This dissertation articulates the theoretical and pragmatic foundations of a rhetorical approach to psychotherapy; an approach, that is, which is informed by the worldview, concerns, and methodologies of the discipline of rhetoric. Rhetoric—which originated in ancient Greece—long predates psychotherapy in aiming to understand the workings of influence or persuasion, both as it occurs between persons and within persons (i.e., self-persuasion). Persuasion is of critical importance to psychotherapy not only because it is instrumental in producing change in clients, but because it is an ongoing facet of everyday life, accounting for a substantial portion of why persons behave as they do. Despite the apparent commonalities between rhetoric and psychotherapy, the literature on psychotherapy contains few references to—and fewer substantive explorations of—rhetorical works, concepts, and strategies. Moreover, the majority of works on psychotherapy which do refer to rhetoric neglect to root their claims in a rhetorical understanding of the psychology of the individual. Integrating concepts drawn from rhetoric with contemporary psychological theories of emotion, cognition, and psychopathology, this dissertation offers, first of all, a construction of the individual as a rhetorical subject, or as a being whose psychological capacities are organized to facilitate the sending and delivery of messages, and the exertion and reception of influence. Secondly, this dissertation demonstrates how rhetorical insights and procedures can help psychotherapists meet the daily, pragmatic demands of doing psychotherapy. Accordingly, this dissertation culminates in a structured, clinically-oriented description of how psychotherapy may be carried out according to rhetorical principles. The model for psychotherapy proposed here is intended to enable clinicians to envision a rhetorical framework or logic for psychotherapy cases, as well as to engage clients in (a) symptom-relieving rhetorical exchanges and (b) the work of developing greater rhetorical (self)understanding and proficiency. In articulating a model for psychotherapy, emphasis is placed on the role of argumentation, both as it is practiced by clients and by therapists. It is suggested that the fundamental mechanism of healing—that is, the essential occurrence to which therapeutic effects are due—is carefully constructed, psycho-socially apt, symptom-targeted argumentation.

The primary goal of my study is to explore students’ subjective experience of teacher response to their writing. This study is intended to deepen our understanding of students’ experience of feedback, and provide an opportunity to hear student voices adding to the conversation about what they have found to be most useful in terms of improving their writing. This is a qualitative study, relying primarily on individual interviews and questionnaires to elicit participants’ understanding of teacher feedback and response to student writing. An initial questionnaire about student response to teacher feedback was distributed to 73 students. The results of the questionnaire yielded significant information in terms of how students read teacher feedback, and how they interpret this feedback. I analyzed these 73 initial questionnaires for themes, and then chose 10 students for further in-depth interviews, looking at their writing and their response to/and interpretation of teacher comments. In these interviews the students brought in mid-process and final papers with written teacher comments, and then interpreted these comments. I analyzed themes in these interviews, and looked at whether and how teacher comments affected students’ final drafts. The in-depth interview findings indicated that a surprising number of students do not read the feedback thoroughly or seriously, and of those who do, many misinterpret that feedback, and very few students think of feedback as an exchange or dialogue between a teacher and student. At the end of the study all of the students met together in a focus group to reflect on their experience, to ask questions, and to add their voices to the conversation. Some of the implications of this study suggest that we need to spend more time in class educating students about feedback and response, and that we need to rethink, modify, and experiment with the ways we respond, especially in terms of creating dialogic response. I also suggest areas for further research.

In the literature of writing centers, and in particular the literature around online peer tutoring, the voices of the tutors themselves are conspicuously silent. We read the perspectives of writing center administrators, but not those of the people actually providing the service. As administrators of writing centers, we are at a loss as we attempt to prepare our tutors for the online environment because there is little data that addresses the tutors' perceptions of what it is like to conduct a tutorial in a virtual environment. Thus, we are left with theory and practice that is little more than an adaptation of face-to-face tutoring pedagogy. This study began with the premise that the perceptions of peer tutors of their tutoring experiences, especially those experiences in the online tutoring environment, are a valuable resource. To tap this resource, this study asked tutors to reflect on their perceptions of the online tutoring environment, their perceptions of their own tutoring in the online tutoring environment, and their perceptions of any changes they felt necessary to accommodate the online tutoring environment. This was a situated exploratory study conducted at the Washington State University Vancouver Writing Center, which focused on 4 tutors at that site. It drew on Jim Bell's (2001) “reflection on practice” model in which peer tutors reflect on their face-to-face tutoring practices. The goal of this study was to address the gaps in the literature of tutor training through an understanding of the perceptions of these tutors as they negotiate tutoring online. Data for this study was collected over a period of two semesters. The researcher took the role of participant/observer/interviewer for these semesters. Interviews with tutors were audio taped, transcribed, and coded according to a scheme created from the transcripts. The significance of this study is the inclusion of the often silent voices of the tutors who perform online peer tutoring in the body of literature covering that task. It presents first-hand perceptions of online tutoring that can add to our understanding of the nature of online tutoring and, in turn, assist in the development of training programs for peer tutors.

