the midwest journal of undergraduate research

the midwest journal of undergraduate research

Dear Readers, Undergraduate research represents, I believe, all that is best in higher education. It relies upon the curiosity and the quest for knowledge that undergird what colleges and universities do. It offers students the chance, whether they are at the laboratory bench or in the research library, to experience the thrill of discovery while learning how to use at close range tools of investigation that have enduring value across many careers. It endows those students with the confidence to challenge, in analytical and realistic fashion, what they encounter in the classroom and in their course readings, rather than merely to accept it.

The topics you will find in this fourth issue of The Midwest Journal of Undergraduate Research reflect the wide range of investigation undertaken by young men and women pursuing a bachelor‘s degree. With the kind of faculty mentoring offered at Monmouth College and similar institutions, in the Midwest and beyond, undergraduates can make important discoveries in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. And in doing so they can also determine whether a life of research and scholarship is for them.

At the Newberry Library, we have been supporting undergraduate research for more than 125 years. Working with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and the Great Lakes Colleges Association, we have, since 1965, operated a seminar in which talented undergraduates have been able to conduct primarysource research side-by-side with professional scholars from the world‘s great research universities. We share the commitment of liberal arts colleges to the kind of work you will find here in this journal.

As a teacher of college students, I take greatest satisfaction in reading the essays they produce that are based on original research; these often serve to teach me about our shared subject matter, rather than me teaching the students. As a scholar myself, I recall with great satisfaction and ongoing inspiration my early undergraduate forays into what was for me – and clearly is for the students whose research appears in this journal – the exciting world of the research scholar. As the head of a research library, I observe concrete evidence that our mission has real meaning when I encounter such fine products of the undergraduate research experience as the essays selected for inclusion in this volume.

Hearty congratulations to these young scholars, to Monmouth College, and to the undergraduate research enterprise. Enjoy your reading.

Yours sincerely, David Spadafora President, The Newberry Library

Visit us online at: http://research.monm.edu/mjur

Editorial Office Monmouth College 700 East Broadway Ave. Monmouth, Illinois 61462 mjur@monmouthcollege.edu Editorial Board Sara Frakes - Editor in Chief Carly Abbott - Copy Editor Lauren Becker - Review Editor Keri Hannie - Copy Editor Mackenzie Mahler - Publication Editor Chase Mowery - Copy Editor William Terrill - Review Editor Advisory Board Judi Kessler Ph.D. Lars Jorgen Kristiansen Ph.D. Anne Mamary Ph.D. Kevin Roberts M.Ed. Hannah Schell Ph.D. Tim Stiles Ph.D. Fred Witzig Ph.D.

Special Thanks To‌ The editorial board of The Midwest Journal of Undergraduate Research would like to give special thanks to the faculty and deans of the ACM colleges for encouraging your students to submit to the fourth issue of our journal. We would also like to thank President Mauri Ditzler, Dean David Timmerman, the Monmouth College Board of Trustees, and our anonymous board of reviewers for providing the resources to make this journal possible. Finally, we would like to thank Monmouth College alumna Caitlin Mehta for designing our cover and logo.

The publication of The Midwest Journal of Undergraduate Research is made possible through generous gifts from Robert L. Best ‗62 Margaret C. Bozarth ‗61 Joan S. Kotz ‗64 Dee Ann Shuff ‗63

Thank you for your support.

Call For Papers The Midwest Journal of Undergraduate Research would like to invite undergraduate students from any ACM institution to submit manuscripts for our 2015 issue by January 15th.* Works may be submitted to:

mjursub@monmouthcollege.edu Requirements:   

Submissions may be from any discipline as long as they are researchbased.

May use MLA, APA, or Chicago style.

Alongside your submission you must provide the following information:  Name  School/Graduating Class  Major  Discipline of paper  Citation style used  Daytime Phone Number  Email Address  Mailing Address  The name and contact information of a sponsoring professor

For questions you may contact us at:

mjur@monmouthcollege.edu *MJUR guarantees review for all submissions received by January 15th.

MJUR cannot guarantee review for submissions received between January 15th and 31st.

MJUR will not accept submissions for the 2015 issue beyond January 31st

Publication: The Midwest Journal of Undergraduate Research is published annually by Monmouth College, 700 East Broadway Avenue, Monmouth, Illinois 61462.

Copyright and Photography: © 2014 Monmouth College. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from The Midwest Journal of Undergraduate Research.

Disclaimer: The Publisher, Monmouth College, and its editors cannot be held responsible for errors or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in this journal; the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Monmouth College, any college or university represented in this journal, The Midwest Journal of Undergraduate Research, or its editors.

Contents...

Apologia in the Steroid Era: How Athletes Respond to Steroid Allegations Ryan Riebe Ripon College, 2014 ......................................................................................... 13

Relativistic Jets Emanating from a Black Hole Due to the Acceleration by the Magnetic Field Generated by the Accretion Disk Adrien Saremi & Jared Johnson University of Alabama-Huntsville & Monmouth College, 2014................................. 35

Israel‟s Economic Motives for Colonizing the West Bank Joshua Tenenbaum Beloit College, 2014 ......................................................................................... 46

The Rhetoric of the Physician-Assisted Suicide Movement: Choosing <Death> Over <Life> Alecia Pasdera Ripon College, 2014 ......................................................................................... 62

Jane Austen: Shaping the Standard of Women‟s Education Elizabeth McElligott Wartburg College, 2013 .................................................................................... 79

Evaluation of Ayer‟s “Symposium: „Can There Be a Private Language?‟” Drew Nevitt Macalester College, 2015 .................................................................................. 99

Unsupervised Part-of-Speech Tagging: An Introduction Alex Brooks & Mike Stees Monmouth College, 2013 ........................................................................................... 116

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About the Authors...

Ryan Riebe Ripon College, 2014 Ryan is a senior Communication and Politics & Government major at Ripon College, and will begin attending law school in Fall 2014. In his free time, Ryan is an avid runner and enjoys following both sports and politics. Ryan would like to thank Dr. Steve Martin for his guidance through the various stages of this paper, as well as each of his professors in the Communication and Politics & Government departments for their continued support throughout Ryan's time at Ripon College.

Jared Johnson Monmouth College, 2014 Jared is a senior Physics and Mathematics major at Monmouth College. He is a member of the Monmouth College Golf Team. He plans to attend graduate school at The Ohio State University to receive his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering where Jared hopes to research some type of energy application. He would like to give thanks to his professors at Monmouth College, Dr. John Poirier (University of Notre Dame), and his parents for pushing him to his full potential and investing confidence in him.

Adrien Saremi University of Alabama-Huntsville, 2014 I am a senior majoring in both Physics and Mathematics at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. My main interests are to solve computational problems by numerical and analytic solutions in diverse fields such as astronomy, engineering, and even finance. I would like to thank Dr. Poirier, my supervisor during my 2014 summer research internship, who helped Jared Johnson and me with our project as well as taught us the responsibilities and the conduct that a researcher must have.

Joshua Tenenbaum Beloit College, 2014 Josh is a senior International Relations major and Spanish minor at Beloit College. He is currently completing an Honors Term semester as a post-graduation endeavor. Josh has taken interest in US and foreign politics, having worked in a congressional office here, and focusing on Middle East foreign policy in his major. Before trying political staffing in Washington DC, Josh will teach English in Spain for a year. Josh owes the success of this paper to the efforts of Beth Dougherty and Pablo Toral, who have mentored and nurtured his interest

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in global political affairs, theory, and academic writing. Josh cannot be more grateful for the encouragement of Beloit College's political science and language programs.

Alecia Pasdera Ripon College, 2014 Alecia is a senior Communication major at Ripon College who plans on pursuing a career in journalism after graduation. She is the Editor-in-Chief of her school's paper, and she was recently accepted into Lambda Pi Eta, the National Communication Association Honor Society. Her endless gratitude goes to Communication professors Jody Roy, Steve Martin, and Deano Pape for their constant encouragement and coaching. Without their support, she would not have developed as much as she has as a student, or more importantly, as a person.

Elizabeth McElligott Wartburg College, 2013 Elizabeth McElligott graduated from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa in May 2013 with a degree in English. While at Wartburg, she enjoyed playing flute in the Wartburg Wind Ensemble, serving as co-editor of the college literary magazine, The Castle, and leading Wartburg's English club, Pen & Inc. This paper was the result of an independent study that allowed Elizabeth to read Jane Austen novels for fun and call it homework. Special thanks to Dr. Rachel Clark for guidance and support on this paper, and the rest of the English professors at Wartburg who helped Elizabeth through her undergraduate journey. Currently, Elizabeth is a curriculum coordinator at the University of Minnesota Medical School in the department of Family Medicine and Community Health, and hopes to pursue a Master's degree in Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development of Higher Education.

Drew Nevitt Macalester College, 2015 Drew is a third-year Linguistics major and Philosophy minor at Macalester College, located in St. Paul, Minnesota. One of his academic pursuits is studying the syntactic structure of the Old Germanic languages, and he has been awarded an Anderson-Grosshuesch Interdisciplinary Research Grant from Macalester for the summer of 2014 to further this interest. Drew would especially like to thank Professor Joy Laine in the Macalester Philosophy Depart-

10 ment, who guided the essay from the start and helped him put his leanings toward empiricism into perspective. He would also like to thank his peer reviewers Diana Chao and James Innelli for helping him focus his arguments and bring clarity to the piece.

Alex Brooks Monmouth College, 2013 Alex graduated from Monmouth College in 2013 and is now a first year Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently holds a Research Assistant position under Dr. Marc Snir. His research interests include parallel runtime systems, parallel architecture, and compiler optimizations. Alex is actively involved in research projects with Sandia National Laboratories and participates in a weekly student reading group. After completing his graduate work, he plans to pursue a career in industry. Alex would like to thank Professors Logan Mayfield, Marta Tucker, and Michael Sostarecz for their valuable feedback on the project and for their support through his undergraduate career.

Mike Stees Monmouth College, 2013 Mike graduated from Monmouth College in 2013 and is now a first year Ph.D. student at the University of Kansas. In addition to being a Self Graduate Fellow, he currently holds a Research Assistant position in the Functional Programming Group under Dr. Andy Gill. Mikeâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s research interests include functional programming, parallelism, language design, and parallel functional programming. After completing his graduate work, he hopes to pursue a career in industry. He would like to thank his professors from Monmouth College, Logan Mayfield, Marta Tucker, and Michael Sostarecz, for their guidance on this paper and their support throughout his undergraduate career.

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About the Editors...

Sara Frakes Sara Frakes is a senior psychology major. After graduating in May, she will be attending the University of South Carolina for a M.ED in Higher Education and Student Affairs. Her research interests include educational psychology and student success research. In her free time, she enjoys working out and spending time with friends. She has greatly enjoyed her experience with the journal and would like to thank the faculty advisors and fellow editors for their hard work.

Carly Abbott Carly is a junior Psychology major and Sociology minor from Manito, Illinois. She is a member of Pi Beta Phi Fraternity for Women, Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society, Blue Key Honor Society, Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology, and Pi Beta Phi Pi Honor Society. In addition to her involvement with these organizations, Carly is also the President of Monmouth Collegeâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s Student Alumni Association. This ties in closely to her job on campus as an Alumni Programs Intern for the Office of Development and College Relations where she assists staff by reaching out to alumni and preparing for alumni events hosted by the college. She has been a Statistics and Sociology tutor at Monmouth College for two years now. In her free time, Carly enjoys socializing with friends and family and playing the piano.

Lauren Becker Lauren Becker is a December 2013 graduate of Monmouth College and a twoyear editor for The Midwest Journal of Undergraduate Research. She studied English and completed the Honors program with a project on better incorporating English language learners into the American school system. Lauren played soccer as a Fighting Scot all four years and was active in the college's writing center. Since graduating, Lauren has been on the search for writing center-related jobs.

Keri Hannie Keri is a junior Biochemistry major and a History minor from Pontiac, Illinois. She is a member of Alpha Lambda Delta and Circle K, a service program associated with Kiwanis. When Keri is not doing chemistry homework, she is often reading, singing, or playing her flute. Keri also enjoys drawing and painting to help relax after a difficult week. After Keri graduates from Monmouth College, she hopes to attend graduate school to obtain either her

12 Masters degree or Doctorate in Biochemistry. Keri's hope is to become a forensic scientist after graduate school.

Mackenzie Mahler Mackenzie is a junior Psychology and Communication Studies double major from Bourbonnais, Illinois. She has been inducted into several honor societies including Order of Omega, Psi Chi, and Lambda Pi Eta. In her free time, Mackenzie actively participates in Alpha Xi Delta and Rotaract and serves as an editor for the school newspaper. After graduating from Monmouth College, Mackenzie hopes to go to graduate school and eventually teach at a liberal arts institution.

Chase Mowery Chase Mowery is a senior English major from Fairbury, Illinois. He is involved in a number of campus organizations including Sigma Phi Epsilon and the school newspaper, the Courier. He also recently concluded an honors‘ project on a small Midwestern sect called the Apostolic Christians. Chase spent his college summers coaching the local swim team from his hometown and managing the pool. Chase reasons that the greatest choice he‘s ever made in his life—and he likes to think he‘s made at least a few good ones—was to spend a semester in India. He enjoys swimming, hiking, and simply being outdoors in the summertime.

William Terrill Will is a senior English major from Somonauk, Illinois. Along with his major, he also participates in the Monmouth College Honors Program and the Monmouth College Educational Garden. This past fall Will was named Lincoln Laureate for the Monmouth College graduating class of 2014. After graduating from Monmouth, Will hopes to join the Peace Corps as an Agriculture Volunteer.

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Apologia in the Steroid Era: How Athletes Respond to Steroid Allegations Ryan Riebe Ripon College In recent years, some of professional sports’ highest profile athletes have been accused of cheating by using steroids to increase their athletic ability. This creates a rhetorical exigency that needs to be addressed. Just as political leaders turn to apologia in an effort to restore their images after their reputations are tarnished, so too do sports figures. The cases of four athletes, professional baseball players Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, and Ryan Braun, and professional cyclist Lance Armstrong, are examples of athletes faced with the task of responding to steroid allegations. In each of the aforementioned cases, the athlete responding to steroid allegations initially denied prior steroid usage using the apologetic strategies of denial and bolstering and the absolutive apologetic posture; each athlete then turned to the apologetic strategies of bolstering and differentiation and the explanative posture after steroid allegations were confirmed. As a result of the rhetorical decisions made by athletes responding to steroid allegations, athletes and their teams face negative economic consequences, while negative societal consequences are felt among children who view athletes as role models.

According to a January 2013 Harris Interactive poll, over two-thirds of adults in the United States report following at least one sport.1 In addition to having a widespread following in the United States, the economic size of the sports industry in the United States—including sports leagues, teams, broadcast agreements, and advertisements—is estimated to be approximately $470 billion in 2013. This figure is equivalent to roughly three percent of the gross domestic product of the United States.2 Americans follow sports to see competition between the best athletes in the country, they support those athletes through the purchasing of jerseys and/or team apparel, and they allow those athletes to influence their purchasing decisions by supporting businesses who make endorsement deals with popular athletic figures.

In addition to influencing the purchasing decisions of consumers across the United States, athletes also have the ability to influence the behavior of individuals, particularly children, based on how athletes themselves act. According to sports agent Leigh Steinberg, athletes are ―figures of admiration and emulation in [the United States‘] sports obsessed society…young people will

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Apologia in the Steroid Era

look to athletes whether we wish them to or not.‖3 Given the ability of athletes to influence the purchasing decisions and actions of individuals, the consequences of any negative actions (such as the use of performance-enhancing drugs) taken by an athlete are magnified, particularly when those actions call into question the character of certain athletes.

In recent years, some of professional sports‘ highest profile athletes have been accused of cheating by using steroids to increase their athletic ability. As a result, their national prominence is increased due to increased performance. 4 When athletes cheat by using steroids their fans report feeling betrayed, which creates a rhetorical exigency that needs to be addressed. 5 Just as political leaders turn to apologia in an effort to restore their images after their reputations are tarnished, so too do sports figures. In sports, athletes found to have used steroids tend to deny any claims of wrongdoing until it has become completely clear that they have used steroids. This characteristic of steroid-using athletes creates two similar albeit distinct types of discourse: one which denies the usage of steroids and one which features an admission to the usage of steroids after an athlete previously denied doing so.

Steroid usage has been prevalent in American professional sports in recent years, but research into how athletes respond rhetorically to alleged and confirmed instances of steroid usage has been much less prevalent. In analyzing how athletes respond to steroid allegations, this study will examine the apologetic discourse of four athletes: professional baseball players Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, and Ryan Braun, and professional cyclist Lance Armstrong to determine which factors and postures of apologia are present in their respective discourses. This study will show that potential economic consequences of admitting to steroid usage led these athletes to deny steroid usage when first confronted with steroid allegations, only to admit and explain steroid usage once evidence proving athletes‘ steroid use becomes too difficult to counter. The tendency of steroid-using athletes to deny first and explain later will also be shown to have potentially negative economic consequences for athletes and teams and potentially negative societal consequences among children who view athletes as role models.

Prior Study of Apologia in Sports Ware and Linkugel define the concept of apologia to describe public speeches with the purpose of self-defense.6 Ware and Linkugel extend Abelson‘s ―modes of resolution‖ to describe four ―factors,‖ or techniques, that are commonly used in speeches within the genre of apologia. Ware and Linkugel elaborate on four factors: denial,7 bolstering (a speaker seeking to identify him/herself with something viewed favorably by an audience), 8 differentiation (a particularization of the charge being addressed so as to create different audience interpretations about the charge),9 and transcendence (which attempts to move the audience away from the particulars of the charge at hand in a direction toward a more general view of the character of the speaker). 10 Ware and Linkugel also describe the four postures, or types, of apologetic discourse.

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These are absolutive (featuring a speaker seeking acquittal), vindicative (seeking to preserve a speaker‘s reputation and worth relative to the worth of accusers), explanative (where a speaker hopes explaining him-/herself will lead to audiences who understand the speaker‘s motives and thus cannot condemn the speaker), and justificative (where a speaker seeks approval for his/her actions).11 The aforementioned factors and postures that Ware and Linkugel describe are important to the study of apologia in sports because they provide a framework by which to identify differences in strategy that may be present in discourse before and after an individual has been proven guilty of using steroids. As Ware and Linkugel note, such identification of strategies and posture enables the critic to focus on strategic decisions made by athletes when those athletes determine from which posture they will speak. 12 Although the rhetorical genre of apologia has been the subject of numerous studies, particularly as it relates to political discourse, less research has been done focusing on how apologia is applied by athletes. The first work on apologia in sports is Kruse‘s (1981) study of the role of apologia in team sports, with subsequent research carried out by Meyer (2007 and 2008), Frandsen and Johansen (2007), Brazeal (2008), and Fink, Borland, and Fields (2011).13 Of these studies, Kruse; Brazeal; Fink, Borland, and Fields; and Meyer‘s 2008 study each feature the application of the factors used in apologia as described by Ware and Linkugel. Each of these aforementioned studies pay little to no attention on the postures of apologia, with only Kruse‘s study discussing the justificative posture. In the four studies that apply Ware and Linkugel‘s factors to sports apologias, all discuss denial and bolstering, all except Brazeal discuss differentiation, and all but Kruse and Brazeal discuss transcendence. The body of previous research thus leaves a hole to be filled relating to how factors and postures of apologia can be applied to sports; factors because the body of existing research is so small, and postures because the body of existing research on apologia in sports has paid little attention to Ware and Linkugel‘s postures.

While four of the aforementioned six studies utilize Ware and Linkugel‘s characteristics of apologia and apply those characteristics to sports, none focus on trying to identify the factors and postures that specifically characterize apologia in sports as it relates to discourse from athletes who have been accused of using performance enhancing drugs. Meyer and Brazeal focus specifically on analyzing the effectiveness of apologia from Michael Vick and Terrell Owens respectively. Kruse identifies situations that would call for apologia in team sports, though none of the exigencies listed include accusations relating to the usage of performance enhancing drugs. Fink, Borland, and Fields focus on sexist acts in sports, rather than steroids as their point of focus.

The remaining two studies on apologia in sports differ from the other four in that neither features analysis of apologia in terms of the factors and postures that Ware and Linkugel identified. Meyer‘s 2007 study discusses steroids in baseball from the perspective of Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), but concludes that ―apologia…theories do not sufficiently explain the self-defense rhetoric of

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Apologia in the Steroid Era

professional baseball‖ because of the fact that the apologist is a league, rather than an individual.14 The work of Frandsen and Johansen, while discussing apologia in sports, studies only the application of apologia in one particular historical instance, as was the case with Meyer‘s study of Vick and Brazeal‘s study of Owens, but the lack of focus on Ware and Linkugel‘s study of apologia makes Frandsen and Johansen‘s study of apologia less useful for this particular study.

This study seeks to fill the void left by previous research of sports apologia by specifically examining the apologetic discourse of athletes who have used performance enhancing drugs. Specifically, this research will provide new insight with regard to the identification of apologetic postures and strategies employed by athletes responding to steroid allegations, in addition to identifying potential consequences of the rhetorical choices made by the same athletes.

As previously noted, the examination of postures within the category of sports apologia has been minimal among scholars in the field of communication. In examining the discourse of steroid-using athletes, this study will also discuss the postures employed by athletes, the reasoning behind the usage of those postures, the potential economic implications associated with the usage of those postures, as well as the potential impact the usage of those postures have on children.

Steroids in Major League Baseball and Professional Cycling The discourses of athletes in professional baseball and professional cycling who have used steroids are the subject of analysis in this particular study.

Within Major League Baseball (MLB, the top professional baseball league in the United States), the usage of some steroids was banned in 1991, though league-wide testing for performance enhancing drugs did not go into effect until the 2003 MLB season. During this time period, increased offensive output in Major League Baseball led to the belief that a number of top professional baseball players were using steroids to increase their athletic ability and offensive performance.15 In an overview of what has been named the ―Steroid Era‖ in professional baseball, ESPN states that the Steroid Era in the MLB lasted from the late 1980s to the late 2000s. In reality, while steroid use in the MLB is believed to have declined, high-profile players continue to be found guilty of using steroids in violation of the league‘s substance abuse policies. 16 Although the period lasting from the late 1980s to the late 2000s in Major League Baseball is referred to as the steroid era, only a small minority of players have actually faced suspension from Major League Baseball for their steroid usage. From 2005 through the 2013 MLB season, only 52 players have been suspended for using steroids.17 Other professional baseball players have been shown to have used steroids, but high-profile athletes like Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa retired before their steroid usage was confirmed, leaving them unable to be suspended by Major League Baseball. 18 While the majority of professional baseball players in the United States have not been found guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs, a significant

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number of top professional baseball players have been found to use steroids, which led to the perception of a steroid era in Major League Baseball.

The perception that Major League Baseball had a steroid era, even if most of its players did not use steroids, is not unfounded. Of the players who have hit the most home runs in a single Major League Baseball season, the athletes with the six top home run producing seasons in MLB history all used steroids.19 In the MLB‘s American League, each player who hit the most home runs in 1996 and each season from 2001 to 2007 was found to have used steroids. The same is true of the National League home run leader during the 1993 season, the 1998 to 2002 seasons, and the 2004 and 2012 seasons. 20 Since 1990, nine National League Most Valuable Players and five American League Most Valuable Players were found to have used steroids. 21 While most professional baseball players may not have used steroids, the prevalence of steroid usage among the sport‘s top players correctly leads to the designation of a steroid era in Major League Baseball.

In Major League Baseball, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, and Ryan Braun each denied the usage of performance enhancing drugs during their professional careers. Of the three aforementioned players, only Braun would later admit to using steroids. During their careers, both Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens were called to testify before congressional committees investigating the usage of steroids in professional baseball. Under consideration by congress at the time was whether or not the government should implement ―a single, stringent steroids policy for all athletics in the United States‖ that would cover all athletes from the high school level to professional level. 22 As part of the proceedings, several athletes were called to testify in Washington, DC to address their own steroid allegations. On March 17, 2005, Rafael Palmeiro testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. 23 His prepared opening statement from that committee hearing will be one example of apologetic discourse from an athlete who denied using steroids that this study will examine. On February 13, 2008, Roger Clemens testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to address allegations that he used steroids during his professional career. 24 Like Palmeiro, Clemens denied using steroids, and Clemens‘ testimony will be another example of apologetic discourse from an athlete denying the use of steroids that this study will analyze.

Unlike Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro, Ryan Braun did not testify before a congressional committee. Following the 2011 MLB season in which Braun was named the National League‘s Most Valuable Player, it was revealed that Braun tested positive for steroid use during the 2011 playoffs. 25 It was later revealed that the individual responsible for delivering Braun‘s sample to the lab for testing mishandled the sample, voiding Braun‘s positive test. 26 In response to the mishandling of his sample, Braun delivered a public address on February 24, 2012, at the Brewers‘ spring training facility in Arizona in which Braun denied having ever used steroids.27 On August 22, 2013, Braun reversed from his previous position and admitted in a statement to have used steroids during the 2011 season.28 Braun‘s speech denying the usage of steroids and his

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Apologia in the Steroid Era

statement admitting the usage of steroids serve as two examples of apologetic discourse from different postures to be examined in this paper.

If steroid usage among professional baseball players can be considered frequent, steroid usage among professional cyclists can be described as rampant. The Tour de France is considered to be one of professional cycling‘s three ―grand tours,‖ and is recognized as the most prestigious and difficult professional cycling race in the world.29 Of the fifteen Tour De France races from 1996 to 2010, only one winner of the race (Carlos Sastre, the 2008 winner) was not later found to have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. In addition, over one-third of the total top ten finishers from every Tour de France from 1998 to 2012 were later found to have used steroids during their professional cycling careers.30 For seven of the fourteen Tour De France races during the aforementioned 1996 to 2010 window, first place was later awarded to the runner-up of each year‘s race.

While organizers of the Tour De France have awarded first place to the runner-up of the race from 1996 to 1998, 2006 to 2007, and 2009 to 2010, doping within the sport has been so prevalent that organizers were unable to award first place in the Tour De France to the runner-up of the 1999 to 2005 races.

The winner of the Tour De France from 1999 to 2005 was American cyclist Lance Armstrong.31 Throughout his professional cycling career, Lance Armstrong adamantly denied having ever used steroids. In July 1999, Armstrong said ―I‘m not stupid. I can emphatically say I am not on drugs.‖ 32 As late as July 2010, Armstrong continued to deny having ever used steroids during his professional career, going so far as to say ―As long as I live, I will deny it.‖ 33 While Armstrong continued to deny having ever used performance enhancing drugs, in October 2012 the United States Anti-Doping Agency banned Armstrong from competing in Olympic sports for life, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour De France titles earned from 1999 to 2005. Rather than award first place in the 1999 to 2005 Tour De France races, race organizers stated that those years‘ races ―must be marked by the absence of a winner,‖ because the runner-up in each of those years was also guilty of using steroids to increase athletic performance. 34 After winning a record seven Tour De France titles, many observers considered Lance Armstrong to be the greatest cyclist, and among the greatest athletes, of all-time.35 Now, Armstrong is not only considered to be the greatest fraud in cycling history but also ―the greatest fraud in American sports.‖ 36 As was the case with Ryan Braun, the discourse of Lance Armstrong provides another example of an athlete who vehemently denied using steroids only to later admit to using steroids after mounting evidence made it impossible for Armstrong to continue his denial. An example of Armstrong denying that he used steroids during his professional career can be seen during an interview that took place between Armstrong and Larry King during the August 25, 2005 episode of CNN‘s ―Larry King Live,‖ approximately one month after Armstrong won his seventh Tour De France title. 37 After Armstrong‘s seven Tour De France victories were stripped in 2012, Armstrong finally admitted to the usage of steroids during his cycling career in a January 2013 interview with

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Oprah Winfrey.38 By denying the usage of steroids before admitting to having used them, Lance Armstrong‘s discourse provides two differing examples of apologetic discourse from athletes who have used steroids.

