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Previous studies on L2 phrase complexity predominantly focused on noun phrases, while the verb phrase complexity are few and mostly simple verb phrase structures, they have limited expressive capacity. Complex verb phrase structures (e.g., n-grams, VACs) also have limitations. The present study proposes a set of 41 Chinese complex verb phrase structures and are meaningful. A total of 246 verb phrase complexity measures are calculated from the dimensions of account, frequency, diversity, and density. The ability of these measures to predict writing quality is compared with that of 10 large-grained syntactic complexity measures. The results show that large-grained measures (Average sentence length) and verb phrase complexity measures (two verb-object structures and three adverbial-head structures) can respectively explain 14.4% and 41.9% of variance in writing scores. Our results illustrate the importance of Chinese complex verb phrase structures in assessing L2 writing quality.

This qualitative study investigates the biographical factors that influence the professional identities and teaching practices of second language (L2) writing instructors. Previous L2 writing studies have tended to rely on teacher interviews to examine such identities and practices and have failed to include the important perspective of classroom observations. This study conducted teacher interviews and classroom observations with three graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) of a first-year writing course at a U.S. university. The findings suggest that although teachers’ disciplinary backgrounds, teaching philosophies, and prior experiences shape their professional identities and instructional approaches, their classroom practices in language instruction do not always align with their beliefs and stated values. Teacher education programs should integrate language pedagogy and grammar instruction into writing pedagogy, while encouraging teachers to engage in consistent self-evaluation and reflection on their practices.

Automated writing evaluation (AWE) has traditionally emphasized textual features such as vocabulary and syntax, while often overlooking writers’ social identities and cognitive behaviors – factors central to understanding writing as a multidimensional construct. With the increasing integration of large language models (LLMs) into AWE, questions remain about how their assessments align with human judgments and the sources of potential divergences. This study investigates how linguistic (e.g., lexical diversity), cognitive (e.g., pausing behavior), and social (e.g., gender) factors covary with essay scores assigned by human raters and LLMs. We analyzed 4245 argumentative essays paired with demographic metadata and keystroke-logging data, using correlation analyses, random forest models, and regression-based approaches to examine relationships among writer characteristics, writing-process features, textual features, and essay scores. Results showed moderate agreement between human and LLM scores, but the two scoring systems exhibited different patterns of association with linguistic, cognitive, and social variables. These findings suggest that human and LLM evaluations rely on partially different cues and demonstrate how socio-cognitive metadata can be used to examine the factors associated with writing assessment decisions. By moving beyond text-only comparisons, this approach provides a complementary lens for understanding why and how human and machine judgments converge or diverge.

The sonic aesthetics of technical communication have been underconsidered compared to their visual and textual counterparts. We highlight the aesthetic overlaps and contrasts between human-produced audio technical communication and Generative AI audio that mimics the aesthetic patterns of successful science communication podcasts, specifically Radiolab , while exploring the sonic dimensions of ethos, relatability, trust, and narrative. Applying close listening analysis, we explore two particular sonic aesthetic features: prosodic variation and shared conversational syntax. We argue prosodic range and shared syntax contribute to the aesthetics of either overarching agreeableness/certainty or confrontation/uncertainty, which in turn constitutes an orientation to scientific knowledge.

Current writing models suppose that the production of a good-quality text is a complex interaction of low-level transcription skills (handwriting fluency and spelling) and higher-level cognitive and text-specific formulation skills (such as building cohesion and using diverse and appropriate vocabulary). Low-level transcription skills, albeit important for text quality, can only explain a small part of its variance. Therefore, in this paper we investigate whether there exist children who show discrepant achievements in text quality and low-level transcription skills and how they can be characterized in terms of higher-level text-specific formulation skills. A total of 186 native German-speaking 5th to 7th grade students had to complete transcription skills tests and write a narrative text. Text quality and text-specific formulation skills were measured. The following results were obtained: (1) Students with double dissociations (deficient transcription skills/ age-appropriate text quality or the reverse) could be identified; (2) these groups differed significantly in text-specific formulation skills, namely lexical diversity, correct sentence building, and local cohesion. Generally, children with the same low-level transcription skills (whether age-appropriate or deficient) who wrote better texts, achieved higher scores in these variables. The findings emphasize the importance of text-specific formulation skills and their consideration in writing instruction.

Very few research studies of the teaching of grammar and writing had been carried out with children younger than eight-years-old prior to the research reported in this paper. The research evaluated a new approach to teaching grammar and writing called Englicious. A Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) and Implementation and Process Evaluation (IPE) research design, featuring 1,246 pupils aged six to seven-years-old in 70 primary school classes, was used to evaluate the effectiveness of Englicious for improving children’s writing. The approach was implemented in the context of the programs of study for grammar teaching in England’s national curriculum. The research found that there was no effect of the grammar teaching intervention on pupils’ narrative writing. The effect size for pupils’ sentence generation was sufficient to merit reflections about potential impacts of aspects of the intervention although this outcome also did not reach statistical significance. It is hypothesised that the manipulation of words, phrases and sentences, combined with practice at writing, may have contributed to any positive effect, although this would need to be confirmed in future research. It is concluded that until more research is done to investigate the effectiveness of different approaches to teaching grammar and writing with young children, existing evidence-based approaches are more likely to be effective to help young pupils’ narrative writing. England’s national curriculum specifications for teaching grammar and writing could usefully be reviewed to more closely reflect the evidence base from this field of writing research.

The relevance of the three core executive functions for text quality and individual text features had already been shown in a number of studies with novice writers. However, experimental data on the influence of executive functions in adult, skilled writers are rare. This cross-sectional study thus investigated how inhibition, updating, and shifting are related to text quality and relevant individual text features in skilled writers. Sixty-three adult, skilled writers wrote an explanatory text. The text product was used to analyze text quality (as perceived by the recipient) and individual text features (information content, cohesion, lexical diversity, appropriate words, syntactic complexity). Executive functions were assessed with standardized tests. Analyses highlighted the importance of conveying cohesive information when writing explanatory texts. Regarding the role of executive functions, inhibition significantly influenced information content and cohesion; updating influenced the use of appropriate words; and shifting influenced perceived text quality. These findings emphasize that executive functions play an important role in writing not only for novice writers but across the lifespan, whereby their influence changes with development and expertise.

This systematic historical descriptive review was conducted to determine the trends and status of research using true and quasi-experiments (with pretests) to test the effectiveness of writing practices with students in kindergarten to grade 12. The analyses included 859 writing treatment/control comparisons, which were included in two previous meta-analyses ( Collins et al., 2025 ; Graham et al., 2023 ). The search for studies in these two reviews ended in September 2021 and December 2022, respectively. The use of true and quasi-experiments (with pretests) to test writing practices increased dramatically across the decades from the 1930s onward, with 290 treatment/control comparisons conducted in the 2010s. The expansion in the number of studies conducted was accompanied by an increase in study quality as measured by internal/external research design indicators. Research in this area moved from an exclusive study of teaching spelling and handwriting in the 1930s through the 1950s to the study of a diverse array of writing practices in the decades that followed. As the number of writing practices tested increased, so did the number of measures used to assess the effects of these instructional methods. Most of the writing treatment/control comparisons originated in the United States/Canada, but starting in the 1970s European researchers began to make significant contributions to testing the effectiveness of writing practices. The most prolific researchers from 1931 onward were Steve Graham, Karen Harris, Gert Rijlaarsdam, and Sue Del La Paz. Limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.

This article outlines the curriculum and assessment regime related to writing in England that affects children in their final year of primary school (Year 6: ages 10–11). The assessment in England is colloquially known as SATs and, for writing, consists of a grammar, punctuation, and spelling test, alongside a separate teacher assessment of writing using a set of criteria. Both these assessments are statutory and are integral components of the accountability system for primary schools in England. From an interpretive perspective, this article explores how teachers perceive the assessment and how it influences their instructional practices through data collected from interviews with 10 Year 6 teachers. A broad discussion centres around the potential negative consequences of the assessment regime on the teaching of writing and includes the teachers’ perceived impact of these assessments on writing instruction and the effects this has on the teachers’ teaching practices. There is a particular focus on issues around “teaching-to-the-test” with some implications for policy.

Despite the current widespread use of Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) feedback, many issues regarding its efficacy still remain unresolved. Recent studies mainly focus on correctly detected errors with a lack of attention on the comprehensiveness of error detection, or error coverage. Error coverage is interesting because little is known about the capacity of AWE systems to fully detect common second language (L2) errors. It is also important to investigate the potential effect of such capacity on student uptake and retention, which are important constructs in fostering L2 writing development. To this end, the present study compared teacher feedback and AWE error coverage in L2 writing classes. The findings suggest that both the AWE system and the teacher demonstrated low error coverage across grammar, usage, and mechanics error categories. However, they indicated differences in the types of errors they identified most frequently. The AWE system flagged more mechanical errors, whereas the teacher provided twice as many corrections for grammar errors, including wrong/missing words, prepositions, and incorrect word forms. While the AWE system performed moderately in flagging articles and comma errors, it struggled with more nuanced grammatical errors, suggesting it may not be a reliable standalone tool for addressing specific needs of L2 learners’ writing challenges. Interestingly, coverage was positively associated with successful uptake, with students utilizing a wider variety of revision acts (i.e., change, add, delete, remove) on AWE errors identified compared to errors not identified. However, error coverage did not correlate with short- or long-term retention of accuracy, implying that retention may result from the interplay of error coverage with other factors. Findings provide implications for writing teachers regarding the employment of AWE systems and for AWE developers regarding the future optimizations of the AWE systems.

Against the backdrop of rapid developments of algorithm-based feedback tools — from older tools mainly providing feedback on grammar and spelling to advanced tools based on generative artificial intelligence offering more comprehensive writing support — our meta-analysis examines to what extent algorithm-based feedback improves not only surface- (e.g., grammar and spelling) but also deep-level (e.g., structure, content, coherence) writing outcomes for different learners at secondary school and university. We reviewed experimental and quasi-experimental studies published between 2011 and the end of 2024, covering five European languages. Results from the 33 included studies indicated that algorithm-based feedback was beneficial for improving writing in general ( g = 0.36). Specifically, positive effects were observed for surface-level outcomes at posttest ( g = 0.31), though no lasting effects were found at maintenance ( g = −0.02). In contrast, deep-level writing outcomes showed sustained improvement, with positive effects both at posttest ( g = 0.31) and maintenance ( g = 0.54). No significant differences between secondary and university students were observed. However, L2 learners, in general, seemed to profit most from algorithm-based feedback, showing gains in surface- ( g = 0.77, bordering on significance), and deep-level outcomes ( g = 0.46). While no significant differences were found between the effects of specific types of algorithm-based feedback tools, feedback from Grammarly and Pigai statistically enhanced students’ writing, but effects of ChatGPT feedback were non-significant. We discuss implications for future research and educational practice, also in light of the small transfer of learning to new writing tasks. • Small effects for surface- and deep-level outcomes at posttest. • L2 learners particularly benefit. • No effect for surface-level outcomes at maintenance. • No significant difference between tools. • Small transfer effect to new writing tasks.

Assessing the writing competence of pupils learning English as a foreign language (EFL) at primary school is associated with specific challenges because of learners’ limited language resources. This study investigates the extent to which characteristics of their texts trigger so-called halo effects. Halo effects are an assessment bias where the quality of one feature unintentionally influences the evaluation of other aspects. The study examines halo effects across nine aspects of text quality (communicative effect, level of detail, coherence, cohesion, complexity of syntax and grammar, correctness of syntax and grammar, vocabulary, orthography and punctuation), based on a random sample of narrative texts from a sixth-grade corpus. 200 pre-service teachers assessed four randomly assigned texts. Halo effects were calculated by comparison to expert ratings using multi-level regression analyses. Results show that orthography and vocabulary were the two main triggers of halo effects. Punctuation also triggered some halo effects, but to a smaller extent. The assessment of communicative effect, complexity and correctness of syntax and grammar was not determined by the corresponding text quality but dominated by other criteria. Results highlight the importance of being aware of halo effects when assessing young EFL learners’ texts and emphasise the need for suitable training measures. • Analysis of halo effects across nine aspects of text quality. • Random sample of narrative texts from a sixth-grade EFL corpus. • Orthography and vocabulary are the two main triggers of halo effects. • Punctuation also triggers halo effects but to a smaller extent. • Halo effects call for awareness and targeted training.

This study examined the hierarchical structure among second/foreign language (L2) writing subskills using a Hierarchical Diagnostic Classification Model (HDCM). A pool of 500 essays composed by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students was assessed by four experienced EFL teachers using the Empirically-derived Descriptor-based Diagnostic (EDD) checklist. Based on a literature review and the expertise of three content experts, several models were developed to reflect various hierarchical interactions among L2 writing subskills, including linear, divergent, convergent, independent, unstructured, mixed, and higher-order. The comparison of the models showed the presence of an unstructured interaction among L2 writing subskills, indicating that content is the foundational subskill for the mastery of vocabulary, grammar, organization, and mechanics. Higher mastery classes were also associated with higher educational levels, greater frequency of English use, and longer exposure to L2. Understanding the hierarchical relationships among L2 writing subskills can improve targeted instructional strategies and assessment practices. • A constrained version of existing DCMs is represented by hierarchical DCMs. • Models were developed to show hierarchical interactions among L2 writing subskills. • An unstructured interaction among L2 writing subskills was identified. • Higher mastery classes were associated with higher educational levels. • The classes were associated with greater English use and longer L2 exposure.

Typically, one might expect a review to highlight similarities, but here, I choose to place these books side by side for their contrasting perspectives.Before delving into the essence of the comparisons, it is important to recall the mission of the AK Peters Visualization Series.This series aims to capture what visualization is today in all its variety and diversity, giving voice to researchers, practitioners, designers, and enthusiasts.It encompasses books from all subfields of visualization, including visual analytics, information visualization, scientific visualization, data journalism, infographics, and their connection to adjacent areas such as text analysis, digital humanities, data art, or augmented and virtual reality ("AK Peters Visualization Series," n.d.).Both authors are practitioners who bring their expertise in communicating through visualized information and data.Jen Christiansen, who graduated in geology and art, is a senior graphics editor at Scientific American, while Nancy Organ, formally trained in statistics, has experience as a data visualization designer and educator.Each utilizes her unique skills for effective communication.Traditionally, rhetoric is understood as "a discipline concerned with the effective use of language, to persuade, give pleasure, and so on" (Matthews 2007).While this definition seems self-evident, it is essential to note that contemporary rhetoric encompasses all modes of communication.Interestingly, practitioners, educators, and researchers frequently refer to "the language [bold -EM] of data visualization," exploring its grammar, vocabulary, and stylistics (DataVis Lisboa 2020; "Visual Vocabulary," n.d.; Ben-Joseph 2016; Kandogan and Lee 2016).This context invites a closer examination of three key aspects: first, how various authors describe persuasive communication through information and data visualization, or as some call it, data storytelling; second, how to expand our rhetorical framework to include data, numbers, and statistics; and third, a deeper exploration of the audiences-crucial for rhetoricians-of data and information visualizations.As Burns et al. (2020) state.When designers create visualizations for communication, they make choices about encoding and design that they think will accurately and persuasively communicate their interpretation of the data.The ultimate interpretation of a visualization depends on both the designer and the reader. InventioBoth books target distinct audiences, as indicated by their titles.Building Science Graphics serves as both a textbook and a practical reference for anyone looking to convey scientific information through illustrations for articles, poster presentations, and beyond ("AK Peters Visualization Series," n.d.).In contrast, Data Visualization for People of All Ages is more approachable, specifically aimed

This study investigates how the linguistic style of CEO digital communication influences audience engagement. Using an NLP pipeline with a panel regression model on a data set of 19,566 tweets from CEOs, this study reveals that linguistic clarity and an on-platform focus are the most robust predictors of engagement; syntactic complexity and the inclusion of external URLs consistently deter engagement metrics. The effects of stylistic choices like emojis and hashtags are less consistent and depend on the type of engagement being measured. These results offer an expanded understanding of digital communication for CEOs and provide direct implications for business communication pedagogy.

