This dissertation examines John Dickinson's political rhetoric from 1764 to 1776 in order to understand more fully and accurately his practice of moderation. Most who have written about Dickinson suggest that he was a moderate man. Too often, however, that observation has led to the assumption that Dickinson was, as a result, inactive, timid or indecisive. Further, Dickinson's life after 1768 is neglected by scholars, as is consideration of Dickinson's notions of political strategy. In contrast, this research is based on three assumptions: (1) that John Dickinson was a very active man; (2) that the years after 1768 are critical to an understanding of Dickinson's character; and (3) that his views of political strategy are a key to understanding his seemingly paradoxical behavior. John Dickinson defended the need for moderation in all behavior, both personal and political. But he was not an uncommitted or passive moderate, and he was rarely indecisive. He was an active moderate. An important conclusion to be drawn from this overview of Dickinson's rhetoric is that for Dickinson, rhetorical activity meant political activity. Verbal expression of political beliefs was a significant political act in itself. It was also part of his strategy for social change. Rhetoric gave the movement a common ground on which united mass support could be built. Further, petitions of protest legitimized the use of more coercive measures later. Thus, Dickinson's political rhetoric was an essential part of his practice of active moderation. Finally, if we consider the content of Dickinson's rhetoric in light of his continued political success, we discover that Pennsylvania resistance was built on a great, moderate majority; not the Quaker "moderates," led by Joseph Galloway, but the "truly moderate" Presbyterians, mechanics, artisans, and progressive Quaker lawyers, led by John Dickinson and Charles Thomson.

This dissertation discusses how cultural communication creates and sustains senses about the places in which humans live. Senses of place are argued to function culturally to create and sustain both practical and moral implications for how people do and should live in the land. By examining how people depict place and environment in particular ways, we can understand what aspects of the place are resonant within an expressive system and what actions are said to be viable and appropriate in these places. Places, communication, and environmental practices become inextricably linked to each other. Reinforced in this is the notion that communication is heard to make sense within situated scenes and events. These scenes and events become fundamental to an understanding of an emplaced context. Utilizing the ethnography of communication and cultural discourse theory, this project explores these issues within the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts by focusing primarily on historical narratives of place, social dramatic depictions of place, and everyday talk about land and water. A number of different findings are presented. Through the narrative analysis of historic depictions, varying conceptions of person and type were heard and analyzed. The analysis of talk about land in the Pioneer Valley highlighted a fundamental tension regarding people's relationship to land. This tension is analyzed through the key terms of “development” and “protection.” An analysis of a land use dispute as a social drama discusses an environmentally based agonistic communicative form that, in its enactment, resolves the symbolic tension between symbols for self and symbols for society. An analysis of communication about water demonstrates the manner in which natural phenomena are made sensible through speech communities. This research ultimately describes the importance of attending to locally-based environmental discourses as these are based upon deeply felt cultural premises.

From an interpretive standpoint, traditional assimilation/acculturation research is criticized for its linearity assumption and imposition of researcher-defined, ocular categories upon subjective experiences of social actors. In its place, the "transculturation" perspective is offered. Consistent with the interpretive understanding of the reflexive process between higher level meanings and concrete level social actions, transculturation is defined as "the process in which an individual accommodates novel experiences with his/her existing interpretive scheme with resulting changes in the interpretive scheme itself." To empirically observe that process, interpretive scheme was conceptually reduced to "family paradigm" (or a "shared" environmental orientation among family members), and accommodation acts to "breach management acts" (required of an immigrant following the breach of a host cultural norm). Previous research on family culture and individual performance outside of family provided initial hypotheses in the relationship between family paradigm and breach management acts of transculturating individuals. A group of Korean college students (and their parents) in the United States was investigated using questionnaires which placed them in hypothetical but likely interaction situations with an American. Each subject described his/her remedial action following a breach described in the situations in terms of various "logical forces" (as conceptualized in the theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning), which were then related to various dimensions of his/her orientation toward the American society. Data analysis using nonparametric statistics resulted in refuting the very concept of a family paradigm, i.e. the assumption of "sharedness" was not met for the families investigated, although post hoc analysis revealed linkages between clusters of diverse dimensions of individual subjects' orientation toward the host society and the structure of their breach management acts. Tentative explanations of the linkages are provided, with the caution that the findings may be specific to the group studied, although the analytical framework itself was designed to be non-specific as to subjects.

Death is a universal phenomenon; yet, reactions to death are uniquely diverse. Handling the loss of a loved one has the potential to completely change how an individual sees their world, and their response to death can vary by race, religion, gender, and culture. The bereavement process in many ways is culturally guided, and understanding how culture guides the bereavement process through rituals is imperative. Despite cultural difference, responses to death within the academic community are only representative of one group of people. This study looks at funeral rituals seen within the African American community, and addresses possible meanings behind the rituals discussed. Through the use of focus groups participants were asked about their experiences while attending African American funerals the meaning behind specific rituals. It was found that within African American funerals there are certain acts that hold special significance for the community and work to strengthen the community. Funerals have a larger symbolic meaning to the African American community and those symbols and meanings are discussed within this study.