Methodology To examine the apologias of Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, Ryan Braun, and Lance Armstrong, the application of Ware and Linkugel‘s factors and postures of apologetic discourse will be utilized. To accomplish this task, all examples of denial, bolstering, differentiation, and transcendence within the discourses being examined will be identified. After identifying the factors or ―modes of resolution‖ that each athletes employ are identified, the posture from which each athlete speaks (or writes, in the case of Braun‘s 2013 statement) will also be identified. At the most basic level, the application of Ware and Linkugel‘s work allows the critic to identify the factors and postures utilized by each athlete, while also allowing the critic to determine whether or not athletes tend to employ the same factors and postures when faced with similar rhetorical exigencies. The ability of Ware and Linkugel‘s research to provide a basis from which apologias may be compared represents one reason why Ware and Linkugel‘s apologetic postures and strategies merit further scholarly attention.

The identification of the factors and postures utilized within a given piece of apologetic discourse provide a basis for apologetic criticism; however, Ware and Linkugel note that while the categorizing of apologia into subgenres allows critics to compare ―rhetorical uses of language occurring across somewhat different apologetic situations… [t]he act is not, in and of itself, criticism.‖ Instead, Ware and Linkugel go on to say that the advantage of their mapping of the apologetic genre allows the critic to focus upon the strategic decisions that speakers make when choosing from which posture they wish to speak.39 The ability of the critic to utilize Ware and Linkugel‘s research to analyze the strategic decisions made by individuals, in this case athletes, when crafting their apologias provides an additional reason as to why Ware and Linkugel‘s research merits additional attention, in addition to providing a basis for critics to examine the motives behind such rhetorical decisions. As such, this study will also seek to examine the various constraints that led to each athlete choosing the apologetic factors and postures that they did. This analysis will allow the determination of whether each athlete was able to decide how to proceed with their respective apologias or if each athlete was bound by their own previous decisions and rhetorical constraints to fit an existing discourse with a limited number of available rhetorical options.

Following the identification of which factors and postures of apologetic discourse each athlete employs within his respective set of apologias and an analysis of the constraints on their discourse, the discourses of each athlete will be compared to determine whether or not each athlete utilized similar rhetorical strategies in crafting each apologia. The analysis will also examine whether each athlete‘s discourse was subject to similar constraints. If the discourses of

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Apologia in the Steroid Era

each athlete are similar, and the constraints each athlete faces are similar, it becomes possible to draw conclusions about the apologetic sub-genre of steroid-related discourse. This ability to draw conclusions stems from the critical foundation provided by Ware and Linkugel and their mapping of the apologetic genre. The conclusion of the study of apologetic discourse as it relates to the steroid usage of professional athletes is thus found in the determination of which rhetorical elements are characteristic of the aforementioned sub-genre of apologetic discourse.

Analysis of Athletes’ Discourse and Constraints There are two primary situations athletes face in which it becomes necessary to address the usage of performance enhancing drugs: following alleged steroid usage and following confirmed steroid usage. These two situations, although similar, lead to two distinctive types of apologetic discourse. This current study of the discourse of athletes who are addressing only alleged steroid usage will show that such athletes speak from an absolutive posture, while employing the apologetic factors of denial and bolstering. In contrast, athletes who are addressing proven steroid usage utilize the apologetic factors of bolstering and differentiation, resulting in discourse from the explanative posture.

When Rafael Palmeiro testified before the House Committee on Government Reform, Palmeiro‘s steroid usage had yet to be proven. As such, Palmeiro began his testimony with a repeated denial of having ever used steroids, saying ―I have never used steroids. Period. I don‘t know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never.‖40 To compliment his repeated denial, Palmeiro continued his testimony by repeatedly bolstering in an attempt to increase his credibility. Palmeiro first bolstered within his testimony while describing how he and his family fled from communist Cuba, and how he was then able to achieve the American Dream through ―hard work, discipline, and dedication.‖41 The bolstering within Palmeiro‘s testimony continues as Palmeiro describes his charitable work and community involvement. As Palmeiro concludes his testimony, he praises the steroid policy being implemented by Major League Baseball, again a form of bolstering as Palmeiro attempts to identify himself with the MLB‘s substance abuse policy that his audience views favorably. In denying that he ever used steroids, Palmeiro speaks from the absolutive apologetic posture, seeking acquittal in the minds of the public for an action he denies having ever partaken in. Palmeiro‘s absolutive discourse is thus characterized by the factors of denial and bolstering, as Palmeiro seeks to identify himself with the characteristics of hard work and charity and the MLB‘s antisteroid policy that the public views favorably.

Just as Rafael Palmeiro‘s guilt was not yet confirmed when he delivered his testimony to the House Committee on Government Reform, neither was the guilt of Roger Clemens when he delivered his own testimony to the House of Representatives in 2008. Unlike Palmeiro, Clemens‘ denial of steroid usage is buried within his testimony. In fact, the final statement made by Clemens in his testimony is his denial saying, ―let me be clear, I have never taken steroids or

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HGH.‖42 The remainder of Clemens‘ testimony features the apologetic factor of bolstering. Like Palmeiro, Clemens describes how hard work and determination led to his success in baseball, saying that shortcuts (like steroids) were not an option.43 Clemens also discusses his own history of giving back to the community, discussing how he prides himself as an example for children, and how he has ―shared [the] talents God gave [him] with children.‖ 44 The only time Clemens mentions Major League Baseball‘s steroid-testing policy is when Clemens states that he believes the testing program should be more extensive, again an example of bolstering as Clemens identifies himself with a popularlyheld position. The apologetic testimony of Roger Clemens thus serves as an additional example of discourse from the absolutive posture, featuring a denial from Clemens and repeated bolstering in an attempt to restore his fractured reputation.

Unlike the absolutive apologias of Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens, Ryan Braun‘s denial of having used steroids was not delivered under oath in front of a congressional committee; it was delivered in front of members of the media. Nevertheless, the characteristics of the apologias of Palmeiro, Clemens, and Braun are quite similar. Although Braun‘s denial is less straightforward than the denials of Palmeiro and Clemens, Braun is no less adamant about his innocence, saying ―I would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point.‖45 Braun‘s denial also takes an interesting turn when he frames his denial in terms of his on-field performance. He stated that he didn‘t get any heavier, faster, or stronger during the period in which it was alleged that he had used steroids.

In addition to denial, the apologetic factor of bolstering is prevalent within Ryan Braun‘s discourse. Braun utilizes bolstering by describing himself as an individual with honor, integrity, class, dignity, and professionalism. Through bolstering, Braun also seeks to create a sense of identification between himself and Major League Baseball‘s drug testing policy, despite the fact that it led to accusations of steroid use. Of Major League Baseball‘s steroid-testing system, Braun states that ―the system worked‖ because he was eventually able to prove his innocence, but explains that the reason why he was accused of having used steroids was because ―the system in the way it was applied to [him]…was fatally flawed.‖ By describing Major League Baseball‘s steroid testing system as flawed only as it applied to himself, Ryan Braun was able to maintain identification with the league‘s testing system which allowed him to utilize bolstering within his address. By denying that he used steroids, and simultaneously using bolstering in an attempt to improve his reputation, this Braun apologia serves as a good example of discourse presented from the absolutive posture, as Braun‘s primary concern is clearing his name of any wrongdoing.

A final example of apologetic discourse delivered by an athlete in response to alleged but unconfirmed steroid usage is seen in Lance Armstrong‘s responses to questions asked by Larry King in 2005 on King‘s nationally broadcast television program. As was the case for each athlete previously studied, Armstrong denies that he used steroids at any point during his professional career. In response to a question posed by King about steroid accusations,

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Armstrong says ―that kind of an accusation is preposterous,‖ before continuing to deny saying, ―I‘ve said it for longer than seven years. I have never doped.‖ 46 Later in his interview with Larry King, Armstrong seeks to change the subject of conversation to the work of his foundation and its involvement in the fight against cancer. On the subject of cancer, Armstrong states ―I would much rather be on this show talking about the illness and what we‘re going to do to fix it versus having to sit here and defend myself.‖ Here, Armstrong utilizes bolstering to identify himself with something viewed with nearly unanimous favorability, the fight against cancer. Unlike the aforementioned apologias of Palmeiro, Clemens, and Braun, Armstrong does not praise the steroid-testing policies of professional cycling in an attempt to bolster, but does argue, as Braun did, that sample testing protocol was not correctly applied in his case.

As was true of the three previously studied apologias, Lance Armstrong‘s apologia serves as an example of an athlete utilizing the absolutive posture in defense against unconfirmed steroid allegations, specifically using the apologetic techniques of denying and bolstering within his discourse.

Whereas the previous four examples of apologetic discourse relating to steroid usage in sports have been attempts from athletes to address unconfirmed allegations of steroid usage, the final two discourses examined in this study provide examples of how athletes seek to defend themselves after it has been proven that they used steroids during their professional careers. In both the cases of Ryan Braun and Lance Armstrong, whose rhetoric will be studied, each athlete repeatedly denied having ever used steroids—meaning that each athlete lied repeatedly to the American public. As such, after denying the usage of performance enhancing drugs, an athlete must not only use their apologia to defend themselves against their recently confirmed steroid usage but also against the fact that they lied repeatedly in denying that they used steroids during their professional careers.

Following official confirmation that Ryan Braun had in fact used steroids during his Most Valuable Player Award-winning 2011 season, Braun delivered an apologia in the form of a written statement. In his apologia in defense of confirmed steroid usage, Braun continued to bolster just as he had in apologias delivered before his steroid usage was confirmed. As he concludes his statement, Braun states that his personal values include ―hard work and dedication, and being honest both on and off the field‖ though Braun admits that what he did ―goes against everything [he has] always valued.‖47 Braun himself notes that he will have to work ―very, very hard‖ to earn back the trust and support of those individuals who had supported him. Although his commitments to such values as hard work, dedication, and honesty have been tarnished, Braun continues to attempt to identify with those values through bolstering to support his ailing reputation. As was also the case in his previously examined apologia, Braun also sought to identify with Major League Baseball‘s anti-steroid policy in this apologia after it was proven that Braun violated the policy. In the final paragraph of his statement, Braun states that he ―support[s] baseball‘s Joint Drug Treatment and Prevention Program and the importance of cleaning up the game.‖ Despite having been found guilty of using performance enhancing

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drugs, Braun seeks identification with the MLB‘s anti-steroid policy in an attempt to bolster his reputation.

While Braun bolsters in his 2013 apologia just as he did in his 2012 apologia, his 2013 statement differs from his original address in that it uses the apologetic factor of differentiation to explain his steroid usage rather than denying the usage of steroids altogether. In utilizing differentiation, Braun attempts to create a new context through which his steroid usage can better be explained.

Braun begins his usage of differentiation by describing how he was suffering from a ―nagging injury‖ toward the end of the 2011 Major League Baseball season, leading Braun to turn to steroids to shorten the recovery time from his injury. According to Braun, this steroid usage caused Braun to enter a mental state whereby he convinced himself that he had done nothing wrong leading to his repeated denials of having ever used steroids. Braun concludes his differentiation by stating that once he had recovered from his aforementioned mental state, he voluntarily acknowledged his violation of Major League Baseball‘s drug policy in a meeting with the league. As such, Braun emphasized that he was not forced to admit his guilt as a result of another positive steroid test.

Through differentiation, Braun is able to explain both why he turned to steroids and lied about using them through the context of injury and a changed mental state.

Having utilized the apologetic factors of bolstering and differentiation within his discourse, Braun‘s statement admitting that he used steroids during the 2011 season is an example of apologetic discourse from the explanative posture. As Ware and Linkugel note, the explanative posture exists as ―a combination of bolstering and differentiation.‖48 Ryan Braun‘s goal of avoiding audience condemnation through the explanative apologetic posture is evidenced by Braun‘s use of bolstering and differentiation as Braun hopes his audience will not condemn him once they understand the rationale for his prior actions.

Like Ryan Braun‘s apologia in which he admits to having used steroids, Lance Armstrong also admits to having used steroids using the explanative posture of apologia and the factors of bolstering and differentiation. In his interview with Oprah Winfrey, Armstrong bolsters through the description of his personal history, describing how growing up with a single mother led him to be ―a fighter‖ and how his cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment made him a ―fierce competitor.‖49 By describing himself as a fighter and fierce competitor who has fought adversity to find success, Armstrong is able to use bolstering to identify with the American value of perseverance. Armstrong also uses bolstering to identify with the anti-steroid policies implemented by the International Cycling Union (UCI). Specifically, Armstrong praises the implementation of out-of-competition-testing by the UCI in addition to the creation of a biological passport for all professional cyclists. Just as Braun used support for Major League Baseball‘s anti-steroid program in an effort to improve his reputation, so too did Lance Armstrong within his own apologia.

In admitting to having used steroids during his professional cycling career, Lance Armstrong utilized the apologetic factor of differentiation to construct

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the context of a steroid culture in professional cycling to explain his own steroid usage to the public audience. Armstrong begins his description of the steroid culture in professional cycling by discussing how he felt that winning in professional cycling without doping was not possible. As part of the steroid culture in cycling, Armstrong goes on to say that in his view, doping was ―part of the job,‖ and his usage of steroids was not cheating because ―the definition of cheat[ing] is to gain an advantage on a rival or foe…that they don‘t have,‖ and Armstrong viewed doping ―as a level playing field.‖ 50 Through differentiation, Armstrong‘s goal is to have his audience view his steroid usage in a new context, the context of a steroid culture in professional cycling, so that Armstrong‘s behavior is not viewed as cheating, but rather as competing on an equal level with his fellow cyclists.

Through the usage of bolstering and differentiation, Armstrong‘s admittance of steroid usage is a second example of apologia from the explanative posture. In his apologia, Armstrong seeks to prevent his audience from condemning him by giving them an understanding of the motives behind his steroid use, a task he achieved through differentiation. Armstrong also uses bolstering in his explanative apologia to further improve his diminished standing with his audience. Armstrong‘s admission of guilt regarding his steroid usage thus stands as an explanative apologia achieved through bolstering and differentiation as was the case for Ryan Braun‘s previously examined apologia.

Analysis of Outside and Rhetorical Constraints When addressing either alleged or confirmed steroid usage, an athlete has three rhetorical options. An athlete can choose to deny the usage of steroids, admit to the usage of steroids, or choose to ignore the subject of steroids altogether. Considering the significant amount of money athletes stand to lose if found guilty of having used steroids, it is not surprising that athletes accused of using steroids first turn to the strategy of denial in their apologias. For example, it is estimated that Lance Armstrong has lost at least $150 million in lifetime earning potential due to endorsement deals that were ended after Armstrong‘s steroid usage was confirmed.51 Due to the fact that athletes stand to lose millions of dollars if their steroid usage is revealed, it makes sense that athletes would deny any steroid usage as clearly as possible—as Palmeiro, Clemens, Braun, and Armstrong each did in their previously studied apologias.

Given the desire among athletes to preserve future income, certain apologetic postures are not logical options for athletes.

For athletes seeking to deny prior steroid usage in an attempt to preserve his/her reputation and future earning potential, the explanative, justificative, and vindicative apologetic postures are not logical rhetorical options. Explanative and justificative postures are not logical options for athletes seeking to deny steroid usage because both admit steroid usage, either explaining one‘s steroid usage or justifying it, respectively. A vindicative posture in this situation would not necessarily feature a denial of steroid usage, instead focusing on the relative value of an athlete compared to his/her accusers. Because the vin-

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dicative posture does not feature a clear denial, the posture is logically worse than the absolutive posture for athletes seeking to make a clear statement that they have never used steroids in an attempt to maintain their reputation and earning potential. Given their shortcomings in this specific rhetorical situation, the explanative, justificative, and vindicative apologetic postures are not logical options for athletes who do not wish to admit to having used steroids. The elimination of the three aforementioned postures leaves the absolutive posture as the only logical rhetorical option for athletes addressing unconfirmed steroid usage.

As evidence mounts against a particular athlete accused of using steroids, the rhetorical strategies an athlete employs must change. When the amount of evidence against an athlete reaches the point where that athlete‘s steroid usage is confirmed, the explanative apologetic posture becomes the most logical rhetorical option for an athlete to employ, leaving the absolutive, justificative, and vindicative postures as less ideal rhetorical options. The absolutive posture is difficult to justify in a situation where an athlete‘s steroid usage is confirmed and a punishment is imminent or has already been made due, in large parts because American sports fans disapprove of steroid usage and think athletes who have used steroids should be punished.52 American sentiment against steroid usage is strong enough that some sports observers have called for punishments against teams with steroid users on their roster.53 The justificative apologetic posture is equally difficult to justify as a rhetorical strategy for an athlete guilty of using steroids given that it requires athletes to seek approval for their actions, the usage of steroids, an activity that a majority of Americans view unfavorably. In the sport of baseball for example, a 2009 poll from CBS and The New York Times found that 60 percent of Americans said it mattered to them ―a lot‖ if players used steroids, and a 2005 poll from ABC and ESPN found that 62 percent of survey respondents said the records of players who used steroids should be erased from history. 54 If the majority of the members of their respective audiences disapprove of steroid usage, it is a fool‘s errand for an athlete to speak from a justificative posture about their own steroid usage.

After an athlete has been found guilty of using steroids, the vindicative apologetic posture is difficult to employ for the same reason the justificative posture is not an ideal apologetic posture in the given rhetorical situation. It has been previously discussed in the literature review that vindicative addresses seek to prove the greater worth of a speaker relative to the worth of his accusers.55 Since a majority of Americans disapprove of steroid usage, it is unlikely that an athlete using the vindicative posture will be able to prove him or herself to be of greater worth than their accusers. Given the rhetorical difficulties associated with using the absolutive, justificative, and vindicative apologetic postures after an athlete has been definitively found to have used steroids, the only logical option for an athlete is to speak from the explanative posture using a combination of bolstering and differentiation, 56 as both Braun and Armstrong did in their respective apologias.

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Apologia in the Steroid Era Steroid-Using Athletes’ Apologias as a Sub-Genre of Apologia

In an ideal world, an athlete who has used steroids would be honest and forthcoming to the American people about their steroid usage. In reality, economic constraints lead athletes to deny any steroid usage. Though not ideal, the most logical apologetic posture for athletes denying prior steroid usage is the absolutive posture. Inevitably, history suggests that athletes who have used steroids will not be able to deny and hide from their past forever. When an athlete‘s prior steroid use is confirmed, the most logical apologetic posture for an athlete to turn to is the explanative posture. If the apologetic discourse of athletes who have used steroids is to be considered a sub-genre of the apologetic genre—and the distinct characteristics of steroid using athletes‘ apologias suggest that it should—it can be concluded that the sub-genre features athletes who deny first through the absolutive posture before turning to the explanative posture once evidence against a particular athlete has mounted to the point that denial is no longer effective.

Implications of Athletes’ Rhetorical Decisions As was previously discussed, sports have a widespread following in the United States. Sports also have a significant economic impact. When athletes choose to deny the usage of steroids, only to later admit to having used steroids, the potential exists for a negative economic impact to be felt by both athletes and their teams. At least this seems the case if the steroid-using athlete is competing in a team sport. The case of Ryan Braun and the Milwaukee brewers provides an example of how a sports team may spend extra money to compensate for negative publicity surrounding an athlete guilty of using steroids.

Following Braun‘s 2013 suspension, the Milwaukee Brewers announced the creation of a ―Fans First‖ campaign in which the Brewers gave a $10 food, beverage, ticket, and merchandise voucher to each fan who attended an August home game. Of the campaign, Brewers Chief Operating Officer Rick Schlesinger said ―we were finalizing something like this to give back to our loyal fans just as news of Ryan [Braun]‘s suspension hit.‖ Estimates suggest the Fans First program cost the Brewers $3.6 million. 57 The $3.6 million spent by the Brewers to counter negative sentiment surrounding Braun‘s steroid admission is likely only a fraction of the economic loss suffered by the Brewers following Braun‘s suspension. The figure, after all, does not include revenue lost from individuals who would otherwise have purchased Braun memorabilia, which also forced retailers to offer discounts on Braun jerseys and t-shirts.58 The aforementioned figure also fails to account for lost ticket revenue from fans not attending games with the Brewers‘ star player missing from the lineup.

Admission of steroid usage after previous and repeated denials also leads to potentially negative economic consequences for players who are later found guilty of using steroids. After admitting to having used steroids, several companies ended their sponsorship of cyclist Lance Armstrong. For Armstrong, it

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is estimated that the loss of endorsement deals represents a loss of over $150 million in future earning potential.59 Similarly, Ryan Braun‘s steroid admission and subsequent suspension led to the Brewers‘ outfielder losing several of his own endorsements, although the monetary value of Braun‘s endorsement losses is not known.60 While sports teams may experience economic losses following the steroid usage of certain players, the case of Lance Armstrong shows that those losses can be dwarfed by endorsement losses faced by individual athletes found guilty of steroid usage.

In addition to potentially resulting in negative economic implications, when athletes continually lie and deny steroid allegations until their denials are no longer convincing to the public they wrongly teach children who view athletes as role models that it is okay to cheat by using steroids in an effort to become better athletes. According to a study published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 57 percent of students in grades 8 through 12 who admitted to using steroids said professional athletes influenced their decision to use steroids. 63 percent of students also said that their friends‘ decisions to use steroids were influenced by professional athletes. 61 This consequence of professional athletes‘ steroid usage and the influence of professional athletes on children is especially troubling considering the potential of steroid use to result in damage to the vital organs of children or even death.62 The economic impact of athletes guilty of using steroids may be significant, but it pales in comparison to the impact of professional athletes‘ influence over young people and their ability to influence children to use steroids.

Following the analysis of apologias from four professional athletes accused of using steroids, specific characteristics found in each apologia studied were revealed. The apologias examined in this essay that were delivered before an athlete‘s steroid usage was confirmed each featured the absolutive apologetic posture and the apologetic strategies of bolstering and denial. Each apologia studied that came after an athlete‘s steroid usage was confirmed and a punishment had been made utilized the explanative apologetic posture and the strategies of bolstering and differentiation. Further analysis of the economic implications associated with admitting steroid usage also suggests that athletes will deny any steroid usage when first confronted with steroid allegations, making the explanative, justificative, and vindicative apologetic postures logically inferior to the absolutive posture in such a situation. Once an athlete‘s steroid usage is confirmed, analysis of the available apologetic postures suggests that the explanative posture is the best logical option for an athlete. The analysis of the postures available to athletes addressing steroid allegations seem to suggest that the apologias of athletes examined by this study utilized the most logical rhetorical postures given their situations in addition to suggesting that the absolutive and explanative apologetic postures are characteristic of the apologetic sub-genre of athletes‘ steroid-addressing discourse.

While this research provides new insight to the study of apologia, particularly as it relates to sports, a discussion of the implications of this study must also include a note of caution as to what this study does not do. The results of this study show how athletes respond to allegations that they used performance

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enhancing drugs, but the results of this study should not be applied to the discourse of athletes who have responded to allegations that they have used drugs or some other banned substance other than steroids. Within the American populace, different drugs or banned substances have different connotations, meaning that the apologetic rhetorical strategies that must be used to address steroid usage may not be the same strategies that the usage of a different substance necessitates. As the literature review that prefaced this analysis of apologia in sports noted, very little previous research has been done with regard to these apologias in general. While this study describes how athletes utilize apologetic discourse to respond to the question of steroids in sports, it does not describe how athletes speak apologetically about any other subject. As such, the results of this research project should not be considered to be characteristic of any athlete‘s apologia on any subject. Essentially, this study provides an analysis of one sub-genre of apologetic discourse that athletes can employ, meaning that the results of this analysis may not apply to other apologetic discourse that seeks to address rhetorical exigencies other than the ones that this study analyzes.

Although the results of this research may not be applicable to the apologias of professional athletes in general, it has been noted that a study of the apologias within the realm of sports discourse is virtually non-existent. Very few studies have attempted to analyze how athletes respond to rhetorical situations calling for apologia, a surprising fact given the role that sports plays in American society. As a result of this lack of research, significant opportunities exist for further analysis into how athletes use apologias in response to various situations. Such situations in sports that could call for apologetic discourse from athletes include: decisions made during the course of a game or match that led to a team or individual‘s defeat, a significant number of penalties or fouls from an athlete during a game, fighting or arguing with players or officials that lead to an ejection, other off-the-field actions such as criminal activity or nonsteroid substance abuse, or any number of additional situations. Simply put, this analysis of athletes‘ apologias in response to steroid allegations only begins to delve into the subject of apologias in the context of sports discourse.

In the United States, professional sports and the athletes who compete in them are an influential part of society. Individuals make purchasing decisions under influences from professional athletes based on endorsement deals, and they look up to professional athletes as role models. Because of the influence professional athletes have on the American population, when athletes engage in a behavior or are rumored to have engaged in a behavior that the American public views unfavorably, their public apologias have a significant impact on how the public views those athletes. The usage of steroids is an example of a behavior that the public views unfavorably, and while the specific content of athletes‘ apologias in response to steroid usage may differ, the apologias of Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, Ryan Braun, and Lance Armstrong studied here suggest that the apologias of athletes who have used steroids have similar characteristics. These similar characteristics suggest that athletes will deny from the absolutive posture when first facing steroid allegations only to move

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to the explanative posture once evidence against them becomes more concrete. Consistent characteristics across the aforementioned apologias studied here suggest that the discourse of athletes addressing steroid allegations can be considered as a specific sub-genre of the apologetic genre.

Apologia in the Steroid Era

30 Notes

1.) ―The Harris Poll: Football Continues to be America‘s Favorite Sport; the Gap With Baseball Narrows Slightly this Year,‖ Harris Interactive, January 17, 2013, http:// www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris%20Poll%203%20-%20Favorite% 20Sport_1.17.13.pdf.

2.) ―Sports Industry Overview,‖ Plunkett Research, Ltd., http://plunkettresearch.com/ sports-recreation-leisure-market-research/industry-statistics (accessed October 15, 2013).

3.) Leigh Steinberg, ―Why Do We Make Athletes Role Models?,‖ Forbes, January 20, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2013/01/20/why-do-we-make-athletes -role-models/.

4.) Chris Smith, ―Why It‘s Time to Legalize Steroids in Professional Sports,‖ Forbes, August 24, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2012/08/24/why-its-time-tolegalize-steroids-in-professional-sports/.

5.) Emily Smith, ―Many Yankees Fans Feel Betrayed By A-Rod: ‗He Broke My Heart, Actually,‘‖ CBS, August 5, 2013, http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/08/05/manyyankees-fans-feel-betrayed-by-a-rod-he-broke-my-heart-actually/.

6.) B.L. Ware and Wil A. Linkugel, ―They Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ in Readings in Rhetorical Criticism, ed. Carl R. Burgchardt (State College, PA: Strata Publishing, Inc., 2010), 463.

7.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 464.

8.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 465-466.

9.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 466-467.

10.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 467.

11.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 470.

12.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 470.