While previous studies on online resource use in L2 writing have focused on the overall writing quality, limited attention has been paid to its effects on linguistic complexity and real-time writing processes. Addressing this gap, the present study explored how online resource use influences both the processes and products of L2 writing. Forty-nine intermediate L2 learners completed two computer-mediated argumentative writing tasks, either with or without the use of online resources. Writing behaviors were captured via keystroke logging and screen recording, and analyzed for search activity, fluency, pausing, and revision quantity. Cognitive processes were examined through stimulated recall interviews, and written products were evaluated for both quality and linguistic complexity. The results showed that participants spent an average of 14 % of task time using online resources, with considerable individual variation. Mixed-effects modeling revealed that resource use facilitated the production of more sophisticated words, with marginal influence on writing quality or syntactic complexity. Resource use was also associated with longer between-word pauses, fewer within-word pauses, and reduced revisions. These findings highlight the potential of online resource use to enhance the authenticity of L2 writing assessment tasks without compromising test validity, while encouraging the use of more advanced vocabulary in writing. • Learners spent 14 % of the total writing task time using online resources. • Online resource use had no significant impact on L2 writing quality. • Online resource use improved lexical sophistication, not syntactic complexity. • Online resource use reduced within-word pauses and aided spelling retrieval. • Online resource use led to fewer revisions but did not affect fluency.

Peer evaluation is widely recognized for its educational benefits; however, its reliability and validity, particularly among adolescent second-language (L2) writers at the early stages of English language and literacy development, remain insufficiently explored. This explanatory sequential mixed-methods study investigated the reliability and validity of peer evaluation in English argumentative writing among 35 Grade 10 and 37 Grade 12 students from a public high school in Beijing, China. Twelve of the participating students (six at each grade) were interviewed about the validity, reliability, and value of peer evaluation. The findings indicated that peer evaluations demonstrated high levels of reliability and validity, with peer-assessed writing scores closely aligning with inter-teacher assessments. Notably, variations were observed among Grade 10 students, particularly in the evaluation of lower-order writing skills, such as grammar and vocabulary, which exhibited reduced validity. These results underscore the potential of peer evaluation in assessing higher-order content-level writing across varying levels of L2 English writing proficiency. The study also highlights areas where adolescent L2 writers may require additional support to enhance the effectiveness of peer evaluation practices in English argumentative writing. Implications for improving English argumentative writing instruction and refining peer evaluation strategies in high school L2 English classrooms are discussed. • Peer evaluation shows high reliability, similar to inter-teacher rating. • Peer evaluation works well for higher-order skills in L2 argumentative writing. • 10th graders struggled with evaluating lower-order skills like grammar. • 12th graders evaluate lower- and higher-order skills with greater validity than 10th graders.

Perfectionism, a personality trait characterized by the pursuit of flawlessness and high personal standards, and motivational regulation, the strategies through which individuals manage their motivational states, have received limited attention in second language (L2) writing. Framed within social cognitive theory, this study examines how two dimensions of perfectionism—perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns—relate to writing performance (syntactic complexity, accuracy, lexical complexity, and fluency) and how motivational regulation sub-strategies (interest enhancement, self-talk, and emotional control) mediate these relationships. Data from 689 university students in China were analyzed using questionnaires and argumentative writing samples. Results indicated that perfectionistic strivings positively predicted syntactic complexity, accuracy, and lexical complexity, while perfectionistic concerns negatively predicted these dimensions; neither dimension significantly affected fluency. Crucially, motivational regulation sub-strategies partially mediated the relations between perfectionism and writing performance. These findings underscore the importance of distinguishing perfectionism dimensions and targeting motivational regulation strategies to improve L2 writing. Implications for instruction and directions for future longitudinal research are discussed. • Perfectionistic strivings and concerns affect writing via motivational regulation. • Strivings improve syntax, accuracy, and lexical complexity; concerns hinder them. • Most motivational regulation sub-strategies mediate perfectionism’s impact on CALF. • Perfectionism influences writing through motivational regulation.

Using multilevel modeling, the current study examined student-level predictors of compositional quality and productivity in Grade 2 Australian children ( N = 544), including handwriting automaticity, literacy skills, executive functioning, writing attitudes, and gender; and classroom-level ( n = 47) variables predicting students’ writing outcomes, including the amount of time for writing practices and the explicit teaching of foundational (handwriting, spelling, grammar) and process writing skills (planning and revision strategies). Multilevel analyses revealed that student-level factors, including gender, general attitudes, and transcription skills (handwriting automaticity and spelling), were key predictors of writing outcomes. Interaction analyses showed that spelling and word reading influenced writing outcomes, with effects varying by gender. At the classroom-level, time spent on planning had a positive effect on students’ compositional quality, and time spent on spelling instruction had a negative effect on students’ compositional productivity. Implications for research and education are discussed.

Research problem: Taking a linguistic complexity approach, this study conducted a comparative analysis of the readability of English-language CEO statements in Chinese and American corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Research question: From a linguistic complexity perspective, are there significant differences in the readability of CEO statements between original American CSR reports and English translations of Chinese CSR reports? If so, what are the lexical, syntactic, and cohesive differences between them? Literature review: Previous studies of CSR reports’ readability primarily employed classic formula-based readability measures, but a systematic analysis from a linguistic complexity perspective is lacking. Scholarly attention to the readability of translated CSR reports is also scant. Methodology: This study collected English-language CEO statements from the CSR reports of American and Chinese top companies and then applied the TAALED and TAALES computational linguistic tools to calculate the lexical complexity, L2SCA to measure the syntactic complexity, and TAACO to gauge the cohesive complexity. Results: The results show that there are considerable linguistic variations between the American and Chinese companies’ reports in terms of lexical, syntactic, and cohesive complexity. The CSR reports produced by Chinese firms are generally less readable than those created by American companies. Specifically, they are characterized by higher informational density, more sophisticated words, longer syntactic length, more coordinate phrases, and more complex nominals, as well as fewer connectives, pronouns, and demonstratives. Conclusion: Our findings enrich the present understanding of the readability of CSR reports and communication through a quantitative linguistic lens, and provide practical insights for the CSR communication of firms from non-English-speaking countries in the context of internationalization.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that primarily affects the semantic and pragmatic aspects of language. The aim of this study was to analyze pragmatics at macrotextual, microtextual and writing levels in persons with schizophrenia in order to ascertain the narrative characteristics and determine the nature of such pragmatics according to positive and negative symptomatology. Cross-sectional and quasi-experimental study was conducted on a sample of 41 individuals with schizophrenia. An analysis of textual pragmatics was performed using the participants’ summary of "The Tale of Landolfo Rufolo". Macrotextual coherence was functional in that it presented key plot information and respected the timeline of the story. Microtextual cohesion was characterized by repetitions, low lexical variation, low syntactic complexity and maintained morphology. The participants' writing was consistent with a generalized dysorthographic profile. In addition, the present work revealed significant differences according to symptomatology. Individuals with positive symptomatology showed lower macrotextual coherence, while microtextual cohesion entailed a greater number of words and therefore greater lexical variation. In contrast, those with negative symptomatology presented a greater dysorthographic profile. This study provides a functional overview of written language in persons with schizophrenia, highlighting the need for a multidisciplinary speech and language therapy intervention to enhance such individuals’ quality of life by favoring their social integration.

Assessing the writing competence of pupils learning English as a foreign language (EFL) at primary school is challenging. This study aimed at examining a largely unexplored topic, namely the role of text characteristics in writing assessment, and analysed judgment accuracy differentiated by nine aspects of text quality (communicative effect, level of detail, coherence, cohesion, complexity of syntax and grammar, correctness of syntax and grammar, vocabulary, orthography and punctuation). Two hundred pre-service teachers assessed four randomly assigned texts from learners in grade six. Their assessment was compared to the existing ratings of two experts from a previous study. We found a relative judgment accuracy between r = .34 and .60 for the nine assessment criteria, with vocabulary being assessed significantly more accurately than almost all other criteria. Orthography, complexity and correctness of syntax and grammar and punctuation were rated with significantly more accuracy than cohesion, level of detail, communicative effect and coherence. The pre-service teachers assessed most criteria more strictly and with higher variability than the experts. The results suggest that teacher education should offer pre-service teachers concrete opportunities to practise writing assessment, implement activities to strengthen the assessment of content- and structure-related criteria, and help them adjust their assessment rigour. • Judgment accuracy in the assessment of primary school EFL learners’ texts. • Relative judgment accuracy between r = .34 and .60 for the different criteria. • Significant differences in relative judgment accuracy between assessment criteria. • Linguistic text qualities are assessed with more accuracy than content- and structure-related aspects. • Pre-service teachers are more rigorous and heterogeneous in rating than experts.

Because evidence is still limited on writing motivation around the globe and the factors that could influence it, a survey-based quantitative study with 2,067 Costa Rican students from first to sixth grade (84 classrooms in 4 schools) was conducted to explore variations in two constructs of motivation for school writing across school grades and gender in Costa Rican students. Attitudes towards writing were investigated with students from first to sixth grade, while self-efficacy beliefs towards writing were investigated with students from third to sixth grade. Results show that students’ positive attitudes towards writing decreased with grade level, with the highest positive attitudes found in second grade and the lowest in sixth grade. Grade level only determined students’ perceived self-efficacy for generating ideas and concentrating during writing, but not for punctuation and spelling, which is interpreted in relation to the Costa Rican writing education curriculum. Girls from second to sixth grade reported more positive attitudes towards writing than boys; however, they only had higher self-efficacy beliefs for generating ideas and not for punctuation, spelling, or concentrating on a writing task.

This article contributes to discussions of literacy in Old Kingdom Egypt (2700–2200 BCE) by offering a new perspective on “reading” that challenges alphabet-centric approaches and emphasizes the semiotic functionality of hieroglyphs. Through an analysis of publicly displayed royal decrees in temples, it argues that these texts, composed primarily of ideograms, nouns, and specific visual arrangements rather than phonograms or grammatical constructs, were designed to communicate effectively with nonscribal audiences. Local Egyptians, familiar with the visual layouts and ideograms, could grasp key messages, enabling the state to disseminate practical information about work-related regulations and discourage unauthorized labor. This pictorial and visual grammar-based system, which avoided the use of phonetic complements, facilitated comprehension across dialects, functioning as lexical “reminders” reinforced by oral transmission.

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) into academic writing has raised questions about the syntactic complexity of AI-generated texts compared to human-authored essays. While studies have explored syntactic complexity in human writing, limited research has compared AI-generated argumentative and narrative texts, particularly in isolating cognitive overload and proficiency factors. This study addressed this gap by examining genre-specific syntactic patterns in AI-generated essays. Using the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer, the study analyzed four hundred AI-generated essays (two hundred argumentative and two hundred narrative) and employed paired T-tests and Pearson correlation coefficients to identify differences and relationships among syntactic measures. Results showed that argumentative essays demonstrated higher syntactic complexity than narrative essays, especially in production unit length, coordination, and phrasal sophistication, while subordination measures remained similar. Correlation analysis revealed that argumentative essays compartmentalized ideas through coordinated and nominally complex structures, while narrative essays integrated descriptive richness through longer sentences and embedded clauses. The findings suggest that genre-specific rhetorical demands shape syntactic complexity in AI-generated writing. Implications for teaching and learning writing and future studies are discussed.

The Northeast Ohio Medical (NEOMED) University Writing Center was founded in the winter of 2022 to support its medical, pharmacy, and graduate students. Through trial, error, and creativity, the Writing Center Specialists developed a successful writing center offering collaborative synchronous and asynchronous sessions. Often, graduate education needs a different type of support than undergraduate students do: in-house editing combined with traditional theory. This initiative highlights the importance of writing and editing support in medical education, addressing diverse needs across NEOMED’s colleges and promoting effective writing practices. On February 21, 2022, in a small meeting space between two offices, Brian sat at a large, wooden, boardroom table staring out the large window into the Aneal Mohan Kohli Academic & Information Technology Center, the official name of the Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) Library, waiting for the first students to appear for in-person writing tutoring. One week prior, Brian had signed a part-time (20 hours a week) contract to lead a writing center pilot project that ended on June 30, 2024. Brian was the Writing Center Specialist and was tasked with creating a writing center to support the more than 1,000 medical, pharmacy, and graduate students at NEOMED and had less than 30-months to do it. NEOMED is a stand-alone medical university in the rural community of Rootstown in Northeast, Ohio. It is not connected via physical space to any hospital system. NEOMED does not confer any undergraduate degrees but does offer several master’s and PhD programs for its students within its College of Graduate Studies. There are over 600 medical students, 300 pharmacy students, and more than 100 graduate students attending NEOMED. The school is within 50 miles of several teaching hospitals that partner with the NEOMED students in Cleveland, Akron, Canton, and Youngstown areas. The closest clinical location is a 20-mile drive from NEOMED’s campus. Brian’s background was in English Composition and Rhetoric, having taught at several universities since 2010. He worked in a Writing Center as a graduate student and followed writing center theory closely. Now, he was creating a writing center, carte blanche. He was given a common room and two offices. He had a small budget for paper products, a laptop, a bulletin board, and access to various means of communication. He met with the leaders of the three different colleges and asked the same questions: how can a writing center help your students? The answers were all different and began to mold the theoretical approach. NEOMED was founded in 1973 to meet Northeast Ohio’s critical need for primary care physicians. Much of the writing support for the College of Medicine (COM) was provided by the Assistant Director of Student Affairs and the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs. In the College of Pharmacy (COP), the Assistant Dean of Student Success worked with students as they navigated writing assignments. In the College of Graduate Studies (COGS), individual professors were tasked with this writing support. While the individual colleges attempted to support their students in their writing, typically, only the high-stakes professional writing—resumes, curriculum vitae (CVs), personal statements, and letters of intent—were given priority. As an example, the Assistant Director of Student Affairs for the COM reviewed 150-160 CVs and personal statements between May and July each year. The group of third-year medical students submitted their applications for residency programs through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS), the system used by medical graduates to apply for specialized training positions in hospitals. COGS, in which Brian had been an adjunct professor since 2018, needed academic writing support for its students. Many of the nine graduate programs had writing assignments throughout the semester. Some of the program’s students wrote master’s theses and others wrote doctoral dissertations. Many of these students utilized the Writing Center for support. Professors in COGS also asked Brian to create several writing specific videos which covered topics on grammar, punctuation, research writing, and formatting. COP had one goal in mind for the Writing Center, and that was supporting their second language learning (SLL) students. The SLL students struggled with plagiarism, understanding prompts, taking notes, research writing, and reaching out for help. In August 2023, 18 months after Brian was hired, funding was allocated to hire an SLL specialist, and Brook was hired to support the SLL students, specifically those in pharmacy. COM had a detailed list of needs for the Writing Center, much of which was high stakes writing. The number one need of the COM was to support the 600+ medical students as they create their professional CVs. Then, the Writing Center was asked to collaborate with the students as they create personal statements for residency applications and research opportunities. Medical students also created oral and poster presentations, journal articles, and many other writing projects. The University provided its students with 20 hours of writing support. Yet, after a week of being open, students did not come for the support they needed. Brian sent emails to cohorts. Announcements were made. It was clear that sitting at a table facing the window to the library and waiting for students to start coming in for in-person tutoring sessions was not happening. The typical, in-person consultation consisted of reading the paper out loud in the undergraduate writing center world that Brian was accustomed to. Undergraduate writing theory was not what the NEOMED students needed. Instead, it took trial and error, a lot of support, a little bit of money, and some creativity to establish the NEOMED Writing Center as a fully funded center of the University. Ultimately, the NEOMED Writing Center pilot program is a story that all graduate schools can use to create their own writing center. By promoting asynchronous sessions, screenshares, and collaboration, a graduate school writing center became successful.

