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As the basis for major religions widely practiced in western cultures, the Pentateuch also has deeply influenced the structure of these societies. A short historical review demonstrates the secondary status women occupy in western cultures. This study focuses on uncovering the presumed existence of embedded patriarchal ideology within the Pentateuch's text. For the purpose of this study, the researcher draws on the Pentateuch as it appears in the King James Version of the Bible. By conducting an ideological rhetorical analysis of this text, this examination uncovers elements characteristic to patriarchal rhetoric promoting men's superiority and ideals as well as constricting and channeling women's identities. This ideology has contributed to depreciating women's status in western cultures, and awareness of its existence might help women in their struggle for equality. / by Mihaela E. Mallen. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 200?. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

To date there are no acceptable speechreading tests with normative or psychometric data indicating the test is a valid and reliable measure of speechreading assessment. Middlewerd and Plomp (1987) completed a study of speechreading assessment using sentences (auditory-only and auditory-visual) in the presence of background noise. Results revealed speech reception thresholds to be lower in the auditory-visual condition. Montgomery and Demorest ( 1988) concurred that these results were appealing, but unfortunately not efficient enough to be used clinically. The purpose of this study was to develop a clinically valid and reliable assessment of speech reading ability, following Middlewerd and Plomp's ( 1987) framework to achiev~ this goal. The method of obtaining a valid assessment tool was to define a group of stimuli that can be administered and scored to produce reliable data efficiently. Because spondaic words are accepted as a reliable method of clinically achieving speech reception thresholds, they were chosen to be used as the stimuli in this study to develop an efficient clinical speechreading assessment tool. Ten subjects were presented with spondaic words in each of two conditions, auditory-only and auditory-visual, in the presence of background noise. The spondee words were randomized for each presentation, to validate the data. A computerized presentation was used so that each subject received the identical input. The computer also produced a performance-intensity function for each spondaic word. Results revealed an acceptable speech recognition threshold for 18 of the 36 spondee words in the auditory-only condition; 6 words were outside of one standard deviation; and the remaining 12 words did not produce obtainable thresholds. In the auditory-visual condition, all words except one had no obtainable threshold. Although these results invalidated the spondee words as an acceptable stimuli, the study does validate the foundation for further research to study different types of stimuli using this same framework.

"Diversity" has become a word associated with many professions, institutions, and contexts, paired with words such as standards, consultants, training, awareness and others. However, the researcher focused on how diversity is defined or conceptualized by pre-service teachers at Portland State University. Diversity is especially important as it relates to educators and pre-service teachers. Teachers will, today, be instructing children of different backgrounds and races more than ever in the past (Ross & Smith, 1992). And teachers conceptualizations and behaviors have profound impacts on student performance and success. In an effort to come to understand the ways pre-service teachers conceptualize "diversity," a literature search was conducted to identify past and present conceptualizations of diversity within the institution of education and more broadly. In addition, an open-ended survey question was administered, and two focused group discussions and three in-depth interviews were conducted. The survey question and transcripts from the focus groups and interviews were analyzed in an effort to identify emergent themes or units of meaning. Two major theoretical assumptions were utilized: lower-order concepts and constructivism. First, Chaffee's (1991) lower-order concepts, smaller units which comprise a larger unit of meaning, the higher-order concept, was selected. The education literature identifies language, learning style, teaching style, race, socio-economic status, ability, gender, and others (see APPENDIX B) as lower-order concepts for the higher-order concept "diversity." Second, according to constructivism, the human actively interprets and makes meaning of events (Delia, 1977) using constructs, pairs of bi-polar opposites. Individuals identify an event, experience or object and classify it along a number of relevant constructs in order to make sense of it in relation to similar phenomena. Within the education literature, the constructs, assimilationism I pluralism and ethnocentrism I ethnorelativism, good I bad, growing I dying and others have clearly been utilized to make meaning of "diversity." The researcher identified themes respondents appeared to correlate with the concept "diversity" and many complicated and conflicting messages as well (not unlike the "diversity" literature). Two of the emergent themes suggest additional lower-order concepts: "Structures" and "Mixed Messages." The emergent themes 'Teachable" and "Uncertain" suggest new constructs.

This research examined the relationship between the degree of maintained fluency improvement and the type of language used to respond to questions directly and indirectly related to speaking behavior. The subjects included sixteen former Portland State University stuttering clients who had participated in the Ginter (1979) study on fluency maintenance. The subjects responded to a thirteen item questionnaire dealing with themselves and their speaking behavior. Responses were recorded on the Modified Thematic Analysis Form developed by this examiner and analyzed according to guidelines set down by Stone and Casteel (1975) and this examiner.