Death is something everyone will eventually encounter, yet American society has a tendency to avoid or deny death in everyday life and language. Death makes people uncomfortable, and many view it as a topic too complex for children to understand. Children, however, witness big and little deaths in their lives: of pets, relatives, plants, and favorite fairy tale characters. When a child experiences a death, he or she may have questions for parents or other trusted adults which our current avoidance-geared society does not prepare adults for. Children exist in a specific cultural context, and learn rules and expectations of society from an early age. How society views a subject like death will influence how it is talked about, experienced, and learned. Parents and families serve as the primary means of socialization for young children and hold a position of expertise within the parent-child dynamic. Both socio-cultural and personal beliefs about death will influence how a parent approaches death education with his or her child. Through examination of the sensemaking and sensegiving accounts of parent participants, this study sought to understand what the process is like for parents who are discussing the subject of death with their children, what goals and concerns parents have, what information a parent privileges as important within the social and historical context of the conversation, and what resources he or she accesses, if any, to assist with communication. By framing the participants' experiences as "making sense" of a social environment after an interruption, this study was able to investigate the processes of sensemaking and sensegiving in an interpersonal context between parent and child, the roles of Weick's (1995) characteristics of sensemaking, implicit and explicit messages relayed to children about death, and the influence of social scripts on both processes. Twelve semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted to gather accounts in context of parents who had previously discussed death with their children. Interviews were analyzed based on a modified constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006). The study was designed to remain as close to the relayed experience of the participants as possible with hope that information from the participants' experiences will be useful for both academics and parents as a future resource for preparing for parent-child communication about death.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been popular tools for social and political movements in non-democratic societies in which traditional media outlets are under government control. Activists in Saudi Arabia, particularly women, have launched several campaigns through social media to demand the right to drive for women. This study used framing theory as the foundation for looking at the degree to which cognitive, emotion, and religious or moral language has been used to frame discussion of this issue on Twitter. Additionally, this study observed the relationship between these linguistic attributes in Twitter and retweeting behavior to understand the characteristics of the discourse that relate to the potential influence of the message. The results suggested that, within the sociopolitical discussion in social media, cognitive language was expressed the most often, particularly insight and causation language. The results also suggested that tweets containing cognitive language are more likely to be retweeted than those with emotion language. However, among the components of cognitive and emotion language, anger was the strongest specific predictor of retweeting behavior. The implications of the presence of linguistic attributes and their relationship to retweeting behavior and suggestions for future communication research within the context of social and political movements are discussed.

Hegemony is a process of dialectic political control. On one side, intellectuals use political and economic channels to convey an ideology, a set of principles, to the public, and on the other side, the public accepts this ideology, thus consenting to the status quo (Boggs, 1976). Research suggests that media are hegemonic entities that reinforce ideology (Bielby & Moloney, 2008; Lewis, 1999a). Traditional news media comprise the fourth estate, while the blogosphere, often heralded as media critics, constitutes the fifth. Limited research exists on the fifth estate, which, due to the ubiquity of the internet, has emerged as a public information source. On September 17, 2011, approximately 1,000 people gathered in Zuccotti Park in New York City's Wall Street financial district to protest social and economic inequality. The Occupy Wall Street movement garnered the attention of mainstream media, and it continued to do so for a sustained period of time. The movement also had a presence in the fifth estate. The subject of the movement and its presence in both estates, make it an ideal topic for comparing hegemony in the fourth and fifth estates. This content analysis explored the existence of hegemonic frames in news and blog coverage of Occupy Wall Street. Hegemonic frames existed to some extent in both estates, especially frames that highlighted deviant aspects of the movement. Counterhegemonic frames also existed in both estates, with a tendency to call into question acts of the government. Although counterhegemonic frames were present in both news articles and fifth-estate blogs, the fifth estate was more likely to question corporations, implying that the fourth estate was ignoring corporate malfeasance, which could be a factor in organizing consent of the people to the ideological status quo.

Women hold few leadership roles in the workplace, and even though research indicates the positive benefits of more women in top positions, leadership has a longstanding association with masculine qualities. If a woman seeks a position of power, she may find herself negotiating between a conflicting "woman" identity and "leader" role performance. Previous literature on the subject offers two opposing perspectives. While the first school of thought emphasizes the importance of a woman assuming masculine characteristics to successfully assume leadership positions, a second body of research points to gender equality in leadership by driving industries and organizations to change. The current study seeks to determine what kinds of face threats to identity that women leaders encounter in the workplace, how women leaders use impression management to negotiate conflicts between a "woman" identity and a "leader" role performance, and the kinds of facework utilized to manage those face threats. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with 15 women in leadership positions in the southeast United States revealed participants encountered numerous face threats to identity including positive and negative face threats to their face as hearer, positive face threats to their face as speaker, and the enhancement of negative face by others – especially by mentors. Additionally, participants utilized impression management by assuming a masculine gender performance as well as many backstage behaviors, including strategic preparation and planning, in order to be successful. Corrective facework strategies included avoidance and, conversely, direct confrontation.

Sustainability in the United States trends a new marketing demand for eco-labels yet brands often skip regulation to obtain these labels and break consumer trust. The country currently has over 200 eco-labels, leaving consumers overwhelmed and confused. In the present study, 3 focus groups of 6-8 participants were interviewed about their opinions, perceptions and attitudes towards eco-labels. A thematic analysis of the focus group audio was completed. The results indicated that participants desire products with eco-labels yet paradoxically distrust eco-labeled products.

"Discursive Trick Effects: How Raced and Gendered Semiotics in Industry Media Undermine Equal Representation in the Cybersecurity Workforce" builds on the critical theory of Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes to examine how the discursive digital archives produced by industry media represent their workforce. Thomas' approach theorizes that the semiotics of image connotation are importantly compounded in digital archives, exacerbating existing problems of just representation of gender and race. Each chapter is focused on a contemporary discursive archive and intervenes through critical counter-narrative engagement with critical social theorists and historians. These discursive archives are important examples of how cybersecurity industry media is mediating conversations surrounding equal representation in technology fields. This work has implications for how we think about and engage industry media across fields.