This dissertation uses a combination of modern and postmodern interpretative approaches to identify, describe, and analyze the narratives presented within ERACE, an organization which uses the emergent method of dialogue to promote interracial communication. The analysis of the narratives revealed information about the participants' understanding of both the organization and of racism. Based on concepts of narrative thinking and organizational representation, a 'meta-story' was postulated. This 'meta-story' serves as a model for showing relationships between the individual narratives, and for demonstrating the fluidity and constant evolvement of the organization. In doing so, the model moves the interpretation of the findings from a static, functionalist approach to partially achieving what Jeffcut (1993) calls a 'polyphonic, open-ended, creative dialogue,' as an interpretation and representation of the organization. Weick's (1995) concept of sensemaking, Bateson's (1972) Four Orders of Learning, and the theory of social constructivism are presented as ways of understanding the process of this research as well as the experience of dialogue within the organization. Some implications for social work education and future research point to continued emphasis on narrative, the addition of the concept of dialogue as a mechanism of social learning in organizations, and further exploration of the growing phenomena of interracial dialogue organizations / acase@tulane.edu

This thesis addresses the need to claim creativity as an essential component to our technical communication curricula as we prepare students for what their managers want. While many technical communication programs at universities across the country have recognized a need to teach skills beyond 'writing technically,' few, if any, have addressed or 'claimed' a concept such as creativity that helps build these skills. I argue that creativity is what managers are looking for and what technical communication programs are already implementing. Claiming this concept will help us further define a discipline that is becoming much richer and help students develop an understanding of what they will be expected to do. Furthermore, this thesis examines a creative process whereby technical communicators can learn and practice creative abilities. Ultimately, the present study examines four pedagogical theories to consider for the implementation of creativity into the technical communication curricula.

ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) community college students enrolled in a required writing course were introduced to contrastive rhetoric to assist them in making connections between their first languages (L1) and English to enhance their writing. Students wrote a paragraph in their first language and then compared the experience to writing in English. I asked them to investigate specific cohesive devices, comparing how each device functioned in English with how it might function in L1. The research was focused on the question What cultural and linguistic capital do students bring to the writing class, and what is the relationship of this capital to their English writing? A group of seven multilingual students from Pakistan whose L1 was Urdu participated in the study. My methodology, based on teacher research and a case study approach, included four data sets: questionnaires, first drafts of the participants' formal writings, group interviews, and guided student investigations into cohesion and contrastive rhetoric. The results indicate that the students' writing, which was not highly rated by a panel of native English speakers, had few problems with cohesion and also few characteristics that might be traced to the influence of Pakistani English. Instead, mistakes in conventional English grammar and a perceived lack of content development were what influenced the raters. Implications for future research include a suggestion of how colleges and universities may benefit the increasing numbers of students who are users of World Englishes by valuing the linguistic and cultural capital they bring to the classroom.

Although metaphor has been a subject of study for centuries, few experimental studies have attempted to demonstrate the persuasive power of messages containing metaphors. Moreover, it is rarely acknowledged that metaphors and analogies can serve as valuable tools to tailor messages to the values of culturally diverse populations. This dissertation outlines the utility of incorporating metaphors and analogies within persuasive messages and advances a method for generating culturally appropriate metaphors and analogies. The literature on the neurophysiological basis of figurative language processing is reviewed in an attempt to uncover the origin of the persuasive power of metaphor. This literature leads to the development of the concept of Literal Mindedness as a way to explain individual differences in responses to figurative language. The Literal Mindedness Inventory is developed as part of this dissertation research, and its convergent validity with Need for Cognition also is established. Finally, an experiment was conducted to test the effect of metaphors and analogies and Literal Minedness on persuasion. To assess the effect of metaphors and analogies on the reception of persuasive health messages (HIV prevention/pro-condom messages), nine messages representing three levels of metaphors and analogies were tested on outcome measures such as fear, efficacy, message evaluation, and knowledge and attitudes. The hypotheses advanced in this study were partially supported, and form the basis of a number of recommendations for future research.

