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Browsing by Subject "professional communication"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Ethos as Dwelling: The Construction of Corporate Ethos in an IPO
    (2016-08) LI, SHUWEN
    This qualitative case study investigates how trust was operationalized in the Chinese e-commerce company, Alibaba, in its U.S. Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 2014. Rhetorically speaking, gaining trust is a result of a successful construction of ethos. Tracing the classical and contemporary conceptualizations of ethos, I drew a conclusion supporting ethos as dwelling and proposed to investigate this conceptualization in new contexts, such as IPOs. Using Robert Stake’s (1994) case-study methodology, I analyzed two artifacts in the Alibaba IPO: (1) the online tertiary audience reactions, which include English and Chinese online business news media reactions and high status actors; (2) Alibaba’s IPO prospectus, constituting a total of eight versions. “Thick description” and rhetorical interpretations were applied to data analysis. In addition to the main analytical tool, rhetorical ethos, I used theories from regional rhetorics, visual rhetorics, and technical communication to facilitate my data analysis. Findings from the analysis of the online tertiary audience reactions indicate how ecologies, consisted of material experiences and public feelings influence the construction of ethos. Outcomes from examining the IPO prospectus reveal the dialectic relationship between discourse and materiality in ethos construction. Results from the two artifacts overlap in the importance of materiality and the role of emotion in ethos construction. Though this study aims for naturalistic generalization, results can still contribute to refining existing theories of ethos, especially in a cross-cultural context and in professional communication.
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    Updating globalization: An integrative review of technical and professional communication scholarship and geosemiotic analysis of a global u-eco-city
    (2016-05) Madson, Michael
    Few studies in technical and professional communication (TPC) have explored globalization with directness and depth—surprising, since globalization is reported to impact TPC research, teaching, and ethics. Starke-Meyerring’s (2005) global literacies model has been a rare exception. Yet, global literacies, though impressive for its time, has shown two weaknesses, selective review methods and a lack of empirical support. This dissertation therefore addresses those two weaknesses, which are endemic in TPC writ large, through a two-part project. Part I synthesizes integrative review with grounded theory, analyzing how TPC has instantiated globalization in the field’s academic journals. The analysis generates a conceptual framework to guide further empirical inquiry. Actuating the conceptual framework, Part II describes a geosemiotic analysis of a global city’s symbolic characterization. Taken together, the dissertation’s two parts update global literacies, suggesting implications for TPC research, teaching, and ethics in the urban twenty-first century.