With a view to better preparing teachers to engage in linguistically responsive feedback practices, we examined what 120 preservice secondary English language arts teachers (PSETs) considered to be “useful” and “appropriate” feedback to English learner (EL) writers by analyzing posts to an online database of student writing and teacher feedback. Findings of this qualitative study show that PSETs valued linguistic diversity, shared many core orientations of linguistically responsive teaching, and sought to give ELs holistic writing feedback; however, they ultimately equated useful feedback with error correction. PSETs were highly attuned to EL errors, but they were not able to connect different types of errors to language development and could not determine which errors were appropriate to correct given the student’s proficiency level. Furthermore, PSETs largely ignored ELA content and attributed appropriate EL feedback to teacher bilingualism rather than recognizing the need to learn about ELs’ interests and backgrounds. We suggest equipping PSETs with skills to learn about ELs and leveraging extant PSET attention to grammar with additional knowledge of language development processes. Identifying proficiency-level-appropriate errors could allow PSETs to selectively correct errors and provide space for more substantive feedback on ELA content.

The purpose of this qualitative project is to examine the use of a noticing assignment in one fourth-grade dual language arts classroom. We, the authors, consider the texts most interesting to students and how these texts relate to humanizing and responsive writing pedagogies. Learning to write in K–12 schooling contexts is often dictated by state-sanctioned standardized assessments, creating a space in which writing is equated with the rules of grammar rather than with deeper meaning making, inquiry, or joy. For youth from historically marginalized communities, this lack of joyfulness in writing instruction is particularly evident. In this study, we consider the following research questions: (1) How do students in a fourth-grade language arts course interact with texts that are interesting to them? (2) How might the act of noticing support students’ understandings of their own literacies as valued, worthy, and connected to the spaces and places in which they live and learn? and (3) How do students voice their perceptions and experiences of writing and writing instruction through the noticing project? Data include 16 fourth-grade students’ noticing journals, pre-project surveys of youth feelings toward writing, focal group interviews, and researcher field notes. Findings demonstrated that youth held varied perspectives toward writing, that they engaged in multiple LA skills to notice and respond to their and others’ noticings, and that they engaged in discussions of social (in)justice through their noticings. This study has implications for educators and researchers working toward more humanizing writing pedagogies connected to youths’ lived experiences, interests, desires, and curiosities.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of corpus-based interventions for enhancing writing skills in English L2 and French L2 among Romanian-speaking students. Following established intervention models, the study involved five stages: initial essay writing, corpus tool training, introduction to target language corpora, essay revision using corpora, and a satisfaction survey. Analysis of linguistic data (e.g., frequency lists, n-grams, and error correction rates) and survey responses from 40 participants reveals improvements in writing accuracy and diversity. Specifically, English L2 students demonstrated enhanced lexical accuracy and varied phraseology, while French L2 students improved syntactic precision and contextual use of academic terms. Both groups showed increased grammatical accuracy, especially in prepositions and articles, through corpus consultation. The findings underscore the pedagogical potential of corpora in writing instruction and the necessity of expanding corpus resources for under-resourced languages like French.

This study explored a way to help Japanese university students write longer essays while maintaining grammatical accuracy. Participants were three groups of students enrolled in a one-year EFL course in consecutive academic years (N = 111), and the number of words they wrote in 30 minutes and the number of errors made per 100 words were compared. To improve the participants’ grammatical accuracy, comprehensive coded feedback (e.g., Bonilla, et al., 2018, 2021; Hartshorn, et al., 2010) and selective metalinguistic explanation (e.g., Bitchener & Knoch, 2010; Sheen, 2007) were provided on the 12 paragraphs/essays they submitted. The first, sixth, and last essays were analyzed to assess their verb tense and mechanical errors. Regarding the length of writing, the first group kept writing about 150 words, the second group was encouraged to increase the length of writing at their own discretion, and the third group was systematically guided to write longer essays by following a prescribed guideline. The ANOVA results showed that the two groups that wrote longer essays significantly outperformed the short-essay group in the length of writing without sacrificing grammatical accuracy. The correlation analyses produced evidence against a possible trade-off between accuracy and fluency (Lambert & Kormos, 2014; Skehan, 2009).

The Loeb Classical Library was founded in 1911 by James Loeb, a retired banker devoted to the study of ancient Greece and Rome. The preface included in the first editions to be published explains Loeb’s vision for the library. Lamenting that “young people of our generation” lacked the facility to read Latin and Greek texts in the original thanks to the pressure universities were facing to provide a “more practical” education, Loeb sought to provide the “average reader” with “translations that are in themselves works of literature” and “side by side with these translations the best critical texts of the original works” (Lake 1912, ii–iii). Though naysayers occasionally mock the bilingual volumes as glorified trots, the series has been a serious work of scholarship since its inception and has gotten even better over the past twenty-five years thanks to the inclusion of more authors and the revision of outdated editions. Students of rhetoric have been major beneficiaries. Russell’s Quintilian (2002), Mirhady’s Rhetoric to Alexander (2011), and Laks and Most’s Sophists (2016) are just a few of the fundamental texts recently published. The Loeb Classical Library now exceeds five hundred volumes, red for Latin and green for Greek. This entire collection is available to subscribers online, fully searchable in English and the original languages and by both page and section numbers. Now Gisela Striker has revised J. H. Freese’s edition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, taking account of improvements to the Greek text since it was published in 1926. The updated edition remains primarily the work of Freese; only his name appears on the spine. I refer to it as Freese/Striker and to the original edition as Freese. Line number references in this review are all to Freese/Striker. Professor Striker taught me more than twenty years ago in a course on Cicero’s Republic.In assessing Freese/Striker, it is important first to recognize what a Loeb volume is and what it isn’t. The Loebs are Greek and Latin texts, but they are not, with rare exceptions, critical editions with lists of variant readings or discussions of manuscript families. The Loebs are translations, but they are not accompanied by comprehensive introductions, detailed notes, or overviews of scholarly debates. Their value lies in the way the facing texts complement one another, and their core audience is readers with enough Greek or Latin to benefit from having the original language in front of them. A work such as Aristotle’s Rhetoric, however, is exceptionally hard to appreciate without ancillary material. Although Freese/Striker includes a rich introduction and valuable footnotes, these are limited by the scale of the book; the Greek text and translation alone come to 469 pages. Readers who are looking for editorial guidance on a larger scale and in English can and should supplement Freese/Striker with the annotated translations of Kennedy (2nd ed. 2007), Reeve (2018), Waterfield/Yunis (2018), and Bartlett (2019), according to their interests or expertise. Kennedy’s translation is likely to be most useful to students new to the Rhetoric. Formatted as a textbook, it divides the text into sections, prefacing each section with a title and summary. The translations of Waterfield/Yunis, Reeve, and Bartlett are continuous texts without subheadings or summaries. The editors all discuss philosophical, political, and rhetorical issues. Of the three, Waterfield/Yunis’s introduction and notes are most concerned with the Rhetoric as a work of rhetorical theory and are the most accessible and comprehensive option for rhetoricians or nonspecialist readers. Reeve’s Rhetoric belongs to the New Hackett Aristotle Series and is intended for philosophers like the other volumes in that series. Reeve’s introduction and notes emphasize the Rhetoric’s relation to central issues in Aristotle’s thought. Bartlett offers an “interpretive essay” at the end of the volume rather than an introduction; this is a clear overview and summary of the text with particular focus on the Rhetoric’s concern for the role of rhetoric in politics and communal life.For those working with the original Greek, what Freese/Striker has to offer is invaluable. Indeed, since no commentary on the complete Greek text of the Rhetoric has been published in English since Cope’s in 1877, Freese/Striker replaces Freese as the primary resource for English-speaking readers with questions about how to construe the Greek. Reading Aristotle’s Greek is difficult, mostly because he expresses complex ideas in dry, technical, and above all concise language. For those working backward from the English to the Greek, however, these challenges can be virtues. The grammar is straightforward, and the vocabulary is relatively limited. This means that an individual with two years or so of Greek could, with patience and care, use Freese/Striker to work with Aristotle in the original. The search functions in the online version make this easier; one can quickly find relevant Greek passages by searching the English translation (or vice versa). Freese/Striker, therefore, fulfills Loeb’s ambitious goal of making Aristotle in the original available to people with enough Greek to understand it with a facing translation. This is even more valuable today than it was when Freese was published. The growth of rhetoric as an academic field means that rhetoricians without the time to reach advanced proficiency in Classical Greek are engaging with Aristotle’s text on a regular basis and can benefit from the updated text and translation that Freese/Striker provides.Freese/Striker prints and translates a Greek text that is superior to Freese’s. Establishing the Greek text of the Rhetoric is daunting. Aristotle’s laconic and elliptical style led scribal variants and downright errors to creep into the medieval manuscripts, some out of a well-intentioned attempt to make the Greek clearer. In addition, Aristotle seems to have revised and rethought his ideas over the thirty or so years that he worked on the Rhetoric, meaning that some apparent problems in the Greek may not be scribal errors but evidence of Aristotle’s work in progress. Freese based his text and translation on the best editions available in 1926, those of Bekker (1837) and Roemer (1898). In 1976, Kassel published an edition that placed the Greek text on the soundest footing it has been on in probably two thousand years. Freese/Striker is based on this edition, joining other modern English translations of the Rhetoric. Roberts/Barnes (1984), Kennedy, Waterfield/Yunis, and Bartlett are all based on Kassel’s edition. Reeve is based on Ross’s Oxford text (1959) but takes account of Kassel’s proposals.Most of the textual changes from Freese are subtle but important, and they begin as early as the first page, where Freese/Striker has Aristotle say in 1.1.3 1354a14 that previous writers of rhetorical handbooks “have worked out only a small portion of this art,” and Freese that they “have provided us with only a small portion of this art.” The oldest medieval manuscripts have the verb pepoiēkasin, “they have made,” but “they have made only a small portion of this art” makes little sense and seems to be a mistake. At some point, a corrector seeking to fix the problem changed the verb to peporikasin (“have provided”), which Freese adopts. Kassel (1971, 118), following a suggestion of Spengel, realized that Aristotle probably wrote peponēkasin (“have worked out”), which differs from the transmitted pepoiēkasin in just one letter, and which is used similarly with the word for “portion” in Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations. Improvements to the text of the Rhetoric on this scale occur throughout Freese/Striker. A more considerable shift in sense from Freese to Freese/Striker is illustrated by the following sentence from the section in book 2 on mildness (2.3.14 1380b15-17):The difference depends on Kassel’s preference for the reading helōsin (“they have convicted”) over eleōsin (“they pity”). The oldest manuscript has eleousin (“they pity”) in the indicative mood where the subjunctive is required. One option is simply to correct this to the subjunctive. This is the solution Freese adopts with eleōsin, although he adds a footnote acknowledging that helōsin is a possibility. Helōsin is attested in some manuscripts, including in a correction to the manuscript that has eleousin. Since “they have convicted” (helōsin) and “they pity” (eleōsin) are both possible, the choice between them depends on the degree of logical connection one sees between the two clauses. In following Kassel, Freese/Striker makes conviction the organizing principle: People (i.e., judges) have mild sentiments toward the people they convict, especially if they feel that an offender has already suffered more than enough for a punishment. Freese’s interpretation, on the other hand, removes the passage from the context of passing a sentence: People have mild sentiments when they feel pity toward an offender, especially if they feel that the offender has already suffered more than enough for a punishment (cf. Grimaldi 1988, 60-61).Textual editing is as much art as science, and the two proposals of Kassel that I have just discussed have not been universally embraced. Like Freese/Striker, Waterfield/Yunis translates Kassel’s text. Kennedy translates Kassel’s text for the first example but retains “they pity” for the second one, acknowledging in a footnote that “they have convicted” is an option. Reeve translates a different text from both Freese and Kassel for the first example and the same text as Freese in the second, also including the alternate possibilities in his endnotes. Bartlett translates the same text as Freese for the second example; for the first, he seems to accept the manuscript reading “made,” rendering it as “written of.” In both cases he notes the alternate possibilities in his notes. Finally, Roberts/Barnes translates Kassel’s text for the second example, but, like Bartlett, seems to accept “made” for the first, rendering it as “constructed”; Roberts/Barnes has no note in either case (although the translation consistently follows Kassel and notes Kassel’s readings at many points). I have surveyed these translations to show that Freese’s text and translation are not to be condemned out of hand and in some cases may be defensible. The age of the volume, however, means that readers will not systematically encounter an alternate version in a note, as they do in these instances in Kennedy, Reeve, and Bartlett. Readers who continue to use Freese from convenience (it is in the public domain and freely available through Google Books) risk being led astray. In following Kassel, Freese/Striker reflects the modern consensus and brings us closer to what Aristotle is likely to have written, fulfilling Loeb’s promise to give readers the best critical text currently available.Freese/Striker does reject some of Kassel’s bolder proposals. The discussion about the three types of speeches offers an example. In 1.3.2 1358b6-7, Kassel brackets the enigmatic clause that spectators are judges of “the ability of the speaker,” as a signal to readers that it should not be considered part of the original text even though it appears in all the medieval manuscripts. Kassel’s objection (1971, 124–25), that the clause seems to interrupt the sense of Aristotle’s argument by contradicting the distinction he has just drawn between spectators and judges, is reasonable. By using brackets, Kassel alerts the reader that he rejects the clause but does not go so far as to remove it entirely from the text. Brackets for dubious passages are a convention familiar to readers of Latin and Greek, but they clutter up translations and risk confusing readers unfamiliar with the convention. Freese/Striker uses them sparingly. Roberts/Barnes includes this clause about the speaker’s ability in brackets, with a note explaining that Kassel excised it, while Waterfield/Yunis omits it entirely. Freese/Striker (as had Freese) retains the clause without brackets (as do Kennedy, Reeve, and Bartlett), mentions Kassel’s opinion in a footnote, and points the reader to a passage in book 2 where Aristotle once again states that a spectator of an epideictic speech is a kind of judge (although the cross-reference should read 1391b16-17 rather than 1391a16-17). Since the Loebs do not allow for the kind of caution that brackets and textual apparatus provide in critical editions of Greek texts, Freese/Striker’s decision to prefer the reading of the manuscripts in cases such as this serves readers best. In all the places where Freese/Striker does print a different Greek text from Kassel, the change is acknowledged in a footnote.Besides the alterations based on Kassel’s text, Freese/Striker keeps closely to the translation in Freese, updating it to accord with modern English style: “that” instead of “which” more consistently in restrictive clauses, “on this account” instead of “wherefore,” and similar minor changes in wording. More consequential changes include more transparent renderings of the Greek. Among the most significant is this sentence from book 1 about the two different types of pisteis (1.2.2 1355b36):By broadening the scope of pisteis and eliminating the unavoidable connotation of real and fake in “inartificial” and “artificial,” Freese/Striker offers a much clearer sense of what Aristotle means. There is a trade-off. Rendering pisteis as “means of persuasion” obscures the fact that Aristotle seems deliberately to be appropriating the terminology of professional speechmakers for his own novel purposes. Pistis (the singular of pisteis) is a word used in judicial oratory for “proof” in contexts where “means of persuasion” would make little sense. Seeking to make the best of a tricky situation, Freese/Striker uses “means of persuasion” throughout the translation, except where pisteis unambiguously means “proofs.” Freese/Striker is not alone in favoring “means of persuasion.” Reeve uses it, and Roberts/Barnes and Bartlett offer “modes of persuasion.” Waterfield/Yunis stands out by keeping the time-tested “proofs.” Kennedy avoids the issue by printing pisteis without a translation. Another significant improvement over Freese is Freese/Striker’s rendering of ēthos and its cognates in most cases with the vocabulary of character rather than morality or ethics. Freese/Striker’s “considerations of character” (1.8.6 1366a13) and “adapt our speeches to character” (2.18.2 1391b28) are more accurate than Freese’s “ethical argument” and “make our speeches ethical,” as well as free of the moral judgment that Freese’s English imposes on the Greek. Finally, Freese/Striker’s use of “unfamiliar,” while perhaps not quite catching the nuance of the Greek xenos and xenikos in Aristotle’s discussion of style, avoids the negative connotations that Freese’s “foreign” often has in contemporary English.Freese features a twenty-one-page introduction that includes mini-biographies of rhetoricians before Aristotle, a comparison of the Rhetoric to the Gorgias and Phaedrus, an aside on the Rhetoric to Alexander, and accounts of the most important manuscript and of William of Moerbeke’s thirteenth-century translation into Latin. This remains useful, and some may miss it, but the information is all readily available elsewhere. The new introduction in Freese/Striker is more selective and more directly about the Rhetoric. In ten pages, it introduces the reader to Aristotle’s project, the contents of the Rhetoric, and ancient rhetoricians’ lack of interest in it after Aristotle’s death. A highlight, reflecting Striker’s expertise in Aristotle’s logic, is the concise explanation of how the theory of argument in the Rhetoric is an adaptation of the one in the Topics. There is also a new chapter index in the form of an outline that is easier to use than the paragraph-length summaries in the seventeen-page “Analysis” of the text in Freese. Freese/Striker retains from Freese the “Select Glossary of Technical and Other Terms.” This is not, nor is it meant to be, a comprehensive handlist of rhetorical concepts. As the name implies, it is a convenient place for readers of the Greek to look up technical terms or familiar words that Aristotle uses in unique ways. Most of the definitions are taken directly from Freese or lightly revised. Freese/Striker’s entries for dialektikē and sēmeion, however, are clear and concise introductions to these difficult topics, a marked improvement on Freese’s. Where Freese discusses dialektikē without specific references to how Aristotle uses it in other works, Freese/Striker summarizes the explanation in the Topics of how dialektikē is a technique of developing or refuting a thesis through questions and answers and then shows how rhetoric does more than dialectic by also seeking to persuade an audience. And where Freese’s explanation of sēmeion is abstract, Freese/Striker gives us a concrete definition (“a proposition stating a fact that points to a related other fact, so that the existence of the second fact may be inferred from the first”) followed by an example of how this works in practice (fever points to illness). The same general principle of retaining but updating governs Freese/Striker’s policy toward Freese’s rich explanatory footnotes. Many of these have been kept with no changes, some have been revised (often silently correcting oversights), and some new ones have been added. In the interests of brevity, some notes have also been excluded, and, as with the introduction, readers may miss these. Taken as a whole, however, the slightly more concise notes remain useful, especially for readers who will use Freese/Striker as a primary resource, rather than one of the more extensively annotated translations I mentioned earlier in the review.Freese/Striker ends with an index of proper names and a general index. These items too are taken from Freese, with deletions (for example, “hair (worn long in Sparta)” and “pancratiast”) and additions or corrections (for example, “licentiousness” for akolasia and “weakness of will” for akrasia rather than “incontinence” for both). With search engines, indexes are less important than they once were. This one demonstrates how helpful they can still be. The entry for “article, the, use of” refers us to 3.6.5, a section on how to use the definite article in Greek where the translation in Freese/Striker does not use the word “article.” A lexical search for “article” would turn up nothing in 3.6.5, and one for “the” would be next to useless.De Gruyter is selling Kassel’s edition of the Rhetoric for $430. It is not available as an electronic text online. Since many research do not include it in their the way that even most can it is through For the of of Freese/Striker Kassel’s text with Striker’s editorial At the same readers should that no edition, including Freese/Striker, is a version of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. serious scholarly work would be well by it, Kassel’s edition, and an of other translations and English and other their This is the case for all Loeb volumes, Freese/Striker it does Readers a and text accompanied by an lightly translation. As a first of for work on Aristotle in Greek, it should be on the real or of English-speaking of Greek rhetoric and, in the of James Loeb, of academic or in working through Aristotle’s ideas with an toward his own language.

