Research Projects
Here you'll find some of my adventures in rhetoric and research including a peek of some of the work I did as a RA.
01
In the spirit of critical media literacy, I considered the relationship between media representation and public perception, and I decided to analyze how local and national media has contributed to Central Florida's views on gay rights. To accurately gauge media influence over time, I examined artifacts from the LGBTQ+ Museum of Central Florida’s digital archives within historical and contemporary contexts.
02
For this project, I conducted a multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) of Governor Ron DeSantis’ March 3, 2022 speech, "Governor Ron DeSantis Defends Free Speech," originally broadcast live on his official Facebook page. The speech introduces the Free Speech of Health Care Practitioners Act, a bill that seeks to protect medical professionals from disciplinary action for sharing COVID-19 treatment information, including misinformation. I analyzed the speech across five modes: linguistic, aural, visual, gestural, and spatial. The rhetorical environment, complete with branded signage like "Prescribe Freedom" and "Science, Not Censorship," strategically constructs a populist ethos around medical freedom. Poor captioning and inaccessible transcripts also reveal barriers to public comprehension and transparency.
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This digital poster project stems from a larger research interest in how eugenic ideologies shape public health rhetoric in Florida. By examining the speech's messaging through multimodal analysis and the works of Shipka and Kress, I aim to reveal how appeals to “freedom” can be used to undermine public trust in science while reshaping policy language to support political agendas. The final product integrates both textual and visual elements to support a deeper critique of health-related discourse in Florida politics.
03
Research Assistant: Dr. Thomas Wright, UCF DWR
Early in my rhetoric career, I was drawn to the rhetoric of science. A few semesters later, Dr. Wright gave me the chance to intern with him as a research assistant. His research focused on establishing Benjamin Humphrey Smart (an elocutionist and orator from the 1800s) as a rhetorician by crediting his theories as foundational to the creation of knowledge and rhetoric through his lectures and his influence on scientists such as Darwin and Michael Faraday. Smart's influence on one of his students, the great English physicist Michael Faraday, was a promising avenue. Dr. Wright was in possession of 144 pages of notes taken by Faraday in 1818 from Benjamin Smart's lectures on oratory. My mission was to help transcribe Faraday's notes to a state of readability and to dig up potential sources that could be used in research.
I went on a journey with this. I conducted some research that showed Faraday was influenced by the rhetorical theories B.H. Smart proposed in his lectures. I familiarized myself with Smart's work, which helped me begin to truly understand rhetoric and RoS. I transcribed and analyzed Faraday’s lecture notes and researched Faraday’s work, such as the Christmas Lectures (particularly the Chemistry of a Candle) and The Theory of Elocution, to find instances where Faraday employed techniques he may have learned from Smart. Faraday was arguably a performer of science and a rhetorician himself, and I was able to identify areas in his scientific communications that were possibly informed by Smart's rhetorical impact, but coincidence does not equate to evidence. Yet.
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Not only was I able to gain a more practical understanding of rhetoric as an RA, but I was also able to understand and participate in the research process. It made me realize that not everything is a Google search away. Sometimes, it involves digging through notes written in severe cursive from 1818 and trying to establish relationships from scraps of information.
Sample Transcription from B.H. Smart's Lectures on Oratory
