Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2021, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

In this dissertation, A Black (Human)ist Homiletic: A Literary Exegetical Response and Hermeneutic Case Study about the Life and Experience of Prince Kaboo as Samuel Morris; the Angel Ebony, I courageously excavate the literary art of texts written about Samuel Morris through a series of exegetical tools in order to uncover extortion, exploitation, and the cunning sacrilegious exhibition that deprived Morris of his cultural identity behind a veil of Christianization. In this dissertation, I seek to affirm the "human worth and dignity" of Morris without a codependency on theism and provide viable evidence to reveal the mythomaniacal acts of white Christian antics. I argue that a decolonial humanist approach to the literary arts pertaining to the life of Samuel Morris, both material and metaphorical, (Pinn, 2010, p. 11)restores Morris from a TransAtlantic narrative under racial-religious identity that eradicates his human nature and intuitive rationality and reconciles his appropriate Black cultural property (Weisenfeld,2018, p. 5). The depiction of Morris in these synoptic compositions is a theological-aesthetic application interwoven with social and political ingenuity in order to respond to the time in which each text was born.

Committee: Andrea Frohne (Committee Chair); Brian Evans (Advisor); David Breeden (Committee Member); Robin Mohummad (Committee Member); Winsome Chunnu (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; African Americans; African Literature; Black Studies; Ethics; Performing Arts; Theology

EdD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Education : Special Education

This study described the communication and spoken language development of a Japanese girl with profound hearing loss who used a cochlear implant from 19 months of age. The girl, Akiko, was born in Belgium where her family was living at that time. After she was identified as deaf at birth, she and her parents were provided with support services. The family relocated to Japan when Akiko was 1 year 5 months of age. When she was 1 year 6 months of age Akiko underwent cochlear implantation. The cochlear implant device was activated when Akiko was 1 year 7 months of age. The parents routinely made video recordings of Akiko interacting with family members and teachers at home and at school. The video recordings taken by the parents used as the data for this study contained scenes of Akiko from the time she was 3 months of age until she was 4 years 11 months of age. Micro-ethnographic methods were used to analyze the dynamics and development of selected communicative interactions over this age span of fifty-six months. The original pool of video recordings provided for my dissertation study contained 213 scenes, as well as email exchanges with Akiko's mother, the webpage created by Akiko's mother, and an informal discussion with Akiko's parents during a joint viewing session of the 29 scenes, which were chosen for in depth analysis. As a result of video viewing and editing, Akiko's communication development was found to follow expected patterns of development as described by other child language researchers of children with normal hearing, such as, Elizabeth Bates and colleagues (e.g., Bates, 1974; Bates, Camaioni, Volterra, 1975) who applied, J.L. Austin's “speech act theory” as the foundation for their descriptions of “early communication development” of children. There were seven demarcations that represent Akiko's communication and spoken language development: 1) perlocutionary, 2) transition of perlocutionary to illocutionary, 3) illocutionary, 4) transition of illocu (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Kretschmer EdD (Committee Chair); Laura Kretschmer PhD (Committee Member); Jo-Ann Prendeville EdD (Committee Member); Roberta Truax PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, East Asian Languages and Literatures

This thesis examines a type of language behavior, account-giving, in a Japanese business setting. Account-giving occurs when people sense that giving a reason or an explanation will mitigate the situation somehow and reduce uneasiness caused by a certain unexpected or unusual behavior; the account serves to fill the gap between the behavior and the expectations. Apologies have been identified as an integral component of account-giving in Japanese. The present study investigates 1) whether or not an apology is a significant factor in account-giving in a Japanese business setting, and if so, 2) to what extent an apology becomes significant, 3) whether or not the severity of harm has an impact on the need for an apology in the account-giving, and 4) what feelings or attitude an apology in Japanese account-giving can express. Survey data collected in Japan in 2010 from nine native speakers of Japanese with working experience in a Japanese company are analyzed using Bakhtin's notion of speech genres. The concept of speech genres makes it possible to clarify elements of culturally appropriate utterances in particular contexts with particular goals of the interaction. The analysis of the data reveals that apologies are a significant component of Japanese account-giving delivered in a business setting. The absence of apology causes ancillary utterances to be seen as inappropriate, and this in turn yields a negative impression about the account-giver. In the case of high severity of harm, the evaluation of the appropriateness of the utterances as well as the impression of the account-giver, is negatively affected more than in the case of low severity of harm, but the need for an apology remains unchanged. The data show that apologies are necessary regardless of the harm severity level. If the account-giver does not give an apology, that person tends to be perceived as unrepentant (hansei shitenai), discourteous (reigi ga nai), and immature (mijukumono). These personality (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mari Noda PhD (Committee Chair); Charles Quinn PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociolinguistics

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2009, Cross-Cultural, International Education

With globalization of the world economy and cultural communication, more and more Chinese students have entered American universities to pursue academic success in higher education. However, coming from a country where English is spoken as a foreign language, Chinese students may encounter difficulties in adjusting to the new social and academic environment in the U.S. The purpose of the present study was to investigate one pragmatic competence of Chinese graduate students in English communication settings'how they apply English request strategies in various social and cultural contexts. Request, according to Byon (2004), is "a directive that embodies an effort on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to do something" (p. 1674). Making requests in a foreign language is face threatening because it requires considerable cultural and linguistic expertise on the part of the speaker. Inappropriate request strategies can easily cause breakdowns in cross-cultural communication. Building upon a mixed-methods research design, the researcher conducted a comparative study of English requests between Chinese and American graduate students at one mid-western American university. The instrument used to collect data was a modified Discourse Completion Test (DCT)a questionnaire composed of 14 request eliciting situations, and follow-up interviews. Study findings revealed that significant differences exist between Chinese and American graduate students in directness and imposition of the request, and social distance in some social situations. No significant differences were discovered in relation to relative power of the hearer. Social distance, imposition of the request, and relative power were all positively correlated with each other.

Committee: Patricia Kubow PhD (Advisor); Mark Earley PhD (Committee Member); Sheri Wells-Jensen PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education