Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

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Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Persona (Psychoanalysis); Scholars; Sexual orientation; Academic theses;

Abstract

All of the choices scholars make, from what to study to how to study it, are political and moral choices, and they speak as loudly about the scholar as they do about the text. Although scholars often engage in discussions about how their sex, race, class, and gender interact with their scholarly work, very few of them seem to spend time and space thematizing their sexual orientations. Using rhetorical methods, I identify three ways that scholars thematize sexual orientation in scholarly writing. First, an overt persona is demonstrated by scholars who explicitly state their sexual orientations. This option removes any ambiguity or uncertainty about orientation. Second, heteronormative ambiguity occurs when scholars choose not to discuss sexual orientation. In this default persona, the vast majority of readers will understand the author to be heterosexual. However, because the author never explicitly identifies their sexual orientation, the author's identity is ambiguous. The final persona is strategic ambiguity. This persona is characterized by scholars who thematize sexual orientation in a way which intentionally leaves readers unsure.

Year of Submission

2008

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Communication Studies

First Advisor

Catherine Helen Palczewski

Second Advisor

Victoria Pruin DeFrancisco

Third Advisor

April Chatham-Carpenter

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

2008

Object Description

1 PDF file (102 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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