English Doctoral Work

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Composing Comments for Online Students : A Study of Faculty Feedback on Writing in Multidisciplinary Contexts
(North Dakota State University, 2019) Neuteboom, Robert Kimball
In this dissertation, I present findings from a qualitative research project designed to articulate practitioner-teachers’ beliefs about writing and their role in providing feedback on student writing in online courses. To analyze the qualities of these beliefs, I interviewed eight full-time and part-time teachers from multiple disciplines teaching at the same private career-based college. Participants primarily defined writing as grammar and described their feedback intervention as dependent on tools, such as rubrics and web-based grammar software, to ensure students write professionally. Professionalism was a significant concern for participants, many of whom considered preserving the integrity of their discipline and preparing students for its effective deployment as their most important role as teachers. With this goal at the forefront of their efforts, participants generally apply writing as a tool for and sign of professionalism. My findings suggest that participants see professionalism relative to writing as work ethic, formality, practicality, and arrival. These categories characterize what participants prioritize in terms of providing feedback. A limitation of this study is that the participant pool was relatively small and participants all taught at the same institution, with specific standardization requirements influencing how participants perceive the writing task. That said, because the study is so intensely focused, its results may be relevant and generalizable to the perceptions of practitioner-teachers at many institutions.
Crowdfunding for a Cause: Rhetorically Oriented Action Research with Christian Organizations
(North Dakota State University, 2018) Copeland, Adam J.
When it comes to fundraising, many congregations and faith-related organizations struggle to keep up in the competitive charitable giving landscape. In recent years, online crowdfunding platforms (e.g. Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Indiegogo) have grown to a multi-billion-dollar industry, supporting fundraisers for diverse causes both charitable and for-profit. Does crowdfunding offer faith-related organizations potentially valuable opportunities for fundraising? If so, how should faith-related non-profit organizations best ask for money online? To engage these questions, I employed a participatory action research framework to accompany, coach, and learn with organizations launching crowdfunding campaigns. This partnership resulted in meaningful engagement with nine would-be crowdfunders. Three of these organizations eventually launched crowdfunding campaigns. Though none reached their goal, crowdfunders secured over $36,000 for their organizations’ aims. Significantly, all campaigners reported positive mission-related benefits in addition to funds raised. I analyzed data using a cross-case replication study design with three individual case write-ups. Additionally, I rhetorically examined the crowdfunding pages themselves seeking to understand how crowdfunders engaged the multimodal possibilities of the genre. Theories engaged include multimodal rhetoric, audience awareness, genre theory, and Christian giving rhetoric. This project found that crowdfunding pages serve as a place for compact, powerful invitations to give. Yet, in their digital design template and scope of projects, crowdfunding methods also limit fundraisers’ rhetorical choices. Existing scholarship from multiple fields has sought to discover factors related to crowdfunding success and failure. What has not been considered sufficiently, however, is the process potential crowdfunders go through as they discern whether to launch a campaign, how they imagine the audience of a possible campaign, and how the rhetoric of the resulting crowdfunding pages may be shaped by the expectations of the genre. My study identified new terminology to describe rhetorical phenomena of the campaigns including hidden friction, the audience paradox, discrepant rhetoric, as well as visual aids such as an explanatory action matrix. The action research methodology of the study brings the work of crowdfunders, previously behind the scenes, to the forefront. Ultimately, it shows that while the aims of the crowdfunders may be multiple, and even in conflict, crowdfunders can reap rewards beyond money alone.
‘Dear Children, Jacob and Amalie’: A Rhetorical Analysis of Letters from Russia to a Volga German Migrant Couple in the American Midwest
(North Dakota State University, 2016) Schell, Tatjana
This dissertation analyzes a collection of personal letters sent to German-speaking migrants from Russia in the American Midwest by their relatives in southern Russia. The letters can be divided into two groups: the first one includes the ones written in 1913-1914, soon after the couple’s immigration to the United States, while the second one consists of the letters from the 1920s and the 1930s. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the letters from a rhetorical perspective, while the grounded theory and my personal and cultural knowledge about the ethnic Germans in Russia provided an additional help with analyzing the letters and filling in contextual “gaps.” After coding the letters, I examine the ways their rhetoric was influenced by the rhetorical situation, and also the ways various dominant “themes” were communicated by the letter-writers. Also, because some of the letters were sent during a famine that affected the region and the community they came from, many letters included pleas for help from America. I am interested in how these requests for help were rhetorically represented and, therefore, focus on analyzing the theme of “crisis” in these texts. My analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of the letter-writing genre and cultural rhetorics by offering a detailed discussion about the letters as rhetorical texts, the people, who produced them, and the constraints that influenced the letter-writers. By using grounded theory to guide my coding process, I was able tailor this qualitative research method for the needs of my project. By using rhetorical theory as a vehicle, I analyze the stories told through the letters and explore how these historical artifacts go beyond simply fulfilling the function of maintaining personal communication between the writers and readers and provide a rare ”unofficial” insight into a tumultuous period of Russian history in the early 20th century. Furthermore, my dissertation informs the discussion about the value of archival research and the use of archival artifacts in studying rhetoric and composition.