13.) Noreen Wales Kruse, ―Apologia in Team Sport,‖ The Quarterly Journal of Speech 67 (1981): 270-283; Kevin R. Meyer, ―An Examination of Michael Vick‘s Speech of Apologia: Implications for the Study of Sports Apologia and Image Repair,‖ Paper presented at the meeting of the National Communication Association, San Diego, CA., November 2008; Finn Frandsen and Winni Johansen, ―The Apology of a Sports Icon: Crisis Communication and Apologetic Ethics,‖ Journal of Linguistics 38 (2007): 85-

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104; Janet S. Fink, John F. Borland, and Sarah K. Fields, ―Sexist Acts in Sports: Media Reactions and Forms of Apologia,‖ International Journal of Sports Communication 4 (2011): 198.

14.) Kevin R. Meyer. ―Steroids and Ethics in Baseball: Testing Apologia and Image Repair Theories.‖ Paper presented at the meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL, November 2007, 13.

15.) ―The Steroids Era,‖ ESPN, December 5, 2012, http://espn.go.com/mlb/topics/_/ page/the-steroids-era.

16.) Chris Greenberg, ―MLB Suspensions: A-Rod Among 13 Players Suspended But Only One to Appeal PED Punishment,‖ The Huffington Post, August 5, 2013, http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/mlb-suspensions-drugsbiogenesis_n_3707913.html.

17.) ―Steroid Suspensions,‖ Baseball Almanac, http://www.baseball-almanac.com/ legendary/steroids_baseball.shtml (accessed November 8, 2013).

18.) ―Report: Sosa tested positive for steroids in 2003,‖ Sports Illustrated, June 16, 2009, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/06/16/sosa.steroids/.

19.) ―Single-Season Leaders & Records for Home Runs,‖ Baseball-Reference.com, accessed November 8, 2013, http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/ HR_season.shtml.

20.) ―Year by Year Leaders for Home Runs,‖ Baseball Almanac, http://www.baseballalmanac.com/hitting/hihr5.shtml (accessed November 8, 2013).

21.) ―Most Valuable Player winners,‖ Major League Baseball, http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/ awards/mlb_awards_content.jsp?content=mvp_history (accessed November 8, 2013).

22.) Duff Wilson, ―Congressinal Committee Extends Steroids Inquiry,‖ The New York Times, April 1, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/sports/ baseball/01steroids.html.

23.) Jorge Arangure Jr., ―Palmeiro Suspended For Steroid Violation,‖ The Washington Post, August 2, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2005/08/01/AR2005080100739.html.

24.) Alan Schwarz, ―Analysis: The Clemens and McNamee Hearing,‖ The New York Times, February 13, 2008, http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/live-analysis-ofhearings/.

25.) Bob Nightengale, ―Ryan Braun tests positive for PED, says ‗It‘s BS,‘‖ USA Today, December 11, 2011, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2011/12/ ryan-braun-steroids-50-game-suspension-appeal/1#.Un7huOL9UWs. 26.) Eben Novy-Williams, ―Braun Says Mishandled Drug Sample Led to His Baseball Ban Being Overturned,‖ Bloomberg, February 24, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/

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news/2012-02-24/braun-says-mishandled-drug-sample-led-to-his-baseball-ban-beingoverturned.html.

27.) Associated Press, ―Ryan Braun: ‗I‘m a victim of a process,‘‖ CBS News, February 24, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-400_162-57384766/.

28.) USA Today, ―Ryan Braun‘s statement apologizing for doping,‖ USA Today, August 22, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2013/08/22/ryanbraun-statement-apology-steroids-suspension/2690041/.

29.) Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "Tour de France," http:// www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/600732/Tour-de-France (accessed November 08, 2013).

30.) Alan McLean, Archie Tse, and Lisa Waananen, ―Top Finishers of the Tour de France Tainted by Doping,‖ The New York Times, August 24, 2012, http:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/24/sports/top-finishers-of-the-tour-de-francetainted-by-doping.html.

31.) Associated Press, ―Armstrong Wins His Last Tour de France,‖ Fox News, July 25, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/07/25/armstrong-wins-his-last-tour-defrance/.

32.) Stephen McMillan, ―Lance Armstrong‘s doping denials – in quotes,‖ The Guardian, January 18, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/jan/18/lance-armstrongdoping-denials-quotes.

33.) Bruce Weber and Juliet Macur, ―A Champion Against Cancer, Now Under Siege,‖ The New York Times, August 21, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/sports/ cycling/22armstrong.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

34.) Juliet Macur, ―Lance Armstrong Is Stripped of His 7 Tour de France Titles,‖ The New York Times, October 22, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/sports/ cycling/armstrong-stripped-of-his-7-tour-de-france-titles.html.

35.) Chris Smith, ―Lance Armstrong, Cycling‘s All-Time Great, Faces Lifetime Ban For Doping,‖ Forbes, June 13, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ chrissmith/2012/06/13/lance-armstrong-cyclings-all-time-great-faces-lifetime-ban-fordoping/.

36.) Jay Hart, ―USADA Report Reveals Lance Armstrong as the Greatest Fraud in American Sports,‖ Yahoo Sports, October 10, 2012, http://sports.yahoo.com/news/usada -report-reveals-lance-armstrong-as-the-greatest-fraud-in-american-sports.html.

37.) CNN, ―CNN Larry King Live Interview With Lance Armstrong,‖ CNN.com, August 25, 2005, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0508/25/lkl.01.html.

38.) Brent Schrotenboer, ―The Oprah interview: Lance Armstrong‘s High-Wire Act,‖ USA Today, January 17, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2013/01/16/lancearmstrong-oprah-winfrey-interview/1840725/.

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39.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 470.

40.) Rafael Palmeiro, ―Testimony of Rafael Palmeiro before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform,‖ March 17, 2005, http:// www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-109hrpt310/html/CRPT-109hrpt310.htm.

41.) Rafael Palmeiro, ―Testimony of Rafael Palmeiro before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform,‖ March 17, 2005.

42.) Roger Clemens, ―Statement of Roger Clemens, Major League Baseball Player,‖ Associated Press, February 13, 2008, http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_sports/ baseball08/clemens_congress/hearing_transcript021308.pdf.

43.) Roger Clemens, ―Statement of Roger Clemens, Major League Baseball Player.‖ 44.) Roger Clemens, ―Statement of Roger Clemens, Major League Baseball Player.‖ 45.) Ryan Braun, ―Transcript of Ryan Braun‘s statement,‖ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 24, 2012, http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/140333483.html.

46.) Lance Armstrong, ―CNN Larry King Live Interview With Lance Armstrong,‖ CNN.com, August 25, 2005, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0508/25/ lkl.01.html.

47.) Ryan Braun, ―Ryan Braun‘s statement apologizing for doping,‖ USA Today, August 22, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2013/08/22/ryanbraun-statement-apology-steroids-suspension/2690041/.

48.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 470.

49.) Lance Armstrong, ―Full Transcript: Lance Armstrong on Oprah,‖ Armchair Spectator, January 23, 2013, http://armchairspectator.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/fulltranscript-lance-armstrong-on-oprah/.

50.) Lance Armstrong, ―Full Transcript: Lance Armstrong on Oprah.‖ 51.) Patrick Rishe, ―Armstrong Will Lose $150 Million in Future Earnings After Nike and Other Sponsors Dump Him,‖ Forbes, October 18, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/ sites/prishe/2012/10/18/nike-proves-deadlier-than-cancer-as-armstrong-will-lose-150million-in-future-earnings/.

52.) Mark Memmott, ―Do You Care if Ball Players Use Steroids? Polls Say Fans Do,‖ National Public Radio, June 5, 2013, http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwoway/2013/06/05/188933226/do-you-care-if-ball-players-use-steroids-polls-say-fans-do.

53.) Ted Berg, ―If MLB is serious about stopping steroids, teams should be punished too,‖ USA Today, November 21, 2013, http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/11/alex-rodriguezyankees-peds-steroids-mlb-sanctions/.

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Apologia in the Steroid Era

54.) Mark Memmott, ―Do You Care if Ball Players Use Steroids? Polls Say Fans Do.‖ 55.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 470.

56.) Ware and Linkugel, ―The Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,‖ 470.

57.) John Otano, ―Brewers owner offers $3.6 million in vouchers to fans after Ryan Braun suspension,‖ Sports Illustrated, July 29, 2013, http://tracking.si.com/2013/07/29/ ryan-braun-brewers-suspension-fallout/.

58.) Don Walker, ―For Shopko and Kohl‘s, it‘s clearance time for Braun merchandise,‖ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 25, 2013, http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/ sports/216947551.html.

59.) Patrick Rishe, ―Armstrong Will Lose $150 Million in Future Earnings After Nike and Other Sponsors Dump Him.‖ 60.) Jay Sorgi, ―Braun loses Nike endorsement deal,‖ WTMJ-TV, August 2, 2013, http:// www.todaystmj4.com/sports/milwaukee-brewers/Braun-loses-Nike-endorsement-deal218136051.html.

61.) Jacqueline Stenson, ―Kids on Steroids Willing to Risk It All For Success,‖ NBC News, March 3, 2008, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22984780/#.Up_4z-I4kWs. 62.) Manny Alvarez, ―A Dangerous Trend: Kids and Teens using Steroids,‖ Fox News, November 19, 2012, http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/11/19/dangerous-trend-kidsand-teens-using-steroids/.

35

Relativistic Jets Emanating from a Black Hole Due to the Acceleration by the Magnetic Field Generated by the Accretion Disk Adrien Saremi University of Alabamaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Huntsville

Jared Johnson Monmouth College When matter falls towards a black hole, it will form a disk around the black hole known as the accretion disk. Accretion disks have been observed to give rise to relativistic jets coming from the central object. The hypothesis is that the magnetic field produced by a charged accretion disk directs the outflow along the rotation axis of the central object, so that, when conditions are suitable, a jet will emerge from each face of the accretion disk. We have constructed a model of the magnetic field produced by an accretion disk around a black hole in an active galactic nucleus, and used it to show that particles coming off the accretion disk move in the z direction. A computer program was created to simulate the motion of a particle in the magnetic field. The particle is shown to leave its circular motion and move in the z direction.

Introduction Einsteinâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s theory of general relativity predicted the existence of black holes. A black hole is a spacetime region of strong gravitational field left after matter collapses. The strong gravitational field prevents anything from escaping, even light.1 When matter falls towards a black hole, it will form a disk around the black hole known as the accretion disk. 2 Gravity causes some material from the accretion disk to fall into the black hole. Accretion disks have been observed to give rise to jets along their polar axes. Why these jets form is an unsolved problem in physics and one which is of interest to astrophysicists.

To explain the formation of relativistic jets along the axis of rotation of a black hole, we use two major computations. The first consists of computing the magnetic field (B-field) generated by the rotating and charged accretion disk around the black hole. For this computation, we use the Biot-Savart law. The accretion disk is approximated by a set of single rings. The program computes the B-field for each ring and sums over all the rings. Once the magnetic field was computed and verified, we then designed a second program that calculates

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Relativistic Jets Emanating from a Black Hole

the trajectory of a charged particle under the influence of the Lorentz force.

Starting the particles in different positions along the accretion disk, the program allows us to calculate the trajectory upward and inward toward the zaxis. Both of these programs were written in Fortran language and graphed with Mathematica.

Magnetic Field Single Loop In order to compute the magnetic field generated by the spinning and charged accretion disk, we first considered the disk as the summation of many single rings. Such a ring is depicted in Figure 1, in the xy-plane, with radius R, centered on the origin. In this figure point P is an arbitrary location at which we wish to compute the magnetic field.

In physics, the BiotSavart law describes the magnetic field generated by an electric current.3 The law provides us with an equation to calculate the B-field produced by each ring.

Figure 1 Current carrying ring of radius R in the xy-plane centered at the origin

(1) where Âľ0 is the vacuum permeability I is the electric current in the loop dl is the infinitesimal element of length of the source R is the radius of the loop is the vector from source to detector where is the detector position and is the source position

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For the specific case of a ring in the xy-plane, we have: and

(2) a,b,c

(3)

(4)

Therefore (5)

(6)

(7)

The magnetic field in the x direction is determined to be zero as we have chosen field points, , in the yz-plane (x = 0) and the loop is symmetrical about the z-axis. We then computed the magnitude of the magnetic field in the yz-plane in terms of y and z coordinates. Using our computer program, we computed these integrals given by Biot-Savart by summing the magnetic field over small portions of the loop (summation over the angle with an increment of 1.0째).

Figure 2 shows the lines of magnetic force for a single loop, interpolated from the magnetic field data given by our program. The values for the variables were chosen for graphical convenience.

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Relativistic Jets Emanating from a Black Hole

Figure 2 Lines of magnetic field in the yz-plane, for a current carrying loop of radius R = 1.0 and current I = 1.0

Accretion Disk To obtain the magnetic field for a disk, we simply add the previous results for a certain amount of rings, each of different radius. In our case, we decided to have the disk span the distance from to and to use 100 rings (here the summation is over the radius with an increment of 1/100).

Another characteristic specific to the accretion disk is that the current in each loop is inversely proportional to the square root of the radius because the speed of a particle in the accretion disk follows a Keplerian motion. The results are shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 3 Lines of magnetic field for an accretion disk running from r = 1.0 to 2.0 and .

The magnetic field lines are plotted in 2D, but can easily be thought of as a representation for the 3D image by rotating the Figure 3 around the z-axis.

Mathematical method to compute the Magnetic Field In order to make sure that our program is correct, we mathematically computed the B-field for arbitrary points in space. Instead of reasoning on infinitesimal source of currents like in the Fortran program, we here deal with integral forms.4 We also use cylindrical coordinates: P (Ď ,0,z). Due to the symmetry of the situation, we set Ď&#x2022; = 0. Before computing the magnetic field, we first compute the vector magnetic potential3 :

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Relativistic Jets Emanating from a Black Hole

(8)

where r is the distance between the point source and the detector. From the geometry of the situation (see Figure 1) we have: (9)

(in Cartesian) ;

(in cylindrical) (10)

where R is the radius of the ring, is the angle from the axis to the source point, and ρ is the cylindrical radius to the point P in Figure 1. An expression for in cylindrical coordinates (ρ, ϕ, z) is obtained, where ϕ is the angular coordinate of the detector position.

(11)

E1(k) and E2(k) are elliptic integrals of the first and the second kind, and are given by the following equations, where θ is an arbitrary integration variable:

(12)

(13) a, b

We note that only lies on which implies that has a radial and zcomponents in cylindrical coordinates. is obtained from the curl of :

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(14)

Equation (14) allows us to find an expression of BĎ and Bz. We can use BĎ to find expressions for Bx and By: (15) (16) Therefore

(17)

(18)

(19) Since these equations characterize the B-field only for a single loop, our verification only deals with an accretion disk as the sum of two single rings. We then compute (Bx, By, Bz) for each of the two rings using equations 17, 18, and 19 and then take the sum to get the total B-field produced by the accretion disk.

Finally, we compute the B-field using our Fortran program and compare the results with the curl of outlined above. We checked four random points at different (x,y,z) and in the worst case, the B-field from the handwritten formula matches the Fortran program within five parts per million.

Particle Trajectory The final model consists of a particle rotating just above the accretion disk and then, under the influence of the magnetic field, rising up and in towards the z-axis. The particle starts in the (y, z) plane at a small z = 0.2 and at y = y0 with

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Relativistic Jets Emanating from a Black Hole

an initial velocity directed in the x-direction . We start the particle at a small z = 0.2 because the magnetic field diverges at z = 0.

In physics, the force on a particle due to electromagnetic fields is given by the Lorentz equation: (20)

(21)

If we consider â&#x2C6;&#x2020;t sufficiently small so that the velocity remains approximately constant over that amount of time, we can find the change in velocity:

(22)

For each step â&#x2C6;&#x2020;t, the program reads the position and the velocity of the previous step (the initial conditions). It then computes the magnetic field at this point in order to obtain, from which we get and finally the new vector position: . This operation is repeated over 100 steps, thus obtaining the trajectory of the particle. This program was run five times, each particle starting at a different positions on the y-axis. The conditions used:

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Figure 4 Three-dimensional image of the particle trajectory, due to the magnetic field of the accretion disk. In this case, the black hole, represented by its event horizon here (the limit of no return for any particle) is a Kerr Black Hole, which means it is spinning but it is not charged.

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Relativistic Jets Emanating from a Black Hole

Figure 5 Particlesâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC; trajectory in the yz-plane

Figure 6 Particlesâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC; trajectory in the xz-plane

Figure 4 is the three-dimensional image of the particles trajectory. This figure illustrates the accretion disk with inner radius being the inside ring, R = 1 and outer radius being the outside ring, R = 2. Also illustrated is the black hole, centered at the origin and the rotation axis of the black hole, in the zdirection. Our three-dimensional image plotted in Mathematica shows how the particles move due to the magnetic field produced by the accretion disk.

To better visualize the trajectory of the particles, Figures 5 and 6 show the two-dimensional motion in the yz-plane and xz-plane respectively.

Formation of relativistic jets As we can see from Figures 4 through 6, the particles leave the accretion disk and move in an upward/downward direction, along the axis of rotation of the black hole. The particles tend to move on a straight line when they get far enough away from the accretion disk, some passing through the z-axis.

So how do the particles stay near the z-axis? As we get close to the black hole, space and time are twisted due to the angular momentum of the black hole and of the accretion disk. According to the current model established by Roger Blandford5, the magnetic field lines also are twisted around the z-axis, resulting in an accumulation of the particles near the axis of rotation of the black hole, which could explain why the relativistic jets are long and narrow.

Therefore, we have constructed a model which demonstrates that particles can be accelerated vertically away from the accretion disk and inward toward the z-axis. Together with the frame-dragging effects of general relativity, this results in a relativistic jet.

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Acknowledgments We would first like to thank Dr. John Poirier for his guidance throughout the summer, and Dr. Umesh Garg for his involvement in the REU program. We would also like to thank Aaron Sawyer for his help and his contribution to our paper. Finally, we would like to thank Dr. Mark Caprio of the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Thomas Catanach of Cal Tech, and Dr. Michael Sostarecz of Monmouth College for their support and their help in plotting our graphs in Mathematica.

References 1.) Frolov, V. P., and Andrei Zelnikov. Introduction to Black Hole Physics.

Oxford: Oxford UP, USA, 2011. Print.

2.) Urry, Megan C., and Paolo Padovani. "Unified Schemes for Radio-Loud Active Galactic Nuclei." Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 107 (1995): 804-05.

3.) Jim Stiles, ―The Biot-Savart Law and the Magnetic Potential vector.‖ The University of Kansas, last modified November 14, 2004. http:// www.ittc.ku.edu/~jstiles/220/handouts/ section_7_3_The_Biot_Savart_Law_package.pdf 4.) ―Deriving the expression for the off-axis magnetic field of a circular current loop.‖ Grant Trebbin, last modified on April 11, 2012. https:// docs.google.com/file/d/0B5Hb04O3hlQSa0dGdlUtRnQ5OXM/edit? pli=1

46

Israel‟s Economic Motives for Colonizing the West Bank Joshua Tenenbaum Beloit College Now verging on a half-century, Israel’s settlements in the West Bank leave a profound legacy for the study of international relations. Labeled one of the key hurdles to the peace process, understanding the dynamic of Israel’s continuing domination of the West Bank has never been more important: what has been the primary motivator for Israel’s increasingly civilian acquisition of the West Bank? Numerous explanations vary from ideology and religion to defense and security. However, a careful examination of the economic activity as an underlying, yet progressing component of the occupation concludes that the state has intentionally hindered the development and independence of the Palestinian economy in order to export the territory’s potential to Israel. This has established the state as the regional economic superpower. This paper finds that Israel’s primary motivating factor in settling the West Bank is a two-fold outcome: economic expansion for itself and submission for the Palestinian nation; it should be seen first and foremost as an expression of economic colonialism.

Therefore, the disastrous economic situation of the Palestinian West Bank, contrasted with the booming and industrialized economy of its neighbor, is the intended result of the settlements.

Introduction On a diplomatic trip to Israel and the West Bank in 2013, United States Secretary of State John Kerry remarked that reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis would have to come through an improvement of the current situation of mistrust. Specifically, he identified the ―economic front‖ as a major roadblock to peace processes.1 To an audience of Israeli policymakers, Secretary Kerry‘s statement is quite profound, as he is referring to Israel‘s economic policy in the West Bank, the land chartered by the UN to be Palestine into which Israel has been methodically extending itself during the last 50 years. The story is one of power and submission, by which Israel settles Palestinian land, acquiring important resources and severely encroaching on Palestinian development. Secretary Kerry is correct that the purposeful economic imbalance lies at the heart of this conflict; however, as peace processes continue to resurface without resolution, it is imperative to address Israel‘s primary motivation for its increasingly civilian takeover of Palestine.

The saga began in 1967 after Israel‘s victory of the Six Days War with

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neighboring states Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. Setting the stage for the occupation, the war permanently changed the political geography of the region. Settlements in the West Bank defy the tenets of the state system and of international law and are among the most contentious and controversial issues in current affairs. A series of legal maneuvers has allowed Israel to intrude deeply into the West Bank, both physically and civilly, calling into question its stated ambitions of security maintenance.

Physically, the state has taken control of 42% of West Bank lands by reserving them as state territory or military zones, reports the human rights organization B‘Tselem.2 In addition to the primary military acquisitions, the state managed to annex land by moving its population to the territory. For example, it subsidized 50% of land development costs for Israelis settling in the exterior.

Furthermore, economic incentives, such as tax breaks and access to cheap labor for businesses, encouraged Israeli citizens to settle the West Bank. 3 Israel‘s reward system therefore serves as a catalyst to its implementation of a residential, commercial, and military presence in the West Bank. The three dimensions of its presence all legitimize the need for continued Israeli growth in the region. Consequently, the land acquisitions have been extremely harmful to Palestine‘s agrarian economy.

Morally, the state deconstructed Palestinian claims to the West Bank by calling the land by its biblical names of Judea and Samaria, encouraging Jewish biblical rights to the land and erasing the Armistice Line of 1949 from ―atlases, maps, and textbooks,‖ thereby eliminating the negative moral implications of the expansion.4 Having justified the occupation to its citizens, the state began moving its citizens en masse, and the subsequent population growth has been institutionalized as a permanent trend. Whereas the first phase of the movement established defensive forces and a few rudimentary settlements near the 1967 borders, the second and third phases witnessed unprecedented growth; between the years of 1980 and 2010, the settler population increased 122%.5 In doing so, the state created a moral imperative to avoid displacing the very citizens it encouraged to move. This narrative has been employed numerous times in negotiations as a reason to retain West Bank lands.

Civilly, the state injected itself into Palestinian daily life by limiting building, development, movement, imports, exports, capital flows, and even speech.

The intervention has fostered a direct impairment of Palestinian growth. Now, a complex series of Jewish-only roads, security checkpoints, and legal restrictions severely limits movement in the West Bank. This has been identified as a primary hurdle to Palestinian economic development. As 80% of Palestine‘s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is dependent on (mostly agricultural) international trade, the burdensome restrictions cripple the economy. 6 In fact, the combination of resource domination and restrictions in the region coincided with a 60% drop in per capita GDP from 1999 to 2008, according to the World Bank.7 Additionally, Israel has used its permanent expansion to acquire natural and human capital. The state‘s growth was not sustainable given the resources in Israel and the large influx of Jewish immigrants. To overcome these limita-

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Israel‘s Economic Motives for Colonizing the West Bank

tions, the state took control of the vast majority of water resources and enacted burdensome restrictions on Palestinian water use. Diverting this water to Israeli agriculture and manufacturing has been a key expression of economic dominance, as it hindered sustainability and growth in the Palestinian economy.

Additionally, recent legislation allows Israeli companies to export raw materials from Palestinian mines, mirroring the precedent set by the allocation of water. By these means, Israel has created an inverse effect on the economy of the West Bank--disrupting the Palestinian economy in turn for increased Israeli opportunity.

Although the state claims motives such as security, the unprecedented encroachment in civil life suggests economic reasons for the state‘s aggressive expansion. Also challenging Israel‘s rationale is the fact that the state has yet to define the territory as official government or private property, a mechanism used to exclude Palestinians from economic and civil protections under Israeli law.8 This paper seeks to pinpoint the primary motivating factor of Israel‘s everincreasing settlement activity. It argues that Israel‘s occupation of the West Bank should be seen, first and foremost, as an expression of economic colonialism. The state‘s unprecedented increase in civil control of the West Bank and the resulting economic opportunity contrasts the under-development of the Palestinian economy, which is indicative of the state‘s exertion of economic superiority.

I will first outline the three phases of the settlement movement and how state actions indicate an interest in exacerbating the economic gap with its neighbors. Though evident since the beginning, this trend has become increasingly pronounced as the settlements progressed. Following this, I briefly explain how rule of law in Israel has facilitated a climate of intentional ambiguity that is crafted around allowing Israeli growth while enforcing limitations on the Palestinians. Next, I explore Israel‘s control over capital flows in the territory, as well as its monopolization of water resources and labor flows; these trends suggest an economic imperative. Finally, I examine how the restriction of movement has been used as a legal mechanism to open the Israeli economy, whilst intentionally closing its counterpart.

Literature Review Scholarly Work There are five main explanations to describe Israel‘s underlying motives for its continuing control of the West Bank: geopolitics, biblical heritage, defensive and diplomatic, ethnic cleansing, and economic.

Hassan Abdul Kadir Saleh frames Israel‘s settlement activity in a geopolitical narrative but also employs the economic factor. Saleh states that the settlements began as a temporary defensive ―buffer zone‖ after the 1967 War. However, as the political desire to increase the state‘s presence took hold of Israeli politics in the ensuing 20 years, it became clear that the long-term objective of the colonial expansion was ―absorbing West Bank lands by the

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weakening of economic links‖ of the Palestinians.9 Saleh examines the major increases in settlements in the aftermath of a series of wars and conflicts. He sees the economic interference as a means to achieve the overarching goals of the settlement project, which he defines as religious, historical, security, political, and economic.

Rhetorically, the Israeli government has justified its actions in a religious and security-focused manner, but this excludes examination of the facets of everyday Palestinian life that Israel has managed to control, many of which have been criticized as having no real grounds besides ethnic subjugation.

Sara Roy is among the most respected names in the subject of Israel‘s exterior. She coined the concept of ―de-development,‖ which refers to the manner in which Israel has not only built up its own economic arsenal in the occupied territory, but also intentionally prevented the development of the Palestinian economy in the West Bank and Gaza through a complicated series of movement restrictions and arbitrary commerce laws that virtually close the Palestinian economy, prevent consistent trade with the outside world, and restrict the import of capital that would allow the economy to improve methods of production and form a competitive manufacturing sector. She offers a compelling series of examples, and her ―de-development‖ will be my platform to investigate Israel‘s intention in settling the West Bank.

Roy‘s arguments have managed to explain recent developments in the West Bank more successfully than the geopolitical arguments of Saleh, and her direct analysis of statistics are convincing. In addition, Roy offers a direct explanation for Israel‘s intrusion into civilian life, a concept evaded by many other scholars on the subject. Whereas Roy explores the effect of Israel‘s occupation, this paper seeks the cause: was Israel‘s decision to convert its rudimentary military presence in the West Bank into a civilian and capitalist enterprise shortly after the Six-Day War an economic decision? Answering this question would provide a base level for analysis of the conflict.

