Treating the Pro-Life Movement as a monolithic entity creates a blind spot regarding the cognitive effect of the fetal personhood rhetorical framework. This study applies an interpretive lens, using legal and discourse analysis as tools, to provide a critical analysis of personhood laws and web content to shed light on how linguistic patterns construct, and are informed by, worldview. Examining variations in proposed Human Life Amendments—and asking how, or if, proposed bills achieve their specified aim—reveals tension in state and federal jurisdiction of abortion regulations. It also exposes conflicts concerning tactical preferences for attaining fetal personhood and ending abortion that are useful to differentiating the Pro-Life and Personhood Movements.

Framing and discursive practices of the Personhood Movement reflect a ‘black and white’ mentality and an overly-simplified worldview. Movement cognition is shaped by patterns of omission and exclusion, inclusion, repetition, troubling phrases, and the power of labels. The linguistic choices demonstrate, constitute, and reinforce the dominant narratives of the movement and are integral to advocacy, praxis, and legislative efforts. While the struggle to pass personhood-compliant legislation has not been successful, the rhetorical practices and representational framework of the Personhood Movement have succeeded in altering the national discourse surrounding beginnings of life and abortion. The extreme views of the Personhood Movement reconstitute the middle—making tactics of the mainstream Pro-Life Movement seem moderate and reasonable by comparison, which allows dangerous legislation to slide by under the radar.

This thesis investigates colonialism’s legacy on contemporary Liberia’s language practices and self-understandings. Liberia was colonized by freed American slaves under the auspices of the American Colonization Society, established in 1816, which sought to establish a Christian colony in Africa as part of its plan to save the black race. The freed slaves who realized this dream imposed their master’s language and religion upon the indigenous people they encountered while establishing the Liberian nation-state. This thesis delineates and explores three distinct data sets in order to identify contemporary vestiges and legacies of these colonial strategies, including interview data from Liberian immigrants, memoirs written by Liberians, and social media posts by Liberian immigrants. The study uses discourse analysis to analyze how Liberian immigrants represent themselves and their cultural practices drawing upon both colonial and indigenous identities. Findings revealed people with light skinned color (referred to as white) were viewed as beautiful and dark skinned people (referred to Africans) were considered as ugly. The study also revealed that speaking local languages is equated with illiteracy while the ability to speak English was seen as a sign of literacy. However, there was also a contradictory imperative that demonstrated resistance against the colonizing narrative. Liberia immigrants who experienced American culture fantasized about what they called true African identity and culture, revalorizing what previously had been negated.

June Cleaver, and the women who attempted to emulate her perfectly dressed, “happy homemaker” ideal, were considered the epitome of “womanhood” in the 1950s. However, the image of the quintessential domestic diva, in pearls and floral dress is surely a tired and no longer relevant label for the modern woman, right? This research aims to examine whether the “domesticated woman” is still the prevalent social script provided by American advertisers and to determine if there has been a significant change in how often women are portrayed as having an existence not predicated on the home or domestic duties over time. To accomplish this 1,250 American television commercials, spanning from 1970 to 2016, were gathered and analyzed using critical content analysis via a specially designed test, The June Cleaver Test.

The commercials garnered were further broken down into 11 pertinent categories (Food, Household Goods, ect.) and results from each of these categories were also tracked. The overall results showed that 54.4 percent of commercials failed to show women outside of domestic or caregiving roles. When broken down by decade, not a single decade managed to pass over 50 percent of those commercials sampled using The June Cleaver Test. This means at no point over nearly 5 decades were the sampled commercials able to show women outside of domestic role more than 50 percent of the time. The implications the continued failure rate above 50 percent across the decades shows is that the trope of women as homemakers and caretakers, instead of employed or having other demands outside of the home, is still being mass produced as a cultural norm. Pertinent and prevalent trends, tropes and stereotypes about women and domestic throughout the sample were also noted and discussed. These findings have significant implications for not only the options available to women in society, but also in moving towards a place where women find economic equity and fight for equal respect in their chosen vocations. June Cleaver has not so much left the kitchen; instead she has just updated her wardrobe.

