Examines the main political-rhetorical events of the 1980 presidential campaign: the rise and fall of various candidates, convention highlights, and the campaign from Labor Day to November 4 with special attention to the debates. Available from City News Publishing Co., Box 606, Southold, New York 11971; sc $1.25. (PD)

The following study explored the structures and themes found in a few episodes of a popular TV sitcom ("Friends"). Drawing on James Gee's ideas about critical discourse analysis as the main analytical lens for this study, this study discussed the language found in a sitcom and analyzed the complexity of structures and vocabulary in the…

The paper examines ethnicity in American society and the role of ethnic studies in education in the context of a critical response to a paper presented at the National Council for the Social Studies in November, 1977. The original study, "Ethnicity and the Schools," by Daniel Selakovich, claimed that ethnic studies should play no role in education…

This paper takes a critical look at a demographic study of Mexico, namely, Tad Fisher's "Mexico: The Problem of People". Fisher's study relies heavily on population growth as a poverty generating factor. The paper states that Fisher's study exhibited perceptual narrowness by not considering the Marxist interpretation that capitalist…

Suggesting that James Coleman's paper on massive school desegragation reveals methodological flaws of such magnitude that they raise serious questions as to the validity of the conclusions, this paper addresses a full sequence of perceived methodological errors found in the Coleman document, but does not dismiss the conclusions based upon initial…

If children are not present in most travel literature--precisely because the genre has most typically been the domain of solitary male travelers who are escaping domestic obligation, routine, the familiar, and the family--they nevertheless are an integral part of the genre. The traveler is in many ways a child, an innocent abroad. Traveler writers…

It seems that this paper, as if it were some textual Elvis, by the author's own admission has eluded him. With the set of commas included in the title of the paper, it is not clear whether 2 or 3 people are being referred to. The paper's first version took Bakhtin as the reigning monarch of English studies and applied his complicated and…

An effective way to expand students' knowledge and enjoyment of noncanonical, or at least unfamiliar, works is by using more familiar works as benchmarks. For example, in a sophomore-level world literature survey course, students have already read a large part of the "Iliad" and all of the "Odyssey" when they are asked to study…

Kenneth Burke was a college dropout who did not enjoy notable success until quite late in life. His major interest was the development of a meta-theory of language, which he called "rhetoric." Denied the resources and material rewards of academia, Burke was both scapegoated and redeemed by the academic community. Furthermore, the…

Noting that discussions about the interaction of science and politics are often heard, this paper addresses how these discursive arenas are defined and distinguished. It argues that political and scientific discourse may be distinguished by the roles they assume on the rhetorical stage, and the relevant roles which emerge are implementers and…

Several science education researchers are embracing postmodern relativist notions of both evaluation methodology and of the structure of all scientific knowledge. They blame bad educational evaluation and research on several causes, the worst being the following of the fundamental tenets of mainstream science. These researchers feel science…

Deng Xiaopeng's rise to leadership in the People's Republic of China has been accompanied by massive economic and structural reforms. Some claim that these reforms led to the rise of the pro-democracy student movements of 1987 and 1989, and there has been a notable amount of scholarly investigation into their political and economic consequences.…

President Bush's declaration of April 5-7, 1991 as National Days of Thanksgiving is a unique example of Presidential civil religious discourse: no other President has ever made such a declaration to thank God for a victory in war. Whether he intended to or not, President Bush engaged in a rhetorical form which allowed him to manipulate a very…

In the last 6 years, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have been undergoing fundamental political reinvention. Scholars of language, literacy, and rhetoric can learn much from the study of rhetorical histories. Accordingly, a brief rhetorical history of these upheavals, particularly those in…

Although the notion of teaching literature in an intensive weekend format may present numerous problems to be solved by the instructor, it can be a format that results in considerable success. It is conducive to the schedules of many students who work during the week, and weekend literature courses have proven to be popular. Intensive weekend…