The foremost expert on Israel‘s settlement activity, Neve Gordon, argues that Israel‘s intentions throughout 1967-2008 were specifically to remove Palestinian presence in the occupied territories. His in-depth analysis proves that expanded restrictions of movement and ethnic policing aim to separate the two populations. He focuses on the intended social as well as political and economic repercussions of the increased settler presence, especially due to the increasing, lawless violence toward Palestinian villages and infrastructure under the dualistic law that applies differentially to Israeli citizens and Palestinian residents. From this vantage point, economic and social policies were a means to control the Palestinians.

Gordon effectively reduces ideology and security into propaganda that Israel used to ―normalize‖ the occupation to its citizens and the international community, a claim that will be examined in this paper. Like Roy, Gordon uses major events in the occupied territory as a framework for institutional changes, but not as the basis for forming his argument. He mainly focuses on making sense of Israel‘s ―ground game,‖ or its excessive methods of instating itself as the sole legitimate ruler through arbitrary and contradictory use of force and

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Israel‘s Economic Motives for Colonizing the West Bank

political capital.

In many cases, Gordon supports Roy: Israel strategically takes land from key economic strongholds, which fuels Palestinian de-development. Due to the loss in international prestige, the back lashing hostilities, and the extensive resources that Israel has invested in the settlement project, it does not seem likely that Israel would be acting on a solely ideological basis (i.e. ethnic cleansing).

The arguments of Roy and Gordon have an interesting intersection in their use of an economic lens to explain the conflict: by expelling the Palestinians from areas of economic importance, whilst dividing and controlling their population, Israel has managed to invigorate its own economic base and constrain that of the Palestinians, increasing its power as a state in all matters, and gaining an edge in the tumultuous Middle East. Therefore, this paper argues that Israel‘s primary motivating factor for its continued settlement project is economic; it is, first and foremost, an expression of colonialism.

Methodology ―Settlement‖ refers to holdings of Israeli citizens or state entities constructed after 1967 on West Bank land. Settlements are sponsored and oftentimes subsidized by the state itself but are not legitimate under international law. Gordon describes the settlement project as a series of actions by which Israel moves civilian communities to the area and develops ―an infrastructure of control‖ whose political status is intentionally ambiguous. 10 In turn, ―outposts‖ or ―illegal settlements‖ are smaller, ideologically based enclaves throughout the West Bank that are condemned (though trivially) by the state. 11 Finally, this paper defines Israel‘s expansion in the West Bank as an act of economic colonialism, or the act of acquiring, controlling and populating foreign lands (partially or fully) in search of a capital incentive. 12 The settlements themselves are the physical means through which the state monopolizes the economic potential of the territory.

The Colonization Three Stages The settlement project took three distinctive phases, each with progressively higher levels of civilian and economic control. In the first stage, which began directly after the Six Days War, the state secured the territory with rudimentary military presence. In fact, directly after the cease-fire, the Israeli government passed the Allon Plan, which militarily annexed 25-40% of the West Bank.13 This allowed for the increased physical control that resulted from populating the land‘s key geographical entities in the second stage. In turn, populating the territory allowed for the economic domination of the third stage.

Israel was quickly moving up the economic ladder from its socialist, agrarian roots in commune-style kibbutzim to the production of rudimentary technology and weapons.14 However, it was disadvantaged in land and population.

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The accruement of capital that allowed for Israel‘s industrial expansion was artificially rapid, as the state has always had a large donor and investor base in the United States and Europe.15 Thirsts for water, land, and mining resources for the growing population and industrial sector quickly surpassed the state‘s capacities. As had been known for decades, water was most accessible in the center of the West Bank.16 With infrastructure in place and the land secured, the stage was set for the second phase of the West Bank, in which Israel populated the territory, adding an additional dimension to its presence.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Israel expanded its civilian presence in the West Bank; the number of civilians went from 13,500 in 1980 to 303,000 in 2010.17 As part of its civilian presence, Israel sought out the West Bank‘s economic perks, diverting water, labor, and natural resources to its settlements and state entities. This trend has come to characterize the nature of civilian enforcement in the occupation. Gordon mentions that Israel normalized the occupation to its citizens in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s by funding the construction of homes in the West Bank on declared ―state territory,‖ placing an ever-larger apparatus of legal administration on the ground to control the Palestinians and mange resources. Encouragements to settle included tax breaks, secured access to land, as well as fiscal assistance.18 In addition, the groundwork for the intricate system of roads was planted and West Bank settlers gained access to commerce with Israel.

In the meantime, the influx of Jewish immigrants continued. Israel began to use the West Bank as a means to encourage Jewish immigration, often giving out housing assistance and employment security to poorer immigrants.

State incentives thus encouraged Israelis to become a permanent fixture on the land in the second phase. Following this, the government had a plausible reason to develop an economy there. Israelis now benefit from the West Bank for agriculture, industry, tourism, cheap labor, and mining. The formation of a civilian presence in the second phase laid the groundwork for the third phase, in which the state exerted full economic dominance over the West Bank.

Having normalized the occupation, Israel adopted its first official policy of economic colonization by adopting the Drobless Plan in 1978, which Roy describes as the first public ―master plan for translating this control into a Jewish geographic and demographic reality.‖19 As part of the provision, the world began to see Israel‘s real plans for the West Bank as well as the divide and conquer method of total control that currently plagues the Palestinian economy. The Drobless Plan fragments the West Bank under security provisions, some of which allow for the acquisition of important security holds in the territory, as designated by the government and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Additionally, it calls for the areas surrounding the settlements to be taken as buffer zones, retroactively making civilian installments legal, and providing a pass for new ones.20 As Roy argues, many of the acquisitions sought to make economically vital regions accessible to Israelis.

Furthermore, Drobless allows for increased interactions and infrastructure to connect the Occupied Territories to Israel, as many of those living in the West Bank still commuted into Israel for employment (the Israelis had, at this

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point, not yet created a sophisticated economy in the West Bank). These connections further erased the Green Line in the Israeli economic and social psyche.21 In turn, the roads and checkpoints required protection, which justified the acquisition and division of additional Palestinian territory. The Drobless Plan resulted in unprecedented loss of land for the Palestinians: Drobless aimed to normalize and institutionalize land expropriations by eroding 1967 borders, thus making territorial retreat problematic, if not impossible. The idea, if not to make annexation easier, was to make sepa ration harder.22 The effect was increased economic possibilities for Israelis and an obstructed economy for the Palestinians.

Finally, Drobless vastly increased the amount of water flowing from the West Bank into Israel. The farms in southern Israel are not self-sufficient because they need to import most of their water. In fact, by 1979 Israel had a sizeable deficit in its water use.23 Drobless provided factual evidence of the state‘s intentions and converted the settlements into lucrative economic enterprises. The additional element in the third stage was the intentional curtailing of the Palestinian economy in favor of Israel‘s through measures such as movement and capital restrictions.

The degree of transformation caused by the settlement project cannot be overstated. Since Drobless, Israel‘s economic policy has only intensified in its extraction. Specifically after the Oslo Accords peace agreement in 1993, the territory was transformed in shockingly different manners for Palestinians and Israelis in order to exacerbate the economic power dynamic: The West Bank model is characterized by restricted levels of institutionbuilding; isolated pockets of business and commercial development, itself shaped by a cantonized geographical entity and fragmented, externally dependent and a constrained economic base.24 In other words, the state‘s opening of the economy for Jews mirrored the closing of that same economy for Palestinians. It was intentionally exclusive: development for one people, and de-development for another. Palestinians saw Israel‘s military government impose civilian restrictions regarding everything from building to freedom of expression and movement. 25 All of these impacted the Palestinian economy.26 Use of Law in the West Bank: Exacerbating the Economic Dichotomy Israel‘s law for West Bank Palestinians is administered through a strictly undemocratic military government. Especially in the second and third phases of the occupation, the appointed military leaders encroached on Palestinian civil economic life by making the Palestinians increasingly dependent on Israel and outside capital.27 This iron fist manipulation of law has been the main vehicle of Israel‘s pillage of the West Bank. This is evident in the seizure of the financial markets and imposed restrictions of movement, which are mechanisms that intentionally prevent Palestinian economic development. In turn, the use of cheap Palestinian labor and the diversion of water are expressions of law intended to boost the Israeli economy. Both examples represent use of law as a

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means to further differentiate the two economies.

First of all, the Israelis took control of Arab financial and monetary institutions, imposing the Bank of Israel as the central ruler. 28 Financial decisions concerning the West Bank now were to be made by Israel, and currency in the West Bank was converted to Israeli Shekel. As Roy and Gordon point out, this created numerous hindrances to Palestinian infrastructure development and ultimately left the territoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s residents with no choice but to cooperate with the militaryâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s economic demands.29 Palestinians who did seek start-up loans were forced into complaisance with Israeli financial policy in order to obtain funds.

Israeli monetary control furthermore left the Palestinians with no autonomy to buy and sell reserves in order to have a currency fit to Palestinian enterprise.

Therefore, monetary control in the West Bank is a means to quell Palestinian dissent as well as to further tip the economic balance toward Israel.

The banking and trade restrictions effectively barred the West Bank from importing capital and industrializing. Israel instituted measures to obstruct the development of capital-intensive production, requiring burdensome licensing through the military government for all industrial activities. 30 As a result, industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s portion of West Bank GDP steadily declined from 9% in 1968 to 7% in 1989, where it has remained with slight fluctuation since. 31 This means that Israel intentionally kept the Palestinian economy population under-developed as it moved itself up the industrial ladder.

Numerous restrictions on Palestinian trade in the West Bank gave Israeli firms a steep advantage over their Palestinian counterparts. The import and export restrictions intentionally constructed an imbalanced opportunity. For example, a military order levied a series of taxes on Palestinian manufacturers effectively making them pay 35-40% more taxes than their Israeli counterparts.32 In fact, from 1980 until 1997 such policies gave Israeli companies a defacto trade monopoly and accounted for just over 90% of all West Bank imports, which represents a shocking amount of protectionism. 33 Real power allows Israel to block Palestinian industrial and civilian development in the West Bank. Building permits have been in high demand after more than 2,200 house demolitions left 13,000 Palestinians homeless in the past decade. House demolitions and land acquisitions have set the stage for more than 155 new Israeli settlements erected in the same decade. 34 Fewer than 25% of Palestinian permits are approved. 35 This trend has accelerated, as the Guardian reports that Israeli spending on settlements increased 38% in 2013, while in 2012 the Jewish population in the West Bank grew 4.5%, which is two and half times the rate of the rest of the country. 36 Israeli rule of law is thus a key component in the institutionalization of impeded Palestinian growth juxtaposed with Israeli success.

Extraction of Resources & Water In addition to impeding Palestinian development, Israeli policies have increasingly allowed Israeli citizens to take advantage of resources such as labor, capital institutions, water, mines, tourism, and agriculture. To combat their low

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-skilled labor shortage, the Israelis began to give permits for Palestinians to work in Israel. Furthermore, Palestinians earn about one-sixth of their Israeli counterparts.37 This was broadcast as a means to alleviate the Palestinian plight, but Israeli administration of the Palestinian economy is culpable for the laborers‘ disadvantage in the first place. An extensive report by the Journal of Middle East Studies revealed that the vast majority of West Bank Palestinian commuters had previously had their land confiscated by Israel; therefore, many Palestinians laborers were first put out of work by Israel‘s policies, and then made dependent on Israel for employment.38 Restrictions on crops, building, movement, and water use all made a Palestinian economy in the West Bank less feasible, while low-wage employment provided higher returns on Israeli agricultural exports. 39 In essence, many dispossessed Palestinian landowners became laborers for Israeli landowners.

Means of production were usurped from Palestinians and handed to Israelis.

Labor thus became a blatant expression of economic subjugation.

The trick was that this employment depended on the will of Israeli politicians and has been frequently used as a method of control. First, the state made Palestine dependent on Israeli employment by employing 40% of its workforce. This was carved into leverage for the Israelis, as the laborers were ―defenseless when confronting the whims of their employers‖ and of the state.41 This allowed labor to be used as collective punishment. For example, during both Intifadas, Israel sealed its borders and left the dependent Palestinian population without work; both periods were followed by mini crises in the occupied territories. Numerous smaller disputes, such as the Palestinian UN statehood bid in 2010, have produced bans on Palestinian workers entering Israel. Therefore, Israel‘s policies intentionally take economic control from the Palestinians--placing Palestinians at the bottom of the economic ladder, where they will remain until the state is willing to address its economic policy.

Israel has also repeatedly shown interest in the West Bank‘s water resources, which are more abundant than those in Israel. As previously discussed, Israel‘s rapid growth in population and export agriculture were not sustainable given the state‘s resources. For example, in 1975 an average of two billion cubic meters per day were available, while industrial, agricultural, and home use totaled 1.6 billion cubic meters.42 This left only 404 million cubic meters for expanding industry and irrigation systems, which was insufficient for the roughly 20,000 incoming immigrants in 1976. 43 The Israeli authorities realized this early on. An estimated 80% of Mandatory Palestine‘s mountain aquifers lie in the West Bank, which now supply 40% of Israel‘s agricultural needs and 50% of its drinking water.44 Water acquisition usually mirrors land grabs. Strategic use of a variety of laws to acquire West Bank land has been in area C, housing the majority of the mountainous aquifers. Israel has strategically blocked 70% of this area from Palestinian entrance. The restrictions have been so severe, in fact, that the area has seen an 80% drop in Palestinian population from 1967-2012.45 The settlements now use about 80% of the water from the main Mountain Aquifer, and only leave 15% for the 2.5 million Palestinian majority. 46 In fact,

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the World Health Organization reports that per capita water consumption for Palestinians is roughly 25% that of their Israeli counterparts. Over-extraction of water resources in the West Bank has led to a decrease in the water table, which, in turn, has left many Palestinians (as many as 60% in area C) without running water, according to the World Bank and the UN. 47 Intense control over water allocation is the most profound example of Israel‘s intentions of economic colonization.

State legal mechanisms have also carved up the territory for other resources to exacerbate the economic disparity. For example, in Area C the Israelis have taken key sites such as the Dead Sea, now a major attraction for religious tourists. Furthermore, they have allowed the Israeli company Ahava to make and export cosmetic products using the famous Dead Sea mud. In contrast, the state has limited travel to Jericho, a key Palestinian tourist destination.48 Additionally, in 2011 the High Court of Justice reversed long-standing (though frequently disobeyed) precedent by allowing Israeli companies to extract minerals and other raw materials from quarries in the West Bank: On its face, the new rule allows the occupier (in a long-term occupation) to make endless use of the variety of objects found in the occupied territory: to pump its water sources, to transfer its archeological artifacts to elsewhere outside the territory, to use areas within it for garbage disposal, to sell public real estate, and more.49 With the institutionalized extraction of resources such as agriculture, labor, land, tourism, and mining resources, the state is seemingly making its intentions more pronounced to the international community.

Restriction of Movement Besides resource extraction, the lack of economic liberty is a major expression of Israel‘s colonial control over the territory. Among numerous other scholars, Roy and Gordon shed light on the fragmentation that has come to characterize the West Bank‘s economy and civil life. Building and zoning restrictions, in addition to restriction of movement, have been the biggest factor in maintaining an unstable Palestinian economy. Roy relates these to expressions of Israeli power that intentionally constrain the Palestinian economy while expanding Israel‘s.50 For example, during the Oslo Peace period in the 1990s 250 miles of settler-only roads were built in the area. They were ―designed to connect Israeli settlements and create massive barriers to Palestinian movement‖ because they were ―built like a grid running north-south and east-west throughout the entire West Bank,‖ effectively limiting interconnected growth in the Palestinian economy.51 In other instances, the Israeli government uses controversial events to further its economic ambitions. In a comprehensive report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) finds that in the years from 2009-2012, Palestinian economic growth slowed from 8% of GDP to just 5%. The IMF relates this to increased tensions in 2011, both at the UN and internally, that led to a series of new restrictions on movement.52 Additionally, the previously declining unemployment rate rose from 17% to 19% as a direct result of increased trade re-

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strictions and investment blockades.53 This represents intentional sectoral manipulation of the economy, as well as economic punishment for expressions of independence.

Restrictions of movement have been vastly increased, and their effect has been devastating. In Area C, with the highest concentration of arable land, the Palestinians have seen unprecedented increases in restrictions on outside investment, which, accounting for up to 58% of the West Bank real GDP, is a crucial component to the success of the Palestinian economy. 54 Israel now controls 77.5% of Area C.55 Consequently, the Palestinian population there has decreased by 80% since 1967 because 80% of the land is now inaccessible to them.56 Additionally, Israelis now block major entrances to 10 of 11 major Palestinian cities in the West Bank, decreasing the flow of capital and goods between economic centers and rural areas.57 Because Israeli policy has prevented industrialization, these trade routes are a necessary component of Palestine‘s export-based agrarian economy. This is a shining example of Roy‘s dedevelopment argument. On the other hand, Israel‘s control of Area C is indicative of its desire for resources; it is competitive exclusion. B‘Tselem reports that, as a result, ―trade from one section to another in the West Bank has become expensive, uncertain, and inefficient. The economy in the West Bank has been split into smaller, local markets,‖ hindering advantages from economies of scale and international trade.58 In fact, according to B‘Tselem the settlements themselves, which comprise only 1.7% of the West Bank, effectively control 41.9% of the area due to restrictions of movement. 59 The restrictions have been a key method of economic control in Israel‘s occupation. They are also a strong indication of the material motives of Israel‘s settlements.

Conclusion Settlements in the West Bank are the last vestige of blatant economic colonialism in the world. No other conflict in international relations has quite the same dynamic, whereby a state is extending itself into a disputed territory with an ambiguous mix of law and sheer force, whilst exporting economic potential.

It has been progressing for almost 50 years in front of the world‘s eyes, and no international institution or state actor has forced Israel‘s hand in allowing the Palestinians to have a viable economy. Much to the opposite, the colonial nature of competitive economic exclusion has only exacerbated.

The current situation of the Palestinian economy is reflective of almost 50 years of continued colonial capitalism. Israel‘s primary motivating factor in settling the West Bank is thus the economic potential of the territory, which it has taken advantage of in order to subjugate the Palestinian economy.

The economic plight of the Palestinians must be addressed in any legitimate attempt to broker an enduring peace. Despite numerous attempts at reconciliation, Israel has repeatedly shown an unwillingness to concede any degree of economic liberty to the Palestinians, a position that has been condemned time and again by the international community. At this point, it is unlikely that

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Israel is willing to make the necessary concessions in order to broker an agreement with the Palestinians.

However, the international community is in a diplomatic knot. Though the US does not regard the settlements as legitimate, it continues unprecedented fiscal and military support. Given domestic political considerations, it is not probable that the US will give Israel an ultimatum regarding its financial assistance and the Palestinian economic catastrophe. The general public and Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s donor base (American taxpayers in general) must be aware of what they are supporting. So far, Israel has conducted an active public relations effort to moralize the occupation and marginalize its negative effects. 60 Governmental pressure has not sufficed, so a new approach must take place. For example, movements in the UK and Northern Europe sought a demand-side approach to the problem by boycotting agricultural products from the West Bank. This type of civil activism also serves to raise public awareness of the conflict, which is grossly misunderstood. If this approach effectively expands to the territoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s other markets, perhaps Israeli business leaders will be able to lobby for governmental change regarding the economic policy. In other words, Israel will only respond if the economic benefit it seeks is no longer attainable due to consumer action.

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Notes 1.) Michael Gordon, ―Kerry to Focus on Palestinian Economy as Part of the Process,‖ The New York Times, April 8, 2013.

2.) Levinson, Chaim, ―Rights Group: Israeli Settlements Control 42% of the West Bank,‖ 2010.

3.) Leila Farsakh, Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation (London: Routledge, 2005) 59.

4.) Neve Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation (Los Angeles: University of California Press 2008), 7.

5.) Israeli Government, "Population & Demography," 2010.

6.) ―Effect of Restrictions on the Economy,‖ B‘Tselem, 2011.

7.) The International Court of Justice, 2011, 11.

8.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 12.

9.) Saleh, ―Jewish Settlement and its Economic Impact on the West Bank,‖ Geo Journal 21.4 (1990): 337.

10.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 24.

11.) Ibid, 193.

12.) Ibid, 199.

13.) Sara Roy, ―Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts,‖ Journal of Palestine Studies 41.3 (2012): 73.

14.) Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. 6th ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin‘s, 2010), 29.

15.) Alan George, ――Making the Desert Bloom,‖ a Myth Examined.,‖ Journal of Palestine Studies, 8.2 (1979), 96.

16.) Ibid, 89.

17.) Israeli Government, "Population & Demography," Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/?MIval=cw_usr_view_SHTML&ID=705 (accessed November 30, 2011).

18.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 12.

19.) Roy, ―Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts,‖ 73.

20.) Ibid, 73.

21.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 7.

22.) Roy, ―Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts,‖ 73.

23.) Miriam Lowi, ―Bridging the Divide: Transboundary Resource Disputes in the Case of WesBank Water,‖ International Security 18.1 (1993): 118.

24.) Roy, ―Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts,‖ 81.

25.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 72.

26.) ―Effect of Restrictions on the Economy,‖ B‘Tselem, 2011.

27.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 72.

28.) Ibid, 72.

29.) Sara Roy, ―The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Palestinian Socio-Economic Decline: a Place Denied,‖ International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 17.3 (2004): 367.

30.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 73.

31.) Ibid, 74.

32.) Ibid, 73.

33.) Ali Kadri, ―A Survey of Commuting Labor From the West Bank to Israel,‖ Middle East Journal 52.4 (1998): 518.

34.) ―Background on Planning and Building,‖ B‘Tselem, 2011.

35.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 155.

36.) Harriet Sherwood, ―Israeli Spending on West Bank Settlements up 38%,‖ The Guardian, 2012.

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37.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 76-77.

38.) Kadri, ―A Survey of Commuting Labor From the West Bank to Israel,‖ 517.

39.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 74.

40.) Ibid, 82.

41.) Ibid, 79.

42.) George, ―‗Making the Desert Bloom,‘ a Myth Examined,‖ 100.

43.) Jewish Virtual Library, ―Jewish Immigration to Israel, by Year (1949-2012),‖ 2013. http:// www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Immigration/Immigration_to_Israel.html.

44.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 127.

45.) Roy, ―Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts,‖ 74.

46.) "Water Resources in the West Bank," EWASH - Emergency Water Sanitation and Hygiene in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Web, accessed 30 Nov. 2011. <http://www.ewash.org/en/? view=79YOcy0nNs3D76djuyAn3TT. 47.) The International Court of Justice, 2011, 13.

48.) ―Dispossession and Exploitation: Israel‘s Policy in the Jordan Valley and Northern Dead Sea,‖ B‘Tselem, 2011.

49.) Roy, ―Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts,‖ 80.

50.) Roy, ―The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Palestinian Socioeconomic Decline: A Place Denied,‖ 370.

51.) Ibid, 371.

52.) ―Recent Experience and Prospects of the Economy of the West Bank and Gaza,‖ International Monetary Fund 2012, 6.

53.) Ibid, 6.

54.) Roy, ―Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts,‖ 82.

55.) ―Dispossession and Exploitation: Israel‘s Policy in the Jordan Valley and Northern Dead Sea,‖ B‘Tselem, 2011.

56.) Roy, ―Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts,‖ 2012, 78.

57.) Ibid, 78.

58.) ―Effect of Restrictions on the Economy,‖ B‘Tselem, 2011.

59.) Roy, ―The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Palestinian Socioeconomic Decline: A Place Denied,‖ 371.

60.) Gordon, Israel‘s Occupation, 7.

60

Israel‘s Economic Motives for Colonizing the West Bank Sources Cited

―Dispossession and Exploitation: Israel‘s Policy in the Jordan Valley and Northern Dead Sea.‖ B’Tselem. May 2011. http://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/ dispossession-and-exploitation-israels-policy-jordan-valley-northern-dead-sea. ―Effects of Restrictions on the Economy.‖ B’Tselem. Jan 1, 2011. http:// www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement/economy.

Farsakh, Leila. Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation. London: Routledge, 2005.

George, Alan. ―‗Making the Desert Bloom,‘ a Myth Examined.‖ Journal of Palestine Studies. 8.2 (1979): 88-100.

Gordon, Neve. Israel’s Occupation. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008.

Gordon, Michael. ―Kerry to Focus on Palestinian Economy as Part of the Process.‖ The New York Times. April 8, 2013.

"Immigration to Israel, by Year (1948-2013)." Jewish Virtual Library. The AmericanIsraeli Cooperative Enterprise. 2013. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/Immigration/Immigration_to_Israel.html.

International Court of Justice. "Separate and Unequal." Human Rights Watch. Accessed March 3, 2013, http://www.hrw.org/node/95059/section/2.

Israeli Government. "Population & Demography." Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics.

Accessed March 15, 2013. www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/?

MIval=cw_usr_view_SHTML&ID=705.

Kadri, Ali. ―A Survey of Commuting Labor from the West Bank to Israel.‖ Middle East Journal 52.4 (1998): 517-530.

Levinson, Chaim. ―Rights Group: Israeli Settlements Control 42% of the West Bank,‖ Haaretz. July 6, 2010. http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/rightsgroup-israeli-settlements-control-42-percent-of-west-bank-1.300303.

Lowi, Miriam R. ―Bridging the Divide: Transboundary Resource Disputes and the Case of West Bank Water.‖ International Security 18.1 (1993): 113-138. ―Planning & Building,‖ B’Tselem. January 1, 2011. http://www.btselem.org/ planning_and_building. ―Recent Experience and Prospects of the Economy of the West Bank and Gaza.‖ International Monetary Fund, (2012): 1-40. Accessed Feb 2012. http:// www.imf.org/external/country/West BankG/RR/2012/091912.pdf.

Rinat, Zafrir. "High Court says Israel can take advantage of West Bank resources."

Haaretz [Tel Aviv] 28 Dec. 2011 Politics: Haaretz English. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.

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Roy, Sara. ―Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts.‖ Journal of Palestine Studies 41.3 (2012): 71-91.

Roy, Sara. ―The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Palestinian Socioeconomic Decline: A Place Denied.‖ International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 17.3 (2004): 365-403.

Rubin, Barry. ―Israel‘s New Strategy.‖ Foreign Affairs 85.4 (2006): 111-125.

Saleh, Hassan Abdul Kadir. ―Jewish Settlement and its Economic Impact on the West Bank, 1967-1987.‖ GeoJournal 21.4 (1990): 337-348.

Sherwood, Harriet. ―Israeli Spending on West Bank Settlements up 38%.‖ The Guardian, July 31, 2012. Accessed March 10, 2013.

Smith, Charles D. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin‘s. 2010.

United Nations Informational Systems on the Question of Palestine (UNISPAL). ―Plan of Partition.‖ http://unispal.un.org/ UNISPAL.NSF/0/164333B501CA09E785256CC5005470C3. Accessed March 12, 2013.

"Water Resources in the West Bank." EWASH - Emergency Water Sanitation and Hy giene in the occupied Palestinian territory. http://www.ewash.org/en/? view=79YOcy0nNs3D76djuyAn3TTG. Accessed November 30, 2011.