In educational and instructional technology communities, learning objects have generated a great deal of interest in recent years. The learning object paradigm promises many benefits, most of which have yet to be realized. This dissertation proposes approaches for using learning objects outside of the currently dominant approach, which could be characterized as course-centric and informed by skills training, knowledge-transfer, and a content-delivery orientation. The dissertation examines ways that objects can be used to support learners in two key areas central to the concerns of English departments: critical thinking and development of competence in academic (and other) discourses. I argue against the “seamless course” model of content-delivery in favor of an approach that capitalizes on the modular, component architecture of learning objects by letting learners access and manipulate objects at a granular level. Objects that are searchable, shareable, versionable and annotated provide new ways to represent, manipulate and evaluate structural knowledge, and to tie learning content to discursive knowledge. An ongoing concern throughout the dissertation is the necessary and fruitful bridging of the divide between education and training. It is argued that such a bridge is useful for object initiatives to integrate concept-learning, problem-solving, critical thinking, and the social construction of knowledge.

This study is based on in-depth interviews with seven graduate students of literature who teach for a large research university, and the main concern is with their personal experiences and perspectives as they develop as teachers and students. How do they see themselves as readers and critics of literature? How do they see themselves as instructors of writing? The interviews focus on the reading, writing, and educational histories of these seven individuals, as well as on their impressions of their current classrooms: those they enter as students and those they enter as teachers. What stories do they have to tell? In addition to considering the seven participants as individual teachers and students, this study also focuses on their relationships with the teaching community within which they work. According to these seven teachers, how does their program construct the image of a writing teacher? Of a writing classroom? Of a writing assignment? How do those images align with previous ones held by the seven teachers? What adaptations and alterations take place? How might those changes relate to their study of literature? Some writers (Bishop 1995, Gale, Sullivan 1989) have portrayed the graduate literature classroom as pedagogically antithetical to certain writing classrooms, and this study investigates the oppositions and connections between those two spaces. Ultimately, this study also speaks to the complex disciplinary relationship between the fields of literary studies and composition. The participants provide a unique perspective on the relationship, and one that has been given little attention in other work. At times the difference between the two fields has been considered a cultural one (Elbow 2002, Moran 1995), necessitating different identities. But the participants here do not talk of shifting identities, or of cultural differences. Instead, their concerns with studying literature overlap with their concerns about teaching writing.

The publication of Webster's Third New International Dictionary in September 1961 set off a national controversy about dictionaries and language that ultimately included issues related to linguistics and English education. The negative reviews published in the press about the Third have shaped beliefs about the nature of the dictionary itself as well as assumptions about dictionary users' desire for authority. Additionally, the reviews influenced how scholars in English, linguistics, and the emerging field of composition studies viewed the public's understandings of language and attitudes toward structural linguistics. Drawing on archival evidence from the correspondence files of Merriam-Webster, Inc., as well articles published in the popular press and scholarly journals in the 1960s, this dissertation reexamines many of the claims made about the Third. First, it reconsiders assumptions about the influence of structural linguistics on the dictionary, showing that the Third was primarily shaped by a research-oriented attitude toward language. Then, it traces how the claims about structural linguistics evolved in the press coverage of the Third. It then examines how scholars publishing in journals like College English and College Composition and Communication responded to these claims about the dictionary. Finally, it analyzes letters sent from dictionary users around the country to complicate assumptions about dictionaries, language, and linguistics circulating in the published writing on the Third. The letters sent to Merriam-Webster reveal that while the controversy surrounding the Third did influence how some individuals perceived the dictionary, many people had far more nuanced and complicated responses than anyone publishing about the dictionary at the time seems to have anticipated. In particular, the letters indicate that assumptions about public hostility to linguistics were unfounded and that many dictionary users did not conceive of lexicographic authority as absolute. Reexamining the response to the Third opens up new possibilities for studying public beliefs about language and English education, especially in relation to composition studies.

This dissertation investigates how students perceive of new writing technologies and the culture associated with them, especially as these technologies are being incorporated into composition classrooms. In order to assess technology and create pedagogical practices that facilitate the writing development of students, composition scholars need to explore the attitudes of students entering into computerized writing environments. This study solicits the input of students in order to assess their understandings of computer technologies and computer culture, and the impact these technologies have on their experience in writing classrooms. This provides a sense of their perspectives on questions of technology and therefore begins to present a fuller picture of the context within which we teach. The study also creates a model for research that involves students actively in the research process. In order to encourage the input of students, the project was composed of several parts including a survey of eight first-year composition courses and follow-up discussions with each of these classes. However, the bulk of the data comes from eleven students who participated in a specially designed course entitled “Writing and Technology” that invited students to participate in the research process. The results demonstrate that teachers need to be aware of students' various skill levels with computers and teach accordingly. Furthermore, the study indicates that economic class plays a large role in determining a student's competency and perspective on computers. Finally, the project suggests that students hold various opinions on technology and how gender, race, and class might mark it. It is important to bring issues relating to technology and computer culture to the forefront when we teach, rather than letting computers remain “invisible” and therefore neutral objects.

