This study contributes to the growing body of research on gender and writing and extends previous research suggesting that women adapt diverse discourses as they write for the academic discourse community. This study asserts that college women writers attempt to present themselves as more powerful writers by suppressing gender-typical linguistic features in their writing. This tendency to suppress linguistic politeness strategies, which are associated with female-typical language use, provides specific evidence in support of this assertion. In the introductory chapter, I indicate the source of my personal interest in the issue of women writing for the academy. I then review the literature that depicts women literary writers as a muted group and attests to the suppression of women's voices in the academy. Chapter 2 provides a critical review of the essentializing tendencies of the research on gender and language. In this chapter, I also review studies on women's epistemology and present an alternative metaphor for representing gender differences. Finally, I review the research on linguistic politeness theory. In Chapter 3, I indicate the purpose and limitations of the study, and I describe the methods and procedures for this study. In Chapter 4, I discuss my findings, which reveal only limited evidence of gender differences in the use of politeness strategies. I interpret these results in light of current reviews of research in gender and writing that report similar disparate results. I conclude my study with a discussion of the various theories that may account for gender differences in written discourse as well as some suggested pedagogical implications for these theories of gender difference. The significance of this study is that it provides a functionally oriented analysis of gender and writing; that is, it describes the social functions indicated by gender-typical syntactic features. In this way, it provides insight into the ways that discursive practices construct gender identity.

This dissertation contains three major arguments. First, teaching ethics in technical communications courses is worthwhile. Chapter One, a review of literature on ethics in technical communication maps books and articles into three categories: theoretical, case study, and pedagogical approaches. It summarizes ways in which major textbooks address ethics and calls for a pedagogy that combines the benefits of all three approaches. Chapter Two provides the theoretical and philosophical groundwork for a "pedagogy of action," based on an ethical stance called "specific feminism" located in a conversation among feminine, feminist, and discourse ethics perspectives. The chapter addresses work by theorists such as Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, Judith Butler, Iris Marion Young, Jurgen Habermas, and Alisdair MacIntyre. Specific feminism emerges as an ethic of deliberation and action. The second major argument is that in order to effectively "teach" ethics in technical communication and fulfill their social responsibilities, instructors must be involved in their communities as local intellectuals. Chapter Three begins with an argument about the nature of the public intellectual, drawing on ideas from Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, and Paulo Freire. The chapter ends with a case study of the author's own work as a technical writer for a local AIDS prevention program. The final major argument is that the best way for teachers to bring ethics into the technical writing classroom is through service learning. Chapter Four includes an overview of service learning in composition and describes "the seduction of empathy," a dangerous pattern of substituting emotional response for action in service experiences. This chapter includes case studies of students who used a specific feminist perspective to help them move beyond personal reactions to their service learning experiences, converting their empathy into social action. Chapter Five includes an analysis a popular approach to teaching ethics in technical writing, the hypothetical scenario/case study method, and argues that this model is not as effective as one based on service learning. It describes a semester-long method for bringing ethics into the technical writing classroom and argues that service learning gives students opportunities to apply ethical frameworks they articulate through discussions of theories and case studies.

This project speaks to those with broad research interests in rhetorical studies, the ethnography of working class students and scholars, and the role of socioeconomic class in education. In this dissertation, I take as the object of my study two groups of primary sources---the autobiographical rhetorical pieces that appear in a set of five main books of essays by and about working class people and postings to a national working class academic listserv. My purpose in examining these texts is to compare definitions and experiences of "working class scholars" as conveyed by the writers and to explicate and analyze these definitions and rhetorical strategies. This study argues for the existence of a shared discourse among working class intellectuals that developed from the autobiographical essays the scholars created for a core set of published texts, the working class listserv, and additional related texts. These shared narratives give insight into working class scholars' beliefs, actions, education and worldviews as the writers attempt to understand the ways class has acted on their lives and their scholarship. On a larger scale, this study investigates how people tell stories about themselves and how these stories evolve over time to become stronger and more similar to each other, the longer the discourse exists. In their discourse, the working class academics give voice to members of an emerging and identifiable common discourse. Texts in this discourse include commonalties of form and thematic content that circulate freely among members even though the discourse community is widely dispersed geographically. The working class writers use a common language to characterize their experiences and to speak meaningfully to each other about them. Exploring the classed discourse and difficulties expressed in these texts sheds light on American class structures, and suggests ways in which universities might better serve and retain working class people.

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No description available.

In this thesis entitled Traduction et creation chez l'ecrivain-traducteur, we set out to demonstrate that faithfulness is as much a fundamental experience to the writer-translator in his creative writing task as it is in his translation task. / We shall see that the everlasting translation debate opposing faithfulness to betrayal can only find its resolution through a fresh interrogation of the notion of meaning, which is too often viewed as determined and translatable, thereby constraining the literary work. / Thus, we found it necessary to return to the experience of reading as a pursuit of a meaning that is multiple and in movement. To better understand what this reading experience means, we turned to that special reader the writer-translator is, for he is involved both in the reading and in the writing of the literary work. / In the intimate movement which leads from reading to writing, the writer-translator need not be faithful to the source language or to the target language, but faithful to what is revealed between the two, to what eludes them both. In this manner, translation becomes the pursuit of a third language, which would be as close as possible to the literary absolute of which all works, whether written by the writer-translator or by the author he translates, are translations.