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The Rhetoric of the Physician-Assisted Suicide Movement: Choosing <Death> Over <Life> Alecia Pasdera Ripon College "You don't know what will happen when you get older," stated Jack Kevorkian in a 1998 interview with "60 Minutes." "I may end up terribly suffering. I want some colleague to be free to come and help me when I say the time has come. That's why I'm fighting, for me. And if it helps everybody else, so be it."1 The Michigan physician, also known as Dr. Death, ignited a heated nationwide debate about physician-assisted suicide and a terminally ill patient‘s right to die once he started helping patients kill themselves. Between 1990 and 1998, Kevorkian said he assisted in the suicide of more than 130 people. In 1999, the seventy-year-old was convicted of second-degree murder and served eight years in prison for administering a lethal injection rather than letting the patient do it himself.2 In his various interviews, Kevorkian expressed his belief that any doctor who turns his or her back on a suffering patient is a coward. 3 His main argument was that the primary role of any doctor is to relieve the suffering of his or her patient and heed his or her wishes. To him, physician-assisted suicide was an acceptable option. In 1997, the Detroit Free Press conducted an investigation into Kevorkian‘s patients. The investigation showed that ―at least 60% of Kevorkian's suicide patients were not suffering from a terminal disease. At least 17 could have lived indefinitely and, in 13 cases, the people had no complaints of pain."4 Opponents of physician-assisted suicide used these findings to question when, and if, a physician has the right to help end another person‘s life. Kevorkian‘s actions thrust the right-to-die issue into the national spotlight and eventually onto the ballot.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the various ways in which the idea of life is defined by both sides of the physician-assisted suicide (PAS) debate.

Due to the fact that neither side can agree on a concrete definition, the word ―life‖ becomes <life> in the PAS debate, signifying that it is being used as an ideograph in that particular instance. Ideographs are ambiguous high-order abstractions that seek to achieve a particular goal or political reform. <Life> is an ideograph in the debate surrounding physician-assisted suicide because both sides construct different conceptions of what <life> entails. Opponents of physician-assisted suicide use <life> as an ideographic God term, meaning that it is regarded positively in public discourse. 5 God terms carry universal positive connotations. To PAS opponents, <life> is being constructed as something

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universally positive that needs to be sustained at all costs until a natural death occurs, because it is sacred and dignified. On the opposite side, physicianassisted suicide advocates are trying to reconstruct the idea of life and the characterizations surrounding it. In a counter-cultural manner, their rhetoric suggests that death is preferable to life in certain circumstances. Therefore, they use <life> as an ideograph that conveys <life> as a human-controlled element that can be ended before natural causes. They re-define the commonly accepted notion that life is better than death by suggesting that a manufactured death is acceptable when a high quality of life and an individual‘s capacity to live a dignified life are no longer possible.

The existing literature on the subject of physician-assisted suicide deals with the ideograph of <rights> most of the time. The issue is framed around the debate between an individual‘s right to die and his or her right to live. This analysis will branch out and explore the ideograph of <life> instead. Both sides of the PAS debate use <life> differently to try to answer the following questions: ―Is life something that can be controlled by humans? When is life no longer worth living? Is death more dignified when a continued existence equates to prolonged suffering and pain?‖ The ideograph of <life> is an important analytical concept because this particular ideograph undeniably poses a large problem for advocates in obtaining popular and legal support for the practice of physician-assisted suicide. One can study whether or not advocates and opponents will be successful in promoting or preventing social change based on how successfully they convince their audiences to accept their respective conceptions of what <life> entails. This essay will help locate where the idea of life is being used as in ideograph (<life>) in the PAS debate and analyze how the very perception of <life> is being conceptualized differently from both sides.

Literature Review The existing literature on physician-assisted suicide is varied in focus.

Most works on PAS talk about the moral and ethical implications of the practice. One theme in the literature surrounding PAS is the sanctity of life. As stated by Back and Pearlman in an article for The Lancet, ―Respect for autonomy of dying patients wanting relief of suffering is pitted against sanctity-of-life and slippery slope arguments about the inevitable abuse of legalized physician suicide.‖6 This breaches the topic of <life> as an ideograph and how it is sanctified and sacred. However, the authors do not investigate the varying ways that <life> is used as an ideograph; it is only mentioned briefly.

Other literature surrounding the issue mirrors the arguments made by the right-to-life movement. Black states that ―The right-to-life movement argues from the ontological standpoint that all existence remains sanctified, and should therefore be protected.‖7 This statement furthers the argument made in Back and Pearlman‘s article about sanctity of life. Furthermore, their article looks at the right to life from an abortion standpoint and classifies the term <right> as an ideograph and a God term. This essay will take the ideographic

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analysis of <right> in Back and Pearlman‘s article as a stepping stone to analyze <life> as an ideograph of the physician-assisted suicide movement. The issue of <life> is really the main controversial issue between opponents and advocates of physician-assisted suicide, and therefore, needs to be analyzed.

Past works of rhetorical criticism have explored ideological shifts within rhetoric over time. Black quotes Therborn by saying, ―New and changed circumstances require new norms to be accepted.‖8 This is highly relevant to this particular essay because this theory explains how rhetoricians can reconstruct and redefine an ideograph in different circumstances.

Other bodies of literature surrounding physician-assisted suicide serve to normalize the issue. Once physician-assisted suicide was placed on the Oregon ballot in 1994, the issue became more normalized as it became a part of the political process.9 At first, physician-assisted suicide was automatically viewed as a shameful action, but once it became a political issue and discourse on the process emerged, it became more normalized. The very existence of PAS rhetoric helped to open people‘s minds to the idea. Pretty soon it became an acceptable conversation topic, and people started changing their minds on the issue. Rhetoric in and of itself helped to normalize the issue.

Overall, the new knowledge I wish to add to the rhetorical criticism field is how <life> is used as an ideograph in PAS rhetoric, and how advocates are trying to reconstruct the ideograph and the conceptions surrounding it compared to the opponents who are revivifying the already established conceptions of <life.> This is one important element of the physician-assisted suicide movement, and it has not been thoroughly explored as of yet.

The Current Debate over Ending One’s Life Polls show that the majority of Americans favor physician-assisted suicide. So why does legislation fail to reflect public opinion? The results from the latest NPR-Truven Health Analytics Health Poll in 2012 show that most Americans favor physician-assisted suicide for people with less than six months to live. Overall, fifty-five percent of respondents favored it, and fortyfive percent were opposed. Those proportions were unchanged from July 2011, when Truven asked the same questions.10 One common reason physician-assisted suicide is such a controversial topic is for religious reasons. Many Christians base their objections on the biblical commandment ―thou shalt not kill.‖ Muslims believe that only Allah has the right to end life, and both Hindus and Buddhists have a strong reverence for life. It is their belief that physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are interruptions of karma.11 Opponents often describe the role of the physician in physician-assisted suicide as a human ―playing God.‖ Many opponents also use a slippery slope fallacy in their rhetoric to argue that if the law allows for physicians to help terminally ill patients die, soon the elderly and those with a mental and physical disability, or anyone who views that his or her life is no longer worth living, will be viewed as burdens and helped to take his or her own life.

Advocates argue that every individual has the right to die with dignity, autono-

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my, and respect. The rhetoric is based around the idea that living and dying are extremely personal, and sometimes the pain and suffering endured by a terminally ill patient outweigh the benefits of a prolonged life. When this is the case, advocates argue that a physicianâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s main role is to help his or her patient die a peaceful death rather than a painful and prolonged one.

Consistent with these beliefs, the majority of Americans since 1986 believe that physician-assisted suicide should be allowed when a person has a terminal illness. Six in ten adults would consider physician-assisted suicide for themselves if they were on life support or in chronic pain. Fifty percent would consider it if they experienced a loss in mobility and independence, if they became a burden to others, and if they had a terminal illness. 12 Furthermore, three in ten adults would consider it if they were confined to a nursing home. 13 Despite widespread support for physician-assisted suicide, only a few states have legalized the process. Today, only the states of Oregon, Washington, and Vermont have legalized it, and the state of Montana allows for it with permission of the courts.14 Oregon was the first state to legalize physicianassisted suicide under the Death with Dignity Act. The act was approved in 1994 but did not go into effect until 1998. A decade later in 2008, the voters of Washington followed suit. Vermont was the most recent state to pass a Death with Dignity law in 2013.15 By looking at three representational examples of anti-PAS rhetoric and three representational cases of pro-PAS rhetoric, we can learn how the two different sides of the physician-assisted suicide movement create different conceptions of the same ideograph (<life>) to frame their arguments. To analyze the rhetoric used by opponents of physician-assisted suicide, I have chosen to look at the websites of two different organizations that speak against physician -assisted suicide and an article on the Christian Post website. The first group is the Christian Medical and Dental Associations and the other is Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that advocates for religious freedom. Both of these websites address the issue of physician-associated suicide. The Christian Post article was written by Ken Connor, the chairman of the Center for a Just Society, also the former president of the Family Research Council.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I will look at the websites of the Death with Dignity National Center and the Final Exit Network, a national non-profit organization and a member of the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies. I will also examine a controversial billboard campaign of the Final Exit Network that occurred in 2010. This organization was born from the Hemlock Society, a former leading advocate group for the legalization of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide that dissolved in 2003. The billboard campaign led by the Final Exit Network was a series of billboards that read â&#x20AC;&#x2022;My Life.

My Death. My Choice. FinalExitNetwork.org.â&#x20AC;&#x2013;16 The billboards were placed on highways near senior communities in San Francisco, California, and Hillside, New Jersey.17 These billboards were a great point of contention for the opponents of physician-assisted suicide.

The rhetoric surrounding the physician-assisted suicide debate tends to be based around the same issues. The debate about what constitutes as <life> and

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a ―high quality <life>‖ is constantly being debated by opponents and advocates. This essay could delve into the rhetoric of literally thousands of websites, articles, and campaigns on physician-assisted suicide, but the same themes are present in most of the rhetoric. Therefore, this essay looks at just three examples from both sides to illustrate the different uses of ideology. This sample is representative of most other forms of PAS rhetoric.

Identifying <Life> as an Ideograph An ideographic analysis is the most appropriate form of criticism for this particular kind of rhetoric because of the basic arguments that are made by opponents and advocates. Opponents frame their arguments on the idea of sanctity of life, and advocates talk about the quality of life and the circumstances in which death is preferred to life. The way each side shapes their rhetoric to define <life> can help to explain their worldviews and how they are shaping the rest of their arguments.

McGee has previously done rhetorical criticism on ideographs. He has looked at the diachronic and synchronic levels of ideographs. 18 Analyzing an ideograph diachronically looks at how a single term is interpreted differently over time. Every time that term is used in an argument, the critic must look to the past to determine if it is still synonymous with past conceptions of the term.

Synchronic levels occur every time an ideograph contracts or expands. 19 The concept of an ideograph being conceptualized differently over time is a good foundational point for this essay‘s analysis.

Analyzing ideographs is essential to discovering the impact of the rhetoric.

This essay will look at the various times life is discussed in the discourse of both sides, and how <life> represents an ideograph in particular. When the ideograph is used by opponents of PAS, the rhetoric serves to reaffirm the already culturally-established belief that life should be revered. Their emphasis on the sanctity of life serves to resist any social change that welcomes anything but a natural death. On the other hand, a counter-cultural application of the ideograph used by advocates of PAS serves to introduce new characterizations and challenge existing ones. Much of the debate surrounding physicianassisted suicide is based not on actual policy and implementation, but rather upon the rhetoric in the other side‘s arguments and how this, in turn, has the potential to affect policy through interpretation and conceptualization. The successful application of this ideographic analysis could have legal implications if widely accepted by lawmakers and the public.

What is <Life?>: Ideographic Analysis What is life? This may seem like a straightforward question to many, but it is anything but simple to define in the context of physician-assisted suicide.

While it may be sufficient to explain the difference between what is life and what is death based on when someone stops breathing and his or her heart stops beating, this is a very narrow view of what constitutes life and death. The

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nature of physician-assisted suicide raises such questions as: does anyone have the right to help take away another person‘s life, and when, if ever, is life no longer worth living? Advocates and opponents of physician-assisted suicide conceptualize these aspects of life differently in their rhetoric. Therefore, <life> has become an ideograph that alludes to an abstract idea of what it means to live and die.

This analysis will look at the various definitions and conceptions of <life> that are presented by both sides of the physician-assisted suicide debate. The first big ideographical theme that will be analyzed is the sanctity-of-life argument of PAS opponents, who argue that <life> is sacred and should always be preserved until a natural death occurs. This is contested by the quality-of-life argument made by PAS supporters, who believe <life> is only worth living based on qualitative factors, which, in turn, makes opponents question the ethics of determining who is living a high-quality life. The visual rhetoric of both sides cannot be ignored either. By looking analytically at the use of billboards and images on websites, it can be observed how both sides use visuals rhetorically to enhance their sanctity- vs. quality-of-life arguments.

Another major theme in PAS rhetoric is the idea of dignity and the uncertainty as to whether an individual has the right to die with dignity. While advocates maintain that physician-assisted suicide is acceptable for an individual with a terminal illness who is living a low-quality life defined by pain and suffering, opponents argue that taking one‘s own life is never dignified. Clearly, <life> is conceptualized and qualified differently between both sides of the PAS debate. This essay will take a closer look at how both sides create contrasting views of <life> in their arguments.

The first prevalent theme of anti-PAS rhetoric is the sanctity of <life.> To opponents of physician-assisted suicide, <life> is something that needs to be protected, revered, and prolonged at all costs, no matter the circumstance. In many instances, anti-PAS rhetoric mirrors pro-life rhetoric of the abortion debate. In both cases, life is <life,> meaning that a living organism is alive as long as its heart is beating, and this is a sacred phenomenon that should not be ended prematurely. From conception to death, humans do not have the right to take away another person‘s life or their own under any circumstance. This take on <life> is encapsulated perfectly by the slogan listed at the top of the Alliance Defending Freedom web page: Guarding the Sanctity of Life. All human life is sacred-from conception to natural death.20 This particular instance of rhetoric depicts <life> as sacred, not disposable.

The main page of the website claims that the result of society‘s view of life as disposable leads to the termination of ―countless precious lives,‖ and, as a result, human life is cheapened.21 The idea that life can be cheapened suggests that it has a tangible value. This claim serves to take away the very ambiguity of the ideology behind <life> and bring it into the realm of the easily understood. This enforces the idea that life is <life>, and humans cannot devalue it by taking it away prematurely; it is sacred because PAS opponents believe it was a gift from God. The theme of sacred life is prevalent in nearly all anti-PAS rhetoric. As

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stated on the webpage for the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, human life is sacred because it bears God‘s image. Human life ―has worth because Christ died to redeem it, and it has meaning because God has an eternal purpose for it.‖22 This framing equates <life> with God‘s will and purpose. It is sacred, it is holy, and every individual has an obligation to live out his or her life to its full duration. This view irrevocably links <life> with God and aims to make it impossible for Christians to deny God by supporting physician-assisted suicide.

A common theme in anti-PAS rhetoric is not only the belief that life is a sacred gift from God, but that only God has the right to take away life. PAS opponents maintain that physicians and patients who partake in physicianassisted suicide are ―playing God.‖ In response to this argument, pro-PAS advocates such as the Death with Dignity National Center conclude that when an individual chooses to hasten death, he or she makes that choice not as God, but as ―a conscious, self-determined individual.‖23 Furthermore, this decision is no more ―playing God‖ than ―to suggest one more procedure, one more pill, or one more feeding tube may preserve a life that is all but ended.‖ 24 This argument challenges the belief held by PAS opponents that life is in the hands of God. Rather, advocates say humans have always been in control of other humans‘ lives through means of medication and technology. Their argument is that sustaining life with respirators and breathing tubes, as well as giving medication to the sick, are all intervening with God‘s will. This framing of the argument serves to point out the logical inconsistency of the ―playing God‖ argument. If ending a life early is ―playing God,‖ then so too is prolonging it with medicine and/or technology. In so doing, advocates bring <life> into the earthly realm and attempt to lessen the religious appeal of sanctity of life arguments.

The presence of technology in today‘s medical world blurs the line between what constitutes death, in particular a ―natural‖ death. If a person stays alive thanks to medical advances, is that really ―natural‖? When does life cease to be in the hands of God and in the hands of physicians? When is the benefit of using technology and treatments to sustain life no longer worth the pain that comes along with it? The uncertainty about the definition of <life> and a natural death poses further rhetorical challenges for both sides of the physicianassisted suicide debate as they attempt to persuade their audience that their definition of <life> is correct.

The Alliance Defending Freedom slogan advocates for the sanctity of human life ―from conception to natural death.‖25 The emphasis on ―natural‖ implies that the only acceptable death is one that occurs from natural causes. Although supporters of physician-assisted suicide argue that life-sustaining technologies and medications are no more natural than physician-assisted suicide, anti-PAS rhetoric refers to a ―natural‖ death only as one that is not intentionally hastened; medical and technological assistance are presumably considered ―natural,‖ according to their discourse. By definition, the way anti-PAS rhetoric conceptualizes ―natural‖ denies physician-assisted suicide as a viable option. The Alliance Defending Freedom slogan does not even entertain the idea of anything but a natural death; anything else would not be sacred. The slogan

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explicitly states that human life is sacred. Therefore, if <life> is to be defined as sacred in anti-PAS rhetoric and physician-assisted suicide is not accepted as sacred, PAS cannot possibly be an acceptable way to die because it defies the very definition of <life> that is being constructed. <Life> is only sacred insofar as it ends by natural means. If one commits physician-assisted suicide, the life he or she lived is no longer sacred.

In contrast to the sanctity of life argument, supporters of physicianassisted suicide argue that the quality of life is the most important factor surrounding the issue. PAS advocates argue that suffering terrible physical and emotional agony at the end of life does not constitute a high quality of life any longer. They believe that in the case of extreme suffering, life is no longer worth living. At this point, the patient‘s suffering outweighs the benefits of a continued existence, which would undoubtedly be full of pain and suffering.

While PAS opponents argue that life is sacred, pro-PAS advocates such as the Death with Dignity National Center believe that suffering and agony are ―neither humane nor divine.‖26 Quality-of-life arguments made by PAS supporters cause their opponents to question the implications of this form of rhetoric. To PAS opponents, life is <life> insofar as the individual is still breathing and carrying out basic psychological functions. In this framing, quality has no place in the physician-assisted suicide debate in determining who lives and who dies. Life is <life>, and trying to determine whether an individual is living a life with an acceptable level of quality is defying life‘s sanctity by putting humans in control of one‘s death.

A common argument in anti-PAS rhetoric is that exchanging a sanctity-oflife ethic for a quality-of-life ethic will ―put the weakest among us at great risk,‖ as stated by an article in the Christian Post.27 If society allows the terminally-ill to deny continued care and to welcome a ―premature‖ death, then this opens the gate for individuals with other ailments to take their own lives as well. Opponents maintain that if the rhetoric of pro-PAS advocates is accepted, then the elderly, the depressed, and the physically and mentally disabled will be the next people taking their own lives with the help of physicians. One could argue that these individuals have a lower quality of life than other members of society if a low quality is measured by a loss of autonomy and an absence of physical and mental suffering.

Who has the right to define a high quality of life? Opponents maintain that only God has the right to do so, and advocates argue that each individual should be able to determine for himself or herself whether life is still worth living. The ways in which both sides frame <life> will determine how social change ensues. The final outcome of the physician-assisted suicide debate depends on whether the rhetors are successful in promoting <life> as sacred or as something qualitatively worth living.

Both sides of the debate use visual rhetoric to promote either sanctity of life or quality of life arguments. The Alliance Defending Freedom website has a banner that is placed at the top of the main webpage along with the aforementioned slogan about sanctity of life. In this banner, there appears to be a grandfather playing outside with his granddaughter. The juxtaposition of an

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elderly man with the toddler reinforces the slogan that life is sacred from conception to natural death. The two figures serve as rhetorical representations of the two major social issues on which this organization focuses. The grandfather represents the physician-assisted suicide debate, and the child represents this organization‘s pro-life stance on abortion. Putting faces to the slogan personalizes the message and makes <life> even more tangible; the visitor to the website can see what <life> looks like in accordance with the worldview portrayed

by Alliance Defending Freedom. In this picture, <life> is not just an abstract idea; it is a grandfather whose life is sacred and should not be ―taken away.‖ His happy demeanor and physical agility are apparent while he plays with his granddaughter. This photograph ignores the pain and suffering of the dying that is highlighted in the rhetoric of PAS advocates. In this rhetorical picture, <life> is happy, pure, and sacred.

An example of pro-PAS visual rhetoric is the billboard campaign that was launched by the Final Exit Network in 2010, a national right-to-die organization. These billboards that read ―My Life. My Death. My Choice. FinalExitNetwork.org‖ were placed in strategic locations near senior communities to inform the elderly and terminally ill that they have a right to end their own life.28 Final Exit spokespersons insist that physician-assisted suicide is the ―ultimate civil liberty.‖29 The purpose of the Oregon and Washington laws, according to PAS supporters, (Vermont had not yet passed a Death with Dignity Act) is to provide dying patients with the ―control, predictability, and peace of mind that comes with knowing the how and when of death.‖ 30 The billboards equate choosing how to die with the liberties awarded to American citizens during life, such as the right to free speech and the right to practice one‘s religion; the right to die is just one more right that every human possesses.

However, this argument goes into the ideographic analysis of the word <right,> which is not the focus of this essay. It is important to note, however, that these rights are part of living a high quality life. When an individual becomes too sick to make decisions because of a loss of autonomy, he or she is no longer living a quality <life> as defined by PAS supporters.

Another major theme in the rhetoric of both sides of the physician-assisted suicide debate is dignity. However, both sides conceptualize and define dignity in radically different ways to frame their arguments. The opposing conceptions of dignity make it another ideograph that could be examined in PAS rhetoric.

Although this essay focuses on the <life> ideograph, it is important to explore the conceptions of the word ―dignity‖ as it pertains to human <life.> The Christian Medical and Dental Associations advocate for ―dignity of human life‖ through the use of alternatives to relieve pain and suffering and by providing human companionship, spiritual support and counseling. 31 Opponents of PAS refer to dignity as having a relatively sound physical state, the ability to maintain human relations, and being in a robust and content spiritual state. Dignity is all about making life peaceful and content. The emphasis is on living, and the inevitable prospect of death is not dealt with in anti-PAS rhetoric. Death is never the focus; it is all about <life> and how to live it to the fullest. To opponents of physician-assisted suicide, dignity encompasses all self-

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fulfilling things that make <life> worth living. In essence, <life> itself is dignified regardless of pain and loss of autonomy; in fact, there is no dignity in opting for a premature death.

In stark contrast to this take on <life,> pro-PAS rhetoric talks about death with dignity, as implied by title of the Death with Dignity Acts passed by Oregon, Washington, and Vermont. The very name of these acts functions rhetorically to imply that dignity pertains to death, rather than life in the case of terminally-ill patients. In America, it is expected that emergency personnel and medical staff will do everything in their power to save the life of a patient or someone who has been in a life-threatening accident unless a Do Not Resuscitate order is in place. Many Americans have been socialized to believe that life needs to be sustained at all costs. When a patient cannot be saved, one often feels as though the deceased has been cheated out of something that was promised to them in today‘s modern world. Due to a widespread reverence for life, the phrase ―death with dignity‖ goes against the common cultural belief that a prolonged life is the only thing for which to strive. ―Death with dignity‖ implies that there comes a time when life is no longer dignified. Unlike what anti-PAS rhetors argue, the rhetorical phrase ―death with dignity‖ denotes that life is undignified when an individual is in great pain, loses his or her sense of autonomy, and believes that death would be better than living in his or her current condition. It is important to note that the Death with Dignity Acts in all three states in which physician-assisted suicide is legal, makes the process available only to those individuals with a terminal illness and a doctor‘s diagnosis of having less than six months to live. Opponents of physician-assisted suicide point to a slippery slope argument in regards to defining who lives a dignified life, just as with the argument about who lives a quality life. The basis for their argument rests in the rhetoric of the ―death with dignity‖ phrase itself, not the policy. By looking at the PAS legislation, it is clear that the option to take one‘s life this way is legally available only to those with a terminal illness, not the elderly, handicapped, or depressed. PAS opponents do not argue that these groups of individuals legally can take or are taking their lives through physician-assisted suicide, but they are arguing that it is possible in the future based on how society interprets the conception of dignity as it pertains to <life> in the rhetoric of the pro-PAS advocates. If one‘s life can be ended based on how dignified one feels, there are great legal and social implications in defining what constitutes as ―dignified.‖ Much of the debate surrounding physician-assisted suicide is based not on actual policy and implementation, but rather upon the rhetoric in the other side‘s arguments and how this, in turn, has the potential to affect policy through interpretation and conceptualization.

Dignity with death defies the idea that <life> is sanctified, dignified, and individuals have a God-given duty to protect and prolong it. Now the focus is on death and its precedence over <life.> This counter-cultural approach to death vs. life is what gives anti-PAS rhetors the basis for many of their arguments. Ken Connor from the Christian Post seeks to shame PAS supporters for encouraging terminally-ill patients to choose ―self-destruction in the name of

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dignity.‖32 It is a constant battle over what defines dignity: is it placing the sanctity of life above human feelings and emotions to mean all life is dignified no matter what, or is it timing one‘s death so that physical and emotional suffering is spared?

Advocates of physician-assisted suicide describe the lives led by most terminally-ill patients as inflicted with a torturous death. While medical advances have found ways to prolong life, they have, by the same token, inevitably prolonged painful deaths. How can we tell when the benefits of a long life no longer outweigh the consequences of a painful death? This is precisely the question for which both sides are trying to provide the more compelling answer. Advocates maintain that the greatest human freedom is ―to live, and die, according to one‘s own desires and beliefs,‖ as stated by the Death with Dignity National Center website.33 Physician-assisted suicide, as argued by its supporters, gives patients the right to control their own death, something that is as natural as living. The Final Exit Network slogan is ―Supporting the human right to a death with dignity.‖34 Not only is dying with dignity preferable; it is a right. It gives individuals the right to decide for themselves the proper time to be relieved from their suffering and how to avoid an inevitably torturous death due to their terminal illness. Dignity of death in this sense is not about wanting to die, but acknowledging its inevitability and managing the pain prior to death.

In fact, some pro-PAS rhetoric makes a point of saying physician-assisted suicide does not focus on death with dignity, but, rather, on life itself. The Death with Dignity National Center website says, ―Providing dignity, control, and peace of mind during a patient's final days with family and loved ones places much greater focus on the Gift of Life than on the often painful and agonizing process of dying.‖35 Here, <life> is portrayed as a gift. Although this seems to align with the sanctity-of-life argument made by the other side of the debate, it serves a different rhetorical function. Instead of saying that <life> needs to be prolonged at all costs, the rhetoric implies that painful deaths subtract from the joys of life. Throughout the entire PAS debate, both sides use the same ideographs to make their arguments. Sometimes, they define these ideographs in the same way, yet they find ways to manipulate their usage in order to support their own respective claims.

Death is taboo in American society. Nobody wants to talk about it because this means they must confront their own mortality. Perhaps this is why Americans want so badly to know that at the end of life medical personnel will do everything possible to prolong their life. What the debate on physician-assisted suicide brings to light is that what many people fear more than death itself is a painful death. The rhetoric of PAS supporters is intended not only to draw attention to the fact that death cannot be avoided, but also to illuminate the belief that physician-assisted suicide allows people to have the kind of death they desire. In this debate, death is just another aspect of life that requires an individual to make important choices. Death is natural and individuals with a terminal illness should have the option to manage their endings so as to avoid pain and suffering.

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Opponents offset this use of rhetoric with their argument that producing death for the ―relief of pain, suffering, or economic considerations, or even for the convenience of patient, family, or society,‖ should be opposed at all costs. 36 The rhetorical choice of the phrase ―producing‖ death makes death seem unnatural, premature, and selfish. Death is the antithesis of <life> in all situations, at all times, and in all places.