This project is designed to examine and, therefore, hopefully understand how and why personal, reflective writing is used in business communication classes. Personal, reflective writing is treated differently in business communication classes than it is in management classes, yet management theory is greatly influential in the development of business communication as an academic field. In management courses, mostly those with a leadership focus, personal, reflective writing is used as a way to help students identify personal values and goals and then connect those personal discoveries to professional values and goals. In leadership textbooks especially, evidence of personal, reflective writing exercises, such as the personal mission statement, is extensive, suggesting that personal development is integral to professional development, to becoming a manager and leader. Trade books designed to help readers improve and grow as managers and leaders also confirm this, as most books from the genre include personal, reflective writing exercises that are similar to those found in textbooks. However, in business communication textbooks personal, reflective writing exercises are different. To understand better how personal, reflective writing exercises are used in business communication as well as in its affecting discipline of management, this dissertation project has three research foci. They are: a content analysis of business communication and management textbook and business/leadership trade book personal, reflective writing exercises; a brief survey of Association of Business Communication members about their uses of using personal, reflective writing exercises in their classes; and, last, interviews with instructors of management in the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts about their uses of personal, reflective writing in their classes. Results of each study and their implications are discussed.

Purpose: Research over the past several decades has revealed that spelling is a complex linguistic process. The purpose of this study was to investigate the spelling abilities of first grade children using an analysis tool that documented the linguistic knowledge evident in their spellings. A second purpose was to determine the relation of their spelling abilities to their reading skills. Method: This study examined spelling development and its relation to reading skills in eighty-seven typically developing first grade children (M=6:6). Across three time points during the fall, winter, and spring of first grade, a spelling dictation tasks were administered and the spelling samples were scored using the Spelling Sensitivity Scoring (SSS) procedure. Additionally the Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test- Revised (WRMT-R; Woodcock, 1987) were administered as measures of reading ability during the Winter and Spring of first grade. Results: The SSS scores revealed general increases in the use of linguistic knowledge resources to spell, from little to no representation of the phonological structure of words to the consistent representation of phonological structure and an emerging knowledge of orthographic patterns. Results of this study indicated that the SSS word scores increased significantly across time and were moderately to strongly correlated with the WRMT-R scores both concurrently and at future times. Across concurrent measures, the Word Identification task most strongly correlated with the SSS word scores followed by the Passage Comprehension and the Word Attack tasks. The SSS word scores were also moderately to strongly related to future reading abilities. Stronger associations were noted between Winter SSS scores and Spring reading scores. Conclusion: The strong associations of spelling and reading abilities in this study provide further support of the shared underlying linguistic resources necessary for word-level spelling and reading. Implications of these findings are discussed. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication Science and Disorders in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester, 2010. / April 19, 2010. / Reading, Multilinguistic Theories, Spelling, Spelling Analysis / Includes bibliographical references. / Kenn Apel, Professor Directing Thesis; Shurita Thomas-Tate, Committee Member; Lisa A. Scott, Committee Member.

abstract: Rather than being the lawless barbarian society that history and popular culture have painted it, medieval Scandinavian culture was more complex and nuanced. This dissertation interrogates the use of a rhetoric of reasonableness (hóf) in the medieval Nordic society to give voice to this silenced tradition. Specifically, this research focuses on the use of rhetoric in civic and legal settings to show that medieval Scandinavians were more interested in reasonable solutions than unreasonable ones. Civic rhetoric among the medieval Nordic people relied heavily on hóf to keep civic practice manageable. Working in small towns and villages without central bureaucracies, reasonableness became important to the functioning of the village. Large scale disruptions could mean the death of all inhabitants in the area due to social disruption if violence occurred, so finding reasonable means of dealing with social problems was of paramount importance to the Norse. Using readings and analysis from the Icelandic sagas, I show the mechanisms of their rhetoric were used to manage civic life. Legal rhetoric was also based on reasonableness. If civic actions became violent or potentially violent, then the courts needed a way to redress and maintain the peace in the area. The practice of law was heavily influenced by the rhetorical stance of hóf. The Scandinavian tradition of court cases appears in their early laws and in several sagas which allows a picture to be created of their rhetorical stance of reasonableness in the law cases. Analysis of historical data and saga manuscripts give evidence of a rhetorical tradition of reasonable redress in the legal system. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2020