Innovation and technological adoption are continuous processes, which makes them difficult to periodize. At the same time, acquiring new tools and literacies inspires in the adopters a reflection, however brief, on their preparedness for the acquisition. Adopters may face the new technologies with confidence, excitement, curiosity, trepidation, or all the above. The emotions often result from a sense of how equipped adopters feel to receive the innovation. Yet the speed of innovation, and the social and professional need to keep up, might obstruct self-analysis that would ideally help define and sharpen the relevant skills and knowledge. This talking picture book documents how the Hendrix College Writing Center staff reflects collectively on the transition that the arrival of generative artificial intelligence has ignited. As of the Summer of 2024, our writing center has not yet implemented solid AI-related policies and procedures, working instead on research. By responding to four questions about encounters with AI with a still image and an accompanying oral, recorded narration, four student consultants and the center’s director make material memories about the current moment, which the rapid technological development has rendered elusive and even distant. The idea is to create a nostalgia for the present to intensify our recollections of the experiences and abilities that would enable us to interact and grow with AI when it becomes part of our regular operations. Keywords : technological adoption, the speed of technological change, assistive technologies, reflection, still photograph and the imaginary, voice recording and the real, preparedness This work—a collection of still images and voice recordings—examines a part of the process by which a writing center adopts a new technology—a reflection on the staff’s readiness. The Hendrix College Writing Center serves a small, liberal arts, private institution with around 1200 undergraduate students. With that in mind, we are designing procedures (for individual appointments, workshops, course collaborations, and so on) to tackle the AI-related needs of students and faculty. We have not formally implemented any of those procedures under the belief that we still need to learn more. Whether we will know when we have reached a critical mass of knowledge for the implementation to happen remains an open question (although we are certain the learning process will not stop). What we do know is how much self-reflection the recent prominence of text-generating AI has ignited in our center. Contemplation must eventually give way to actionable conclusions for the current moment, even if they might come with an expiration date. That fact does not mean we can’t extend the contemplation a bit longer for the purposes of investigating our Center and our campus at what will certainly be an inflection point. This piece attempts to stage two artificialities to give us more room to think and match the condition of its subject. The first artificiality concerns something that technological development never deliberately affords most citizens: a pause to consider who citizens are (a sense of their place in their lives and in their communities), and how ready they feel, before adopting a new technology. Everett M. Rogers’s (1962) technology adoption life cycle indicates that citizens incorporate technical advancements at different times, classifying them into five groups: “innovators,” “early adopters,” “early majority,” “late majority,” and “laggards” (p. 161). Given the particularity of the experiences and circumstances around every citizen, Rogers warns that models to track the timeline of technology diffusion across populations are “conceptual,” a useful tool to understand the impact of a continuous phenomenon and to identify trends. Something that becomes clear from following the spread of innovations is that innovators rarely spend time speaking to consumers about the effects and implications of their work before that work is widely available. Educational, legal, and governmental institutions struggle to anticipate technologically driven change. Instead, they react to every development. The lag happens because, for Preeta Bansal (quoted in Wadhwa, 2014), codified behaviors require social consensus, while technological innovation does not. The speed of the “technological vitalism” (p. 45) of which Paul Virilio (1986) speaks runs right past the much more difficult optimization of agreement. Our project is similar to Rogers’s in that it also exists on a conceptual plane: it conceives of a reflective stoppage in technological adoption as a situated, almost nostalgically defined period. This talking picture book imagines what it would be like to expand the reflection before a community (in this case, the writing center) creates protocols to mark the perhaps irreversible presence of artificial intelligence in their practice. Like Rogers’s device, making visual and aural mementos of the current moment means to contain, however abstractly, an ungraspable and ongoing process. Yet we differ from Rogers in one respect: “Each adopter of an innovation in a social system could be described, but this would be a tedious task” (p. 159).  As believers in the counterhistorical value of the anecdote, however, we propose describing this small group of adopters in some detail, so that a fuller picture of AI’s spread comes into view—one harder to categorize in one of the five groups above. We distinguish between that pause and the preliminary groundwork for institutional change because, so far, the preparation we have undertaken has relied on current, forward-looking research. The past, the a priori of our technological and disciplinary knowledge, always informs the envisioning of our future. Still, our center has not defined that past in concrete terms. We have not named what we possess that would let us inhabit a practice alongside AI. Defining our past would, in turn, clarify our present, a perpetually in-flux moment that never stands still long enough to comprehensively assimilate it. An analog detailing of the conditions that shape the adoption of new tools at the writing center appears in research on the selection of assistive technologies for writers. Nankee et al. (2009), for example, break down the factors involved in writing: visual perception, neuromuscular abilities, motor skills, cognitive skills, and social-emotional behaviors (p. 4). While the authors composed this list to select assistive technologies for students with disabilities, reading the factors makes it clear that anyone who intends to write or even assist in writing needs to consider them. The same can be said of the writing process itself. In a discussion about assistive technologies in writing centers, DePaul University blogger Maggie C (2015) cites a study by Raskind and Higgins (2014) that shows text-to-speech software enhanced proofreading for students with learning disabilities. In their analysis, Maggie C observes that the issues “that all writers struggle with (proofreading, catching errors, etc.) [aren’t] unique because the people in this study had learning disabilities” (para. 3). Indeed, this kind of capabilities analysis can apply to the writing center staffers as well. Even if right now we do not treat AI as an assistive technology, framing its adoption in terms of what prepares and allows us to incorporate it reveals areas of interest to influence our eventual policies. So we propose taking stock not just of our capacities but of our collective mood before letting AI take residence in our writing center. The piece represents how we have identified the signals of change, or how we have developed a notion, however tenuous, that a (perhaps paradigmatic) shift is coming. We are conscious that the past and present we will try to articulate are largely fictional—the second artificiality this work hopes to render. Artificial intelligence, and its applications to writing, have been with us for some time now. While students, faculty and staff at Hendrix College work, together and apart, to respond to its challenges and fulfill its opportunities, AI has made its way into our practice. To some extent or another, often inadvertently, we have adopted AI, further complicating our identification of a pre-AI moment. That fiction, however, remains useful because it will allow us to recognize (and perhaps even invent) qualities upon which we may rely to work with AI. Generative speculation represents a significant part of the exercise, as we list skills that both intuitively and counterintuitively empower us to face AI. It will also give us a reference point, a purposefully constructed memory of a period that we might need to revisit moving forward. It will provide a starting place for an approach to understanding the transition. Call it a preemptive act of writing center archaeology. We are building evidence for future excavations. To create a reflective pause, generate a fictional past, and capture a mood during transition, we turn to a multimodal approach combining photographs with voice narration. The process began with four questions: The authors shared still photos that reminded them of their encounters with AI. Then, they recorded spoken descriptions of the photos, explaining their relevance to the questions and the memories they elicit. At times, the question prompted only the recorded reflection. In those cases, the door to our old writing center supplies the background image. The result is organized by the questions but also allows the audience to view and hear it in any order as if browsing through a family album. The choices of modalities follow the ideas of theorists Vilém Flusser and Friedrich Kittler. For Flusser (2004), photography “ has interrupted the stream of history. Photographs are dams placed in the way of the stream of history, jamming historical happenings” (p. 128). It’s this “jamming” that makes still images an appropriate medium for this project, which temporarily and imaginatively arrests time to acquire an advantageous perspective on our history. On a personal level, we might be familiar with the connection between still images and remembrance. The essay is, in part, a picture book of our days before adding AI to our mission statement. The photographs literalize the piece’s title. As for the voice recordings, we recall how Kittler (1999), in his psychoanalytic analysis of media, associated the gramophone and its capacity to mechanically store and reproduce sounds with the Lacanian Real, or the part of the world that exists beyond human signification (p. 37). For Kittler, when we record someone’s voice, we capture words, but also the uninflected, unintentional, unstructured noises that reveal something true about the speaker. Our tone, tics, and silences (those sounds free of signifiers) express the authenticity of our responses to AI and our ideas of how it will alter our writing assistance. Kittler, incidentally, would have something else to say about photography to elaborate on Flusser’s thoughts. As a mechanically constructed image of the world, the photograph belongs to the Imaginary—it creates a double of the world onto which viewers can project their ideals. In short, the affordances of still photographs and voice recordings allow us to weave our imagined past and pair it with the real hopes, mysteries, and anxieties involved in our incorporation of AI. Our goal is to evoke our world before that revolution. Before moving on to the picture book, here are a few words of the Hendrix College Writing Center staff who participated in this project: In the writing center, I begin my sessions away from the page. I start a conversation sparked by questions like What do you want to say? What’s blocking you from that right now? What gets you fired up about this piece? I sprinkle in camaraderie and a touch of humor: Oh yeah that class is ridiculously hard or yeah one time someone came in here twenty minutes before their paper was due! The specifics vary, but the point is to create a space at the intersection of talking, thinking, and human connection. That’s where writing begins. It doesn’t spring magically into existence out of the end of a pen. I’m critical of that sort of “natural” approach to human writing. The idea that writing should “flow.” There’s nothing natural about the act of writing. It’s agonizing. It’s counterintuitive. So, I tend to start with conversation. I ask the writers who visit me to say what they’re trying to communicate. I let them think aloud until something greater than the separate pieces of our conversation emerges. Only then do we shape those thoughts into written form. I suppose I should mention my skepticism about AI. I’m not convinced AI can or will allow something greater to emerge. I’m reminded of Verlyn Klinkenborg’s (2012) description of cliché as “the debris of someone else’s thinking” (p. 45). Might that be an apt description of AI as well? To me, a writing center’s strength lies in its ability to create human connections. Before implementing AI in the writing center, we should ask ourselves how it supports that strength. My general approach to writing assistance is to analyze works for structural issues (how do ideas flow, satisfactory resolutions to concepts set up earlier, etc.) first and foremost and to center any aid around my findings. To me, AI has the downside of cheapening this process by reducing the structure of an essay into a template of what it could be, reducing the potential impact a work could hold. In addition, AI isn’t very good at following along with these threads of ideas when fed a paper, so it doesn’t do me much good to ask ChatGPT or so such about a paper I’m meant to look over. I approach my duties as a writing consultant as if I am helping a friend with their homework without doing it for them. I see myself as the bridge that connects their contemplation of the assignment to their final project. This approach consists of talking to me as if I am a friend, where I listen without judgment. They simply describe what they think the rubric means or, if they’ve already begun writing, what thought they are struggling to put on paper. From there, we work to make the thought clearer and the assignment criteria more reachable. I have seen firsthand how AI is a tool that can make the rubric digestible. It is a tool that can also help with spelling and grammar. This can be helpful because patrons are then able to enter the appointment already understanding the assignment, thus having questions and drafts ready. At the same time, however, AI can interfere as it makes it easier for someone to lapse in their work ethic, comprehension, creativity, and originality. When those lines are crossed, so is academic integrity. During my time as a writing consultant, I was a student majoring in psychology and minoring in biology. I think that my background in science afforded me a unique approach to writing assistance and writing in general, which contributes to my reservations about using AI in spaces of writing assistance. AI, by nature, does not allow that uniqueness or human variability, which can sometimes make all the difference in writing and helping others to write. In my experience, there are times in which the person-to-person conversations and connections create a soundboard that facilitates breakthroughs in a peer’s writing far more than any technical edits. Maybe it is arrogant, but even as AI continues to develop and earn its place as a supplement to writing assistance, I do not think it will ever replicate the peer-to-peer experience. As long as we respect AI’s limitations and honor the value of traditional writing assistance, I believe the two can work together to empower individuals in their writing journeys. If I invoke some clichés about mixed emotions at the arrival of generative AI, it is because they feel true. They also feel appropriate because I believe writing and writing assistance are about mixed emotions. I believe that, to find ways to express thoughts, writers and their readers need to embrace being a bit unsettled. I try to cultivate comfort with uncertainty as a necessary mindset for successful, truly exploratory writing. After advocating for such a double consciousness for years, I feel generative AI is the biggest challenge so far in practicing what I preach. Looking at the pictures we put together for this piece, I find great serenity— a reminder of how we reacted when we first realized how quickly a full-fledged essay could appear on an app’s screen.