The rhetoric of opponents suggests that, universally, <life> is better than death. Opponents use <life> as a God term, as defined by Richard Weaver in his book The Ethics of Rhetoric.37 When opponents of physician-assisted suicide talk about <life,> they are referring to all things sacred, good, and desirable. In many cultures and contexts, <life> is synonymous with positive symbols such as light, goodness, innocence, and hope. In contrast, <death> evokes thoughts of darkness, evil, sin, and despair. By shaping their rhetoric to conceptualize <life> as an indisputable God term, anti-PAS spokespersons are reaffirming culturally established and accepted definitions of <life.> Whereas physician-assisted suicide opponents make their arguments in order to vivify what the majority of the population already believes in regards to life being preferred to death, the PAS advocates must make certain rhetorical choices to reconstruct Americans‘ perceptions of <life.> By doing this, they are reconstructing the ideograph of <life> itself and its power to persuade audience members into promoting social change. Advocates‘ arguments are counter -cultural in nature, and those made by opponents to physician-assisted suicide are an example of culturetypal rhetoric. Culturetypal ideographs tend to be more successful in persuading audience members to agree with the argument at hand because society‘s beliefs about <life> are confirmed and revivified through the employed rhetoric. Counter-cultural ideographs are not as immediately successful in gaining approval simply because there is more work to be done in order to persuade an audience. First of all, the widespread conception of <life> as a God term is not only being questioned, but it is also being reconstructed to mean something entirely new. The counter-cultural approach to the <life> ideograph can be seen by the appeals to a dignified death in the rhetoric of pro-PAS arguments. The fact that death is the focus and is also portrayed as desirable in certain circumstances is a unique ideology shift that dominates the rhetoric of physician-assisted proponents.

The reason the debate surrounding physician-assisted suicide is so heated is because the rhetorical questions raised by the rhetoric of both sides are multi -fold and have no concrete answers. The rhetoric of this movement is abstract and leaves many unanswered questions. Both sides of the debate are successful in gaining followers because the rhetoric surrounding physician-assisted suicide allows for the audience to decide how they want to interpret various ideographs, such as <dignity,> <rights,> and <life.> The latter is perhaps the most prevalent in the debate because of its potential to be used as a universal God term or to be reconstructed to change people‘s views on what makes for a good <life> and a peaceful death.

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The Rhetoric of the Physician-Assisted Suicide Movement Implications and Conclusion

The analysis of this essay proves that opponents and supporters of physician-assisted suicide use the same <life> ideograph in different ways to support their respective arguments. Opponents of physician-assisted suicide use <life> in a culturetypal manner by finding ways to revivify and confirm the common conception that life is preferable to death. Their sanctity of life and right to life appeals coincide with the widespread belief in American culture that <life> must be revered and prolonged until the moment of ―natural‖ death. Their use of the <life> ideograph simply reaffirms the cultural beliefs of their audience in stating that <life> is the ultimate gift or possession that humans are given.

PAS opponents structure their arguments in such a way that the audience cannot disagree with them without challenging the conception of <life> the PAS opponents have constructed. In essence, the rhetoric of the opponents of physician-assisted suicide has made <life> not only an ideograph, but a God term as well. Universally, <life> is revered. If the audience buys into this claim, then it becomes impossible to support death over <life.> In contrast, the rhetoric of PAS supporters can be summed up as using <life> in a counter-cultural manner. In their rhetoric, <life> is no longer a God term in the same way it is being used by PAS opponents. Rather, the focus is put on the dignity of death in the face of a torturous prolongation of life. Their fundamental argument surrounding the conception of <life> is that if <life> is defined by pain and suffering in the final months of one‘s life, then does it remain a God term? Their answer is no. This counter-cultural application of the <life> ideograph serves to completely reconceptualize the way society looks at the idea of <life> in the face of a painful impending death. Advocates of PAS argue that <life> is only worth living in the case of a terminal illness when the quality of life is enough to outweigh the alternative of death. When the pain and suffering begin to outweigh the benefits of a continued existence, then <life> is no longer the <life> for which PAS opponents conceptualize and fight to protect. At that moment in time, death has become preferable over <life>, and <life> loses its sanctity.

Clearly, the physician-assisted suicide debate is heated. The reason for this has just as much to do with the rhetoric surrounding physician-assisted suicide as the process itself. When the two sides strive to define <life> differently and the conceptions surrounding it, there can be great implications for how the rhetoric is being used. If one side is successful in earning a large enough margin of support, then their viewpoints have the potential to be reflected in legal policies. To put this more clearly, if the supporters of physician-assisted suicide are successful in reconceptualizing the ideograph and idea of <life> in a counter-cultural manner, then, eventually, more states may adopt a Death with Dignity Act. This is only possible if the idea of <life> is no longer viewed as something sacred to be prolonged at all costs, in all situations, regardless of the amount of pain and suffering being endured. If the supporters of physicianassisted suicide can manage to shift society‘s perceptions of <life,> then the effect of their use of the <life> ideograph will be mirrored in legislation. All of

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this is only possible through a successful ideological shift of the conception of <life,> which takes time.

There have been many scholarly essays on physician-assisted suicide and the ideographs that are present in the rhetoric surrounding the political issue itself. However, most of these essays and articles analyze the ideograph of <right> as it pertains to right to die vs. right to live arguments. <Right> is a popular ideograph that is analyzed in various discourses because of its legal implications. This particular essay is unique in that it deals with another ideograph of the physician-assisted suicide debate that is prevalent in the rhetoric of both sides: <life.> It is interesting that there is a lack of analysis on the <life> ideograph in this heated political issue among scholars, because the use of this ideograph arguably explains how both sides structure their arguments and make the rhetorical choices that they do. The ways in which a group conceptualizes what <life> means is indicative on how it feels about physician-assisted suicide.

Furthermore, it affects the ways in which these groups go about persuading audiences to support their side of the issue based on how they manage to portray their conceptions of <life> in comparison to the culturally accepted conceptions that already exist.

Further studies could look into the ideograph of <dignity> that is present in physician-assisted suicide rhetoric. While this essay looks at the PAS debate as a whole from the two different sides, an ideographic analysis on the word <dignity> could reveal more about the Death with Dignity Acts themselves and how the conceptions of what it means to live a <dignified> life impact public opinion and legislation.

In sum, the ideographical choices made by both sides of the physicianassisted suicide debate are instrumental in either revivifying or constructing new conceptions of the <life> ideograph. This, in turn, has the potential to transfer over to the legal realm where conceptions of <life> can determine whether states pass future Death with Dignity Acts.

Kevorkian once pictured a world where physicians could legally help individuals end their own lives. He spent his adult life trying to change Americansâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC; conceptions of what it means to be living a quality life, and his efforts caused the nation to debate the morality of physician-assisted suicide. Whether or not all individuals should be given the right to die will remain a controversial issue as long as there is disagreement about what constitutes <life> and whether or not there ever comes a time when it is no longer worth living

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The Rhetoric of the Physician-Assisted Suicide Movement Notes

1.) Dennis McLellan, ―Dr. Jack Kevorkian dies at 83; 'Dr. Death' was advocate, practitioner of physician-assisted Suicide,‖ LA Times, 4 June, 2011, http:// articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/04/local/la-me-jack-kevorkian-20110604 (accessed 2 December, 2013).

2.) McLellan.

3.) Transcripts: ―Anderson Cooper 360,‖ CNN, 15 April, 2010, http:// transcripts.cnn.com/-TRANSCRIPTS/1004/15/acd.01.html (accessed 2 December, 2013).

4.) McLellan.

5.) Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953).

6.)A.L. Back and R.A. Pearlman, ―Desire for physician-assisted suicide: Request for a better death?‖ The Lancet 358, no. 9279 (August 2001): 344, http:// search.proquest.com/docview/199033299?accountid=9525 (accessed 14 October, 2013).

7.) J.E. Black, ―Extending the rights of personhood, voice, and life to sensate others: A homology of right to life and animal rights rhetoric,‖ Communication Quarterly 51, no. 3 (2003): 315. http://search.proquest.com/docview/216482542? accountid=9525 (accessed 11 October, 2013).

8.) Black, 314.

9.) M. Rust, ―Acceptance of the Unacceptable,‖ Insight News 14, (November, 1998): 18 -20. http://search.proquest.com/Docview/205893817?accountid=9525 (accessed 13 October, 2013).

10.) Hensley, Scott. ―Americans Support Physician-Assisted Suicide for Terminally Ill,‖ NPR, 28 December, 2012, http://www.npr.org/blogs/ health/2012/12/27/168150886/americans-support-physician-assisted-suicide-forterminally-ill/ (accessed 8 November, 2012).

11.) Jen Allen, Sonia Chavaz, Sara DeSimone, Debbie Howard, Keadron Johnson, Lucinda LaPierre, Darrel Montero, and Jerry Sanders, ―Americans‘ Attitudes Toward Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide, 1936-2002,‖ Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 33, no. 2 (June 2006): 7.

12.) Allen et al., 1.

13.) Allen et al., 10.

14.) Lynne Ann DeSpelder and Albert Lee Strickland, ―End-Of-Life Issues and Decisions,‖ The Last Dance: Encountering Death and Dying (New York: McGrawHill, 2011), 223.

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15.) ―Death with Dignity Acts,‖ Death with Dignity National Center, 2012, http:// www.deathwithdignity.org/acts (accessed 7 November, 2013).

16.) Meg Baker, ―Billboard Campaign Puts Controversial Right-to-Die Group in the Spotlight,‖ Fox News, 15 July 2010, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/21/ radical-right-die-groups-controversial-suicide-campaign/ (accessed 8 November, 2013).

17.) Baker.

18.) Michael Calvin McGee, ―The ‗Ideograph‘: A Link between Rhetoric and Ideology,‖ in Readings in Rhetorical Criticism, 4 ed., ed. Carl Burgchardt (State College, PA: Strata Publishing, Inc., 2010), 504.

19.) Black, 314.

20.) ―Guarding the Sanctity of Life,‖ Alliance Defending Freedom, http:// www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org/issues/sanctity-of-life (accessed 8 November, 2013).

21.) ―Guarding the Sanctity of Life.‖ 22.) ―Physician-Assisted Suicide,‖ Christian Medical and Dental Associations, http:// www.cmda.org/WCM/CMDA/Issues2/End_of_Life1/ Assisted_Suicide_Euthanasia1/Ethics_Statements4/Physician_Assisted_S.aspx (accessed 6 November, 2013).

23.) ―Physician-Assisted Suicide.‖ 24.) ―Physician-Assisted Suicide.‖ 25.)―Guarding the Sanctity of Life.‖ 26.) ―Frequently Asked Questions,‖ Death with Dignity National Center, 2012, http:// www.deathwithdignity.org/historyfacts/questions (accessed 5 November, 2013).

27.) Ken Connor, ―Assisted Suicide: Blinded by the Light of Celebrity,‖ Christian Post, 1 October, 2013. http://www.christianpost.com/news/assisted-suicide-blinded-bythe-light-of-celebrity-105677/ (accessed 4 November, 2013).

28.) Baker.

29.) Baker.

30.) ―Frequently Asked Questions.‖ 31.) ―Physician-Assisted Suicide.‖ 32.) Connor.

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33.) ―About Death with Dignity,‖ Death with Dignity National Center, 2012, http:// www.deathwithdignity.org/ (accessed 5 November, 2012).

34.) ―Our Guiding Principle,‖ Final Exit Network, 2011, http:// www.finalexitnetwork.org/new/what-sets-us-apart/ (accessed 5 November, 2013).

35.) ―Frequently Asked Questions.‖ 36.) ―Physician-Assisted Suicide.‖ 37.) Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953).

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Jane Austen: Shaping the Standard of Women‟s Education Elizabeth McElligott Wartburg College “But if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret.”

John Gregory Jane Austen (1775-1817) was a Romantic-era writer who published six novels and several other writings. She is well-known for her insightful social commentary, in addition to the incisive portrayals of the gentry‘s life in the late 1700s. Much of her writing centers on marriage plots, in which her main female characters undergo a transformation in order to achieve happiness in marriage. Austen published Sense and Sensibility in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma in 1815; and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published posthumously in 1818. In her novels, Austen discusses taste, environment, auto-didacticism, wit, and social awareness, and illuminates how these different aspects of education combine to allow women to learn about themselves and improve their character. Scholar Barry Roth states that ―[Austen] identifies self-knowledge as education‘s primary end‖ (112). Each novel portrays a different facet of education in order to create a more comprehensive view of women‘s education. Austen develops the women in her novels so that they educate themselves in order to achieve selfknowledge instead of simply achieving an advantageous marriage. Austen‘s novels also reveal a shift in perception from solely portraying society‘s perceptions of educated women to challenging the existing purpose of education as a means to gain a husband. Jane Austen engages with the social constructs of women‘s education and challenges societal perceptions by revealing the importance of self-awareness through an holistic education, which involves more than formal schooling and identifies self-knowledge as its end.

During the late 1700s and early 1800s, numerous publications were available that explained what a woman‘s education should entail. Although many of these were written by men, several were also written by women who presented a traditional view of the ideal woman. The ―female character‖ was a muchdebated topic, with each writer positing his or her own views. Hannah More, a writer on religious and moral topics, wrote in ―Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education‖ that worldly concerns such as education distracted women from spiritual concerns. Moreover, it disordered and sensualized women, diverting them from domestic concerns. Likewise, Thomas Gisborne, an

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Anglican priest, discussed what a woman should do in order to become virtuous. He wrote that a woman‘s first concern was to comfort her husband, parents, other relations, and neighbors. The second was to improve the manners of men by setting a faultless example, and the third was to model and shape the human mind (487). This, Gisborne proposed, would ―excite virtuous exertion.‖ However, Gisborne did not elaborate on the duty of modeling, or forming, the human mind beyond stating that moral principles must be passed down to children.

Women were certainly not encouraged to improve their own minds; in fact, another moralist named John Gregory goes so far as to caution his daughters to hide their learning. Gregory wrote an epistle to his children, titled ―A Father‘s Legacy to his Daughters.‖ In this letter, he describes the ideal behavior his daughters should practice. He writes: Be even cautious in displaying your good sense. It will be thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the company – But if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially from the men, who generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great parts, and cultivated understanding. (405) This shows that society‘s perception of women‘s education at the time was largely negative; to have a cultivated mind was to attract a ―malignant eye.‖ If a woman had good sense, she had to temper it to not appear smarter than the men in her circle, and if she had formal education beyond what a standard finishing school would provide, it was regarded as a shameful secret that was to be guarded at all costs. The view was that a woman‘s first priority in life was to secure a husband and maintain domestic felicity; a ―cultivated understanding‖ not only interfered with that aim by distracting women from domestic tasks, but was detrimental in that it drove potential husbands from their company. Educated women, therefore, seemed almost unacceptable in Jane Austen‘s time.

An idea also existed during the time that men were simply formed to be more intelligent than women. The Creator had formed each sex for specific duties, and, therefore, had blessed each gender with the appropriate qualifications each would need in life. Gisbourne describes this in ―An Inquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex‖ and states that ―other studies, pursuits, and occupations, assigned chiefly or entirely to men, demand the efforts of a mind endued with the powers of close and comprehensive reasoning . . . in a degree which they are not requisite for the discharge of the customary offices of female duty‖ (282). The idea that men were granted a greater capacity for learning was prevalent because it seemed natural that ―the Giver of all good, after bestowing those powers on men with a liberality proportioned to the subsisting necessity, would impart them to a female mind with a more sparing hand‖ (283). Women, therefore, through no fault of their own, were not endowed with the brainpower required to perform comprehensive reasoning, or so many in society believed. If a woman displayed competence in areas outside the feminine sphere, she could be regarded as an aberration or even someone who was unnatural in the grander scheme of God‘s plan.

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However, there were certain habits and characteristics a woman needed to learn to perform, most related to domesticity. Hannah More wrote various publications on the subject of women; another, titled ―The Benefits of Restraint,‖ describes what a woman should learn before marriage. She states that ―habitual restraint‖ led to future happiness and that women ―should be led to distrust their own judgment.‖ Women should also acquire a ―submissive temper and forbearing spirit‖ and aspire to perform their domestic tasks well, but receive little to no recognition for their success. However, More did claim that these feminine qualifications should stem from a desire to be obedient to Christ, instead of the simpler idea presented by Gregory that an educated woman would scare husbands away or defied God‘s plan entirely. She wrote, ―…let them not be instructed to practice gentleness merely on the low ground of its being decorous and feminine, and pleasing, and calculated to attract human favor; but let them be carefully taught to cultivate it on the high principle of obedience to Christ‖ (489). More‘s quotation suggests that knowledge of domestic tasks was not only beneficial to women, but also pleasing to God. In this sense, a woman perhaps should mistrust her judgment in order to follow God‘s law, as More appears to suggest.

Although More encourages women to be gentle, decorous, and feminine, she states that a woman‘s highest aim should be to please Christ, not a future husband. However, More contradicts herself in another publication and states that the highest aim women should aspire to in life is marriage and pleasing a husband, which presumably would be a woman‘s duty in pleasing Christ. Any education women receive should be to prepare them for the duties involved in marriage. In ―Comparison of the Mode of Female Education in the Last Age with that of the Present Age,‖ she writes: ...yet it does not seem to be the true end of education to make women of fashion dancers, singers, players, painters, actresses, sculptors, gilders, varnishers, engravers, and embroiderers…. The profession of ladies, to which the bent of their instruction should be turned is that of daughters, wives, mothers, and mistresses of families. They should be therefore trained with a view to these several conditions, and be furnished with a stock of ideas and principles, and qualifications ready to be applied. (500) More claims that women should be trained throughout their lives and prepared with certain ideas and thoughts in order to enter into marriage. Although she states a woman should place Christ first, More acknowledges the social necessity of obtaining an advantageous marriage. She recognizes that importance of training for matrimony and places emphasis on undertaking an education that will prepare a woman specifically for duties required of a wife and mother.

Another much-debated topic in the scope of women‘s education during the late 1700s and early 1800s was wit. Austen does not engage with this topic often, although several of her characters display wit. However, it is important to understand what precepts women faced in order to fully comprehend the lack of appreciation for educated, autonomous women. The term ―wit‖ encompassed qualities such as vivacity in speech, quickness in reply, and overall cleverness of the woman. Far from being qualities that were sought out and

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appreciated by men, wit in a woman was something that was undesirable.

James Fordyce, in ―Sermons to Young Women,‖ directs commentary at women to warn them ―against the affectation and the abuse‖ of wit. Fordyce writes, ―the faculty termed Wit is commonly looked upon with a suspicious eye . . . It is especially, I think, dreaded in women.‖ He then elaborates: ―Men of the best sense have been usually averse to the thought of marrying a witty female . . . men who understand the science of domestic happiness, know that its very first principle is ease.‖ Fordyce asks, in the face of wit, ―who would not flee? Protect us, ye powers and gentleness and decorum, protect us from the disgust of such a scene – Ah! my dear hearers, if ye knew how terrible it appears to a male ear of the least delicacy, I think you would take care never to practice it‖ (394-402). Even Gregory comments that ―wit is the most dangerous talent that [a woman] can possess. It must be guarded with great discretion and goodnature, otherwise it will create many enemies‖ (406).

This perception of wit paints a bleak picture for the woman who was clever in conversation and talented with words. Instead of displaying intelligence, showing wit appeared to be a guaranteed way of driving men away. It is evident that a woman was not encouraged to educate herself in order to be clever and witty; it was, in actuality, a skill that was detrimental to the success of finding a domestic partner. That Fordyce comments on a male ear of the ―least delicacy‖ demonstrates that even men who were of lower class were repulsed by a woman who displayed wit. For a woman of low class whose only hope of advancement was through marriage, displaying wit and intelligence could be deadly to her future happiness, if she followed the ideas presented by moralists. Even though not all men may have responded to witty, intelligent women in the same manner of the moralists, it was risky for women to display intelligence in public.

Women‘s education during Jane Austen‘s time was defined primarily by these moralists, who commented on specific habits and characteristics a woman must practice to be dutiful to their husbands and to God. Women often did receive a small education at a finishing school, but this traditional education largely provided women only with skills necessary to attract men and become wives. The traditional portrayal of a woman‘s education did not extend beyond the realm of her domestic duties. However, Jane Austen‘s novels provide a comprehensive social commentary on the state of women‘s education and a progressive view of what a woman‘s education should include. Her six novels, when examined chronologically in a larger context, reveal an holistic interpretation of what a woman‘s education should be in order for the woman to improve herself and her society.

Austen‘s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, largely emphasizes the importance of taste. Good manners are also accentuated, as is correct behavior in certain social situations. Elinor Dashwood emerges as the heroine of Sense and Sensibility largely because of her preservation of good manners and her presentation of a calm face even though she is suffering privately (Markovits, 779). She interacts with sense in all situations, in contrast to her sister, Marianne, who generally reacts with strong emotion. Over the course of

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the novel, Marianne must learn to steady her emotions, recognize that tastes other than her own have merit, and improve herself through reading more than romance novels. Elinor serves as her example because of her steadiness in action and emotion.

In Sense and Sensibility, emotional control is paired with taste to demonstrate how an important part of a woman‘s education is knowledge about navigating social situations. Taste seems to be defined by Austen as the ways a person is trained and prepared to appreciate the world. Being sincere and unaffected is also an important part of taste, although a woman must have enough control that she is proper in her sincerity and not overly forward. Marianne is often carried away in raptures in her vibrant expression of taste, which demonstrates an immature understanding of how to express herself. Her taste aligns exactly with John Willoughby‘s, which is a large reason for her attachment to him. As scholar Beth Lau states, ―maturation begins with a state of passionate attachment to a heroic, larger-than-life figure‖ (65). Marianne becomes attached to Willoughby after he rescues her from the rain and carries her home, tending to her sprained ankle. This attachment to Willoughby and the ultimate loss of his acquaintance is what helps Marianne grow. She holds Willoughby in higher esteem than Edward Ferrars, Elinor‘s friend, because her tastes align better with Willoughby‘s than Edward‘s. For example, when Edward, Elinor, and Marianne walk through the country, Edward states that he disagrees with the typical views on the picturesque that women like Marianne hold (127).

After Edward professes his atypical opinions, ―Marianne looked with amazement at Edward, with compassion at her sister‖ (128). Marianne believes that since Edward‘s taste does not align with hers, Elinor could find no happiness in a match with him, which exemplifies Marianne‘s naïve perception of taste. Her obvious credulity also serves as a stark contrast to Elinor‘s calm demeanor.

However, Elinor admires Edward for reasons other than his descriptions of nature, and she is able to ignore Marianne‘s gaze.

Education in Sense and Sensibility also revolves around the idea of selfimprovement through reading. Formal education is not portrayed in a manner that is useful to people later in life; Edward‘s formal education prepared him only for a life of idleness, and Charlotte Palmer‘s seven-year education endowed her with the skills to embroider. Charlotte Palmer laughs heartily while admiring the Dashwoods‘ house, but after admiring different aspects she ―very soon forgot that there were any such things in the room‖ (136-139). In contrast to Charlotte Palmer‘s inattention, the Dashwood family is quite unprepared to handle Charlotte‘s energy. The Dashwoods seem much steadier and calmer and emphasize reading to improve their minds. Edward states on page 123 that he knows the Dashwoods would buy more books to improve the house if they were richer, which shows they value books and self-improvement through reading. Although Marianne pursued Romantic literature on her own, out of her own self-interest, later in the novel she states that she will read to improve her mind and pursue books ―beyond mere amusement.‖ She claims, ― By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelvemonth a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want‖ (348). She realizes that

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Romantic literature had affected her taste and expression of emotion, and recognizes that different novels will improve both her taste and her self-control.

A woman‘s education in Sense and Sensibility revolves mainly around the ideas of taste and self-improvement through reading. Not many other accomplishments are emphasized as the central part of women‘s education, such as singing, playing the piano, or needlework, although Marianne does play and sing quite well. Austen offers in her first novel that women must mature into their understanding of taste and expression of emotion. Elinor Dashwood‘s taste is refined, and her steady countenance, despite personal struggle, serves as a mirror through which Marianne‘s lack of maturity is reflected. Only through a development of taste and control of emotions, enabling selfimprovement after Marianne‘s attachment to Willoughby, does Marianne find happiness and a steadiness of character.

Although Sense and Sensibility did not emphasize accomplishments as integral to a woman‘s education, Austen‘s second novel, Pride and Prejudice, demonstrates the benefit of accomplishments to women. She provides social commentary on the idea that accomplishments were methods to ensnare quality husbands, and ultimately demonstrates that the goal of education is social mobility and the ability to improve one‘s place in society through gaining respect.

In Pride and Prejudice, taste is only mentioned in relation to Lady Catherine‘s love of music and her boast that she has excellent taste. Instead, the novel centers around the idea of accomplishments as tasks that women perform to demonstrate their superiority in society. Lady Catherine interrogates Elizabeth Bennet about her various accomplishments and is stunned to learn that she never had a formal governess to teach her drawing, piano, or other skills deemed necessary to genteel ladies. Lady Catherine declares, ―‗I always say that nothing is to be done in education without steady and regular instruction, and nobody but a governess can give it‘‖ (191). While Elizabeth appears to have the bare minimum of accomplishments necessary to interact with those of a higher status, she is judged harshly by other women in the novel with formal educations because she never had a governess of her own.

Louisa and Caroline, Mr. Bingley‘s sisters, are ―entitled to think well of themselves and meanly of others‖ because they ―had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town‖ (54). Their formal education molded them into accomplished women, which enables them to maintain their higher standing and superior self-regard. However, Austen also emphasizes the negative effects of a formal education. She creates antipathy toward formal training in a woman‘s life and, instead, portrays the Romantic idea that education enabled snobbishness, which is especially evident in Bingley‘s sisters. Austen also demonstrates that a substantial education can be just as bad as an inconsequential one. After all, George Wickham attended Cambridge for his education and serves in the militia. His only hope for social improvement is to marry a rich woman.

However, much like Sense and Sensibility, Austen stresses the idea of selfimprovement through reading. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are frequently reading

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novels and educating themselves. They improve their intellect and their ability to interact in social situations. In fact, Elizabeth even counsels Mr. Darcy to practice his conversation much like she practices the piano (199). Through Elizabeth, Austen demonstrates that auto-didacticism is integral to a universal understanding of society. Conversation and the practice of speech allows Elizabeth to interact with ease with all classes in society. Wider interaction in society displays a broader knowledge; Elizabeth not only reads to improve her mind, but also to improve herself in order to better navigate social situations.

Georgiana, Mr. Darcy‘s younger sister, is receiving a structured education, but lacks the social skills necessary to function in society. Her inability to navigate social situations is seen as detrimental as not being able to perform specific tasks or accomplishments. Likewise, Mrs. Bennet has a ―weak understanding‖ and ―illiberal mind,‖ which do not inspire affection, respect, or esteem in Mr. Bennet, who states that due to Mrs. Bennet‘s folly, ―all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown‖ (250). Elizabeth‘s ability to examine her prejudices after reading Mr. Darcy‘s letter demonstrates a solid understanding of her own nature and faults. Through novels, conversation, and the analysis of one‘s own behaviors, a woman can learn not only accomplishments, but also the method of interacting in society, which will enable her to earn respect and esteem. These qualities combined enabled women to be displayed at their best advantage in society; ultimately, in the case of Pride and Prejudice, to attract a husband of a higher class.