First-Generation Pedagogy: A Case Study of First-Generation College Students in First-Year Writing
(North Dakota State University, 2016) Jorgenson, Jessica
The purpose of this research was to examine the motivations and attitudes first-generation college students held toward classroom interventions and written assignments. This classroom research took place during one semester in a single English 120 College Composition II class that included fourteen enrolled students with three students self-identifying as first-generation college students. The study was composed of two separate qualitative surveys: a pre-survey and a post-survey and all surveys. The pre-survey was distributed to all fourteen enrolled students during week three of the semester. The post-survey was distributed to all students during the final week of the semester. Based on the findings of this survey, and previous research conducted on first-generation college students, this study argues for three pedagogical interventions that can best engage the needs of first-generation college students. The pedagogical interventions include creating structured peer review groups, creating an empathetic space, or safe space, within the classroom, and demonstrates the importance of teaching genres that open up pathways for an emotional discourse in the classroom. These three pedagogical interventions best benefit first-generation college students, but may also benefit the learning of all students.
In this Together: Consubstantial Ethos in Writing in the Sciences Classrooms
(North Dakota State University, 2017) Atwell, Justin Michael
“In This Together: Consubstantial Ethos in Writing in the Sciences Classrooms” explores the ethos of instructors tasked with instructing STEM students how to write in the sciences. Building on the importance of ethos in education and Dale Sullivan’s foregrounding of the importance of consubstantial ethos in building effective communicative acts, this study sought to determine how student and instructor perceptions of ethos were similar and dissimilar to determine if there was a sense that we were truly “in this together” as Sullivan claims is necessary. For this mixed-methods study, I distributed surveys to students as they entered and exited the course. Student surveys inquired about attitudes and beliefs about previous English courses, the trajectory of the course, the overall worth of English courses, and their roles within the course. Instructor surveys, in turn, asked mirrored questions to see how instructors perceived students’ attitudes and beliefs towards the course, the practice of writing, and WAC/WID and English courses more broadly. Encouragingly, the majority of students reported seeing a value to English courses, but this worth was primarily seen as emerging from two components: 1) the content of the course and 2) student perceptions of the instructor—both, this project argues, are closely tied to ethos. As such, the final two chapters of the project suggest adjustments to foster optimal ethos for Writing in the Sciences courses by introducing more direct teaching of Writing Studies theory in such courses and implementing assignments such as the Forum Analysis and Popular Discourse Report that encourage students to critically analyze the work of experts writing in their fields.
Natural Flavors: Rhetorical Stories of Food Labels
(North Dakota State University, 2017) West, Rebecca
What is in our food? What can food labels tell us about what is in our food? This dissertation applies rhetoric in the everyday human act of reading food labels and making decisions about what to eat based on those labels. Rhetoric is continually operating from the beginning of the food manufacturing process, to designing and writing food labels and packaging, and finally to the consumer reading the label in the store. “Natural flavors” is an ingredient listing that appears more frequently on food labels, especially in the organic and natural foods industries. I collected food labels and used qualitative methods as I rendered labels textually into Word documents in order to see the discursive elements of food labels away from the sometimes elaborate graphic design. I found that food labels contained three elements: the story, the reality, and the credibility. The story of the food label lures the consumer into an emotional response in either purchasing the food item or putting it back on the shelf. The reality of the label is in the ingredients list, or what is actually in that food item. The credibility is the availability of the manufacture in connecting with the consumer and to what extent they have transparency. By comparing these three elements on a textual page, we can see if there is truth and label equivalence between them, with “natural flavors” as a central component when it appears in the ingredients list. To the extent that there is or is not equivalence is explored through qualitative rhetorical analysis and briefly discussed by engaging Brummett’s rhetorical homologies.
Social Dialect Features of Military Speech: A Sociolinguistic Study of Fargo Veterans
(North Dakota State University, 2020) Albright, Anthony J.