The dissertation confronts these dual questions: What theory of rhetoric would serve a multicultural democracy? How might such a theory be taught in a first-year composition program? I argue that democratic negotiations are rhetorical, as groups vie to control definitions of themselves, each other, and the "proper" relationships among people, and that rhetoric shapes what people consider to be "knowledge" and "truth." Because hidden ideologies influence the rhetoric people find convincing, people need methods for reflecting critically on their own locations. I argue that one method of developing this reflection is to seek to understand the positions of oppressed peoples, as those positions may reveal assumptions embedded in dominant rhetorical patterns. I also argue that a rhetoric for democracy must be committed to action, not just self-reflection and analysis. I call my theory "strong rhetoric." In the remainder of the dissertation I consider how to apply strong rhetoric in pedagogical contexts, and I perform the kind of self-reflection that strong rhetoric demands by noting how my own contexts have influenced my theory. In chapter two I contemplate the role of a teacher in a democratic classroom and offer "liberation morality"--the critique of inequitable distributions of power--as a strategy to convince students of the value of strong rhetoric. In chapter three I critique four curricula designed to teach civic rhetoric, and I argue that teachers must present ideology as more than partisan politics, advocate action as the goal of rhetoric, discuss the limits of democracy defined as a public forum, and treat students as knowledge-makers and citizens. In chapter four, I discuss my involvement in the the University of Arizona's curriculum revision and make explicit that research and revision are integral to strong rhetoric. I also argue that a pedagogy for strong rhetoric must confront the tensions of establishing the classroom as "community." In chapter five I show how teaching assistants at the University of Arizona translated complex rhetorical concepts into essay assignments. Recognizing that teachers need to simplify strong rhetoric to present it in a one-semester course, I model the analysis teachers might use to determine which elements of strong rhetoric to teach.

Almost everyone agrees that doctors' handwriting is not the only indecipherable and alienating communication practice in healthcare. The oral communication between doctors and patients is equally problematic. Few scholars in the field of rhetoric have attempted to analyze why and how these discursive practices have come about. Equally absent from the medical and rhetorical fields are alternative models that construct a better discourse between doctors and patients. My dissertation, Look Who's Not Talking: Recovering the Patient's Voice in the Clinique, not only examines how doctors talk to patients, but also begins an effort to change present discursive practices in healthcare. Michel Foucault began an academic conversation in The Birth of the Clinic and in Power/Knowledge that deconstructed certain institutionalized discourses. While his study went a long way toward analyzing the discourse of medicine, his language and theories have not moved into medical journals or patient rooms. My dissertation acts as a bridge between "high" rhetorical theory and the "marketplace" of medicine (an unfortunately apt metaphor for healthcare in this country). Foucault supplies one of the lenses I use to look at the discourse. Other lenses include those of Kenneth Burke and Lloyd Bitzer. One underlying assumption in the dissertation is that practices are more easily changed once they have been analyzed. I place the analysis within history and within current contexts. This strategy enacts a model opposing the usual acontextualized, ahistoric doctor/patient discourse. Both chapters 3 and 4 look at how doctor/patient discourse was constructed in Europe and America. In addition to making a contribution to the medical field, this dissertation breaks new ground within rhetoric and lays the basis for further explorations. Because of my extensive work in the healthcare field as cardio-pulmonary technician and special procedures nurse, I was able to draw on my own experience to use as examples of the particular problems within the discourse I isolate and propose alternatives to. The fifth chapter features a two-semester course I designed for first-year medical students. This course is rhetorically based and teaches doctors-to-be why the language they use with patients is important and how to effectively address patients.

Researchers have discussed the problems of restructuring, the methods used to measure restructuring success, the effectiveness of restructuring efforts, and prescriptions for successful restructuring among specific types of organizations (for-profit and public non-profit). While some have suggested that different challenges face for-profit sector and public non-profit sector restructuring efforts, few have compared the restructuring processes in both sectors based on the statements made by organizational representatives. This research studies both the language of restructuring as used by university and corporate leaders and the actual results of the restructuring plans presented through the theoretical frameworks of isomorphism and resource dependency. The documents collected from each organization were limited to those prepared for public consumption and reflected the language used by top management or administrators. An approach, using multiple case studies, was employed to organize and focus the data collected. The use of individual cases provided the opportunity to examine specific restructuring strategies, language, and results used by different organizations functioning in different economic sectors. The language analysis looked for the expression of different or similar organizational values expressed during the course of restructuring. The organizations studied all underwent recent restructuring efforts, and included two Research I universities and three Fortune 500 businesses. This research indicated that the public rhetoric of restructuring may not reflect the actual activities of restructuring taking place within an organization. Even though the business literature and many businesses themselves have extolled the benefits of a more collaborative management style since the early 1980's, and legislatures have encouraged public universities to be more business-like since the early 1990's, and though much of the rhetoric reflected these pressures, the actual management processes showed very little change in either group. A movement toward one another in management style was not found in these organizations. All five organizations structured rhetoric to satisfy their constituents, all five organizations maintained their traditional management and decision making styles, and, at the end of the restructuring period, all five organizations were still trying to find ways to improve their organizational outcomes.