Austen portrays education as a route to a better life through marriage, allowing women to self-improve both their minds and their social position. Education is viewed largely as a way to attract men, which is a stark contrast to the distasteful way the moralists explained what women should do to gain a husband. When Lydia takes Jane‘s place at the table as a married woman, Austen demonstrates that society valued marriage as a greater achievement than intelligence and honor (322). Similarly, Charlotte Lucas demonstrates that marriage was the main objective in society. Austen writes, ―Without thinking highly of either men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want‖ (152). An education could not provide for a woman; marriage was consequently valued in society in a greater sense than education, and even education and accomplishments were only means to achieve an advantageous marriage. Throughout Pride and Prejudice, Austen demonstrates that accomplishments are performed simply to attract male attention. They are not particularly good or bad, but simply allow women a chance to improve their social position by ensnaring a husband in a higher class. Although Austen satirizes the snobbery that often coincides with being an accomplished and educated woman, as seen in Louisa and Caroline, she embodies the notion that accomplishments enabled social mobility through marriage. A woman‘s education needed to develop accomplishments as marketable skills in addition to providing opportunities for reading and reflection, which ultimately enabled personal growth.

However, Elizabeth‘s reading and conversation skills do not drive men away as

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moralists would caution; Mr. Darcy seems attracted to Elizabeth‘s personality as revealed through her conversation ability, in addition to her humble supply of accomplishments.

Austen‘s third novel, Mansfield Park, further elaborates on the idea of self-improvement, but also demonstrates that education can be found in a woman‘s surrounding environment. In this novel, the term education includes the environment in which a woman was raised, and incorporates a development of a moral compass and correct mannerisms to interact with society. In an early conversation with Edmund, Fanny remarks that one learns morals through example. She questions Edmund: ―‗Do you not think . . . that this impropriety is a reflection upon Mrs. Crawford, as her niece has been entirely brought up by her?‘‖ Edmund responds, ―‗Yes, we must suppose the faults of the niece to have been those of the aunt; and it makes one more sensible of the disadvantages she has been under‘‖ (90-91). This demonstrates that the influence Miss Crawford grew up under was what caused her to misspeak about her uncle since she never learned proper decorum from her aunt. At Mansfield Park, Fanny grows and matures under Edmund‘s example and discusses propriety and social opinions with him. Her experience introduces the idea that one must learn from one‘s elders in the environment. Another example supporting this idea is revealed when the play Lover‘s Vows is discussed. Edmund believes that acting out this play would be indecorous and urges Maria to put a stop to the play by using her status to influence others around her. On page 161, Edmund states, ―‗You must set the example.If others have blundered, it is your place to put them right... In all points of decorum, your conduct must be law to the rest of the party.‘‖ Edmund‘s statement illuminates the fact that others in the party will learn from and follow Maria‘s example if she declares they should choose another play.

A further instance that provides evidence of how much the environment of a woman affects her is illuminated in another conversation between Edmund and Fanny when they discuss Miss Crawford later in the novel. Edmund states, ―‗I know [Miss Crawford‘s] disposition to be as sweet and faultless as your own, but the influence of her former companions makes her seem, gives to her conversation, to her professed opinions, sometimes a tinge of wrong.‘‖ Fanny replies ironically, ―‗The effect of education‘‖ (278). Her comment illuminates the importance of environment in a woman‘s education. Fanny also learns to ride a horse better when she joins her cousin‘s world in a higher class and receives opportunities that would not have otherwise been available to her. In fact, the environment that she would have grown up in presents a sharp contrast to Mansfield Park, where Fanny resides for most of her young life. Sir Thomas Bertram even sends Fanny back home when she initially refuses Mr. Crawford‘s proposal in the hopes that she will appreciate the environment available to higher classes (371).

In Mansfield Park, Austen depicts formal education in an apathetic manner, revealing that it does not always provide the best situations through which women can learn. Austen does not support a claim that a formal education is especially beneficial; instead, she demonstrates that one learns more and im-

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proves more if she simply follows the example of people with a high moral character. Henry Crawford himself had a formal education, but one that perhaps lacked in moral direction, as his education failed to eradicate his improper tendencies that later led him to entice Maria into adultery. In addition, Sir Thomas Bertram laments his daughters‘ upbringing and education; despite their childhood, his daughters still did not hold true to social propriety in their marriages. Maria leaves her husband for Henry Crawford and Julia marries Mr. Yates seemingly in reaction to the scandal that follows, knowing that her chances of a beneficial match are slim due to her sister‘s actions. Austen describes Sir Thomas Bertram‘s reaction: …Though the anguish arising from the conviction of his own errors in the education of his daughters, was never to be entirely done away. Too late he became aware how unfavourable... the treatment which Maria and Julia had been always experiencing at home, where the excessive indulgence and flattery of their aunt had been continually contrasted with his own severity. (458) It is clear that Sir Bertram blames his daughters‘ impropriety on the environment in which they were raised.

On the other hand, although Fanny received a similar education as Maria and Julia, she was guided more often by Edmund and coddled less by Mrs. Norris. Her environment encouraged moral discipline and strengthening of values, which is evident in Fanny‘s refusal of Crawford‘s proposal. She understands that he is not a man of the highest virtue and is unwilling to submit to the environment that would ensue from such a match. Although her refusal confused those around her, Fanny‘s relatives lauded her discretion after the scandal involving Mr. Crawford, shortly after his attempts to persuade Fanny he had changed.

In fact, Fanny takes action herself to create the best possible environment for her learning. She often takes refuge in the old schoolroom, which is full of books and teaches herself as she reads. She later takes great pride and pleasure in teaching Susan, her younger sister, when she visits home. Fanny and Susan subscribe to a circulating library and Fanny thinks, ―…to be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any one‘s improvement in view in her choice! But so it was. Susan had read nothing, and Fanny longed to give her a share in her own first pleasures, and inspire a taste for the biography and poetry which she delighted in herself‖ (400). Fanny recognizes that her reading helps her improve her own character and that she can set an example for Susan and provide an environment to nurture Susan.

Fanny‘s character develops through this process, which illustrates how environment affects education. For Fanny, education is not about mastering knowledge, but more about strengthening and solidifying her morals and values. She learns from the poor examples of Maria and Julia and conducts herself in a more proper manner than their example illustrated. She also learns from Edmund and values their relationship because it allows her to improve her character and her understanding of good principles. This education from her environment and the people around her empowers Fanny and allows her to

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stand for what she believes. Lau states that Austen, like many other women writers of the Romantic period, constructed her characters‘ identities according to an ―ethic of care that privileges relationship and community over autonomous individuality‖ (65). Fanny demonstrates personal growth and selfdiscovery throughout the novel, which allows Austen to support the idea that a moral compass and strong sense of personal principles are essential for an educated woman.

In Austen‘s next novel, Emma, she further explores the idea of women learning from those around them and, in addition, focuses on sense and selfreflection. Particularly in Emma, Austen presents the idea that growth can only happen when one learns from her own mistakes. Although Emma often looks to Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightly for guidance, she often makes decisions and judgments by herself. In some cases, she blunders in social situations, but she reflects later and rectifies her behavior, similar to the way that Elizabeth remedied her preconceptions in Pride and Prejudice.

Austen opens the novel by introducing Emma and the neighborhood in which she lives, focusing on a description of Mrs. Goddard‘s boarding school.

Austen writes, it was a ―real, honest, old-fashioned Boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, where the girls . . . [had no] danger of coming back prodigies (68).‖ This criticizes the idea that accomplishments were marketing devices for women to ensnare husbands and demonstrates that there should have been more to a woman‘s education than learning skills for matrimony. Austen supports this idea often through Emma‘s declarations that she will never marry; her knowledge is, therefore, for gains other than those existing through marriage. Instead of focusing on accomplishments, Emma must learn about herself and how to interact with others in different classes in society to improve her education. In the beginning of the novel, she is not focused on self-improvement, which is evident on page 79 when Mr. Knightly and Mr. Woodhouse discuss Emma‘s friendship with Harriet Smith. Mr. Woodhouse declares, ―‗As Emma wants to see [Harriet] better informed, it will be an inducement to her to read more herself.‘‖ Mr. Knightly retorts, ―‗Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old... She will never submit to anything requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.‘‖ Here, Austen establishes Emma as a character who must undergo self-improvement throughout the novel in order to receive a more rounded education that enables personal growth rather than simply an advantageous marriage.

Further on in the novel, Mr. Knightly cautions Emma to have more sense in the way she behaves in society. He tells her, ―‗Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do‘‖ (99). Emma must learn common sense and the knowledge of how to act in certain social situations, and she does learn from her experiences over the course of the novel. For example, after Emma and a group of her friends travel to Box-Hill, Knightly criticizes Emma‘s behavior toward Miss Bates and scolds her for being insensitive to Miss Bates‘ feelings (325). Emma examines her actions, and eventually she understands that she behaved improperly and apologizes to Miss Bates. As scholar Stefanie Mar-

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kovits claims, Austen‘s heroines almost always undergo a moral fall and mortification before entering the ―blessed state of matrimony,‖ which demonstrates that some self-learning must be involved before a woman can marry (779).

Emma is mortified to have displeased Mr. Knightly to such an extent, which causes her to regret and make amends for her actions. Through experience, Emma develops sense and emerges with a greater understanding of herself.

In Emma, formal education is portrayed in a number of ways. It can lead to independence for lower classes, so it is beneficial to the lower class (172).

However, a woman using her education for a profession is portrayed in a miserable style. Jane Fairfax must become a governess in order to make her way in life, which is described as a sacrifice, penance, and mortification – a duty that is honorable, but pitiable (173, 175). For Mrs. Elton, who is of a higher class in society, education was merely a means to gain a husband. However, her education does not necessarily make her a better partner for Mr. Elton; in fact, Austen declares that a woman of a lower class with more sense would have made a better match. Austen writes: Mrs. Elton was a vain woman, extremely well satisfied with herself and thinking much of her own importance; that she meant to shine and be very superior, but with manners which had been formed in a bad school . . . that if not foolish she was ignorant, and that her society would certainly do Mr. Elton no good. Harriet would have been a better match. If not wise or re fined herself, she would have connected him with those who were. (249) Mrs. Elton also believes that once she gains a husband, she no longer needs to practice her accomplishments. She discusses her married friends who have given up piano, and states, ―‗I begin now to comprehend that a married woman has many things to call her attention.‘‖ Austen then writes, ―Emma, finding her so determined upon neglecting her music, had nothing more to say‖ (254).

Austen portrays in this situation that accomplishments only prepare a woman to find a husband, not for the role of a wife, and that good sense and wisdom are better qualities in a match than the classic education Mrs. Elton received.

Mrs. Elton also acts as a foil to Emma, providing a backdrop against which Emma‘s change throughout the novel can be viewed. On page 288, Emma is jealous of Mrs. Elton for opening the ball, wishing that she was married as well and could open a ball of her own. However, she changes her opinion and decides she does not want to be married so that she can maintain the independence she has in her house with her father. She also changes her opinion about Mr. Martin. In the beginning of the novel, Emma practically forbids Harriet from accepting a marriage proposal from Mr. Martin because he is a farmer.

Although Emma concedes that Mr. Martin‘s sisters ―are quite as well educated as me,‖ she states that ―Mr. Martin looked as if he did not know what manner was‖ (75). She learns, however, that Mr. Martin reads novels and that he has true regard for Harriet. After learning more about how well he conducts himself from Mr. Knightly‘s counsel, Emma approves a match between Mr. Martin and Harriet. This demonstrates Emma‘s self-reflection and knowledge of self she gains that allows her to change her opinions. Whereas Mrs. Elton maintains the same beliefs she was instilled with in her traditional education, Emma

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demonstrates that she thinks for herself and can create and change her own opinions, which is a skill she learned to do without an education at a finishing school.

Education in Emma is also about interacting with others in society and building relationships with other people. If Emma had befriended Jane Fairfax instead of Harriet, for example, she would have benefitted from Jane‘s society.

Emma ―bitterly regretted not having sought a closer acquaintance with her‖ and realizes that most of the negative feelings she associated with Jane stemmed from jealousy (359). Although she did not befriend Jane, Emma‘s attentions to Harriet also provide evidence for this statement. Mr. Knightly credits Emma for Harriet‘s education on page 325, which emphasizes that education revolves around relationships with other people.

Throughout the course of the novel, Emma gains wisdom through her selfreflection which enables her personal growth. Her new knowledge of self through the education she received from interacting with others is what draws Mr. Knightly‘s attention. Although Gregory suggested in his letters that any display of knowledge would drive men away, it is, in fact, Emma‘s education about herself and her actions that cause her to rise in Mr. Knightly‘s esteem.

Emma is also the first of Austen‘s women to represent a progressive view on what women were entitled to in society. Far from practicing numerous accomplishments to gain a husband, Emma declares she is satisfied with becoming an old maid. Although she marries Mr. Knightly in the end, she maintains a portion of her independence by not leaving her own home to move to her husband‘s house. Alice Drum describes in ―Pride and Prestige: Jane Austen and the Professions‖ that ―Emma supports both tradition and reform, depending on the subject and the circumstances. For example, Emma will not break with tradition: she will marry, but Mr. Knightley will break with tradition and move to his bride's home‖ (428). Emma breaks tradition, and even though this may not seem revolutionary, it illuminates an important shift in Austen‘s consideration of women, education, and marriage.

Austen‘s last two novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, further elaborate on the shift in Austen‘s evaluation of educated women. While her first novels interact with the existing sentiments of women‘s education, Emma represents the first challenge to these ideas as Austen allows her female character to defy tradition and have power over her choice of residence after marriage.

Austen‘s final novels build on the non-traditional portrayal of women‘s education. Her later novels represent women‘s education in more progressive manners than Austen‘s earlier novels, which demonstrate a shift in Austen‘s perception of women and present Austen‘s idea that women deserve a rounder education than traditional finishing school provides. Persuasion focuses largely on good sense and learning and a strong sense of self that guides one‘s actions. It evaluates how novels are a large part of a woman‘s education and how women, particularly Anne, use their power to manipulate social situations around them. Northanger Abbey also elaborates on the importance of novels and reading in education and provides the most comprehensive example of personal growth through experiences. Far from focusing merely on taste, ac-

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complishments, or the chance of growing up in a better environment, these novels build on these ideas and depict self-knowledge as education‘s ultimate aim. Austen challenged society‘s opinions on formal education, when a woman‘s only goal was to marry advantageously.

In Persuasion, education is introduced as something that makes good company into great company, suggesting that it provides superior knowledge of how to interact in social situations. However, the term education does not refer to formal schooling, but to knowledge, sense, and understanding of human nature. Anne comments to William Elliot, ―‗My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people.‘‖ Elliot responds, ―‗That is not good company, that is the best. Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice. . . . A little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company, on the contrary, it will do very well‘‖ (171). This demonstrates that learning, not necessarily education alone, improves company. In fact, Mrs. Smith, Anne‘s old governess, values her nurse‘s compassion and good sense above any other qualities. She states: She is a shrewd, intelligent, and sensible woman. Hers is a line for seeing human nature; and she has a fund of good sense and observation which, as a companion, make her infinitely superior to thousands of those who having only received ‗the best education in the world,‘ know nothing worth attending to. Call it gossip if you will, but when nurse Rooke has half an hour‘s leisure… she is sure to have something to relate that is entertaining and profitable... (175-176) Mrs. Smith illuminates the idea that education involves far more than schooling and benefits women in the degree that it makes them more valuable in society and the company of others.

However, Austen also focuses on the role of novels in education. Captain Benwick reads voraciously and the fact that Anne can recommend books for him to read displays her taste and knowledge. Benwick is grateful to her, which supports the idea that a woman who had developed taste in novels could become a treasured companion (128-130). Anne also knows enough poetry that she is able to describe landscapes using quotations. When she is not entertained enough by the company she is walking with, she thinks of poems in her head that describe the various scenes in nature. Her learning allows her to amuse herself and take comfort in her own company instead of simply relying on others for entertainment (114). Elizabeth, Anne‘s sister, does not value reading as much as Anne does, as evidenced in her statement to Anne before Anne visits Lady Russell: ―‗You may as well take back that tiresome book she would lend me, and pretend I have read it through. I really cannot be plaguing myself for ever with all the new poems . . . that come out‘‖ (227). Anne emerges as a sympathetic character in contrast to Elizabeth, who has no intention of broadening her knowledge or lessening her ignorance of literature.

Anne also serves to provide a woman‘s perspective on the many novels that were published by men. It is arguable that Anne could serve as Austen‘s proxy when she discusses the negative portrayals of women in novels. On page

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243, Captain Harville remarks that he has never opened a book in his life that did not debate woman‘s inconsistency. Anne retorts, ―‗If you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove any thing.‘‖ Here, Austen is able to make a proto-feminist statement that deplores the current state of women‘s education. This demonstrates that education matters beyond simple schooling; it gives control to represent topics in writing. This is a power that women typically do not have, which is why Anne refuses to accept the portrayal of women‘s inconstancies from novels written by men. Education allows men to control the representations of women since they receive more education and, therefore, are seen as more credible sources. However, Austen seems to declare in this instance that if women cannot represent themselves, a reader should not always trust the judgment of the author. This sheds light on a possible reason for Austen‘s shift in the portrayal of women‘s education, as if she realized that her novels gave her the control to represent women in an innovative manner.

As Markovits states, Austen wants to both entertain and educate her readers. She wants her women characters to have self-knowledge, but she also wants to give her characters and readers happy endings. Markovits states: Austen‘s letters point to a constant balancing act between a desire to educate her readers (to make them good) and to delight them (to make them happy), and she thinks of her novels comparatively according to which of these ends she has focused on achieving, a distinction based in turn upon the form of happiness with which she blesses her heroines in conclusion. Anne Elliot and Fanny Price are the only two Austen heroines who begin their narratives knowing not only the objects of their love but also their own minds. (18) Austen allows Anne to be the master of her own mind, which allows her to take action to win the love of Captain Wentworth. As Fordyce discusses in ―Sermons to Young Women,‖ virtuous women have a degree of power over men. He describes the ―very great and extensive influence‖ women have over men (400). Anne displays this power in her actions toward Captain Wentworth; she is able to manipulate certain situations to appeal to his favor.

When Anne and Captain Wentworth were on the verge of marriage years before the novel took place, Anne allowed Lady Russell‘s and her father‘s influence to affect her decision. This ability to be easily persuaded showed ―a feebleness of character.‖ Captain Wentworth states, ―She had given him up to oblige others. It had been the effect of over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity‖ (95). However, by the end of the novel, which is over ten years after Anne gave in to persuasion, Anne is able to act of her own accord. She is persistent in her pursuit of Captain Wentworth; she maneuvers opportunities to speak with Wentworth and makes sure that her meaning will be grasped by him. She knows what she wants and takes action to gain it, which is a progressive view of what a woman of strong character can achieve. Anne‘s actions are also evidence that with experience and learning, a woman can improve her

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situation after gaining a better understanding of self, contrasting with Austen‘s earlier depiction of women in Pride and Prejudice, such as Charlotte Lucas, who views the purpose of education to become wives rather than self-directed individuals. Anne trusts her judgment and acts of her own accord, which challenges More‘s earlier conception that a woman should not depend on her own judgment.

Northanger Abbey also provides strong evidence that self-learning, selfeducation, and learning from mistakes and experience are essential in the education of women. Of course, Austen wrote Northanger Abbey largely to satirize Gothic novels and Gothic heroines; however, she still continues to demonstrate that women‘s education is important. Catherine Morland has very little success with accomplishments; she was not dedicated in her studies and does not display developed taste or skill in drawing. Her lack of education is evident in her numerous misquotes of famous texts (39-40). Catherine believes she has great knowledge of heroines and Gothic novels, but her own pursuits have not taught her enough about society. She travels to Bath and reads even more Gothic novels, but also learns new lessons from the Tilneys. Before Catherine goes to Bath, ―her mind [was] about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is‖ (42). This suggests that Catherine‘s upcoming experiences will inform and shape her education.

In Northanger Abbey, education and courtship also are paired hand in hand. Education is revealed through conversations between characters who are courting, which demonstrates distinct, transformative change. Catherine‘s conversations both with Henry Tilney and Edward Thorpe allow her to gain wisdom over the course of the novel and provide her with new experiences through which she grows and changes. Catherine‘s education is not only about facts and knowledge, or even accomplishments, but experiences that will cause her to reflect on her actions and character.

For example, Mr. Thorpe‘s ignorance of the novels that Catherine reads emerges as a character flaw. He states that he would never read The Mysteries of Udolpho or any other Gothic novels, except those written by Mrs. Radcliffe.

Catherine hesitantly corrects him, stating that Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe. She discovers that they do not share similar interests, and she does not even entertain the possibility that he attempts to court her. Instead, she takes great pleasure in discussing novels with Tilney. Mr. Tilney decidedly states, ―‗The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid‘‖ (120). Although Tilney also mocks Catherine‘s obsession with Gothic novels, their conversations teach Catherine that she should not simply depend on knowledge from what she reads, but that her experiences will help her better understand society. Over the course of her stay at Northanger Abbey, Catherine learns to control her fancy. Although she still takes pleasure in reading Gothic novels, she understands that her own life is not similar to a Gothic text. Her growth is evident on her last night at the abbey when she hears a noise at the door. Catherine ―trembled a little at the idea of any one‘s approaching so cautiously; but resolving not to be again overcome by trivial appearances of alarm, or misled by a raised imagination, she stepped

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quietly forward, and opened the door‖ (216). Catherine realizes that her earlier fears in the abbey were influenced by her reading and understands now, after reflection, that she can master her own emotions. Her personal growth is enabled directly by her experiences at the abbey.

Austen‘s earlier novels emphasize taste, sense, and education from the environment, while her later ones stress the importance of growing and changing with knowledge gained from experiences. However, each of Austen‘s six novels revolves around the idea that a woman must reflect on her actions and thoughts and learn her own mind instead of simply focusing on pleasing men.

Through her collective novels, Austen provides a comprehensive definition of what a woman‘s education should include. She creates the universal idea that one can benefit from those around her by learning from their example, must self-examine and reflect on experiences, and learn more about the self in order to gain power. This can be described as a proto-feminist idea because it gives value to educated women and allows them power in their decisions in life outside marriage. Although Austen provides a progressive view in this sense, she does acknowledge certain qualities that women who will be married should possess. She understands the merits of society‘s perception of women and supports the idea that women should be cheerful, have a good temper, be obedient to their elders, and be able to comfort, counsel, reason, feel, assist, sooth, and strengthen those around them (More Comparison, 501). Fordyce states that a woman‘s chief recommendations are a ―sober mind, steady attachment, gentle manners, and good understanding‖ (399). While Austen does highlight the benefits of these qualities, she also provides a much more progressive view of women in education.

The traditional view of women in the late 1700s and early 1800s was difficult to challenge. As stated in ―The Practical Uses of Female Knowledge,‖ another moralist text by More, ―Each sex has its proper excellencies, which would be lost were they melted down into the common character by the fusion of new philosophy. Why should we do away distinctions which increase the mutual benefits and enhance the satisfaction of life?‖ Society, in general, did not want to change. Most people did not want women to gain power due to a more comprehensive education; the existing view was that ―an advantageous settlement on marriage is the universal prize.‖ A woman‘s only duty in life was due to her husband, in ―sharing the cares of her husband, perhaps in consoling him under misfortunes, and in bearing patiently the inequalities of his temper, ruffled by adverse accidents; that so far from shewing discontent, it will be her part to soften these asperities, by a steady command over her own passions‖ (Wakefield, 288). A woman did not need a thorough education in order to perform these duties, simply a way to develop her morals and virtues.

Other sources of literature that would have been circulating during Austen‘s time also demonstrate that society was not likely to alter its perceptions of educated women and did not provide a hopeful outlook of change. Maria Edgeworth, another novelist during Austen‘s time, wrote in ―Prudence and Economy‖ that women ―must trust to the experience of others, they cannot always have recourse to what ought to be, they must adapt themselves to what

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is.‖ However, some women writers in addition to Jane Austen also examined the state of women‘s education and found fault with it, suggesting a need for adjustment. In ―A Vindication of the Rights of Women,‖ Mary Wollstonecraft describes how ―strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty,‖ and how women were like flowers that were disregarded before they reach maturity: One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false sense of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect. (503-504) As Austen introduces in Persuasion, Wollstonecraft explains how society‘s understanding of women is biased due to the lack of material presented by women. Instead of being viewed as people, women were creatures whose only ambitions should be to inspire love.

As scholar Alice Drum describes, Jane Austen is ―a balanced social critic, who is able to promote the positive values of traditional gentry life, while showing at the same time and in the same novels that gentry life is evolving‖ (92). Austen‘s ability to show that life was evolving also applies to her portrayal of women‘s education. She is able to acknowledge the traditional perceptions that exist, but also provide a more progressive look at what women‘s education should entail. Education can become a way for women to improve their own individual status and regard in society, rather than marrying to advance in class. Drum calls this idea ―vertical ascendance,‖ in which women attract men of a higher class to marry in order to enter a higher societal circle.

However, Austen demonstrates with her later novels that women are more in charge of their own minds and have the power to affect situations around them.

Reflection and self-knowledge become the cornerstones of women‘s education for Austen, the qualities that enable women a slightly greater degree of power.

For Austen, ―education's aims include instilling a sense of one's duty and the ability to behave rationally, as well as inculcating wisdom, good breeding, and learning . . . she identifies self-knowledge as education's primary end‖ (Roth, 112).

Austen engages with and challenges societal perceptions of women‘s education primarily through her main female characters.Throughout her six published novels, Austen allows her main characters to become educated in ways other than traditional finishing schools. In Sense and Sensibility, Marianne learns about taste and control, and in Pride and Prejudice, accomplishments and wit serve to educate Elizabeth in her interactions in society. Fanny, in Mansfield Park, learns by example from her environment and develops a strong set of principles that allow her to make her own decision about matrimony. Emma, Austen‘s next novel, highlights a shift in Austen‘s portrayal of women, as Emma learns more about herself and the people around her through self-reflection. Her display of self-knowledge contrasts with the moralists‘ idea

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that showing any sort of cultivation could be detrimental to finding a husband.

Emma not only marries Mr. Knightly, but defies tradition in that she remains in her own house as a married woman, and Mr. Knightly moves to join her and her father. Anne, in Persuasion, also uses self-reflection to gain knowledge and understanding about herself. She is able to overcome any previous weakness from letting others persuade her into decisions, and instead uses her own judgment and influence to manipulate situations in order to talk with and win Mr. Wentworth‘s affection. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine learns from her new experiences that she can control her emotions, which demonstrates further that self-reflection and different experiences in life contribute to a greater sense of self.

These six women ultimately gain self-knowledge throughout Austen‘s novels, although each woman‘s journey is different. Self-knowledge as the ultimate goal, contrasted with the perception existing in Austen‘s time that marriage was a woman‘s aim and anything beyond a simple education at a finishing school, repulsed potential husbands. Austen creates a universal view of women‘s education that includes not only book learning, but learning from experience and environment. Women, after reflecting on their experiences, could learn more about themselves, which would enable them to make their own decisions and maintain their own power. Austen‘s women demonstrated a challenge to social precepts and provided a proto-feminist picture of women.

