Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1982. / Title from title page screen, viewed April 6, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Stan Renner (chair), Glenn Grever, John Heissler, Jan Neuleib, Ross Rutter, Dent Rhodes, Ronald Halinski. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 156-159) and abstract. Also available in print.

The purpose of this thesis is to aid in qualitative improvements to technical support documents on the Internet. By using a generic criticism this analysis will make substantive suggestions towards the improvement of this type of document by engaging the rhetoric employed by their authors. It will discuss the history of technical documentation, hypermedia, and the Internet. Using a generic criticism, the analysis will explore the strengths and weaknesses of representative documents in order to define a rhetorical genre. With a genre defined, the analysis will offer suggestions to the authors of instructional documents on the Internet regarding ways to improve the qualitative features of the documents. The analysis will conclude with suggestions for further research. / Graduation date: 2006 / Best scan available for Appendix. Original has a photocopy of black and white screen shots.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 286-294).

This dissertation examines the multimodal discourse of academic posters from three disciplines, namely, Chemistry, Speech & Hearing Sciences and Linguistics, in an attempt to unravel how writers from different disciplinary communities build their communicative purposes into the verbal and visual modes in their posters. The analytical framework adopted for this study builds upon the one proposed by D’Angelo(2010), which incorporates Hyland’s metadiscourse model (2005) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar paradigm (2006) for the verbal and visual analyses respectively, and supplements it with multimodal content analysis adapted from Jones’s (2007) model. Follow-up interviews with members of the discourse communities were also conducted to enhance the validity of the results. The findings reveal that there exist a wide range of differences in the use of metadiscourse markers (e.g. hedges, boosters, evidentials, code glosses) across the three group texts pertaining to disciplinary influences. There is also evidence that academics in different subjects value some of the same qualities in the texts necessitated either by the peculiar context of poster presentations (e.g. frame markers, engagement markers) or a need to maintain scientific formality (e.g. self-mentions). Visually, the concern for the context and ‘scientificness’ continue to exert great influences, rendering a myriad of visual manifestations (e.g. framing, modality) that are commonly shared across the data, whereas the cross-discipline discrepancy mainly narrows down to the image usage(functions and types). / published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Over the past decade, an interest in collaboration has been coming to the fore in composition studies. Whereas once we were primarily interested in investigating the cognitive processes of the individual, we now seek to understand more about the social dynamics of writing in groups to improve our teaching of composition in the classroom. To that end, this dissertation looks at the real world collaborative activities of business proposal writers within a high technology company. Writing in the workplace is often undertaken in groups, and my work at Cerebellum, Inc. with computer professionals (who wrote as part of their jobs) reveals complexities hitherto unsuspected in the social writing process. The importance of a detailed understanding of collaboration has been called for in the literature by, for example, Ede and Lunsford (1990). My dissertation surveys current literature in composition, including a review of investigations into collaboration during business writing as a salient behaviour of such a discourse community. In order to accomplish my research, I used a video camera to record the activities which embodied the writing process at Cerebellum Inc. I found that the use of the video camera in an ethnographic manner not only helped me to gather detailed data, both verbal and nonverbal, in the continuous and comprehensive detail so vital to communication research, but also assisted in initiating better understanding within the business community of the aims and approaches of academic research. Video technology gave me a chance to participate in as well as observe situations, and also opened the door to conversation concerning my methods and my findings with both researchers and informants. I propose a model of the varying levels of engagement undertaken by the writers of a business proposal. I then suggest the educational value of the representation with a discussion of implications for the teaching of writing in the workplace and in more traditional school settings. Detailed research into collaboration offers us a window on the social processes which constitute writing for our students now and in their futures in the workplace. Such work is vitally important to ensuring superior levels of advanced literacy which will be in continuing demand now and in the next century.

No description available.

This research examines factors that either promote or hinder workplace writing among Chemical Engineering students during their study in two Technical Report writing courses. It examines the extent to which a workplace writing environment, which instructors believe they create, is actually enacted in the classroom, and also explores the differences in intended and actual learning outcomes between instructors and students. / A number of qualitative research methods were used to gather data for sixteen student case studies. These methods include taped and transcribed interviews with students and the two course instructors, an analysis of all student reports and course documentation, classroom observations, taped student-professor conferences, and taped responses from both instructors as they evaluated each student report. / Research findings suggest that students learned the required technical report format since everyone passed the course. Findings further suggest, however, that explicit efforts to enact a professional chemical engineering writing environment within this university context were generally unsuccessful. Writing tasks did not reflect an authentic workplace writing situation where writers believed their composing purpose was to communicate with others within their community of Chemical Engineering. Even though attempts were made by instructors to create such an environment, the writing task actually became a school-based exercise where students learned to provide the right textual format in order to meet with both teacher expectations and writing success. / The study concludes that educators must be aware of their real teaching and learning agendas and that these objectives must be conveyed adequately to students. Findings also reinforce the difficulty of enacting authentic workplace writing contexts within academic environments, and ways to achieve this goal are discussed. This research also contributes to evolving theoretical discussions about writing and the teaching of writing.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2007. / Title from title page screen, viewed on April 8, 2008. Dissertation Committee: Gerald Savage (chair), Ronald Fortune, Ronald Strickland. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 180-189) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Kent State University, 2009. / Title from OhioLINK ETD abstract webpage (viewed March 12, 2010). Advisor: Christina Haas. Keywords: Scientific writing; rhetoric of science; writing in the disciplines; multimodality; semiotics; visual rhetoric; technical writing; ethnography; workplace literacy. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1982. / Title from title page screen, viewed April 11, 2005. Dissertation Committee: John Heissler (chair), Glenn Grever, Elizabeth McMahan, William Piland, Charles Sherman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-135) and abstract. Also available in print.