<p> Freshman Sen. William H. Seward of New York was not expected to say anything noteworthy in his "Freedom in the New Territories" speech against the Compromise bills on March 11, 1850. The venerated "Great Triumvirate" had previously addressed the Senate&mdash;Sen. Henry Clay on Jan. 29, Sen. John C. Calhoun on March 4, and Sen. Daniel Webster on March 7&mdash;so everything there was to say was thought to have been said. Seward's "Freedom in the New Territories" speech, however, is recalled as one of the more divisive of Compromise orations and most significant of Senate maiden speeches in history because of its appeal to "a higher law than the Constitution." The utterance drew a maelstrom of criticism from the partisan press and congressional adversaries and colleagues; however, Seward's rhetoric introduced a reformist interpretation of the phrase "higher law" to the slavery discourse. </p><p> This thesis applies concepts from the literature on rhetoric of agitation and control and ideographs to define Seward's rhetoric as managerial, show his motives as socio-economic, and discover how the senator's reformist arguments were controlled by the establishment after the Christiana Riot in 1851. The researcher suggests that the establishment employed a kind of denial of rhetorical means to obstruct Seward's reformist rhetoric of its solidifying slogans. Future research into the control response to agitative rhetoric is suggested to understand the strategies and tactics used to control reformist rhetoric. </p>

<p>This critical rhetorical critique interrogates rhetorics of memory in negotiations of national identity, especially as they address race and colonialism. We need to rethink race in more complex ways that disrupt homogenous conceptions of who belongs in the U.S., instead embracing the possibilities offered in those liminal spaces of racial national identities, such as (Native)American. Doing so requires acknowledging the reverberations of past rhetorics in contemporary sense-making and how those echoes vary across communities. In exploring how we (mis)remember race and colonization in relation to nation, my concern lies in exposing some of the persistent rhetorical strategies that impede social justice efforts by marginalized communities, as well as the resistive rhetorics these communities respond with. </p><p> Pursuing this project, I rely on investigating rhetorical mnemonic strategies of race, nation, and colonialism in everyday discourses about the relationship(s) between a Euro-American community in Lawrence, Kansas and a pan-Indian community associated with Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU) to reveal how we negotiate national identities in relation to the past and to one another. At its core, this ideological critique of rhetorics of race, nation, memory and colonialism is an investigation of identity negotiation among two representative communities in disparate positions of power, their places constituted across several centuries of racist discourses that we too-often continue to rely on. In examining historic Assimilation Era discourses from Haskell Indian Boarding School as well as recent discourses produced by the Lawrence, Kansas, and HINU communities about a local land controversy, I interrogate the role of memory in contemporary negotiations of identity and reveal ways the normative assumptions of U.S. citizenship are profoundly raced. I also propose the idea of &ldquo;enabling uncertainty&rdquo; as a perspective that explicitly troubles narrow and limiting conceptions of racial identities, highlighting the idea through discussion of the complex ways (Native)Americans navigate the interstices between Native and American identities. </p>

When the people of a given society contemplate the outside world, they do so with inherited but constantly changing values, assumptions, preoccupations, and aspirations. Who they are, one might say, largely determines what they perceive. For a variety of reasons, the Chinese have long had a fascination with the United States--a country which has not only been an active participant in Chinese affairs for well over a century, but which has also served as an idea and an example. Naturally, China's direct and indirect experiences with America, together with the vast cultural and political differences that still separate the two countries, have shaped Chinese perceptions. In China's search for a new political, social and economic order, America, as both a world power and as a concept, has played a major role. This dissertation examines the way images of America were transmitted to China in the twentieth century, and how these images were debated and represented (or misrepresented) by three main social groups of Chinese--the Chinese state, Chinese intellectuals, and the Chinese masses. Although America has unquestionably played a part in shaping modern China, the Chinese, for various reasons and in different ways, have constructed their own distinctive "America."