Custom-designed hearing instruments comprise the majority of those dispensed in the United States today. Because of their custom nature, there has been no means of evaluating them until they have been completed. There would be advantages to evaluating custom instruments prior to their completion. This study investigates a means of evaluating custom instruments prior to their final assembly into the customized shell. This is done by having the subject listen to the circuitry of the instrument while it is still mounted on the faceplate, which is accomplished by coupling the faceplate assembly to the subject's ear with foam earplug. To determine if the faceplate assembly, when coupled to the subject's ear, is a facsimile of the completed instrument, the insertion gain of the faceplate assembly was compared to the insertion gain of the completed instrument. Real ear measurements were obtained for both conditions (faceplate assembly vs. custom instrument) on twelve subjects. Once insertion gain was measured, the faceplate assemblies were then converted into custom instruments and insertion gain remeasured. A two-way Analysis of Variance test revealed no significant difference between the two test conditions at five representative test frequencies. A tolerance template, as specified by ANSI S3.22 1982, was used as a second criterion for similarity between two conditions. The tolerance template was superimposed over the insertion gain curves of the twelve faceplate assembly conditions to determine if the insertion gain curves of the completed instrument fell within acceptable variances. None of the insertion gain curves for the completed instruments fell completely within the tolerances allowed by the template. Based on this criterion, it was concluded there was a significant difference between the insertion gain of the two conditions and therefore the faceplate assembly was not a facsimile of the completed instrument, where insertion gain was concerned. However, from a subjective standpoint the faceplate assembly might still have some utility in the fitting of the custom in-the-ear hearing instruments. For example, it could be used to allow potential hearing aid wearers to experience different technologies during the preselection phase of the fitting process.

Predicting language outcomes in children who at age two are "late talkers" is a concern of Speech Language Pathologists. Currently, there is no conclusive data allowing specialists to predict which children will outgrow their delays and which children will not. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the effect of a receptive language delay on the outcome of the slow expressive language delayed child, and determine whether or not it is a viable predictor of poor outcomes. The subject information used in this project was compiled from the data collected and reported by Paul (1991) during the Portland Language Development Project (PLDP). Children in the PLDP first participated in the longitudinal study between the ages of twenty to thirtyfour months. They were categorized as being slow in expressive language development if they produced fewer that fifty intelligible words during this age range. They were then subgrouped into an expressive-receptive delayed group if they scored more than one standard deviation below the mean on the Reynell Developmental Language Scales. Of the twenty-five subjects with complete data over the five years of the study, nineteen were considered to be solely expressively delayed, while the remaining six were classified as having both an expressive and a receptive language delay. Lee's Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) (1974) was used to track the subject's expressive language abilities to the age of seven. DSS scores were analyzed yearly, using the Mann-Whitney nonparametric statistical test. This would determine whether the subjects considered to be both expressively and receptively delayed were exhibiting more difficulties in their expressive language abilities than those subjects with expressive delays alone. The results of the study indicated that significant differences did not exist between the two groups. Therefore, there was insufficient evidence to conclude that a receptive language delay at twenty to thirty-four months of age is a feasible predictor of lasting expressive language delays. This leads to the recommendation that additional research be conducted focusing on areas other than receptive language abilities as being predictors of poor expressive language outcomes.

Identifying the severity level of unintelligibility objectively and efficiently holds critical clinical implications for speech assessment and intervention needs. The speech of children who demonstrate phonological deviations is frequently unintelligible. The use of an accurate and time-efficient measurement of intelligibility is necessary to screen children who may be producing phonological patterns that contribute to significantly reduced intelligibility in connected speech. The purpose of this study was to investigate the degree of concurrent validity between scores received on the 1-Minute Measure of Homonymy and Intelligibility (Hodson, 1992) and speech intelligibility as measured by the percent of words understood in connected speech. For this investigation, intelligibility is operationally defined as the percent of words understood in a connected speech sample derived from orthographic transcription. Data collected were from 48 children, aged 4:0 to 5:6, who demonstrated varying levels of phonological proficiency/deficiency. A group of four listeners who had experience treating children with phonological disorders were responsible for completing orthographic transcriptions of the 48 connected speech samples. The two methods of assessing speech intelligibility investigated in this study were found to correlate highly (r = .84). This is considered a significant statistical correlation and therefore the 1-Minute Measure may be used to provide speech-language pathologists with valuable information to predict a child's intelligibility level in connected speech. A regression formula was employed to predict percentage of intelligibility when presented with a child's 1- Minute Measure score. Results from this correlational study suggest that the 1- Minute Measure of Homonymy and Intelligibility may serve as an assessment tool that can provide a speech-language pathologist with some valuable information pertaining to a child's level of intelligibility in connected speech. When used with another speech assessment tool, the 1-Minute Measure may function as a screening measure to identify preschoolers who produce phonological deviations that interfere with intelligibility of conversational speech.

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From Jimmy Carter’s self-identification as a “born again Christian” in the 1976 presidential campaign to George W. Bush’s declaration of “Christ” as his favorite political philosopher “because he changed my heart” in a Republican primary debate of the 2000 campaign, presidential speeches and campaigns are often laced with religious language. Such an observation is nothing new. However, many scholars and political observers do not know what to make of such religious references. Such language is often dismissed as either shameless pandering to religious constituencies or something hopelessly out of place in American politics. This dissertation attempts a deeper analysis of this controversial subject by identifying how presidents use the rhetorical resources of religion by employing religious argument patterns stemming from the Jewish and Christian religious traditions in presidential speeches. Specifically, this dissertation explores how the last five presidents (Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush) have used such religious rhetorical forms in attempts to strike a symbolic chord within the larger American public. The religious rhetorical forms explored herein, if employed judiciously, can serve as political shibboleths—or passwords—which indicate a basic level of identification with the public thanks to the basic elements, such as transformation, atonement, and renewal, which comprise the mythical core of these forms.