This thesis contains an analysis of apologia from the 1988 national presidential campaign which resulted from Republican vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle's disclosure that he served in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. Quayle's revelation created a "gaffe sequence" played out in the media over a period of approximately two weeks. The rhetorical situation dictated the use of an eclectic methodology to evaluate apologia generated in response to media questions about Quayle's avoidance of active military service. Quayle's defense included minimalizing the issue through avoidance and denial during staged and spontaneous contact with the media, and also the rhetorical support of other Republicans. Ultimately, he overcame the issue by turning questions about his competence and character into questions about the media's ethos. Notwithstanding, the media's investigation of the relatively unknown Quayle pointed to the larger issue of his qualifications for national office. Although Quayle's strategy was successful, the initial gaffe raised questions about Quayle's ethos which persist to this day. The study yielded three important insights about apologia: (1) apologia is not a single response, nor responses given in a single setting; (2) not only does apologia repair an ethos, it can also help construct an ethos in cases where the public knows little or nothing about a political figure; (3) apologia includes the rhetorical support of others. Additionally, critics must continue refining existing methodologies as they seek to understand rhetorical phenomena.

Since its inception, intercollegiate debate has not only survived storms of controversy and periods of great change but has grown and matured into a vital part of almost every speech department across the country. Today, tournaments are more numerous than ever; the debaters are more plentiful and just as enthusiastic (even if spectators are not). Even though intercollegiate debate has withstood the struggles of its beginning and the ensuing growing pains, maturity has not brought an end to the problems and controversies. Many present day controversies--such as the value of debate, the value of the tournaments, and the type of decision have raged since the early years; other problems such as debating on both sides of the topic have developed and been temporarily solved only to reappear later. In short, intercollegiate debate is still being debated after more than seventy years. In the face of this realization, has intercollegiate debate made any real progress? that has happened in those seventy years-- what have been the major disagreements and problems of the past? Are they the same today? A survey of this past might suggest realistic and pragmatic solutions of some of the present problems. Some predictions on the direction of debate in the future should be evident concomitant with possible changes that will be necessary for debate to grow as an educational tool. In this study, only the history of intercollegiate debate in America will be dealt with; only the major changes and additions to the tournament1 the topic, the form, and the style will be examined from around 1892 until 1968. In almost every instance, this survey is traced through debate as it existed in the four year college.2 This is, presumably, the place where the most important and significant debating was (and is) done in terms of viewing trends and patterns. 1. Both the contest and tournament will be dealt with, therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between them--a contest debate is a single meeting between two teams whereas a tournament is a predetermined number of contests between several teams from different schools ;:ho meet at one commonly agreed place to carry on a tournament until a champion is determined. 2. Every attempt has been made to limit information to four-year colleges except when a form or change involving a prep school or junior college, or some other context, has been significant to the overview of intercollegiate debate.

For the sake of this study, news impact and artistic value will be the chief concerns. Of course, the problem of obtaining news impact poses a number of questions, and two of the most obvious will be studied here: 1) Who is to evaluate a picture's new impact and artistic value? 2) How should the photographer cover his daily assignments to obtain the best of both and thus make the reader stop and look at a particular picture?

Inoculation is a robust theory applied to a variety of health behaviors. Social marketing is designed to change behavior by applying marketing tactics in the context of social change. This study combines inoculation theory with social marketing in the context of substance abuse disorders to promote long-term recovery. This is a pilot project that specifically focuses on the Beacon House, a residential recovery treatment center in Louisville, Kentucky. With the growing drug problem in America, it is necessary to implement effective recovery strategies in treatment programs. The social marketing plan focuses on the target audience to outline potential barriers, motivators, and competition to remaining in long-term recovery. Three intervention strategies were developed as part of the project: a core inoculation message, booster messages, and refusal skills training. These strategies utilize inoculation messages in various ways to address the complexity of long-term recovery. While this study focuses on the Beacon House treatment facility, the concepts can be applied to similar treatment centers.

The United States has a serious epidemic of mass incarceration and high recidivism rates. The U. S. must act on these high recidivism rates by implementing social services programs that help the formerly incarcerated stop committing crimes. The formerly incarcerated are being oppressed by a historic process that has continued to incarcerate and control them, even after they had served their time for their crimes. This project attempts to assist in reducing the high recidivism rates by creating an education-based transitional housing facility with a plethora of supportive services that will be open to formerly incarcerated individuals. This project sheds light on some of the problems that continue to plague this demographic group of people, while providing a possible solution to help reduce recidivism. The outcome of this project is a business plan that explains a procedure to help create a non-profit transitional housing facility that will be located in Palm Springs, CA. The steps of building this non-profit business are detailed in an implementation plan following this manuscript.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