This paper explores the implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on writing center instructions and presents a professional development workshop designed for writing center tutors to help them discover the affordances and the constraints of using AI in tutoring. Since AI became increasingly integrated in the academic environment, writing center tutors face new challenges and opportunities in supporting the students’ writing. The paper highlights key strategies for tutors to integrate AI awareness into their teaching practices, ensuring they remain effective in guiding students through the writing process while fostering academic integrity. Through a combination of theoretical insights and practical exercises, this professional development initiative promotes a balanced approach, emphasizing both the potential and limitations of AI in the writing center context. The goal is to prepare tutors for the evolving landscape of academic writing and enhance their ability to support students in a technology-driven educational environment. Keywords : AI policy, writing center practices, workshop, AI assisted writing, tutor training In the fall of 2022, a writer visited the Kathleen Jones Writing Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) to schedule a writing tutorial. Their main objective for the session was to ensure that their piece sounded more humane. During the session, the writer disclosed that their paper had been generated by ChatGPT and sought assistance to avoid detection by their professors. Although there was no existing policy on AI at the time, the tutor politely informed the writer that the center only worked with human-authored pieces. Following this incident, the director of the IUP Writing Center established an AI task force, with its first mission being the creation of an official AI policy for the center. As PhD candidates in Composition and Applied Linguistics, the task force members knew their AI policy should not violate the objectives of first-year Composition classes. As a result, the policy recognizes AI as “not reflective of a student’s own understanding and effort and, thus, is not acceptable, unless authorized specifically by the instructor/administrator.” The Kathleen Jones White Writing Center at IUP supports student success and engages in creating AI policies for the departments to implement in their classrooms. While concerns about AI’s potential to reduce students’ engagement with writing are valid, writing center tutors as well as students have also explored its potential benefits. For instance, ChatGPT could serve as a writing coach or a source of inspiration (Kleiman, 2022), or it might “support bottom-up writing skills, freeing up time, space, and energy for more advanced aspects of composition” (Daniel et al., 2023, p. 37). Mollick and Mollick (2023) provide a list of ways students can engage with AI as a partner in their work. For instance, AI can assist students in writing by offering real-time feedback, suggesting improvements in grammar and style, and providing creative prompts, allowing them to refine their work while enhancing their writing skills. Moreover, AI has the potential not only to enhance writing processes, but to transform or even redefine them—much like Google Docs redefined collaborative writing by enabling real-time, location-independent co-authoring (Puentedura, 2013). As a result of this growing body of literature that emphasizes the potential benefits of AI, the writing center held a tutor training about AI to help tutors direct their writers who use AI in the writing session. One of the ways to make writing center tutors aware of students’ challenges and concerns and help them overcome those challenges is to conduct a professional development workshop, which we did at Kathleen Jones White Writing Center. This workshop was designed and led in February 2024 and aimed to highlight the importance of creating a united AI policy to help tutors work with students who use AI tools to write their papers. It also aimed to help tutors discuss possible challenging situations around AI that they might expect in the writing center. One more goal of that workshop was to compare the feedback given by writing center tutors with AI feedback provided by ChatGPT to learn specific features of AI writing and to recognize its rhetorical moves. This workshop was titled Overview of AI Technology and its Relevance to Writing Center Support and consisted of four main parts: (a) discussion of different challenging issues concerning AI technology; (b) lecture and discussion, which focused on the introduction of AI and open discussion about its use; (c) an activity part that focused on proving different types of feedback and comparing human and AI feedback; (d) and creating a brief draft of a united AI policy that would help tutors work with students who use AI to write their papers.

Students’ proficiency in constructing sentences impacts the writing process and writing products. Linguistic demands in writing differ in terms of both student characteristics and measurement features. To identify various syntactic demands considering these features, we conducted a meta-analysis examining the relationships between syntactic features (complexity and accuracy) and writing performance (quality, productivity, and fluency) and moderating effects of both student characteristics and measurement features. A total of 109 studies (effect sizes: 871; the total number of participants: 24,628) met the inclusion criteria. Results showed that there was a weak relationship for syntactic accuracy (r = .25) and complexity (r = .16). Writers' characteristics, including grade level and language proficiency, and measurement features, writing genres, writing outcomes, whether the writing task is text-based or not, and type of syntactic complexity measures, were significant moderators for certain syntactic features. The findings highlighted the importance of writer and measurement factors when considering the relationships between linguistic features in writing and writing performance. Implications were discussed regarding the selection of syntactic features in assessing language use in writing, gaps in the literature, and significance for writing instruction and assessment. • Aimed to depict the relationships between syntactic features and writing performance. • Found weak relationships between syntactic features and writing outcomes. • Relationships vary as a function of student characteristics and measurement features. • Noun phrase complexity might be more valid than some traditional syntactic complexity measures. • Findings have important implications for writing assessments.

