The Rhetoric of Second Chance: The Invention of Ethos For An Ex-Offender

For many, literacy is reading and writing- a critical tool for ethos construction. But for a marginalized group of ex-offenders, former prison inmates, who were not accustomed to reading and writing as an agent for character invention, the ability to employ literacy and to construct ethos was a challenging and almost unsuccessful attempt. I discuss in this thesis a community-writing project I designed as a graduate student and my partnership with Boaz & Ruth, a local faith-based non-profit organization working with ex-offenders. Through the collaboration I facilitated writing skills workshop, which objective was to have the ex-offenders to write personal narratives. The writing exercises enabled me to examine implications at work when a marginalized groups like the ex-offenders endeavor to invent ethos, develop rhetorical dialogues and contended with public discourses.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2011

Author dc:creator

• Fofana-Kamara, Modu

Contributors dc:contributor

• David Coogan

• Ex-offenders
• ethos construction
• literacy
• writing as a process and community lieracy
• Arts and Humanities
• English Language and Literature

Statement dc:rights

• © The Author

Identifier

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/236

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-1235