The Project

The project I am revising was originally a literature review I wrote last year for the Proseminar in Rhetoric and Professional Communication class. The literature review version of my project provides a lot of background and a long theoretical framework section on Identification, Identity, and Difference. I'm looking to strip down the theoretical framework section, as well as some of the background section and start with a paradigm, which will highlight the genocide in Rwanda as an extreme example of disidentification.

Further, I look to research and include scholarship that works with the dilemma that rhetoric is really about relationships and not this shallow notion of persuasion since this what my project is really about. I use Kenneth Burke's theories from A Rhetoric of Motives in my literature review and I want to show what Burke is coming up short on so as to highlight Krista Ratcliffe's work that extends Burkes' theories of identification and difference in "cross-cultural conduct, where rhetorical listening assumes the possibility of conscious identifications" (48). My project employs Nancy Deutsch's dissertation research at the Boys and Girls Clubs of America in her article, "Positionality and the Pen: Reflections on the Process of Becoming a Feminist Researcher and Writer". I posit that Deutsch's work presents a successful paradigm for her growth as a reflexive researcher over the course of her four year qualitative research study. Using the lens of Ratcliffe's rhetorical listening, my project delineates how Deutsch moves from disconnected and unreflexive identifications in her cross-cultural interactions to more reflexive and conscious identifications over the course of her research at the Boy's and Girl's Club—thus providing a starting place for the pragmatic work of rhetorical listening in cross-cultural research. I may also consider other cross-cultural research examples besides that of Deutsch that moves towards this potential to include in my project.