Mikal Lambdin

Mikal has a BA in English with a concentration in Writing and Rhetoric from George Mason University. She most recently worked as an Undergraduate Research Assistant for Writing Across the Curriculum, where she wrote research-driven blog posts about composition from a student perspective. She enjoys pushing the envelope when writing by creating her own rhetorical frames and finding connections between dissimilar topics like children’s literature and politics. Mikal lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her doctor-to-be husband and hyperactive cat.

Contents 

Introduction

The Role of Ethos

"I Don't Know": Leaving Things Out

"I Don't Know": Leaving Things Out Cont.

"I Wanna Die Comfortable": War is a Game

"I Wanna Die Comfortable": War is a Game Cont.

"With Me I Think It's One": Man Over Machine 

"With Me I Think It's One": Man Over Machine Cont.

Conclusion

Works Cited

Introduction

Of all the controversies that film attempts to depict, war is one of the most difficult and dangerous. How can directors in Hollywood ever truly understand what it’s like to be a soldier, regardless of the cause, and should they even try? How are the evils (death, loss, pain, cruelty) juxtaposed with the good (courage, loyalty, and something worth fighting for) without resulting in offensive oversimplification? And, perhaps most problematic, how do filmmakers avoid a seemingly unavoidable bias that could potentially alienate half of their audience? In light of these complexities, most filmmakers approach war movies with more than a little trepidation, and well they should: war films do poorly at the box office, rarely win awards, and are more likely to ruin careers than make them, which begs the question, are they ever worth it (Rico)?

Faced with these difficulties, many war films make what effort they can to represent the basic realities of dense concepts like war and soldier within their two hour time slot. In other words, many war films aim to be generally representative. Classics like The Thin Red Line, Saving Private Ryan, and We Were Soldiers all attempt to answer, more or less, the same two questions: What is war really like? and What are soldiers really like? Saving Private Ryan includes several especially horrific scenes of battles and death, offering a picture of the violent reality of war. The title of We Were Soldiers says it all, as the film depicts the heroism and loyalty that turned men into soldiers. These war films, like so many others, attempt to epitomize war by focusing on its most fundamental attributes and thus mostly elude controversy; when effectively executed, this method results in the classic, award-winning war films that so many know and love. Yet by focusing on the agreed-upon basics of war and soldiers, these films send messages that are equally basic: War is violent. Soldiers are loyal. Soldiers are heroes. As a result, these concepts, especially the idea of being a soldier, have slowly turned into clichés. The message is now All soldiers are loyal. All soldiers are heroes.

In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow’s war drama The Hurt Locker won six Academy Awards and was nominated for three more. It beat Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time, for Best Picture, and it made history when Bigelow became the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director (Bilington). Yet The Hurt Locker was not just another in a chain of war films that successfully represented the fundamental realities of war. In fact, it was The Hurt Locker’s departure from this approach that made it noteworthy: it did not try to capture the all-encompassing reality of war. Disregarding the approach of classics which endeavor to be representative, Bigelow set out to make a different kind of war film. Instead of creating war’s perfect landscape and crafting everything else to fit that landscape, The Hurt Locker started with its characters – one character in particular. Rather than offering a picture of all soldiers, it offered a picture of one soldier. It carefully molded a unique, multilayered, real person, dressed him in a bomb suit, and sat back to watch what played out. While some may argue that positioning one character at the center of the fray is simply a plot device, the forthcoming analysis will show that the distinctive character traits of protagonist Sergeant Will James are what determine the film’s narrative action, and not the other way around. This focus on the ethos of James’ individuality is what ultimately determined The Hurt Locker’s singularity and success. Instead of asking, what is war really like? it asks, what is war like for one person?

In this paper, I will look more closely at the character of James, analyzing the rhetorical moves made to establish his ethos as a single, honest entity rather than a comprehensive symbol of war. My analysis will focus on three rhetorical hallmarks of James’s character – his anonymity, his detachment, and his vulnerability. Many details about James’s past and current identity are simply left out, which works to create an essence of believability. The audience gets to know James in the same way as it would get to know another person – piece by piece. Perhaps most obvious is James’s detachment from the world around him – both the life-or-death nature of his surroundings, and the family that he has left behind. This detachment is constituted by his addiction to war, his most distinctive quality. Finally, James’s momentary vulnerability adds a layer of nuance and relatability to his character. Although these moments serve to authenticate James’s humanness, they do not result in some grand gesture or sudden, radical character development – instead, these moments simply continue to reveal his shortcomings. I have created this unique, threefold rhetorical frame for the purposes of an equally unique analysis, and I hope to demonstrate that, especially in the context of film, this frame is valuable and effective in establishing rhetorical ethos. I will examine how these three rhetorical aspects work in both the dialogue and, when applicable, the actor portrayal, to confirm the ethos of one character’s identity as a soldier.