If we but listen, we can hear a voice from the grave—Jacques Derrida’s mournful lamentation: “There is no longer, there has never been a scholar capable of speaking of anything and everything while addressing himself to everyone and anyone, and especially to ghosts. There has never been a scholar who really, and as scholar, deals with ghosts” (2006, 12), a scholar who “does not believe in the sharp distinction between . . . the living and the non-living” (12). But, then, as if in response, we witness the apparition of just such a scholar: Stuart J. Murray, the author of The Living from the Dead, who very much is dedicated to the ethical project of attending to those dead who continue to haunt the living. Indeed, the book’s cover features a spectral image, entitled “Ghost,” as it were, conjured by artist Si Lewen. As well, the very title of his work renders the “sharp distinction” between “The Living” and “The Dead” porous, quixotically indistinct, as signified by the unattached and unhinged preposition “from.” That is, the title does not announce that Murray intends to distinguish the living from the dead, nor separate the living from the dead, nor identify the living from the dead—in some categorical, decisive demarcation. Rather, Murray’s use of the preposition “from” might conjure—instead, a Derridean sense of a “borderline”—a relation marked by différance between the living and the dead. Etymologically derived from an Old English preposition, “denoting the distance, absence, or remoteness of a person or thing in fixed position” (OED)—in time or space, from evokes Derrida’s neologism. “Différance as temporization [time/deferral], différance as spacing [space/difference]. How are they [time/space],” Derrida queries, “to be joined?” (1991, 61). Murray’s syntactically incomplete phrase suggests that the living and the dead are conjoined in a relation of interminable deferral and indeterminable difference, entangled in a fluxed, symbiotic—parasitic, even—relation.Much more could be said on this t(r)opic of deferred presence (and much more, indeed, of parasitic consumption and carnophallogocentrism), but to our immediate point, as Murray’s work entreats us to consider, there is much to learn in conversation with the dead; and indeed, it is our ethical responsibility—burden, even, as he remarks—to “hearken” to their voices. Murray’s The Living from the Dead undertakes this burden, listening to “the dead, the dying, the dispossessed” (1), endeavoring to articulate “[u]nder what conditions might we hearken those dead who summon us, and exhort us, perhaps to reckon with our unspeakable complicity in their deaths” (1), while offering the following caveat: “These pages, which arise in care of such summons, exhortations, and calls to reckoning neither speak for nor as the dead, the dying, or lives lost” (1), for as he will reveal in his refrain, speaking for or as amounts to an unethical co-option, a resentencing to death of the dead and dying.Murray describes his work’s writing “something akin to thanatography” (1), which is through and through a rhetorical enterprise, necessitating an attunement to and with biopolitics’ “speech/acts and its tropological constitution of subjects, political identities, and lives lived” (10). That is, as Steven Mailloux has argued elsewhere, tropes are rotated in order to “rotate the troops” (1993, 299). Tropes, troops; life, death. Much is at stake.The subtitle of the book, Disaffirming Biopolitics, foregrounds Murray’s argument: that attending to these voices, to the dead, requires a certain disaffirmation of biopolitics, a disaffirmation of “a politics ostensibly devoted to life (bios)” (1), to the production of “life,” which is “governed by increasingly autonomous efficiencies and economies of scale, through techno-administrative mechanisms that include systems of surveillance, segregation, health and welfare regimes” (2), as well as “through education, . . . law, biomedicine, and popular culture, too” (2). The production of “life” instantiates itself by way of a “sacrificial economy” (5) that necessitates letting die (1), even “acceler[ating] or mand[ating]” (2) death. In short, “[b]iopolitics kills, albeit indirectly and in the passive voice. It lets die in the name of life. This book begins here in the care of deaths disavowed—rather than from life’s sacred vows and avowals” (1).Murray undertakes his thanatographical critique of biopolitics with an introduction, four chapters, and a concluding “refrain.” Through the use of case studies, examining sacrificial economies that mobilize tropes/troops, Murray listens to those—dead and dying—who are “let to die,” according to the rhetorics and logics of bioethics, as employed during the COVID-19 pandemic, by suicide terrorism, during the hunger strikes of California prisoners, during legal cases of “untimely” deaths of young children, and surrounding the technologically distributed, videotaped death of a disabled Black man. Each case study is situated within a rhetorical framework, and—as ever—critically foregrounds Murray’s own burden of “using,” for analysis, for his evidentiary purposes, these very “precious perilous bodies in sickness and suicide; in hunger, subjects of medico-legal power, of time and race and technology” (161). “My ‘uses’ are abuses,” he admits, “notwithstanding my intent” (161). This confession, which seeks no absolution, confirms, yet again, our/his irredeemable and “unspeakable complicity” in the violence of letting die (1).The stakes are grave, indeed, in Murray’s thanatographical critique—politically, ethically, and rhetorically, which remain, in refrain, indistinguishable, one from the other. In the face of “unconscionable state violence,” “the revivification of nativist nationalisms and racisms,” “merciless neoliberal governments and burgeoning authoritarianisms; and most recently, a deadly global pandemic”: “We live and die today on a knife’s edge of disaster” (1–2). Yet, the most devasting cut of his critique comes, on refrain, as an interrogation into his, my, our, individual and collective complicity in all. Once more, there is no option of good conscience, nor of absolution, although there remains “the future-to-come” (148). This should give us pause, to “wait abidingly” (148)—and should inspire a certain, disaffirming vigilance. At the gravest point, The Living from the Dead is a powerful, ethical invocation; a lyrical, performative provocation—and a promising, futural conjuration.Murray begins his rhetorical investigation citing Foucault’s halting attempt to “define” “biopolitics,” as worked through during a lecture at the College de France in 1976, where Foucault postulates that “one of the greatest transformations political right underwent in the nineteenth century was precisely that, I wouldn’t say exactly that sovereignty’s old right—to take life or let live—was replaced, but it came to be complemented by a new right which does not erase the old right but which does penetrate it, permeate it. . . . This is the right, or rather precisely the opposite right. It is the power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die” (qtd. in Murray 3).Murray astutely notes that Foucault’s description of this “epochal transformation” of power can be articulated only in the passive voice, and Murray argues that this is Foucault’s only grammatical recourse precisely because this new right somehow manifests “seemingly by no one, or nothing, and yet in the name of an incipient ‘life itself’” (3). However, Murray continues, although this new right is, in contrast to sovereignty’s supreme agency, “decentralized and reticulate” (4), the grammar of liberal humanism has “become a great biopolitical ruse” (4), propagating the continuing illusion “that I freely choose and choose the very conditions of my own choosing—a grammatical ‘I’ propped up in its delusional sense of rationality, autonomy, and enlightened agency. An entitled ‘I’ through which ‘life itself’ would speak” (4).This grammatical habit—like Nietzsche’s worn coin in “On Truth and Lying” (1989, 250)—remains, circulating in this sacrificial economy as zombie currency: the illusion of individual sovereignty. This “lie”—supported and reproduced by “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms” (250)—further belies that “the object of that [new] power, its site of application, is not a singular body to be disciplined or punished. Biopolitics makes live and lets die en masse. No longer concerned with given individuals, it is applied systemically on—and constitutes—particular ‘populations’” (Murray 2022, 4). Further, still, Murray maintains, not only is the grammatical “I” a rhetorical invention, but “life itself” is, also. That is, biopolitics mobilizes “a tropological regime that fabricates a vital ‘truth’ from which all else seems to follow” (3). This “truth” belies a so-called “concrete biological body,” which incarnates a trope of a “most disincarnate, sacred, or transcendental notion,” which is “neither given nor natural” (3). The Living from the Dead “surfaces” these mobilizations of metaphors—the tropes of “life itself” (14).Disaffirming biopolitics’ tropological moves is in response to scholars who advocate an “affirmative” or “democratic” biopolitics, who proffer a “kinder, gentler” biopolitics (12). Yet, as Murray convincingly argues, “to affirm is the performative speech/act of a (neo)liberal political subject and iteratively both relies on and shores up a problematic underlying ontology” (12). In this way, citing Nancy Fraser’s criticism, such affirmative attempts, therefore, do not “disturb,” but rather reify “the underlying social structures that generat[ed]” the very injustices, which we are interrogating and asking to be held accountable (12).Disaffirming, in contrast, is a thanatographical endeavor—a rhetorical one: “To critique is not to judge the truths or lies of biopolitics (it proclaims both), or whether it is good or evil (it can be both); rather, critique would pursue rhetorical questions concerning the conditions in and by which such statements could be voiced, circulate, and recruit desiring subjects as agents of the biopolitical apparatus” (13). In this way, “[t]o disaffirm is a devastating undertaking. It is not self-righteously censorious, neither a disapprobation nor a condemnation issued from a posture of moral superiority or a secure sense-of-self. . . . Instead, it would turn its gaze inward to reckon with my collusion and complicity in systems that let die in the name of my own livingness” (18). And, would amount to—if not a burial of the liberal, humanistic subject, certainly “a mortification of this subject, ‘I,’ who writes—here” (19).And then, what remains of The Living from the Dead is its refrain. After careful exegesis of the case studies, themes repeat. What remains, like a refrain, which repeats, remains. A refrain, etymologically, also carries the signifying saturation of the sense of “burden,” which Murray carries with him in his thanatographical study. As chorus or burden, Murray’s refrain through the book is to amplify, in its repetition, like a death dirge, the incalculable, immeasurable ethical burden that “we,” that “I,” that “he,” the author, carries as the ethical obligation in the face of the recognition of our own complicity in the letting die, in the knowledge that our, my, his, very living is at the purchase of the disavowal of so many deaths, the disavowal of all whom “we”/“I” have let die in this sacrificial economy (see also 171).Yet we must lend our ear. The responsibility to “hearken” to, address, and dialogue with “the dead, the dying, the dispossessed” (1) (“however fictively” [144]), however rhetorically, however lyrically, Murray argues, necessitates the use of apostrophe as a non-co-optive, non-cannibalizing trope. Through a careful explication of the distinction between the tropes of apostrophe and prosopopoeia, Murray makes clear that the latter, prosopopoeia, speaks for and as the dead—a making present, as a projection of the addressor, and, as such, is “the master trope of biopolitics,” “whether expressly in the service of making live or letting die. It is a voice that impatiently projects the response it wishes to hear. It refuses to wait; inattentive, it willfully mistakes the echo for origin” (145).In contradistinction, apostrophe attends to a nonpresent absence (144), and eternally awaits a response—an impossible response, because the “impossible possibility of the reply ontologically precedes the call, and calls-forth that call, hearkening in advance: the apostrophe is summoned (by the absent addressee), the apostrophe in turn summons, and we tarry in this space. The address is always in the eternal return of this refrain” (145).And the address, “if we seek possibilities for a critical response that might disaffirm biopolitics,” requires a different “rhetorical register” (145). Hence the apostrophic address, the address summoned by the absent addressee, requires the “mortification” of the liberal human subject, perhaps summoning a sort of sacrifice of “letting die.” In this impossible space, unmoored from “our liberal subjecthood” and the illusion of agentic sovereignty, Murray takes up the (un)timely question: How then? What now? How might “we” proceed ethically (19)? In this concluding chapter, Murray faces the impossible, ethical injunction: How, then, to “deal” with these ghosts—with all these dead and dying with whom I have some complicity—by my very “livingness”? He turns/tropes his thanatographical eye from other systems to himself—to the very act of writing about the dead, about those lives that have been allowed (accelerated or mandated) to “let die.” The repetition is palpable. The lament has a corporeal texture. One feels the weight of corpses; the burden is heavy. This grave acknowledgment, however, is not cause for despair—but rather hope; here for a future-to-come, for a new way of being—for a new relation between the living and the dead.Murray suggests that there is a rhetorical, ethical responsibility to hearken to, to address—in a mode of call-and-response. How, then? Murray, thus, queries: might “we” (as tentatively as he inscribes such a collective), alternately, “gather around the impossible possibility of death, rather than life itself—a thanatopolitics rather than a biopolitics” (170)? Murray explains (and I realize I am quoting him heavily, but his prose is so gorgeously citation-worthy): “We must not think that by saying yes to ‘life,’ one says no to power and to death; on the contrary (to continue borrowing on Foucault’s phraseology), one tracks along the course laid out by the general deployment of biopolitics. And yet, in the sanctimonious affirmation of my ‘life,’ biopolitics demands that I say No to death, that I possess my life by locating death elsewhere, producing it there clandestinely, outsourcing it, as the condition of my living-on” (171).Speaking yes to life or yes to death, indeed, presumes that one can address such, and—to our purposes—presumes that one can, in present circumstances, “own” one’s own death, where nothing could be further from the “truth.” To speak the “truth” would acknowledge that “we ourselves are stuck in the universal contexts of death and cooperate with the death industry” (Sloterdijk 1987, 203). And this is where Murray resurrects the ancient Cynics, who acknowledged “the death-warranting of our established order. They refuse[d] to uphold the broken liberal contract, its ‘free speech,’ its false equalities” (175). Rather, they called for a “life which is radically other” and which “itself responds to—perhaps it has hearkened—death’s address” (175).By way of explication, he conjures Foucault’s late work on Cynic philosophy, as “a sort of parallel history to Western philosophy” (165). That is, Foucault contrasts the philosophical impulses as advocated by Plato’s with that of Plato’s In the the to is with a much relation to the as articulated in the Murray explains the of the the on the of an ethical relation to as a the manifests itself a and of in to the body the that we Western philosophy, and liberal In the in contrast, “the relation to itself . . . not on the care of the . . . but on the care of life (bios)” within Cynic contrast to the and of life within biopolitics rhetorical the or by which I my life and to it rather as by of as by a reply to that It does not speak it lives it. . . . a new to the of to say the (Sloterdijk 1987, It responds to the with “a dialogue of and An disaffirming mode of a mode of of of that one’s life and one’s one is or has one is to live or let to or of the has been a by scholars in our as in a to on Foucault and the of the to speak to speak and to speak The has a and history within the rhetorical (see and but of is the to to as is on the and rhetorics have their to critical This is a by who Foucault’s of power, and who argues that that we will or those that do not sense within the of or is, then, not in the according to much as it is an a The mode of thus, this critical as that up the possibilities for or of the of the to that have in that him his life, but he articulated a of that could one’s mode of one’s mode of death. the of the no such are or even even if we this Murray, in refrain, Cynic philosophy, the no no of an no but it us to still, on refrain, are the remains, the of remains, and the “burden,” or ethical to to Derrida has the work of attending to remains, to remains that do not remain, as the the impossible nonpresent absence that renders all thus, the for what I the (qtd. in 1987, in order to acknowledge that which the How to the of How to the work of our complicity in the systems of How to to the remains, to our complicity with injustices, in order to into the of the to address—in Derrida’s a and of a responsibility for This is what Murray is a scholar who deals with who to address, who for a of “life” that in one’s relation with the living and the ethical relation that would disaffirm our biopolitical regime and would not just an other life, it is an other in which an other death will one be (175). This is his this is what remains.

This study conducts a multimodal discourse analysis of the live streaming of Jiaqi Li, a well-known Chinese streamer. Integrating systemic functional grammar and systemic visual grammar to explore the construction of interpersonal meanings in Li's live streams, the authors found that Li uses verbal semiotics to convey information and feelings and, more important, to create his different interactive roles as an authoritative opinion leader, a protector of consumers’ benefits, and a friend who shares his experiences and recommends products. This study offers insight into e-commerce discourse and communication, adding to the literature on live streaming in commerce and business communication.

ABSTRACTAs immersive technology grows in popularity, universities are developing academic innovation labs (AIL) that often introduce students to virtual reality (VR) and other emerging cross reality applications. Although these labs help educate students on emerging technology, a more critical eye is needed to examine user experience (UX). This article reports on a qualitative, multimethod study that employed a talk-aloud UX protocol to gather data on VR users' experience at the University of Connecticut's OPIM Research Lab. To fully define and contrast this data, we juxtapose these individual narratives with rhetorical analysis of marketing discourse, as presented by VR platform HTC Vive, Google's VR application Tilt Brush, and the Research Lab's promotional material. Based on our findings, we assert that sociotechnical imaginaries as constructed by promotional material often reduce the complexities of immersion in user experience. Such marketing rhetoric creates "top-down" imaginaries that contrast with "bottom-up" imaginaries generated in user experience, reinforcing the complex and fluid definitions of immersion. The resulting study has practical implications for stakeholders across higher education, especially in the context of innovation labs, as well as for technical and professional communication educators and practitioners.KEYWORDS: Immersive technologyinnovation labsvirtual realityimmersionuser experienceemerging technologyfuture imaginariessociotechnical imaginaries Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsBrent LuciaBrent Lucia is an Assistant Professor In-Residence at the University of Connecticut School of Business. He has a PhD in Composition and Applied Linguistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His current research explores the rhetorics of technology and its relationship to the production of space. His recent scholarship can be found in Rhetoric Review, Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, and Enculturation.Matthew A. VetterMatthew A. Vetter is an Associate Professor of English and affiliate faculty in the Composition and Applied Linguistics PhD program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His research, which asks questions related to technology, rhetoric, and writing, has been published widely in venues such as Social Media and Society, Rhetoric Review, Studies in Higher Education, and Computers and Composition. His co-authored book, Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality, was published by Routledge in 2021.David A. SolbergDavid A. Solberg is a teaching assistant at the Holy Family Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his MA degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His master's thesis was entitled The Use of Parallelism in Poetry Writing for the Acquisition of English Grammar (available from ProQuest).

ABSTRACTWe asked 15 editors about their perceptions of five sentences using singular they in different contexts and about the style guides that inform their work. Editors appreciated the inclusivity of indefinite and definite singular they and recognized APA for its leading-edge stance. Our findings indicate the need for editors to develop a heuristic for determining when to deviate from style guide advice and to develop their own system for mitigating ambiguity in relation to they.KEYWORDS: Editingsocial justice / ethics Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. We explained to editors that, in each sentence, the capitalized pronoun referred to the capitalized noun phrase.2. When we refer to a "comprehensive style guide," we mean a manual that provides standards for writing, editing, and publishing texts. A comprehensive style guide may be written by a publisher or discourse community but adopted widely. For example, University of Chicago Press's Chicago Manual of Style is used by other publishers and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is used in disciplines outside of psychology.Companies may create their own style guides for internal use. Such guides may or may not be as detailed or complete as comprehensive style guides and may, in fact, be based on or direct users to a comprehensive style guide for any gaps in content. For example, ACES: The Society for Editing "Style Guide and Proofreading Checklist" (Filippini, Citation2021) is for ACES communications and based on the AP Stylebook.Some editors in this study referred to style sheets. A copyeditor creates and uses a style sheet to note a running list of grammar and usage that are specific to a manuscript and which may be different from house style or a comprehensive style guide (CMOS, Section 2.55).Despite attempting to define these terms, we recognize there are overlaps among the categories and across fields. For example, the Microsoft Writing Style Guide began as an in-house style guide and is now used by other software companies. Further, there exist other contexts of the terms "style guide" and "style sheet," such as brand style guides, programming style guides, and web design style sheets.3. Of the remaining two editors, one said that they would revise the sentence to avoid using singular they, and the other said that they would use the name Pat again instead of a pronoun.4. Only three editors (4%) said they would edit the sentence.5. The two remaining editors differed in their responses. One said that they would avoid using singular they by revising the sentence; the other said that they would change the pronoun to her.6. Ten editors said that they would edit this sentence.7. As of August 16, 2022, AP Stylebook Online advice under "accent marks" reads: "Use accent marks or other diacritical marks with names of people who request them or are widely known to use them, or if quoting directly in a language that uses them: An officer spotted him and asked a question: "Cómo estás?" How are you? Otherwise, do not use these marks in English-language stories. Note: Many AP customers' computer systems ingest via the ANPA standard and will not receive diacritical marks published by the AP."Additional informationNotes on contributorsJo MackiewiczJo Mackiewicz is a professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University. She studies the communication of pedagogical and workplace interactions. Her book, Welding Technical Communication: Teaching and Learning Embodied Knowledge was published by SUNY Press in 2022.Shaya KrautShaya Kraut is a PhD student in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication program at Iowa State University, where she teaches first-year writing. She has also worked as an ESL teacher, a writing center tutor, and a teacher/tutor for adult basic education. Her research interests include composition pedagogy and critical literacy.Allison DurazziAllison Durazzi is a communication professional with experience in industry settings including law, the arts, and freelance editing. She is a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric and Professional Communication at Iowa State University where she researches and teaches technical editing and teaches business, technical, and speech communication courses.

