English Masters Theses
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Item Mottling the conversation: an evolving debate(North Dakota State University, 2009) Comeau, PaulaOnline forums have often been considered a medium of equality. However, after studying Amazon.com communities taking part in the evolution/intelligent design debate, it became clear that these communities were substituting the ability to produce conversation for the ability to consume it. This becomes important in the development of online hierarchies. In order to outline the differences between access and accessibility, it was necessary to demonstrate how these two ideas operate on a continuum. Amazon.com sits to the access side of the continuum, which makes it a medium that is easily used by the majority of the consuming population. For this reason, it was used in the study to demonstrate how people not in the inner inclusionary circles are setting up gates by substituting access for accessibility in conversations. Articulation theory was used to describe the boundaries created within Amazon.com and to show how individuals can manipulate the boundaries to increase productive ability. It was found that proper online etiquette was important for a participant to be able to contribute to a conversation, demonstrating how etiquette acts as a gate. Various online conversation tactics were also linked to proper etiquette, and, therefore, those who were able to properly invoke these tactics became gatekeepers. The establishment of gates and gatekeepers means that the Internet is not as free as previously thought, and has moved old media gates into new media.Item Classical Rhetoric for Modem Problems: Accommodating Stasis for the W AC/WID Curriculum(North Dakota State University, 2011) Archer, Seth AndrewThis paper performs a case study of scientific information as it moves between media, in this case, from the journal Science to the New York Times. In order to monitor the rhetorical shifts between texts, both are analyzed using a modified four tier taxonomic system of stasis as outlined by Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor (140-143, 1983). As the information from the different texts is analyzed under a singular lens, in this case 'the stases,' the rhetorical accommodations, both the subtle and the not subtle, become obvious in a manner since stasis is a "general scheme capable of accounting for the ways issues naturally develop" (Fahnestock 1988, 345). This new use of stasis coupled with the spread of Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) and Writing in the Disciplines (WID) throughout college writing curriculums will develop students' awareness of how scientific information can become attenuated through accommodation in order to avoid communication problems once they become the primary communicators of science.Item Usury as a Human Problem in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice(North Dakota State University, 2017) Petherbridge, StevenShakespeare’s Shylock from the Merchant of Venice is a complex character who not only defies simple definition but also takes over a play in which he is not the titular character. How Shakespeare arrived at Shylock in the absence of a Jewish presence in early modern England, as well as what caused the playwright to humanize his villain when other playwrights had not is the subject of much debate. This thesis shows Shakespeare’s humanizing of Shylock as a blurring of the lines between Jews and Christians, and as such, a shift of usury from a uniquely Jewish problem to a human problem. This shift is then explicated in terms of a changing England in a time where economic necessity challenged religious authority and creating compassion for a Jew on the stage created compassion symbolically for Christian usurers as well.Item Identity Theory and the Lunar Chronicles: Expanding the Study of Identity in Young Adult Literature(North Dakota State University, 2017) Silvernail, Sarah RoseThis Master’s Thesis applies Identity Theory from Social Psychology to The Lunar Chronicles, a young adult novel series by Marissa Meyer. In this thesis, I explain the theory in detail, apply it to the text, and discuss what can be gained by applying such a theory to young adult literature. Young adult literature (YAL) works with the concept of identity, and applying a Social Psychological theory of identity to YAL can provide a new vantage point from which to examine the concept of identity as portrayed in YAL. Through my application of Identity Theory to the texts, I demonstrate how we can apply this theory to young adult novels, focusing on three specific identities of the main character, Cinder. Following this analysis, I discuss potential pedagogical implications of this type of textual analysis in addition to implications for the field of YAL itself.Item Resisting Rape Myths in Young Adult Fiction: An Analysis of Young Adult Novels Speak and Crank(North Dakota State University, 2016) Jangula Mootz, Kaylee BlancheIntroducing young people to fiction that depicts rape is important in that reading this type of fiction can be a more effective strategy for reducing rape-myth acceptance in young people than lecture-based prevention programs. To be fully effective, literature used for lowering rapemyth acceptance must fully resist rape myths. This paper analyzes Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and CRANK by Ellen Hopkins to find the ways in which each novel resists and conforms to rape myths, to determine whether these texts would be suitable for reducing rapemyth acceptance, and to identify ways in which future texts that aim to reduce rape-myth acceptance in young readers can be more effective. Neither Speak nor CRANK fully resists rape myths, which reinforces the validity of rape myths to young adult readers. Both novels resist rape myths that attempt to deny the reality of rape while conforming to rape myths that blame the victim.Item From Homo stupidus to Homo sapiens: Changing and Reaffirming the Paradigm of Human Uniqueness Through Neandertal Descriptions(North Dakota State University, 2015) Even, Megan LynnNeandertal interpretation is changing the paradigm of human uniqueness, but exactly how needs to be examined. This paper provides a qualitative analysis of how Neandertal descriptions embed long-held cultural attitudes and how those cultural attitudes are being challenged and, in some ways, reaffirmed through rhetoric. A rhetorical analysis was performed on the second and third editions of a widely used physical anthropology textbook, Clark Spencer Larsen’s Our Origins. Both editions rhetorically favor a view of Neandertals as more similar to than different from us, a view which appears at odds with the disciplinary preference. Larsen appeals to the disciplinary preference in the second edition by only implicitly favoring similarities, but the third edition is more explicit in its favoring of similarities. The analysis of Larsen’s text provides examples of how rhetors can continue to move readers toward a new view of Neandertals, despite the current disciplinary preference for Neandertal classification.Item "Where Everything Goes to Hell": Stephen King as Literary Naturalist(North Dakota State University, 2012) Perry, Meghan JoyIn his bestselling nonfiction book about the horror genre, Danse Macabre, author Stephen King lists among his idols "the great naturalist writer Frank Norris" (336). While King primarily writes horror fiction, he has often noted his indebtedness to early American literary naturalists. As these naturalist writers have been such an influence in King's life and writing, it seems logical to explore whether King himself, in addition to being a horror writer, can also be considered a literary naturalist. By looking at ideas of both early and contemporary American literary naturalism, I explore how a variety of King's works utilize the most central tenets of naturalism, including realism, determinism (biological, environmental, and technological) and the seeming paradox of free will within determined environments. I also look at how King's horror can be compatible with, and even expands on, the definition of traditional literary naturalism.