Kristy Lesperance

Kristy was in her third year of undergraduate studies at the University of British Columbia when this essay was originally written, studying Mathematics under the faculty of Arts. The paper was written for an upper-level, intensive research and scholarly writing course using corpus analysis to investigate discursive features of literature from the student’s chosen major.

Contents

Introduction

Mathematics in Discourse Analysis

Method

Results & Discussions 

Results & Discussions Cont.

Conclusion

Works Cited

Introduction

Differences of academic writing style across hard and soft disciplines have been noted by various scholars, such as Hyland (2009) and Becher (1994), including differences specifically in the incorporation of exemplification and reformulation (Hyland, 2007; Cuenca & Bach, 2007). Hyland (2007) describes these terms as “code glosses” (p. 266): elaborations intended to increase reader comprehension and demonstrate an author’s audience-sensitivity. Cuenca and Bach (2007) describe reformulations in essentially the same way: reiterations intended to improve reader comprehension through increased specificity.

Other scholars have argued that, in addition to a traditional textual analysis, a methodical incorporation of context could enhance the understanding that discourse analysis seeks to reveal, explicitly mentioning the significance of audience-sensitivity (Lillis, 2008; Paltridge, 2008; Swales, 1998; van Dijk, 2006). Although uncommon, some scholars, such as Graves, Moghaddasi and Hashim (2013), have ventured to discuss the particular macro-organizational features unique to mathematics research articles. However, despite a compendium of more than 1,700 journals pertaining to mathematics, and the wide variety of audiences towards which this writing is directed, it seems that the discipline remains untouched by textual or contextual discourse analysis beyond this macro-organizational level.

The present study explores salient differences in code gloss use between two discursively opposing sub-disciplines of mathematics – namely, theoretical mathematics (categorized as hard, pure) and mathematics education (soft, applied) – highlighting their similarities and differences. In particular, I seek to demonstrate that not only do disciplines themselves differ in their use of discursive features, but that differences can be noted across sub-disciplines within those broader disciplines. Using the study by Hyland (2007) as a guide, this article begins with an overview of literature regarding the definitions of "hard" and "soft" fields, the uniqueness of mathematics articles, and the significance of both context and audience-sensitivity in academic writing. It then outlines my corpus analytic methods and reviews my results, comparing my findings to those of Hyland.

Benjamin Sherick

Benjamin Sherick graduated from the University of Calgary in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts - Honours First Class in Communication Studies and a minor in Religious Studies. His academic interests include rhetoric, pop culture, music, and religion. He currently resides in Alberta with his wife.

Contents

Introduction

The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill Church

What are the Scriptures?

Theory & Method

Ethos

Ethos Cont.

Conducting Interviews

Analysis

Analysis Cont.

Conclusion

Works Cited

Introduction

A pastor stands in the pulpit on a Sunday morning and, drawing on the book that both he and the congregation agree to be the holy words of God, preaches with conviction and fervor. The pastor attempts to persuade the congregation regarding the truth of Christianity. This is a rhetorical act. It is a call to action. It is an attempt at relating.

In the third pew, a dedicated churchgoer sits skeptically. Although she agrees with the propositions coming from the pulpit, she is not persuaded. This stems from a more personal concern. For one reason or another, the pastor’s persona alienates her. He is not a credible rhetor. In other words, the pastor’s ethos prevents the churchgoer from identifying with him.

According to classical conceptions, rhetoric is concerned with persuasion. Aristotle (c. 335/1984) defined rhetoric as “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (p. 24). Rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke (1969) later suggested that an additional motive of rhetoric is to cause identification between the rhetor and the audience: to create a connection (p. xiv). Woodward (2003) notes that Burke built upon Aristotle’s foundation of rhetoric, particularly the concept of a rhetor’s ethos, in constructing his theory of identification. Aristotle stated that in order to persuade (and Burke would later add, to cause identification), the rhetor must construct and portray an appealing persona within the context of the rhetorical act. This is the rhetor’s intrinsic ethos. However, this is only half the equation. Audiences are also involved in the process of identification, and they interpret the rhetor’s ethos. Their interpretation can be influenced by the rhetor’s extrinsic ethos, or reputation. For this reason, Isocrates suggested that rhetors must also pay attention to their extrinsic ethos.

This article summarizes the findings of the undergraduate thesis The Ethos of Mark Driscoll: Rhetorical Analysis of a Sermon in the Context of a Preacher’s Public Reputation (Sherick, 2015). The project sought to understand how a contemporary pastor’s ethos affects his audience’s ability to identify with the pastor and potentially be persuaded by his claims. In other words, to what extent does the ability to persuade rely on ethos as an aspect of identification? To answer this question, the project asked two sub-questions. First, how does a pastor construct and present intrinsic ethos within the bounds of a sermon? Second, to what extent is a pastor’s extrinsic ethos a factor in the audience’s interpretation of the pastor’s overall ethos? A pastor’s intrinsic and extrinsic ethos will either enable or prohibit identification, which in turn will enable or hinder persuasion. These conclusions can also be applied to rhetors more generally.