The proliferation of materialist perspectives in rhetorical studies has generated feelings of disciplinary crisis and fragmentation. Early materialist formulations of rhetoric, such as those put forward by Michael Calvin McGee and Raymie McKerrow, conceptualized materiality discursively and, thus, maintained continuity with more traditional accounts of rhetoric as a practice of “symbolic action.” However, beginning with texts such as Ronald Walter Greene’s “Another Materialist Rhetoric” and Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley’s edited collection Rhetorical Bodies, scholars began emphasizing the ontological and embodied rhetoricity of physical contexts and environments over discursive and ideological conceptions of materiality. This turn toward the ontological and embodied has rapidly expanded over the past twenty years, with numerous scholars now offering new materialist, postcritical, ecological, computational, and digital perspectives on rhetoric that privilege concepts such as affect, circulation, and assemblage over more traditional rhetorical terminology.It is in response to this tension between standard rhetorical perspectives and materialist rhetorical approaches that we can appreciate the interventions of S. Scott Graham’s recent book, Where’s the Rhetoric? Imagining a Unified Field. Rejecting the view that the materialist turns in rhetorical studies (particularly rhetorical new materialisms [hereafter referred to as RNM] and computational rhetoric) have left the discipline more fragmented and less capable of defending a unified perspective on rhetoric, Graham believes it is possible to generate a new unified theory that can affirm the lines of scholarly influence that have given rise to RNM (what Graham calls modern rhetoric’s “right branch”) as well as the more traditional lines of scholarly influence that have led to a formulation of rhetoric as “symbolic action” (what Graham calls modern rhetoric’s “left branch”). To accomplish this task, Graham argues that we should avoid the tendency to view RNM as “other” to traditional narratives about rhetoric and, instead, consider how these latter perspectives are compatible with the former. Much like unified field theories in physics that seek to bridge older perspectives on general relativity with newer perspectives on quantum mechanics (e.g., string theory and quantum loop gravity), Graham believes it is possible to achieve similar results in rhetorical studies by approaching standard rhetorical perspectives from the ontological viewpoints enabled by RNM.What makes Graham’s angle on this claim particularly unique is his premise that a proto-new materialist perspective has underpinned some of the most influential left branch approaches to rhetoric all along. While most rhetoricians start from the present when introducing concepts associated with RNM, Graham, following historically informed thinkers such as Scot Barnett, Debra Hawhee, and Thomas Rickert, demonstrates that there is a line of thinking about “symbolic action” as “situated action” that goes back to the relational approach to metaphysics put forward by philosopher Henri Bergson in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus, as Graham argues, if we begin with Bergson’s relational ontology, rather than the postmodernist and social constructivist philosophies that (explicitly and implicitly) shaped interpretations of rhetoric’s left branch during the second half of the twentieth century, we do not “need to re-engineer rhetoric” to fit the latest trends of RNM (41). From Graham’s perspective, many standard rhetorical perspectives have been hospitable toward new materialism from the outset. To appreciate this fact, we simply need to recuperate the Bergsonian legacy that informs this tradition.To make a case for this Bergsonian approach to rhetoric, the first main chapter of Graham’s book (chapter 2) engages in detail with the work of Kenneth Burke. As a crucial founder of the symbolic action paradigm, Graham believes that if he can show the influence of Bergson on Burke’s thought, he can, in turn, demonstrate how scholarship informed by Burke is also influenced by Bergson. To trace the influence of Bergson on Burke’s thinking, Graham focuses on Burke’s early work, especially Permanence and Change. In contrast to Burke’s later writings (e.g., A Grammar of Motives, A Rhetoric of Motives, and Language as Symbolic Action), which have been crucial to interpreting him as a theorist of symbolic action, Graham argues that Permanence and Change is directly indebted to a Bergsonian process philosophy that emphasizes the rhetoricity of situations. For the Burke of Permanence and Change (which Graham calls Original Bergsonian Burke [OBB]), there is no ontological or epistemological gap between symbolic action and material situations. Instead, symbolic practices and the situations that underpin such practices (e.g., environmental ecologies, social ecologies, digital ecologies, etc.) can all be conceived immanently, as nested complex dynamic systems that reveal motives toward reality. Hence, according to Graham, available in the writings of OBB is a Bergsonian ontology that emphasizes relational processes all the way down and rejects any Cartesian dualism (or Kantian correlationism) between nature and culture and things and words. For OBB, which is also the Burke Debra Hawhee focuses on most extensively in her book Moving Bodies, symbolic action is the effect rather than the cause of material processes of becoming, and rhetoric is the act of responding to these material processes in a satisfying way that is always itself creative and inventive.After offering a novel way to think about Burke and his materialist contributions to rhetoric, chapter 3 of Graham’s text turns to Carolyn Miller’s highly influential essay “Genre as Social Action” (originally published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech in 1984). As her piece is deeply influenced by Permanence and Change, as well as the writings of Austrian philosopher Alfred Schutz, Graham believes that rhetoricians can also read Miller’s formulation of genre as presupposing a Bergsonian ontology. While Miller does not mention Bergson in her essay, Graham argues that by appreciating the influence of Bergson on Burke and Schutz, it is possible to see that Bergson has indirectly influenced Miller’s account of genre. Graham argues that rhetoricians can also appreciate the link to Bergson in terms of how Miller’s project explicitly rejects “modernist materialism and the postmodern fetishization of discourse” (90). For Miller, the situations that produce genres—as repeated patterns of discourse—are not mechanistic and mechanical but active and dynamic processes that sediment through time (what Bergson calls duration). For Graham, then, the resources for interpreting Miller as “in some ways, the [discipline’s] original rhetorical new materialist” are already at play within her text (90). If we simply expand Miller’s understanding of situation so that, like OBB, it accounts for patterning and structuration not only at the social level but also at the flattened ontological level of movement and becoming, then Miller’s Genre as Social Action (GASA) framework can be reconceptualized in terms of a new materialist method that Graham calls Genre as Process (GAP). Whereas GASA conceives of genres as abstract nouns that emerge out of stable social patterns, GAP emphasizes genre-ing, “[t]he processes of structuring activity that occurs in situational hierarchies and guides situated action” (73). A GAP approach also helps realize Miller’s recent call for deeper engagement with new media technologies. As dynamic structures that are always entangled with their larger contexts and environments, new media technologies, such as Twitter, are best approached through a GAP framework that can appreciate the way these technologies repattern the norms of genre (e.g., letter to the editor genre on Twitter vs. traditional letter to the editor genre). Approaching GASA as GAP, then, allows rhetoricians to conceptualize genre in terms of dynamic patterns of circulation that are continually predisposed toward change and entropy. While effective genre deployment, like Burke’s rhetoric, requires kairotic responsiveness (or what Graham, borrowing from Whitehead, calls satisfaction), this situated responsiveness (especially in digital contexts) is itself inventive and, thus, continuous with the patterns of circulation that makes genre itself possible.Chapter 4 of Graham’s book concludes the conceptual portion of his project. In this chapter, Graham argues that a GAP framework can enrich not only traditional rhetorical (left branch) perspectives but also RNM. While Graham identifies as a new materialist rhetorician who favors the ontological turn in rhetorical studies, he believes that part of what makes the GAP framework valuable is its tendency to move RNM back toward a study of “the recurring experiences of practicing rhetors” (122). Too often, Graham argues, advocates of RNM adopt a “zoom-out” (distributed agency) perspective that makes it challenging to locate rhetorical agents’ strategic, situated practices. A GAP approach, by contrast, returns to the situated rhetor without rendering their agency discrete, atomistic, or self-contained. By conceptualizing rhetorical agency as the accomplishment of “structuring structures” that produce performatively enacted boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, GAP enables both a “zoom-out” and “zoom-in” approach that can account for the rhetorical strategies that satisfy particular human situations and exigencies. Graham’s framework, thus, not only improves traditional rhetorical perspectives by making them more process-oriented but also enriches RNM approaches by making them more suited to analyze rhetorical practices and discourses.The remainder of Graham’s book is a sampling of case studies that apply the GAP framework to cultural artifacts. In chapter 5, Graham discusses the qualitative research he produced studying the work of Brandon, a graphic designer who consults with various companies to create novel digital products. Graham argues that the novel digital products that Brandon produces for these companies can be understood through a GAP framework. Across his consulting work, Brandon must demonstrate an ongoing sensitivity to the genre constraints of various situations (that are ecological, social, and digital) to effectively satisfy his clients and consumers—a practice Graham calls “fit foraging.” Graham argues that a clear example of this approach to “fit foraging” is the holiday e-card video game that Brandon produced for the Ryzex Corporation (a UPC scanner manufacturer). After being asked by Ryzex to create a novel holiday e-card that could satisfy the company’s various clients, “Brandon designed a shooting-gallery Flash game that used Ryzex UPC scanners as ranged weapons and barcode-marked boxes as appropriate targets” (126). According to Graham, this shooting gallery game was an excellent example of fit foraging because it combined the genres of the holiday e-card, shooting gallery games, and Ryzex’s unique brand identity to produce a novel outcome.In chapter 6, Graham turns his attention to scholarship on computational rhetoric. Focusing largely on his own work deploying content-analytic methods, Graham argues that these approaches work through an ongoing dialectic between intuition, which he defines as “an experiential approach to metaphysical inquiry” (139), and abstraction. This Bergsonian framing is valuable, Graham argues, because it locates practices of quantification in a GAP framework that understands data as “aggregations of intuitions rendered symbolically so that the patterns, abstracted for the local sites of situated action, become more clearly visible” (149). Hence, for Graham, computational rhetoric should be approached not as “other” to more traditional rhetorical perspectives but as a distinct genre of rhetorical inquiry that is compatible with his larger GAP framework. Graham’s insights in this chapter also have important implications for scholarship centered on the rhetoric of science. Like content analytic methods, scientific inquiry can be understood generally as a process of abstracting the intuitive and forging a fit with material reality through embodied experimentation. Graham’s Bergsonian approach to the rhetoric of science is, thus, compatible with scholars, such as Bruno Latour and Andrew Pickering, without needing to draw extensively on their distinct science and technology studies vocabulary. If we simply start with a Bergsonian relational ontology, Graham argues, all rhetorical practices emerge out of the nexus between intuition, the patterns of stabilization (or duration) that result from intuition, and the processes of symbolic abstraction that attempt to provisionally capture intuition and duration in a satisfying way.In chapter 7, Graham returns to a more specific case study that deals with the rhetoric of Donald Trump. Arguing that the Trump moment poses a crisis to traditional studies of presidential genre, Graham claims that a GASA framework can help make sense of Trump’s success as a rhetor. Graham’s method for analyzing Trump’s rhetoric works at two registers. First, Graham shares the results of a quantitative study he conducted to test the widely held conviction that “the 2016 presidential primary [featuring Donald Trump was] . . . more negative . . . [than] prior campaign cycles” (165). Contrary to popular perception, Graham shows that his study reveals that a similar level of negativity characterized previous primary debates and that there is no stark difference. Graham then zooms in on the specific rhetorical strategies enacted by Trump during the primary debates, focusing in particular on his infamous exchange with Marco Rubio about hand (penis) size. Graham’s main argument here is that Trump’s communication during this exchange (and others) can be appreciated in terms of a Laconic rhetoric genre that “leverages the powerful organizing structures of reality TV and Twitter flame wars to supplant the traditional genre-ing processes of political oratory” (176). Graham argues, furthermore, that this same Laconic genre did not work when Rubio deployed it because his situated responsiveness did not align with “the media apparatuses that supported . . . [Trump’s] rhetoric” (176). Graham’s case study in this chapter, thus, shows how a GAP approach to presidential genre, especially when paired with computational rhetoric, can reveal illuminating insights about rhetors. While a historical perspective on negativity in presidential primary debates cannot capture, on its own, the qualities that made the Trump presidency unique, Graham’s GAP framework is able to locate the specific “structuring structures” that made Trump such a powerful contemporary rhetor.Chapter 8 concludes Graham’s text by recapping key theses and offering a glossary that defines key terms. My summary sense of the key takeaway is that Graham offers scholars a new materialist perspective on genre (GAP) that can account for the diverse material structures that pattern symbolic meaning in historically specific contexts. Effective responsiveness to this new materialist conception of genre works in terms of Whiteheadian satisfaction, or fit foraging, which I would describe as an ontologically situated enactment of kairos (similar to the account offered by Debra Hawhee in Bodily Arts). In addition to providing a recap of his project and clearly defining key terms in the book, the concluding chapter of Graham’s text notes some of the book’s limitations. Some of the critical limitations raised here include a need for more careful engagement with cultural rhetorics (i.e., rhetorics that study the performance of identity and embodied subjectivity), applying GAP to old media in addition to new media, and considering GAP more directly in relation to sound studies.While Graham does a good job acknowledging the limits of his project, I’d like to conclude this review by discussing what I perceive as a few more limitations. First, in addition to engaging more directly with cultural rhetorics, Graham’s text could benefit from a more robust theorization of power and its effect on the patterning of genre. For example, while I agree that new materialism should explore the processes that produce the situated boundary of the human, I believe, following the interventions of scholars such as Sylvia Wynter, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, and Armond Towns, that what constitutes a “fitting” response within this domain is overdetermined by structures of racialization (as well as patriarchy, heteronormativity, ableism, etc.). Graham’s work does not discuss the boundary of the human in this way, and his case studies seem to overlook the problem of positionality in relation to genre. It would be interesting, as part of Graham’s ontological account of genre formation, if he considered how genres emerge out of historically specific patterns of exclusion and bordering.Second, while I find Graham’s advocacy of “zoom-in” approaches to RNM compelling, I feel that his book could engage more with the nonhuman. Most of Graham’s case studies foreground the materiality of new media, but they say little about concrete extrahuman processes of mattering. I’d like to hear more from Graham about the role of physical ecosystems and nonhuman entities (like plants, animals, and even inorganic matter) in the dynamic materialization of genres. It seems that from an RNM perspective, something as banal as the energy used to power new media technologies would play a constitutive role in genre formation.Finally, there is the question of whether turning to Bergson can resolve rhetoric’s crisis of disciplinary identity. Bergson, after all, is first and foremost a philosopher, and Graham’s project could have benefitted from more argumentative scaffolding to support the case that Bergson was doing philosophy from a rhetorical vantage. Perhaps if Graham returned to some of the earlier disciplinary debates over rhetoric and philosophy that occurred between the late 1960s and early 1980s, he could locate more commonplaces for exploring these tensions and justifying why Bergson’s relational metaphysics should be conceived as an ontological approach to rhetoric.Limitations notwithstanding, Graham should be praised for this important contribution to the discipline. Graham demonstrates a masterful understanding of RNM, computational rhetoric, and thinkers associated with the left branch of rhetoric. And his ability to synthesize all this work into a unified theory is very impressive.I look forward to reading new scholarship in genre studies that builds on this text, and I look forward to following the theoretical debates it prompts with respect to the compatibility between RNM and traditional rhetorical perspectives. I also look forward to future scholarship that situates Graham’s process-oriented account of rhetoric in relation to a larger historical context and disciplinary genealogy. As scholars such as Debra Hawhee, Thomas Rickert, Scot Barnet, and Mari Lee Mifsud have all shown (at least indirectly), perspectives that resonate with the process philosophy of Bergson can be found in Greek antiquity as well as the Homeric period that predates Greek antiquity. More work should be done to connect these historical threads so that rhetoric’s ontological relationship to process, change, movement, and indeterminacy can be fully appreciated.

Background: The bulk of international trade has led to increasing demand for specialized professional communication texts in multilingual contexts. Persuasive language is required in promotional discourse to sell products. When transactions are carried out with foreign countries, translation becomes essential for successful commercial exchange. Literature review: Persuasion requires the use of positive evaluation to describe products. This article addresses the need to contrast the expression of positive evaluation in English and Spanish online promotional cheese descriptions. Research questions: 1. What are the linguistic resources used to express positive evaluation in English and Spanish in online promotional texts of the cheese industry? 2. What is the distribution across parts of speech and semantic categories and subcategories between these two languages? 3. How can semantic tags in bilingual comparable corpora provide useful information for translation practice? Methodology: Empirical data have been extracted from Online Cheese Descriptions (OCD), a semantically tagged English-Spanish corpus, and classified using the Appraisal Framework into the subcategories of appreciation, judgment, affect, and graduation. Results and discussion: Tests of statistical significance have revealed cross-linguistic differences, mainly in appreciation, thus leading to a qualitative analysis. The findings also include a large inventory of all evaluative items that express appreciation for cheeses in both languages and general guidelines for translators. Conclusions: This multilayer corpus-based analysis has yielded relevant data that can be used to enhance the second-language writing and translation processes required for marketing cheese in English and Spanish, thus supporting international professionals in their communication in multilingual contexts.