ABSTRACT

This dissertation examined how seven federal agencies utilized Twitter during a major natural disaster, Hurricane Sandy. Data collected included tweets between October 26-31, 2012 via TweetTracker, as well as federal social media policy doctrines and elite interviews, to discern patterns in the guidance provided to federal public information officers (PIOs). While scholarly research cites successful local and state government efforts utilizing social media to improve response efforts in a two-way communications interaction, no substantive research addresses social media’s role in crisis response capabilities at the federal level.

This study contributes to the literature in three ways: it focuses solely on the use of social media by federal agencies in a crisis setting; it illuminates policy directives that often hamper federal crisis communication response efforts; and it suggests a proposed model that channels the flow of social media content for PIOs. This is especially important to the safety of the nation moving forward, since crises have increased. Additionally, Twitter was adopted only recently as an official communications tool in 2013. Prior to 2013, social media was applied informally and inconsistently.

The findings of this study reveal a reliance upon a one-way, passive communication approach in social media federal policy directives, as well as vague guidelines in existing crisis communications models. Both dimensions are counter to risk management and crisis communication research, which embrace two-way interactivity with audiences and specific messaging that bolsters community engagement, which are vital to the role of the PIO. The resulting model enables the PIO to provide relevant information to key internal agencies and external audiences in response to a future crisis.

Wildlife endangerment and extinction is a significant and pressing issue. Environmental research notes that if humans hope to preserve wildlife, change needs to occur within the next decade. Therefore, it is important to understand the kinds of messages young adults are receiving about wildlife. This communication may affect their attitudes, beliefs, and ideals toward nature. Communication and socialization remain significant factors in cultivating environmental values in individuals. Memorable messages remain a socialization tool utilized to promote values in others.

This study explores the kinds of wildlife messages and underlying values individuals receive by asking them to recall a memorable wildlife message. The study analyzed 108 memorable messages from individuals between the ages of 18-35. The study employs a content analysis to examine message content and values. The study employed sensitizing concepts, such as Stern's Value-Belief-Norm theory to examine the messages’ underlying values, such as altruism and progressivism. Results indicate messages revolve around themes of preservation, stewardship, sanctity, domestication, and complexity of conservation. Of the 108 messages, 66 messages conveyed altruistic and progressive values as defined by Stern while other messages conveyed appreciation, awareness, and dominative values. Additionally, wildlife messages were received mostly through mediated sources. Implications for parents, the media, and wildlife are explored.

Romantic relationships are an important aspect of anyone's life. For individuals with an autism spectrum disorder, this is true as well. However, these people may experience relational dynamics and trajectories that are in some aspects either similar to or markedly different from those who are not on the spectrum. There are very few studies analyzing and understanding how adults with an ASD navigate romantic relationships. This particular study examined how turning points pertaining to relational escalation or de-escalation were recognized and understood by eight individuals (four men and four women) possessing an ASD. The Retrospective Interview Technique (RIT) was implemented in order to accrue data from participants. Each participant completed a RIT graph mapping out a romantic relationship of their choice by understanding when a turning point was identified and placing a mark next to the corresponding level of relational closeness or attachment. Once all turning points were mapped out, they were connected with lines so that a visual representation of the entire relationship may be viewed. Participants were then queried about how they knew that particular event (or mark) to be a turning point, how it impacted the relationship, and how they were, personally, influenced by it (how they responded to the event). Interviews were transcribed and explored through a grounded theory approach. Specifically, Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis method was applied to articulate interview data. The research revealed four main themes (Relational Genesis, Relational Escalation, Relational De-escalation and Conflict Management) as well as seventeen sub themes. Limitations for this study, information relating to discourses surrounding autism spectrum disorders and romantically intimate relationships, as well as, areas for future study are also discussed.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) have a polarizing effect in the US. The first commercially viable GMO was Roundup Ready Soy, introduced by Monsanto in 1996, to be used in conjunction with Roundup herbicides. This thesis investigated and delineated the development and deployments of the discourse of Monsanto’s agricultural assemblage of Roundup Ready seeds and Roundup herbicides and its resistant discourses. Monsanto builds its discourse around the safety and necessity of Roundup Ready seeds through federal regulation and toxicology studies. Resistant discourses deployed by Monsanto’s critics problematize Roundup safety and reject Monsanto’s contention that GMOs are necessary for meeting world’s food demands. The discourse analysis pursued in this thesis explored interactions between the dominant discourse and counter discourses and charted their deployments in Colorado’s and Oregon’s 2014 ballot measures that would have required mandatory GMO labeling. Analysis suggested counter discourses were successful in mobilizing people to engage civically.