The research focused on the case of Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church. Mark Driscoll was the controversial pastor of Mars Hill Church, a multi-campus church based in Seattle. For most of his career and especially throughout 2014, Driscoll was a magnet for controversy. Amidst increased criticism, Driscoll resigned from his position in October 2014. This led to the dissolution of Mars Hill Church in December 2014.

This project filled a gap in the scholarship relating to rhetoric and preaching. A search using the University of Calgary library’s search engine combining Christian genre terms “preaching” and “sermon” with rhetorical terms “ethos,” “identification,” and “rhetoric” yielded few scholarly works directly related to this project’s research question. While much scholarship exists on ethos (i.e. Benoit, 1990; Braet, 1992; Leff, 2009; Rummel, 1979) and identification (i.e. Baxter & Taylor, 1978; Davis, 2008) from a rhetorical perspective, as well as religious and theological scholarship about preaching (i.e. Augustine, 426/1958; Campbell & Cilliers, 2012), sources explicitly linking the two in a way that helped answer the research question were rarer. For this reason, I selected sources that spoke on rhetorical theory more generally (i.e. Aristotle, c. 335/1984; Too, 2008; Woodward, 2003) and then adapted those sources to the discussion of preaching.

As a persuasive act of public speaking, preaching is a rhetorical act that occurs on a weekly basis. Through this case study of a Mark Driscoll sermon in light of his reputation, the project summarized herein made the links between preaching and rhetorical theory explicit. It applied rhetorical concepts such as ethos to Christian preaching in a way that has rarely been done.

Wyn Richards

Wyn Andrews-Richards is a rhetoric scholar with specific research interests in literacy studies (particularly science literacy/aliteracy), writing center studies, political rhetoric, and feminist rhetoric. She will begin her masters program in August 2016 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Contents

Introduction

Science Literacy Scholarship

Anti-Vaccination Literacy

The God Argument - Faith over Evidence

Proud Anti-Science Moms

Natural News isn't Science

Frustration Among Scientists

Autism and the MMR Vaccine

Storytelling

Final Thoughts

Works Cited

Introduction

The development of safe and effective vaccines is one of the greatest achievements in public health. Instead of widespread death and disability caused by diseases such as polio and smallpox, vaccines have all but eliminated these diseases in the developed world. However, in 2016, there are still large groups of people, predominantly in the United States, who believe that vaccines cause autism, as well as various other “injuries.” In this paper, I assert that the problems with science literacy in the United States have led to gross misunderstanding of the importance of vaccines in public health, thus having a negative effect on continued public health in the United States. Later, I relate this literacy problem to an examination of online anti-vaccination literacy communities.   

The 1990s saw an advancement of anti-vaccination sentiment, although there were and are years of scientific consensus regarding the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. In 1998, UK surgeon and medical researcher Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the respected medical journal The Lancet reporting that he had found a link between the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. This study was later found to be fraudulent and was retracted by The Lancet. Despite the scientific community’s discrediting Wakefield’s work, the damage had been done.

In 2007, US celebrity Jenny McCarthy claimed that the MMR vaccine had led to her son’s autism. McCarthy’s anti-vaccine activism rallied a legion of moms decrying vaccines, claiming vaccines caused myriad irreparable damage and diseases to children. Although discredited and disavowed by the science community, as well as being stripped of his credentials, Andrew Wakefield continues to be an anti-vaccination advocate. He published a book in 2011 called Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines--The Truth Behind a Tragedy, which incidentally, includes an introduction written by Jenny McCarthy.

There has been a resurgence of pertussis and measles throughout the United States, largely due to the anti-vaccination movement. Why, when there are decades, and in some cases, hundreds of years of scientific evidence that vaccines work, is there such a prevailing push against science literacy, particularly revealed in the form of the anti-vaccination movement? In an article from The Huffington Post, world renown astrophysicist (and science celebrity) Neil deGrasse Tyson helps provide a partial answer to this question:

Not enough of our society is trained how to understand and interpret quantitative information. This activity is a centerpiece of science literacy to which we should all strive -- the future health, wealth, and security of our democracy depend on it. Until that is achieved, we are at risk of making under-informed decisions that affect ourselves, our communities, our country, and even the world. (qtd. in Freeman, 2015).

Adults are clearly lacking in science literacy, rendering themselves ineligible to accurately make decisions regarding such important scientific/medical decision about whether or not vaccines cause damage.