the Mother Lode wanted to be entertained and could pay for it. Many preferred the saloon and gamboling hall, but the theatre did not languish because of this, and in fact, developed in some instances directly out of the saloons and fandango halls. It was the purpose of this study (1) to present the history of the theatre of the Mother Lode during that portion of the gold rush period of the decade 1851-1861; (2) to show who some of the notable thespians were; (3) to describe the modes of transportation used; (4) to give historical accounts of the buildings used for, or built for, theatres; (5) to review some of the plays and performances offered; and (6) to show the influence of the audiences' reactions to the bill of theatrical fare.

The phenomenon surrounding news media’s power to alter group identity and group cohesion is something that rarely a point of focus in communication studies. In this study I worked with a local social movement group called Stockton Stands with Minneapolis. This group illustrated the importance of maintaining shared values. Utilizing relational Interviewing, SSWM members provided evidence showing the connection between news media and group success. News media has had a role in shaping group members’ understanding of SSWM and activism. SSWM has faced internal conflict as a result of negative news representation. SSWM is a relatively small and young (2 ½ years) group when compared to more established groups and movements (such as black lives matter and #MeToo), the impact of losing any amount of membership to news representation is important and deserves attention. Therefore, in this paper I argue researchers must go beyond the conventional protest paradigm and media effects research that has commonly only examined the impact of the outgroup. There is a need for a new area of focus within media effects and activist representation, one that examines the impact of news media through multiple lenses of analysis. I argue this area would benefit from incorporating theories and concepts across the communications studies discipline. Utilizing research from the fields of media effects, interpersonal communication, and organizational communication can bring new insights to already existing understandings of activism and activist success. To help lead the charge into this new area of focus; I introduce a new paradigm and research approach called social movement splintering.

Much research about advertisements for menstrual products reveals the ways in which such advertising perpetuates shame and reinforces unrealistic ideals of femininity and womanhood. This study aims to examine the content of Instagram posts by four different menstrual product brands in hopes of understanding how these functions may or may not be carried out by social media posts by these brands as well. Building on the body of research about menstrual shame and advertising, I specifically ask: How do the Instagram pages for four menstrual product brands dissuade individuality; how do they prescribe femininity; and how do these functions differ across brands? From a liberal feminist perspective, the examined media exhibits some signs of progress—such as better racial representation—but overall maintains the status quo as to who should be using which products, what womanhood means, and what menstruation entails. These findings indicate that within menstrual product advertising, harmful gender, ability, race, class, and wealth stereotypes continue. Further research of a broader scope is needed to investigate changes on a larger scale, such as within advertising on other platforms and by more brands.