This mixed-methods study examines the potential existence of a military dialect separate from regional or social dialects experienced by civilians. In particular, how similar is the military-related storytelling lexicon of veterans in the Fargo-Moorhead area to the lexicon set forth in training bases and training manuals used by the U.S. military? The lexicon used by veterans in storytelling can sometimes seem opaque to an audience. It is typically dense with meaning borne by a few coded words. These words carry a contextual burden that can be better understood by an appeal to the dialect from which they were borne. In order to disentangle the veteran way of speaking from other overlapping and intersecting social and regional dialects that make up a subject’s typical speech, guided conversation and word-matching exercises were used to isolate lexicon that was typical to the military experience. The resulting interview transcripts were analyzed in comparison to military training manuals to arrive at a percentage of military-specific terms used in the guided conversation and a percentage of general knowledge military terms retained in the word-matching measure. The resulting 1.85% of military-specific terms and phrases used by participants in guided conversations and 61% retention of military-specific term knowledge was used to show that the military dialect not only exists but persists in the repertoire of veteran participants. As the majority of those who work with veterans are not veterans themselves, these percentages represent a significant barrier to understanding veteran storytelling. This barrier hinders the successful reintegration and mental health of veterans who return to their communities without knowing how to meaningfully express their stories in their existing support networks.
Women and the Environment of the Global South: Toward a Postcolonial Ecofeminism
(North Dakota State University, 2016) Jabeen, Neelam
In this study I claim that mainstream ecofeminism is inadequate to translate the experiences of the women of the Third World and propose postcolonial ecofeminism. The study focuses on the ecofeminist assumption of women’s relationship of care and compassion with nature. Through textual examples, I show the complexity of relationships between South-Asian women, and their natural environment, and claim that these relations are based on their material conditions and social status rather than necessarily being that of care and compassion. The study also highlights the acute nature of women-nature connection in the South-Asian societies where women are treated as land: their bodies are used to reproduce, and at times leased out to earn sustenance through prostitution. I have selected multiple South-Asian texts (fiction). Chemmeen, Village by the Sea, The Folded Earth, and The Hungry Tide are used to shed light on the role of their respective authors in developing postcolonial ecofeminism. Chemmeen, Nectar in a Sieve and Village by the Sea are analyzed to highlight the practices of the characters, male and female, which appear to be disruptive and harmful for their natural environment that sustains them. Then I use alternative analysis that I term as postcolonial ecofeminist perspective, to interpret the practices of the characters, while considering the livelihood strategies of these characters. I provide textual examples from Nectar in a Sieve and Water to support my claim that in the presented societies, women’s bodies are not just symbolically connected to land but are actually treated as land in the form of prostitution. I also analyze Madwoman of Jogare as a counter example that epitomizes mainstream ecofeminism, and also helps to complicate the notion of embodiment. The study also provides pedagogical implications of postcolonial ecofeminism by providing a sample reading of Fire on the Mountain. Besides challenging mainstream ecofeminism, all the discussed texts highlight the need for a revised ecofeminism that encompasses the postcolonial perspective. The study also shows the rhetorical significance of such texts that may enable students in the classroom to become active members of the society who want to bring change.
Writing (Dirty) New Media: Technorhetorical Opacity, Chimeras, and Dirty Ontology
(North Dakota State University, 2014) Hammer, Steven Reginald
There is little doubt that emerging technologies are changing the way we act, interact, create, and consume. Yet despite increased access to these technologies, consumers of technology too seldom interrogate the politics, subjectivities, and limitations of these technologies and their interfaces. Instead, many consumers approach emerging technologies as objective tools to be consumed, and engage in creative processes uncritically. This disquisition, following the work of Hawisher, Selfe, and Selfe, seeks ways to approach the problem of a “rhetoric of technology” that uncritically praises new technologies by drawing on avant-garde art traditions and object-oriented ontology. I argue that, by following the philosophies and practices of glitch, dirty new media, zaum, dada, circuit-bending, and others, we might approach writing technologies with the intention of critically misusing, manipulating, and revealing to ourselves and audiences the materiality of the media and technologies in use. In combination with these avant-garde practices and philosophies, I draw from object-oriented ontology to argue that we, as new media composers, never simply write on or through our technologies, but that we write in collaboration with them, for they are active and agential coauthors even (and especially) despite their status as nonhuman. I argue for an model that not only levels the ontological playing field between humans and nonhumans, but also one that embraces irregularities and “glitches” as essential features of systems and the actors within those systems. Finally, I provide examples of how to perform these models and philosophies, which I call object-oriented art.

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