This study explores the impact of multimodal feedback types on student experiences with asynchronous writing tutoring. Through analysis of survey responses from students who utilized Drop-Off Essay Review appointments at a small, private college, this study finds that the combination of written and video feedback enables students to better understand and engage with asynchronous feedback from their tutors. Findings indicate that most students prefer video feedback or a combination of video and written feedback, noting that the video feedback helps elaborate on the tutor’s written comments. Results also suggest that offering multiple feedback options may help writing centers reach a wider range of students, as participants expressed varying individual preferences for different feedback types. Furthermore, the asynchronous format appears to provide a more comfortable entry point into tutoring for some students. This study contributes to the limited research on multimodal feedback in asynchronous writing tutoring and highlights the importance of examining how combined feedback types impact student experiences. Keywords : asynchronous tutoring, multimodal feedback, writing centers, student engagement, inclusivity Asynchronous methods of tutoring, in which tutors and students provide and review feedback on their own schedule, have been increasingly introduced in many college and university writing centers. While asynchronous tutoring is not a new concept, such tutoring methods provide the opportunity for students to receive feedback on their writing without ever needing to meet with a tutor, which brought great value during the online times of Covid-19 and led to these methods becoming more widespread during and after Covid restrictions. Often, asynchronous feedback is received in a written format, though asynchronous tutoring can also utilize audio and video feedback from tutors. As a new tutor providing asynchronous feedback to students, I often noticed students would not review all forms of feedback provided to them; many would ignore the screencast video provided with their written feedback, and this brought forth the question: were both feedback methods necessary? This study aims to understand how multiple feedback types (written feedback, in which the reviewer uses forms of written communication such as imbedded comments, emails, or letters; audio feedback, in which the reviewer records their voice talking through their feedback; and video feedback, an expansion on audio feedback in which the reviewer provides a video both talking through and showing their feedback) impact student experiences with online writing tutoring when used in combination with one another. This article will first examine previous research on asynchronous feedback methods, looking at comparisons between asynchronous and in-person feedback, considering the specific pros and cons of asynchronous tutoring, and exploring the impact of written versus media feedback, before presenting data from a study that explores student experiences and perceptions of online, multimodal feedback. Overall, I argue that using multiple feedback types creates a valuable relationship between those methods, allowing students to better understand and address asynchronous feedback from their tutors. Previous research has compared asynchronous and face-to-face tutoring (where tutors and students meet at the same time to discuss that paper), finding that the online format can change various aspects within tutoring. In Bell’s study on 10 asynchronous sessions, she found that “tutors are not simply applying the tutoring techniques and strategies they use in in-person session in a new online setting, but they are adapting these tools and approaches” (2019). Buck et al.’s study investigating online tutoring comments also notes how an online setting impacts feedback, explaining that the asynchronous format “introduces many interpretations of the tone” which can shift how feedback is received (2021, p. 38). Separate pieces of research investigating the difference between in-person and online formats also comment on how this difference impacts the tutor-tutee relationship. Buck et al. explain that the “tutor and writer cannot have conversations setting the agenda for the upcoming session,” and that this lack of communication among each leads to a shift in focus between the two, with the tutor and tutee often maintaining different priorities (2021, p. 39). These researchers continue to explain that the lack of contact between the two results in the tutor being unable to adjust their tutoring style in ways that is often done within face-to-face sessions. As tutors are unable to see how students will respond to their feedback, they are unable to get to know their student as a writer in their session, which is often vital to adjusting tutoring feedback based on the writer’s abilities (Buck et al., 2021, p.  39). Bell also explores the tutor-tutee relationships in her research, noting that tutors often made more attempts to define roles between themselves and the student in their sessions in order to “define relationships in an asynchronous setting where participants are not both present to otherwise negotiate and establish roles” ( 2019). Bell also found that tutors adapted to the online setting by finding different approaches to keeping attention on the subject at hand. Within face-to-face tutoring, it is common for tutors to read papers aloud in order to stay on the same page as their tutees. Within Bell’s study, she found that asynchronous tutors utilized screencast videos as a visual prompt to draw attention to the section tutors focused on ( 2019) . Other findings on the shifts between in-person and asynchronous tutoring consist of the format itself. Breuch (2005) explains that the media within face-to-face tutoring remains consistent across sessions, with tutoring always occurring within a physical space and through speaking to one another. In online writing centers, however, there are numerous options to communicate, and communications can take place in a variety of formats such as email or Microsoft Word (p. 23). These differences between the tutoring methods can ultimately impact a student’s experience with writing tutoring. Various literature also demonstrates that many students prefer and value online options for tutoring specifically. A study conducted by Bell and others finds three common variables for why students opt for asynchronous appointments: time, physical space, and feedback. Students feel asynchronous options make “best use of what little time” they have available in their busy schedules, provide a space for those with distance to travel to reach the center or that is more comfortable for those not finding the physical center accommodating for their needs, and provide feedback types that students find favorable (Bell et al., 2021, pp. 6-7). Another study highlighting how many students appreciate online options for tutoring found that 40% of participants from asynchronous appointments said that they would only come for online tutoring, while 57% of in-person respondents said that they would only come for in-person tutoring (Barron et al., 2023 ). This fact highlights the value placed on each tutoring form by students and shows that despite the changes from in-person to online, both options are valued by different students. Aside from students’ preference for the option, online tutoring brings many advantages. As mentioned, previous research establishes the benefits of time, change in physical space, and feedback (Bell et al., 2021, pp. 7-6). Chewning (2015) also comments on the benefit of time in online tutoring, elaborating that such methods provide more freedom to students “particularly in terms of when contributions to the process can be made by either party,” allowing for both tutors and tutees to address the appointment when they are ready and able to (p. 59). Gallagher and Maxfield echo this sentiment, explaining that the online format allows for students to “take breaks and work on certain revisions” before revisiting feedback, allowing for students who might get overwhelmed from large portions of comments to review their tutor’s feedback at their own pace (2019). Another benefit brought from asynchronous tutoring is the permanence of the feedback. Gallagher and Maxfield (2019) explain, while students have to rely on memory and any potential notes taken in face-to-face tutoring to inform them while making revisions after an appointment, students in asynchronous appointments are left with written or multimodal artifacts to reference at any point when working on revisions. They further explain that such an artifact can be utilized by students “to build a personal library of supplemental material over time” (2019). Bell and others also discuss this advantage in their study, explaining that because feedback is given in a more permanent format through comments or videos, students are able to revisit this feedback whenever they desire (2021, p. 7). Finally, an interesting benefit brought from asynchronous tutoring methods is that such options provide the ability to reach new students, bringing an aspect of inclusivity that may be lacking from in-person opportunities. In a study that incorporated several new tutoring options onto their campus, including an asynchronous option that they refer to as Written Feedback, it was found that “the more traditional in-person modality was the only modality where a majority (54%) of writers identified as white (191 of 356 respondents)” which suggested that while white students opted for “traditional in-person tutoring,” non-white students tended to prefer non-traditional methods of tutoring (Barron et al., 2023 ). Thus, this study concluded that nontraditional tutoring such as asynchronous tutoring allowed the typical boundaries of the writing center to be stretched in order to reach students who wouldn’t utilize in-person options. A similar finding came in a study investigating why students choose asynchronous options, stating that “those using online tutoring services may do so because in-person writing center programming is not always easy to access and not always designed to be inclusive” (Bell et al., 2021, p. 8). Thus, various research indicates that asynchronous and online tutoring reaches new audiences, often including students within marginalized groups, who might not feel comfortable visiting the physical writing center. There are also various findings displaying the disadvantages of asynchronous or online tutoring. For instance, Chewning (2015) explains in his findings through implementing online tutoring in his institution that there is value from in-person tutoring that simply cannot be recreated through online tutoring without proper resources which come with financial cost and the need for more staff or training. Due to this need, he states that a hybrid approach where writing centers offer a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous tutoring options, rather than solely replacing face-to-face tutoring with online options, would be more effective for institutions like his that are unable to provide the necessary funding and staffing (p. 61). Breuch (2005) discusses how the frustration people have with online writing centers stems from expecting these online options to function the same as in-person tutoring, but online writing centers need to have their own approach and adapt to the online format in order to be best suited for their format (p. 32). Chewning (2015) discusses how personal preference also means that some writers or even professors may be more receptive to face-to-face tutoring over online options (p. 59). Other research establishes, however, that there is a lot of preference for online formats. A study conducted by Wolfe and Griffin (2012) found that “87% of student writers who participated in an online session either preferred the online environment or had no environment preference” (p. 81). Satisfaction with feedback was also analyzed, and the study “found no significant differences in our expert raters’ perception of the instructional quality of the sessions; moreover, participants were equally satisfied with the consultations regardless of environment” (p. 83). Research on the use of different feedback methods is also crucial to understanding how asynchronous tutoring works. While there has been investigation of the use of video feedback within instructors’ feedback to students for over 10 years, only in recent years have there been writing center-specific research about asynchronous videos. Despite this drawback, findings from outside of the writing center can still inform how writers interact with different feedback types. Research on written feedback is wide with many interesting results. First, there are various ways that written feedback can be provided. Gallagher and Maxfield (2019) discuss how asynchronous feedback delivers writing in the format of advice letters, which differs from the common practice of utilizing embedded comments in student papers. These researchers explain how this format “still allows the tutor to address very specific passages, just as embedded comments do, by copying and pasting them into the advice and making them an integrated part of a more global discussion,” allowing the written feedback to focus on larger portions of the text more easily than is done when embedding comments, which focus on a specific section of the paper. Another study incorporated a pilot program testing different online tutoring options. In this study, both email and message board tutorials were utilized as written feedback forms, and it was found that message board tutorials were more effective for this institution (Chewning, 2015, pp. 60-61). As marginal or embedded comments are a more common form of written feedback, however, most research focuses on this type. A study on the effectiveness of online tutoring (ETutoring) comments found that this feedback type results in effective revision from students, explaining that “student revision in response to tutor commentary is typically of a high quality” (Buck et al., 2021, p. 38). A study utilizing Microsoft Word to make marginal comments as a form of written feedback to students in the classroom found that this feedback type tends not to be perceived as conversational by students, even if the instructor makes specific attempts for feedback to be worded conversationally (Silva, 2012). In discussing audio feedback, many researchers point out the humanity that this feedback type brings to the table. Gallagher and Maxfield (2019) comment that “A student then knows from page one that the work submitted was reviewed by another person, that a human being has invested time and energy in the student’s success.” This sentiment is echoed within studies done in the classroom setting, in which students comment that their instructor’s video feedback “added a more personal touch” and that “it was fun to put a voice with a name” (Cavanaugh & Song, 2014, p. 126). Research on video feedback specifically, rather than simply audio feedback, finds that “Satisfaction with online asynchronous screencast tutoring was readily visible throughout the data, but the importance of offering other tutoring options was also clear” (Bell et al., 2021, p. 8). In her own study, Bell (2019) also analyzes how screencast videos impacts tutor feedback, explaining that “tutors rarely relied on a single technique or strategy” while creating their video feedback, and that “In addition to providing feedback, tutors appeared to use multiple tutoring strategies and techniques to encourage audience awareness, reflection, and critical thinking, encouraging and engaging writers in the learning process.” Furthermore, in video format, it is found that the combination of visual and auditory feedback provides opportunities for focus on larger concerns while still providing the opportunity to point out specific portions of text (Silva), similarly to how embedded or marginal comments function. Cavanaugh and Song’s (2014) research also noted some comparisons between the two feedback types. They explain, “Students in the study noted that the instructor’s tone was quite favorable when receiving audio comments. They found this in contrast to the tone communicated in written format” (p. 126). Their research also highlighted another difference between the two feedback types in which the focus of feedback provided shifted depending on the feedback type. Within written feedback, it was found that professors often focused on micro-level issues such as grammar and mechanics, while audio feedback typically focused on macro-level issues such as organization and overall topic of the paper (pp. 126-127). This finding was echoed within Silva’s (2012) research in which she explains that written feedback drew attention to specific sections of the paper such as specific words or sentences, while video feedback “afforded detailed discussion of macro level issues.” Students further noted that written feedback tended to be more specific, but audio feedback often was more detailed in providing examples (Cavanaugh & Song, 2014, pp. 127-128). In discussion of these findings, the researchers suggest that audio feedback provides a more similar experience to face-to-face instruction, which is echoed by some students’ opinions on how the audio feedback was more engaging in maintaining attention similar to when in the classroom (Cavanaugh & Song, 2014, pp. 128-129). Buck and others (2021) comment on similar findings as it pertains to written feedback, finding that students often utilized written comments from their tutors “to make the most formal revisions, such as changes in spelling, punctuation, and usage” (p. 38). In fact, this study finds that even when tutors do focus on macro-level issues in their written feedback, students “do not respond to those comments most frequently,” and instead opt to focus on micro-level issues (p. 38). Student preferences for feedback types tended to differ, with these studies by Silva, and Cavanaugh and Song highlighting the importance of both options. Both studies show that students found written feedback to be valuable for the revision process but enjoyed the more personal mode of feedback within the video or audio feedback (Silva, 2012; Cavanaugh & Song, 2014, pp. 127-129). In the case of Silva’s research, the students who participated requested that their professor utilize a “hybrid approach” of the differing feedback types at the end of the study. While the research above highlights many findings on asynchronous tutoring, this study intends to fill the gap in research on multimodal feedback methods within asynchronous writing tutoring. This study emphasizes the importance of how student experiences may change depending on various feedback types, particularly when one type of feedback is used in combination with another type. While previous research focuses on the impacts of separate feedback types, often not within a tutoring setting, this study investigates how a structure containing multiple feedback methods enables students to engage with their writing feedback in a tutoring setting. At a small, private, comprehensive college in the Mid-Atlantic, Drop-Off Essay Review (Drop-Off) was introduced to the Writing Center in the fall of 2019 to implement asynchronous tutoring alongside in-person and Zoom options. Students are able to sign up their paper, prompt, and rubric through an online submission form for a Drop-Off appointment and receive feedback from a writing tutor by 9 pm the same day as their appointment. Drop-Off utilizes three main forms of feedback: marginal comments left directly on the student’s paper, a cover page attached to the top of the student’s paper, and a screencast video made through Vidgrid provided through a link in the cover page. Tutors are provided instructions for conducting Drop-Off appointments. Such guidelines include leaving feedback that address higher-order concerns such as organization and local concerns such as grammar and mechanics feedback where appropriate. These guidelines also instruct tutors to utilize their recordings to either summarize or explain the feedback they provide through comments and the cover page summary. Finally, tutor instructions for Drop-Off are to spend up to 60 minutes on each appointment without going over this time limit. The cover page summary portion of feedback includes various pieces of information for students to review. First, the rubric provides a section for the tutor to greet the student and introduce themself by name. The next section of the cover page provides a link to the video summary or explanation that the tutor created, while the third section is optional for tutors to utilize whenever additional disclaimers are needed. A notable disclaimer is one warning the student that the tutor did not receive the assignment instructions, and, as such, was not able to ensure that the paper met all requirements; however, multiple disclaimers exist for tutors to utilize (Fig. 1). The rest of the cover page provides the assignment requirements and tells the student which requirements were met, provided that the student attached instructions to their appointment, and gives the three priorities that the tutor focused on when providing feedback. Then, the cover page provides sections for the tutor to point out what the student did well in their paper and what they could change to improve upon their paper. To view the full Drop-Off cover page and its contents, see Appendix A.