Notes that the rhetoric of Frances E. Willard relied primarily on "womanhood" arguments, making her uniquely successful at promoting woman suffrage with conservative audiences. Concludes that the popularization of Willard's strategies represented a transformation of the symbolic context of the suffrage movement. Examines the implications…

Challenges theoretical boundaries of feminist separatist texts. Reads Jeffner Allen's "creative violence" as offering a means of "becoming-lesbian" even for a "gay" man. Suggests that "becoming-lesbian" constantly re-creates itself and does not seek to establish any practice as either the norm or the…

Develops a theory of apocalyptic texts and movements by applying Kenneth Burke's conception of the tragic and comic frames of acceptance to the text of the Christian Apocalypse and to the history of its interpretation. Uses Burke's "psychology of form" to explain the recurring patterns of apocalyptic argument as functions of…

Examines two debates within the basic writing community (the reaction against Min Zhan Lu's early theoretical work and the recent acrimonious debate regarding Ira Shor's defense of mainstreaming) showing how they reflect conflicting models of the basic writing field, with "critical" discourse challenging the conventions and authority of…

Discusses the manner in which news discourse frames the female subject. To illustrate the applicability of Foucault's concepts of power and discourse to the framing of the female subject in the press, a series of news stories and editorials are analyzed that appeared in the "Vancouver Sun" between November 22 and 24, 1982. (Author/VWL)

Examines three recent popularized accounts of emerging lethal viral strains within the context of a late 19th-century rationale for imperialism: the ideologeme of scenic contamination, which justifies imperialism as a defensive measure. Notes how the three texts present ideologically charged images of the Third World and its relationship to the…

Workplace literacy discourses have become institutionalized and are not critically examined. Workplace literacy has been socially constructed into a dominant discourse that offers limited understanding of work and literacy and strengthens existing power relations. (SK)

Argues that functionalism is not limited to a functional rhetorical position. Discusses two misrepresentations of creative writing: the casting of composition in functional terms, and "creative" writing as a special process distinct from serious academic work. Argues for a cultural critique that opens the creative writing class to…

Delineates three meanings of technology assumed in popular and academic discourse: technology-as-instrumentality, technology-as-industrialization, and technology-as-novelty. Examines the deployment of these definitions by the Clinton administration as it promulgates and defends its policies regarding the Internet. Reflects on the significance of…

Analyzes three Dutch connectives. Argues that the crucial distinction between the pragmatic nature of causal and contrastive connectives should be made on an underlying level, the so-called Basic Scheme, and its relationship to the surface utterance. Establishes a relation between semantic and pragmatic use of a connective, and the ideational and…

Presents a text-linguistic definition of the difference between semantic and pragmatic relations. Shows that the type of context (descriptive, argumentative) appeared not to influence language users' interpretation of clear cases, whereas their judgments of ambiguous relations were influenced by the type of context. Finds informative texts are…

Looks at how frames--expectations of how new information is to be perceived or dealt with in a conversation or other discourse interaction--are set up in metalinguistic discourse throughout the twentieth century, and how the particular way in which the concept of language is framed in introductory textbooks reveals an ideology that limits the ways…

Analyzes shareholder reports of equity mutual funds whose total returns were high in absolute terms, but low in relative terms. Reveals that mixed-return shareholder reports use a nonlinear hyperstructure, dramatize ideas through contrasting narrators, embed a variety of subgenres, and complement verbal with visual discourse in order to make…

Suggests that public doublespeak is an abuse of language, power, and people and that it is an excellent site for investigating and understanding the power of discourse. Discusses motivation for doublespeak, skillful use of language, and deconstructing doublespeak. (RS)

Analyzes the literary questions within the anarchist statement that "the way to the transformation of society was transforming people by education and propaganda." (PA)