This study aims (1) to document and classify the materials and techniques of persuasive speech in Euripidean drama, and (2) to develop an understanding of the ways in which the balanced arguments and abstract speculations of Euripidean characters contribute to the construction of plots, themes and characters. The results are intended to be useful both as a contribution to criticism concerned with the "tone" of Euripidean tragedy and as a resource for the study of early oratory and argumentation in the period of the Sophists. The first two chapters classify and analyse speeches and scenes according to dramatic context. In Chapter I, single speeches of several types are shown to rely on similar techniques of presentation and argument. Chapter II analyses patterns of correspondence between the speeches of a scene. The debate scenes of Alkestis and Hippolytos are discussed with a view to determining how stylised and conventional rhetorical material affects our view of the characters involved. Analysis is next offered of some common techniques for the presentation of arguments. Chapter III discusses the "probability argument" and related forms involving the use of rhetorical questions and conditional formulations. Chapter IV examines Euripides' use in argumentative contexts of gnomic material and so-called "utopian reflections". Chapter V considers the use of rhetorical techniques and scenes in three plays. Phaidra's monologue in Hippolytos 373-430 is discussed in terms of its rhetorical purpose and its contribution to important themes and formal relationships in the play. The rhetorical confrontations of the first half of Suppliant Women are seen to contribute to the delaying and highlighting of the action that follows while exploiting an opportunity for abstract moral and political debate. The play-long rhetorical preparation for the sacrifice of Iphigeneia in Iphigeneia at Aulis similarly is shown to serve the purpose of enhancing the importance and value of the girl's death, while involving an intricate formal balancing of scenes and speeches that should be appreciated in its own right.

<p>The fundamental purpose of <i>Theoretical Communities of Praxis: The University Writing Center as Cultural Contact Zone</i> is to investigate the situatedness of Writing Center Studies, defining it as an autonomous (sub)discipline and interdisciplinary contact zone within the larger discipline of Rhetoric and Composition. In order to meet this objective, a &ldquo;Communities of Praxis&rdquo; methodological and theoretical framework, based on scholarship of Critical Discourse Analysis, ecocomposition, and Contextualist Research Paradigm, is applied in the analysis of a variety of WCS discourses. </p><p> In doing so, WCS is repositioned as a series of interrelated, triangulated contact zones that are based on collaborative interactions and illustrated through the development of heuristic maps that challenges the traditional discursive practices of local writing centers and the WCS (sub)discipline alike. By emphasizing a (sub)disciplinary identification based on embracing WCS&rsquo;s place as an interdisciplinary contact zone, this dissertation demonstrates ways for all stakeholders to employ a Communities of Praxis framework in order to more effectively and more equitably consider the theoretical places and physical spaces of Writing Center Studies. </p>

<p> This study is a rhetorical analysis of 911 active shooter calls. Working from frame theory it examines the types of communication that occur during crisis situations. This study reviews the actual audio tapes of the Columbine Colorado School shooting, the Trolley Square Salt Lake City UT shooting and the Arizona shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford. This study provides a method for investigating the communication between caller to 911 and the telecommunicators that answer 911calls. It provides a baseline of the communication activities that are occurring and this method of communication is rapidly changing with pending text-mediated communication scheduled to take effect in 911 centers in 2014.</p>

<p> Nativist language, expressed as opposition to foreigners, has been a part of American history since the country's founding. At various times, often during periods of recession and economic pressure, nativist movements have arisen with remarkable fervor, at times affecting the course of the nation's history. Most recently, the twenty years from 1990-2010 saw a significant increase both in the number and power of anti-immigration organizations. During this period, the contemporary minutemen, organizations of nativists focused on border security, came to prominence. Anti-immigrant pressure groups, whose purpose was to focus on specific aspects of immigration, became powerful. Nativist politicians found that rhetoric could successfully elevated their cause to prominence on the national stage. </p><p> This study uses principles of generic criticism to analyze the rhetoric of two contemporary Minutemen organizations and their founders, as well as three prominent nativist leaders. It seeks to determine whether there are common characteristics in the chosen examples of nativist rhetoric. Under such circumstances, the rhetoric would be classified as belonging to a particular genre, or type. The analysis reports that there are five common characteristics shared by the five rhetors: Appeals to rationality and positioning within the mainstream; predictions of threats to economic security and political stability; paranoid language; patriotic and constitutional imagery and alignment with law enforcement; and appeals for sympathy for victims. It continues by comparing the five commonalities with common rhetorical forms and concludes that all five align with the rhetorical type known as the jeremiad. Named for the biblical prophet Jeremiah, this type of rhetoric is marked by a call for a return to traditional values, predictions of disasters to come if the audience does not heed the warnings, and reassurance that the audience and the nation will be rewarded for their righteous behavior. The study also finds that contemporary nativist rhetoric can be classified as exhibiting the paranoid style of rhetoric. The study concludes with an enumeration of issues relating to rhetorical studies of nativism that arose during the research. These issues would be useful avenues of inquiry for other researchers intrigued by the subject.</p>