Through critical discourse analysis, this thesis explores the construction of poverty and development within and across the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and the proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals texts. The proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals frame the international development landscape for the next 15 years, therefore it becomes imperative for civil society to understand their dominant economic schemes for poverty alleviation in order to adopt or oppose similar methods of poverty abatement. Deductively, this thesis investigates Keynesianism and neoliberalism, the dominant economic discourses whose deployments within the goals have shaped transnational frameworks for interpreting and mitigating poverty. It assesses the failures of the Millennium Development Goals, as articulated both by its creators and critics, and evaluates the responsiveness of the United Nations in the constitution of the proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals in relation to these critiques through the lens of liberal feminist and World Social Forum discourses. These activist and oppositional social discourses embody competing values, representations, and problem-solution frames that challenge and resist the dominant economic discourses in both sets of goals. Additionally, this thesis uses an inductive approach to critically analyze both sets of goals in order to identify any emergent discursive frameworks grounded in each text that assist in understanding the problems of, and solutions to, poverty.

Smoking prevalence has been a significant issue in China. This present study investigates family influences on the smoking behaviors of highly-educated Chinese youths (HECY) and explores whether family factors work as distal factors in the revised framework of the theory of planned behavior. Convenience sampling and snow-ball sampling have been utilized to select participants from highly-educated Chinese youth population who are students studying in colleges or universities and people who recently graduated from Chinese colleges or universities with Bachelor's and/or Master' degrees. This study relies on quantitative methodologies to analyze the data from the participants' responses to online cross sectional surveys with SPSS. This present study has determined that family influences do contribute to the smoking behaviors of highly-educated Chinese youths. In addition to examining the proximal factors (highly-educated Chinese youths' attitudes toward smoking, self-efficacy and social norms of smoking) in the model of the theory of planned behavior, this current study has examined the following distal factors: (1) parental communication about smoking, (2) communication about smoking among siblings, (3) parents, siblings and/or cousins' attitudes toward smoking, and (4) smoking behaviors of parents, siblings and/or cousins.

The economic crisis in 2008 triggered a global financial shockwave that left many wondering about the origins of the crisis. Similarly, in the early twentieth century, Wall Street faced catastrophic losses that set the stage for the Great Depression, which resulted in a decade of economic depression, leaving millions of people out of work. Using discourse analysis to understand how economic crisis is framed through the mainstream press, this research project analyzed the stock market crash of 1929-1932 and the mortgage-backed financial crisis of 2007-2009 through the lens of two mainstream publications, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Comparative analysis focused on explanations for the causes of the crises, attributions of blame, culprits, and proposed solutions emerging in news coverage of the 1929 panic and the 2007-2009 financial crises. Mainstream media accounts of the 2007-2009 crisis are then compared with `alternative media' accounts of crisis causes, culprits, and solutions. These comparative analyses are contextualized historically within economic paradigms of thought, beginning with the classical economists led by Adam Smith and transitioning to the Chicago School.