<p>A strong model of culture should capture both the structured and negotiated elements of cultural meaning, allowing for the fluidity of social action and the agency of social actors. Although cultural meanings often reproduce societal structures, supporting stability and consensus, culture is constitutive of and not merely produced by structural arrangements. It is therefore essential to establish clear mechanisms which guide how individuals interpret social events and apply cultural meanings in making sense of the social world. As such, this dissertation focuses on the model of culture forwarded by affect control theory, a sociological theory linking culturally shared meaning with identity, behavior, and emotion in interpersonal interaction (for reviews, see Heise 2007; Robinson and Smith-Lovin 2006). </p><p>While many theories have attempted to deal with components of the cultural model separately, affect control theory provides a unifying multi-level framework, which rectifies many shortcomings of earlier models by simultaneously accounting for individual cognition and emotion, situational and institutional context, and cultural meaning. The dissertation begins by introducing affect control theory, which considers cultural meanings to be societally bound, based on consensual and widely shared sentiments, and stable over long periods of time. We advocate several refinements to the theory's assumptions about culture, proposing that cultural sentiments are dynamic and structurally contingent, and that mechanisms operating within social networks serve as important sources of meaning consensus and change.</p><p>The remainder of the dissertation presents empirical evidence in support of our propositions. First, we draw upon primary survey data to show how social position and patterns of social connectedness relate to inculcation into the dominant culture and commonality with the affective meanings of others. Respondents' demographics, social position, social connectedness, network composition, and experiences in close relationships are explored as predictors of inculcation and commonality in meaning. Second, through an experimental study, we explore social influence processes as a mechanism of cultural consensus and change. Analyses examine both conditionally manipulated features of the group structure and respondents' emergent assessments of social influence as predictors of change in task-related attitudes and affective meanings. </p><p>Our results identify structural sources of normative differentiation and consensus, and introduce social networks methodologies as a means of elaborating affect control theory's explanatory model. More broadly, the findings generated by this project contribute to an ongoing academic discussion on the origins of cultural content, exploring the complex and dynamic relationship between patterns of social interaction and cultural affective meaning. We close by introducing research in progress, which examines predictors of clustering in affective meaning and explores how values, self, and identity condition the effects of social influence on decision-making.</p> / Dissertation

Previous research suggests that the amount of food that women eat may fluctuate depending on their impression-management motivation; however, the results do not provide direct evidence supporting such an explanation. That is, no studies conducted to date have actually manipulated impression-management motivation and measured its effects on eating behavior. The present program of research aimed to confirm that eating behavior in women does, in fact, change as a result of impression-management motivation. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 tested this by manipulating impression-management motivation via direct and explicit instructions. Experiment 3 was also designed to investigate how impression-management motivation might affect eating in situations in which females are eating with a friend (as opposed to a stranger). The results demonstrate that women motivated to make a good impression on a male stranger (Experiments 1 & 2) and a female stranger (Experiments 2 & 3) eat less than do those for whom the desire to make a positive impression has been disrupted. The results also confirm previous findings showing that women eat less when eating with a male stranger than when eating with a female stranger (Experiments 1 & 2). The findings from Experiment 3 suggest that there may be a different pattern of eating associated with impression-management motivation when women eat with female friends; it was found that participants ate more with a friend when they were motivated to make a good impression compared to when this motive was not present. These results may be explained by impression-management theory, in combination with notions about the complexity of female friendships and female-female competition surrounding eating, dieting, weight, and appearance.

Previous research suggests that the amount of food that women eat may fluctuate depending on their impression-management motivation; however, the results do not provide direct evidence supporting such an explanation. That is, no studies conducted to date have actually manipulated impression-management motivation and measured its effects on eating behavior. The present program of research aimed to confirm that eating behavior in women does, in fact, change as a result of impression-management motivation. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 tested this by manipulating impression-management motivation via direct and explicit instructions. Experiment 3 was also designed to investigate how impression-management motivation might affect eating in situations in which females are eating with a friend (as opposed to a stranger). The results demonstrate that women motivated to make a good impression on a male stranger (Experiments 1 & 2) and a female stranger (Experiments 2 & 3) eat less than do those for whom the desire to make a positive impression has been disrupted. The results also confirm previous findings showing that women eat less when eating with a male stranger than when eating with a female stranger (Experiments 1 & 2). The findings from Experiment 3 suggest that there may be a different pattern of eating associated with impression-management motivation when women eat with female friends; it was found that participants ate more with a friend when they were motivated to make a good impression compared to when this motive was not present. These results may be explained by impression-management theory, in combination with notions about the complexity of female friendships and female-female competition surrounding eating, dieting, weight, and appearance.