Browsing by Subject "Dialogue"
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Item Cicero the dialogician : the construction of community at the end of the Republic(2009-08) Hanchey, Daniel Parker; Riggsby, Andrew M.In the opening lines of the preface to De Divinatione 2, Cicero describes his motivation in composing of the complures libros of his post-exilic years. Most of all, he says, he wished to prevent any interruption in his service to the state. Though he does not say so explicitly, he clearly refers to an interruption occasioned by his exile and Caesar’s ascension. Elsewhere Cicero describes this period of his life as enforced otium, an otium threatened by the absence of the dignitas which Cicero identifies with the otium of L. Crassus in the opening words of De Oratore. As he claims in Div. 2, Cicero achieved a level of usefulness to the state (and so maintained a certain amount of dignitas) by writing his theoretical books, books which he says communicate the optimarum artium vias to the Roman reading public. What Cicero does not explicitly explain is why the great majority of those works assume the form of the dialogue. In this dissertation I seek to explore the formal capabilities of the dialogue which would make it attractive to a Cicero seeking to maintain dignitas and to render significant service to a state faced with a rapid shift of political and social structure. In general I argue that the dialogue form itself represents an antidote to the decommunalizing and populizing nature of Caesarian hegemony. As I contend, the dialogue achieves its communal nature through an emphasis on three major ethics, each of which is demonstrated in the theories expressed within the dialogues, in the actions of the interlocutors, and in the activity of Cicero himself as author. These three ethics (imitatio, memoria, gratia) each depend on community for their actualization and themselves generate the bonds that lead to community. By placing significant, multi-layered emphasis on each of these ethics, Cicero aims to communicate their validity to a generation of boni faced with the non-traditional, non-communal power of Julius Caesar.Item An epistemic compass towards home : students’ stories of comunalidad, educación, dialogues, and responsabilidad within Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA(2016-05) Velasquez, Yesenia; Urrieta, Luis; De Lissovoy, NoahThis thesis examined the stories of Perla, Ingrid, Dan, Estefanía, Paloma, Kassie, Paco, Daniela, Marina, Elena, Mia, and Valencia within Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA. Critical Race Theory, Freirean Theory, and nepantla guided this study’s theoretical framework. These grounded theories spoke to what is silenced by dominant narratives, as well as possibilities for knowledge construction and served as a foundation for the findings. This study centered on the construction and meaning of knowledge, and brought to the forefront ontological concerns such as who has the possibility and ability to teach, to learn, and to question. Through narrative analysis, this study also focused on the epistemic significance of identities. The program participants’ voices and experiences underscored themes of educating through comunalidad, languages de educación, fostering comunidad through dialogue, and consciousness through responsabilidad. Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA provided a space for how program participants situated themselves within UCLA and Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA, as well as how the education they gained in Proyecto and UCLA nourished each other. Unifying their UCLA and Proyecto educational experiences helped deconstruct the binary between formal and informal education. Additionally, at the center of Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA was a commitment for community service; however, community service found in Proyecto rested on a sense of collective “we.” “An Epistemic Compass Towards Home: Students’ stories of Comunalidad, Educación, Dialogues, Responsabilidad within Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA” expressed that home embodied an epistemic and agentic significance of “going home.” Home entailed an active resistance that simultaneously deconstructed the binaries between school/home and the institution of education/educación, Educación spoke to the education gained through the institution of education and to the education we develop from our community that provides insight, morals, and values.Item Three explanations for the link between language style matching and liking(2011-08) Ireland, Molly Elizabeth 1984-; Pennebaker, James W.People who match each other’s language styles in dialogue tend to have more positive interactions. A person’s language style is defined by his or her use of function words (e.g., pronouns, articles), a class of short, commonly used words that make up the grammatical structure of language. The language style matching (LSM) metric indexes the degree of similarity between two individual’s patterns of function word usage. Previous research assumes that function word similarity and its positive social correlates, such as liking, result from convergence that occurs within an interaction. However, the link between language style similarity and liking may alternately be explained by two kinds of preexisting similarity. First, people tend to like each other more to the degree that they are similar in terms of attitudes, backgrounds, and personality, and these kinds of interpersonal similarity tend to manifest themselves in similar function word use. Second, processing fluency research suggests that people will process typical language styles—which are by definition similar to most other language styles in a normal population—more fluently and thus will like typical speakers more than less typical speakers. Two studies compared the relationship between liking and three measures of function word similarity (convergence, baseline similarity, and typicality) during brief conversations. Each language similarity variable was hypothesized to positively predict measures of liking individually. However, consistent with the behavior coordination literature, only LSM, a measure of within-conversation language convergence, was expected to predict liking above and beyond the other predictors. Study 1 revealed that both men and women in mixed-sex dyads were more interested in contacting their partners the more that their language styles converged during 4-minute face-to-face conversations. Men were also more interested in contacting their female partners to the degree that women’s baseline language styles matched their own. Study 2 found that men, but not women, were more interested in contacting their partners the more that they matched each other’s language styles during 8-minute online chats. Results support the hypothesis that language convergence, theoretically an index of interpersonal engagement, positively predicts quasi-behavioral measures of liking.Item Troubling Trypho : associative-group language in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew(2016-12) Fitzgerald, Ryan Austin; Friesen, Steven J.Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew is a vital text in the study of early Jewish Christian relations. This paper argues that Justin attempts to portray Christians as a legitimate and cohesive genos, ethnos, and laos, what I will call an “associative-group,” over and against his construction of Jews. Using Denise Kimber Buell’s argument that Justin defines Christianity in ethnoracial terms in contrast to Erich Gruen’s critique that ancient people did not think of self identification in modern ethnoracial manners, I examine what I call Justin’s “associative-group” identity. Justin constructs Christianity as the “true” associative-group of God, connected through creative lineage from the patriarchs through Jesus. Justin uses the failure of the Jews in the Bar Kokhba revolt as proof that they are not the associative-group defined by their relationship to God or land, nor have they been since their rejection of Jesus as God’s Messiah.