This project uses the rhetorical concept of strategic ambiguity to analyze how U.S. war films from 2006 through 2011 framed the politics of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I argue that, rather than presenting partisan propaganda or apolitical drama, these films purposeful…
This dissertation is a study of paronomasia, or plays on words, in the narrative portions of the books of the Hebrew Bible known as the Former Prophets. The author first presents a summary of the history of the study of paronomasia in the Hebrew Bible. He then offers a taxonomic…
In this dissertation I bring clarity to debates on the meaning and history of religion with a linguistically and anthropologically informed approach that maintains a clear distinction between language and ontology and seeks to avoid the traps of both nominalism and essentialism.…
Addad (plural of didd "opposite") is the term employed by Arab philologists to designate the Arabic words of which each denotes two opposite meanings such as jawn "dark" and "bright". The peculiarity of this phenomenon in Arabic has attracted the attention of scholars of differe…