Austen wanted to not only please her readers, but also show them that a woman could learn in all aspects of life and use this knowledge to become a stronger individual. Each main female character progresses further away from societal standards and the picture presented by the moralists, and closer to a representation of an autonomous woman. These women are educated in different aspects throughout their lives and learn that marriage is not the highest goal in life, but that self-knowledge gives them independence in a way that traditional education could not. Austen demonstrates in her novels that society is, in fact, changing and that women are driven more by a desire to have self-knowledge and independence instead of marrying a man of a higher class to improve their situation. Throughout these six novels, Jane Austen challenges the moralists‘ views on women‘s education and reveals the importance of self-awareness through an holistic education, which results in self-knowledge and a stronger sense of individuality.

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97 Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Emma. First. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2004. Print.

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. First. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. Print.

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Second. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2002. Print.

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. First. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 1998. Print.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. First. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2002. Print.

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. First. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. Print.

Burke, Edmund. ―On Taste.‖ Emma. Ed. Kristin Flieger Samuelian. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2004. 427-429. Print.

Drum, Alice. ―Pride and Prestige: Jane Austen and the Professions.‖ College Literature.

36.3 (2009): 92. Print.

Edgeworth, Maria. ―Prudence and Economy.‖ Mansfield Park. Ed. June Sturrock. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. 501. Print.

Fordyce, James. ―Sermons to Young Women.‖ Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Robert Irvine.

Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2002. 394-402. Print.

Gisborne, Thomas. ―An Inquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex.‖ Persuasion. Ed. Linda Bree. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 1998. 281-285. Print.

Gisborne, Thomas. ―On the Importance of the Female Character.‖ Mansfield Park. Ed. June Sturrock. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. 487-488. Print Gregory, John. ―A Father‘s Legacy to his Daughters.‖ Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Robert Irvine. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2002. 405-406. Print.

Lau, Beth. ―Sense and Sensibility and Tintern Abbey: Growth and Maturation.‖ Wordsworth Circle. 35.2 (2004): 65. Print.

Markovits, Stefanie. ―Jane Austen and the Happy Fall.‖ Studies in English Literature.

47.4 (2007): 779. Print.

More, Hannah. ―The Benefits of Restraint.‖ Mansfield Park. Ed. June Sturrock. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. 489. Print.

More, Hannah. ―Comparison of the Mode of Female Education in the Last Age with that of the Present Age.‖ Mansfield Park. Ed. June Sturrock. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. 500-501. Print.

More, Hannah. ―The Practical Uses of Female Knowledge.‖ Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Robert Irvine. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2002. 435. Print.

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More, Hannah. ―Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education.‖ Mansfield Park. Ed. June Sturrock. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. 499-500. Print.

Roth, Barry. ―Jane Austen and the Question of Women‘s Education.‖ Studies in the Novel. 25.1 (1993): 112. Print.

Wakefield, Priscilla. ―Reflections on the Present Conditions of the Female Sex.‖ Persuasion. Ed. Linda Bree. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 1998. 286-288. Print.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. ―A Vindication of the Rights of Women.‖ Mansfield Park. Ed. June Sturrock. Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. 503-504. Print.

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Evaluation of Ayer‟s “Symposium: „Can There Be a Private Language?‟” Drew Nevitt Macalester College A. J. Ayer offers an empiricist response to Wittgenstein’s private language argument. He maintains that Wittgenstein’s conclusion is mistaken and that it is possible for a necessarily-private language to exist. Wittgenstein’s error, according to Ayer, is his failure to adhere to the strong empiricist principle that all objects are reducible to sense experience. Ayer maintains that there is no such thing as a publicly observable object because observation takes place in the mind, which is a private Cartesian space. However, this position leads to solipsism and idealism. My objective is to show that Ayer’s argument fails because it rests on a mistaken interpretation of Wittgenstein’s private language argument, which is that of believing Wittgenstein’s argument is one over verification. I will also attempt to show that Ayer’s argument is not an attractive solution to the private language argument because it leads to the undesirable conclusion of solipsism.

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argues against the ontological possibility of a necessarily-private language. Such a language is defined by Wittgenstein as one whose terms ―refer to what only the speaker can know – to his immediate private sensations‖ (Wittgenstein 95). Wittgenstein‘s assertion that no such language can exist has been the subject of much debate. A.J. Ayer argues in his essay, ―Symposium: ‗Can There be a Private Language?‘‖ that private language not only exists but is necessary to our conception of human language. I will show that Ayer‘s argument fails because it rests on a mistaken interpretation of Wittgenstein‘s private language argument, which is the interpretation that Wittgenstein‘s argument is one over the verification of a sign. I will also show that Ayer‘s argument raises more problems than it solves due to its seemingly unavoidable conclusion of solipsism.

Ayer‘s ―Symposium‖ is one of the best-known challenges to Wittgenstein‘s private language argument. Even today, half a century after the publication of these two pieces, there is no clear consensus among philosophers on whether a necessarily-private language may indeed exist. Ayer‘s piece is an excellent example of a hard-nosed empiricist approach, which is distinctly absent from Wittgenstein‘s Philosophical Investigations. In this essay, Ayer‘s interpretation of Wittgenstein is taken to be the traditional approach, which was later aggregated in McGinn‘s Wittgenstein on Meaning. It is certain that Ayer is not interpreting Wittgenstein how Kripke later does in Wittgenstein on

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Rules and Private Language, because Ayer does not mention the skeptical paradox for which Kripke‘s interpretation is primarily known. Hence, Ayer‘s arguments focus on privacy in a Cartesian sense rather than in the sense of social privacy.

Ayer begins his piece by defining private language. He quickly rules out a definition consisting of a language that is understood only by a small group of people: ―By this criterion, thieves' slang and family jargons are private languages. Such languages are not strictly private, in the sense that only one person uses and understands them...‖ (Ayer 63). He then uses the example of dead languages to show that even a language understood by only one person is not necessarily private, but only contingently so. Ayer writes, ―There is, however, no reason, in principle, why it should not come alive‖ (63). He concludes that in order for a language to be truly (or necessarily) private, it must refer directly to the experiences of the speaker, which cannot be known to anyone else, and not merely the result of a complex code or the disappearance of the other speakers. Such logistical obstacles could in theory be overcome, but the barrier between the subjective experiences of two separate people cannot. This aligns well with Wittgenstein‘s definition of private language: ―The words of this language [a necessarily-private language] are to refer to what only the speaker can know – to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language‖ (Wittgenstein 95).

It may be useful to further clarify the distinction between objects that are commonly held to be public and those that are held to be private in a Cartesian way. A private object may be one of two things. First, it may be the qualitative characteristics of any physical sensation, for instance the sensations of hot, cold, the prick of a needle and the tickle in the nose just before a sneeze. Because it is generally held that no one except the one who experiences physical sensation can know the exact qualitative characteristics of that sensation (in other words, how the person experiencing the sensation ―really feels‖), it is said to be private in a Cartesian sense. Second, a private object may be a specific thought. All thoughts are commonly held to be private objects, from propositional thoughts like ―It may rain tomorrow‖ to more abstract thoughts that are impossible to describe but that everyone is familiar with, such as a sudden realization that seems to materialize from nowhere and does not seem to take the form of either words or images. In the same way that the exact subjective qualities of physical sensations are generally considered unknowable by anyone but their subject, a specific thought cannot be had by more than one person. Now we have a working definition of an object that is private in a Cartesian sense.

Before developing his arguments in detail, Ayer gives his thesis and an outline of his overarching argument for why a necessarily-private language is possible. A summary of his thesis, a prototypical empiricist argument, is as follows: Regarding the meaning of a linguistic sign, verification in the ―public‖ domain is no better than verification in the private domain. He states: A point to which Wittgenstein constantly recurs is that the ascription of meaning to a sign is something that needs to be justified: the justification consists in there being some independent test for determining that the sign

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is being used correctly; independent, that is, of the subject's recognition, or supposed recognition, of the object which he intends the sign to signify.

(Ayer 67) Ayer maintains that for Wittgenstein, this justification that the sign is being used correctly is done in the public domain, by observing how the sign is actually used in the speech community. However, Ayer takes issue with Wittgenstein‘s approach by claiming that Wittgenstein‘s method of justification is unsatisfactory because it leads to an infinite regress of verification. For no matter how well the particular application of a sign may be justified in the public domain, our perception of this justification is just that, perception, or observation, which is private. Therefore, at some point verification must move beyond the public domain and into the private, for it is only in the private (in one‘s own mind) that one can verify public justification of use.

We see here that Ayer‘s claim is rooted in an extremely strong iteration of empiricism. His claim that all language is inherently private seems to emerge from the belief that all we can know is our sense experience, and so we can never know anything for certain about the external world, or even that an external world exists. If we take Ayer at his word here, it seems he is on a dangerous track to solipsism and idealism, for if sense experiences are all that can be known, and if these experiences are known in the mind, then there is no way to prove the existence of a world beyond one‘s own mind. This deep skepticism would not be confined to the private language argument; it would devastate commonly held conceptions of what constitutes reality to the point where nothing outside of one‘s own mind could be known to exist. Naturally, a theory with such intuitively unlikely and potentially destructive implications 1 should be adopted only if the truth of it can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt. So Ayer‘s task in this piece is to allow for the possibility of the existence of private language while retaining the ability to reconstruct an external world.

Now I examine the details of Ayer‘s argument against Wittgenstein‘s claim that a private language is impossible. Ayer identifies two false assumptions that he believes led Wittgenstein to conclude: One is that in a case of this sort it is impossible, logically impossible, to understand a sign unless one can either observe the object which it signifies, or at least observe something with which this object is naturally associated. And the other is that for a person to be able to attach meaning to a sign it is necessary that other people should be capable of understanding it too. (Ayer 69-70) He first turns his attention to the second of these supposed false assumptions. He implies that they can be better understood if the second assumption is approached first. In order to stay true to Ayer‘s argument as much as possible, I will examine these suspected false assumptions in the order that Ayer does.

Ayer brings up the example of Robinson Crusoe, stranded on an island before he began to learn to speak, to show that it is not necessary for other people to be able to understand a sign for someone to ―attach meaning‖ to the sign. He says that although it is empirically and statistically unlikely, it is logically possible for Crusoe to develop a language of his own. So, as with any

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language, there must be a method of verification in order for Crusoe to know that he is using his signs consistently. Since for Crusoe there cannot possibly be a public domain distinct from private (because any ―public‖ domain would be identical to his private domain), he has nothing to rely on for verification but his memory. (Of course, according to Ayer, this is true of everyone all the time. Crusoe in Ayer‘s piece serves as a representation of the lack of public domain in all linguistic communities.) And, since it is clear that the holistic Wittgenstein would grant that it is at least possible for a physically isolated individual like Crusoe to develop his or her own language, it seems that memory is a valid method of verification of the use of a sign. Here we see the beginnings of Ayer‘s attempt to eliminate the distinction between the public and private, which seems to lead eventually to idealism and solipsism.

Now Ayer claims that since Crusoe has created a language with terms for his surroundings, there is no reason why he could not add terms for his sensations. As we have seen, it is no obstacle to the creation of such terms that he has to rely on his memory to verify which sign he associates with which sensation. The signs for his sensations are not understandable by anyone else because the signs refer to his private sensations. As Ayer points out, it is merely a contingent (coincidental) fact that Crusoe is alone on the island. If someone else were to appear, he or she would be incapable of comprehending the signs that Crusoe has invented to signify his own private sensations, even if he or she were able to learn the sounds and structure of his language, because the referents of these signs are private in a Cartesian way. As Ayer explains, ―But from the fact that he cannot teach this part of his language to Man Friday it by no means follows that he has no use for it himself. In a context of this sort, one can teach only what one already understands. The ability to teach, or rather the ability of someone else to learn, cannot therefore be a prerequisite for understanding‖ (Ayer 72).

Peter Asaro takes issue with the view held by both Ayer and Wittgenstein that it is possible for a physically-isolated individual to develop his or her own language. Asaro attempts to present a counterexample to Ayer‘s claim that memory is sufficient for verifying the meaning of a sign. In his essay, ―A Case for Private Language,‖ Asaro claims that memory alone is not sufficient for Crusoe to justify to himself that he uses his linguistic signs consistently. He explicitly rejects the premise that any physically-isolated individual could develop a language.

Asaro uses the thought experiment of Crusoe putting a linguistic mark on a tree after eating fruit from it and finding that the fruit was good to eat, i.e. did not make him sick (Asaro 4). Asaro has us imagine that Crusoe later returns to the tree, interprets the mark as meaning the fruit is edible, and eats the fruit, which now makes him sick. Asaro says Crusoe‘s ―linguistic mistake‖ was either marking the tree with the wrong sign or interpreting the sign wrongly upon his return. ―How is Crusoe to decide which mistake he made? He will have to depend on his memories about the meaning he wished the mark to have when he made it‖ (Asaro 4). Asaro implies that this is a paradox for Crusoe, that he will not be able to make the determination based on his memories and hence will never discover his linguistic mistake, thus showing that it is impossible for

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a physically-isolated individual to develop a language.

However, Asaro‘s thought experiment does not work. It does not account for the development of writing being a custom like the development of spoken language and therefore requiring much iteration. In order to develop a system of writing complex enough that one sign could reasonably be mistaken for another, Crusoe would have to mark many trees. And even if he did, this is no different from having a community consensus. He would determine that the majority of the time, this mark means ―edible‖ or this other mark means ―inedible.‖ In effect, the multitude of trees he would have marked would act as a linguistic community. This verification of a sign based on the behavior of the majority is the same type of verification as having a community consensus. To be sure, Crusoe will have to rely on his memory for keeping track of which signs seem to correspond to edible and inedible fruit; however, as Ayer has shown, this is not an obstacle to the development of a language. It is a fact of human physiology that we must rely on our memories constantly. This is true for language, of course, regardless of whether there is a physical speech community present.

Asaro‘s argument has failed for two reasons. The first is that he has failed to take into account the iterative nature of developing a writing system, which is likely to lead to the development of what constitutes in effect a linguistic community. However, while it seems very likely that this would happen, it is possible both logically and causally that Crusoe could develop a writing system without creating a linguistic community, perhaps by cutting down every tree he marked due to some superstition or similar non-rational belief. The second, and ironclad, reason is that he has overlooked the fact that a speech community beyond the individual is useless if we do not put some trust in memory as the causal enabler of language. Thus, have we established not only that it is possible for Crusoe to develop his own language, but also that it is unnecessary, and indeed incorrect, to say that memory, which is something of Ayer‘s bailiwick, plays no role at all in the private language argument. However, as we will see, memory cannot be the whole story.

The driving force behind much of Ayer‘s argument is summed up in his assertion: ―But verification must stop somewhere‖ (Ayer 71). It is already clear from his focus on the validity of memory as a method of verification of the use of a sign that Ayer has interpreted Wittgenstein‘s private language argument as an argument over verification. In other words, Ayer seems to believe that the reason Wittgenstein claims that a necessarily-private language is impossible is that, in a language understood only by its speaker, it would be impossible for that speaker to know if they were using the signs (words, terms) of the language consistently. This is evidenced by his comments on Wittgenstein‘s thought experiment of a ―man who buys several copies of the morning paper to assure himself that what it says is true‖ (Ayer 71). This example occurs in section 265 of Investigations, in which Wittgenstein describes the hopelessness of the endeavor of someone purchasing multiple copies of the same newspaper, all of which presumably contain the same thing, in order to be entirely sure of what the paper says. (This is pointless because all the copies are identical.) Ayer points out what he believes to be a flaw in the thought ex-

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periment. He says it is not necessarily absurd to buy multiple copies of the same paper because if the paper ―was so produced that misprints might occur in one copy without occurring in all, it would be perfectly sensible to buy several copies and check them against each other‖ (Ayer 71). The fact that Ayer makes this point at all is evidence that he interprets Wittgenstein‘s private language argument as revolving around the verification of the use of a sign.

Ayer also attacks Wittgenstein‘s example of the diary keeper (introduced in section 258 of Investigations), for not convincingly showing that memory is an insufficient method of verification. In this thought experiment, Wittgenstein has us imagine that ―I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To that end I associate it with the sign ―S‖ and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation‖ (Wittgenstein 98). Wittgenstein arrives at the conclusion that this is not possible because ―a definition of the sign cannot be formulated‖ (Wittgenstein 98); in other words, it is impossible to define S. And if S cannot be defined, the occurrences of S cannot be tracked. Again, Ayer interprets the example as attempting to show that there is no valid method of verification for a sensation, this time by stating that there may be ways of empirically evidencing whether the person is experiencing the same sensation as they did when they first decided to track the occurrences of S, namely by checking blood pressure or other physiological indicators that would correspond to the subject experiencing S. So it is clear that Ayer sees the private language argument as revolving around verification of the sign.

Thus far we have seen that Ayer is attempting to refute the principal on which he believes Wittgenstein‘s diary keeper thought experiment is founded, which is that one‘s memory in isolation is not sufficient to ensure that a sign will be used consistently throughout a multiplicity of applications. If Ayer were correct, this would reveal a great irony in Wittgenstein: his skepticism of an isolated individual‘s ability to trust his or her sense experiences. The irony would stem from Wittgenstein's categorical insistence that skepticism is the result of a mistake. So it would seem that Wittgenstein has made the mistake of underestimating the reliability of the memory of the average person. However, I maintain that Ayer has not looked deeply enough into Wittgenstein‘s argument.

This interpretation of Wittgenstein‘s private language argument is supported by Jack Temkin in his essay, ―A Private Language Argument.‖ He begins by making a point that is familiar from both Ayer and Wittgenstein, which is that in order for language to function, there must be rules and it must be possible to distinguish between actions that follow the rule and actions that don‘t.

So when a speech community consists of only an individual, it is not possible for a rule to be followed because of the problem of subjective relativism (Temkin 113). He explicitly rejects Ayer‘s interpretation by saying that ―The argument we have been considering depends neither on a verifiability criterion nor on doubts about the reliability of memory‖ (Temkin 114). So Temkin at least would agree that Ayer has fundamentally misinterpreted Wittgenstein‘s private language argument by taking it to be an argument over verification.

Ayer‘s interpretation of Wittgenstein‘s thought experiments and his private language argument in general as revolving around verification is mistak-

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en. In section 258 of Investigations, Wittgenstein seems to be making the point that a sign S, understood as standing for some private sensation, cannot have meaning not because it cannot be accurately remembered, but because there is no established custom through which to verify the meaning of the sign. Wittgenstein‘s point is that to identify a sign with its meaning is an instance of following a rule. The rule would read, approximately: There is a rule such that a sign S means a particular sensation, for instance pain. It is one of Wittgenstein‘s basic points in Investigations that a rule cannot be followed privately, because then ―...thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it‖ (Wittgenstein 88). Since using language amounts to following a set of rules (otherwise known as a grammar), and since a rule cannot be followed privately, there can be no private language. It is not the fallibility of memory or any other causal problem of verification of a sign that causes a necessarily-private language to be ontologically impossible; it is the fact (or assertion) that the very essence of language, the rules on which it is based, cannot exist within an isolated belief system. In other words, it is not a matter of failure to verify the sign, but a matter of verification becoming impossible because there is no way of attaching meaning to a sign without a rule or custom.

(This is not to say that there necessarily needs to be a physical community of other people in the vicinity as a basis of comparison, for then Crusoe could never develop a language. Rather, it is the conceptual framework of a custom that must be in place.)

On a first reading of section 258, it is perhaps understandable that the private language argument should be interpreted as resting on verification. The way Wittgenstein gets to his point is rather roundabout and would be easy to misunderstand if one had not studied Investigations in its entirety. Take, for instance, the following passage: ―I have no criterion for correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem correct to me is correct. And that only means that here we can‘t talk about ‗correct‘‖ (Wittgenstein 99). If one were to approach this passage with the mentality that Wittgenstein were addressing valid methods of verification, it seems that it could be read without any red flags being raised; if Wittgenstein were determined to reject memory as such a method, then 258 could be read as a sort of solidification of his point that memory is insufficient. And indeed, Ayer seems to have successfully shown that memory is sufficient to keep the use of a linguistic sign consistent, provided the presence of the underlying framework of custom. However, as we have seen, Wittgenstein attacks a more fundamental level of the possibility of private language: the fact that a private language cannot have a framework of custom.

To understand why this conceptual framework of custom is necessary for language, we must first examine what rule-following means to Wittgenstein.

Both Wittgenstein and Ayer are in agreement that rules and the ability to distinguish between actions that follow the rule and those that do not are essential to language in any form. The very grammar of a language is, after all, nothing but a set of rules. And it is only because of rules that a sign means what it does in any given context; speakers of the language, if they wish to be understood, must follow the rule that states that a certain sign means such and such if used

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in such and such a way. Without rules, there would be no language of any kind but only a jumble of unintelligible noises. And for Wittgenstein, following a rule is an instance of following a custom, as has already been hinted at: ―A rule stands there like a signpost...I have further indicated that a person goes by a signpost only in so far as there is an established usage, a custom‖ (Wittgenstein 44, 86). So a rule cannot be followed if there is no custom, because to follow a rule is to adhere to a custom. And, because it is logically impossible for language to exist without rules, it is also logically impossible for language of any kind to exist without custom.

The comparison of a rule to a signpost illustrates why custom is necessary for following a rule. As Wittgenstein has it, ―...the signpost does after all leave room for doubt...Let me ask this: what has the expression of a rule – say a signpost – got to do with my actions? What sort of connection obtains here? – Well, this one, for example: I have been trained to react in a particular way to this sign, and now I do so react to it‖ (Wittgenstein 44, 86). The rule itself, its linguistic structure, is not sufficient for telling us what course of action we must take if we are to comply with the rule, for there can be multiple interpretations of any given linguistic construction. For Wittgenstein, a rule serves merely as the indicator of which custom to follow at any given time.

I will attempt to formulate an example using Wittgenstein‘s terminology that shows that a rule in isolation is insufficient for determining a course of action. Imagine you were out for a walk in the woods and you came across a signpost at the intersection of several paths. Now imagine the writing on the sign has been worn off, or that the sign merely says something like ―Go this way,‖ regardless of the direction in which the sign may be pointing. In any case, it is not clear based solely on the sign which direction you ought to take.

Now you may take any of the diverging paths, or even go back along the path you have just come down. However, whichever you choose will be done without reference to the sign, because the sign ―leaves[s] room for doubt‖ (Wittgenstein 44). There would be doubt even if the sign were not obscure and said something apparently quite explicit like, ―If you desire to exit the forest at the parking lot located precisely here (at some specific location), then take the trail the first few feet of which have been painted bright green,‖ because there is always the possibility that you have misunderstood the sign, or even that the correspondence between the writing on the sign and the green paint on one of the paths is a coincidence. No matter which path you choose, you are not basing your actions on the sign, at least not completely.

And it is clear that for Wittgenstein, a ―rule‖ that can be understood with equal validity to call for various courses of action at once is not meaningful.

He explains: This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule.

The answer was: if every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule, then it can also be brought into conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here. (87) In order for a rule to have meaning, it must be normative. It must clearly demarcate a course of action while rejecting others. And no sign (no linguistic

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utterance) is capable of doing so because by the nature of such utterances, which is that they consist of signs, which can be substituted infinitely for other signs, they can be made out to call for or reject a multiplicity of courses of action. The only way for a rule to have meaning (to single out a course of action beyond a reasonable doubt), then, is through custom; as Wittgenstein has it in section 198, ―I have been trained to react in a particular way to this sign, and now I do so react to it‖ (Wittgenstein 86).

It is this requirement that a rule be able to dictate definitively a course of action that is at the core of Wittgenstein‘s private language argument. As we have seen, he claims that ―...it‘s not possible to follow a rule ‗privately;‘ otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it‖ (Wittgenstein 88). He says that if a ―rule‖ is known only to one person, then it can‘t have meaning because there is no definite right or wrong defined by the rule. Wittgenstein is claiming that there can be no subjective rules because without an objective way of demarcating whether a course of action is in accord with the rule, any course of action winds up being in accord with the rule, which he claims in section 201 is paradoxical. If any course of action is (or can be made out to be) in accord with a rule, the rule has no meaning because there is no way for it to function as we generally think of rules as functioning, that is, of stating that course of action A is desirable and that course of action B is undesirable. Simply put, if a ―rule‖ can‘t state that to perform action A is to follow the rule and to perform action B is not to follow the rule, then it is no rule at all. And if there is only one person who knows the rule, and so only one person who can say whether an action is in accord with the rule, then whatever that person says is following the rule, is.

Again, at first glance this definition of rule-following could easily be seen as revolving around verification; however, after a thorough reading of Wittgenstein, it is clear that the reason a rule cannot be followed privately is not because the course of action that accords with the rule cannot be verified, but rather because there is no such course of action. By Wittgenstein‘s definition of a rule, there must be a definite distinction in the consequences or effects of following or failing to follow the rule. If whatever you think is right, is right, then there is no possibility of being wrong, which is necessary for a rule. So because of the problem of subjective relativism, or the inability of the sole knower of a rule to distinguish between following and not following it, a rule cannot be followed privately. And if no rule can be followed privately, then no language can be private, because rules are necessary for language, and the rules of a private language would by definition need to be private.

Interpretation, or substituting signs for other signs, is the method of rulefollowing that Wittgenstein is arguing against. To follow a rule, it is not sufficient to examine the wording of the rule and act in such a way that the wording is satisfied. Because of the variety of ways that any rule, or indeed any set of words, can be interpreted, if following a rule were merely to act in such a way that one ―version‖ of the rule, your interpretation, were satisfied, then the rule would cease to be meaningful, as we see above. Wittgenstein appeals to the problem of infinite regress to show this. He claims that interpreting, or rephrasing, a linguistic utterance such as a written or spoken rule does not in fact

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get one any closer to understanding its meaning, because every interpretation can in turn be interpreted. As he puts it in section 198, ―...every interpretation hangs in the air together with what it interprets, and cannot give it any support.

Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning‖ (Wittgenstein 86). In other words, there is a never-ending chain of interpretations, and so we encounter an infinite regress of interpretations, or re-wordings, if we try to understand a rule (or any linguistic utterance) by substituting signs for signs. To follow a rule, one must move beyond the realm of linguistic interpretation and ground the meaning of the rule in the actions it dictates.

It should be noted that Ayer is in agreement with Wittgenstein in the belief that interpreting a sign with another sign is not a valid method of verification: ―Nor can I define it [a sign] in terms of other words, for how are they to be defined?‖ (Ayer 69). So there is agreement between the two philosophers that the meaning of a sign cannot consist in a rephrasing, or a mere interpretation through words. My interpretation of Ayer is that he believes himself to be undermining Wittgenstein‘s claim that the conceptual framework of custom is what allows users of language to follow rules. I see him to be attempting to show that if we put enough faith in memory, then the custom is not necessary.

Of course, in making this claim, Ayer is placing himself irrevocably in the position of taking a verificationist stance on the private language argument. He is claiming that Wittgenstein‘s insistence on the necessity of custom is unfounded and unnecessary. Ayer seems to believe that it is a flaw in Wittgenstein that he places so much emphasis on custom as the basis for language and leaves out memory. Perhaps Ayer truly believes that he has found the aforementioned irony in Wittgenstein, which is that such a holistic philosopher, and one who looks so unfavorably on skepticism, is so skeptical of the functionality of memory in terms of serving as verification that a sign is being used consistently through a multiplicity of applications.

Ayer seems to be suggesting that Wittgenstein has drawn a false dichotomy, that between custom and memory. In fact, Wittgenstein has done no such thing, since for him custom and memory are on two separate levels of importance in terms of language. Customs, or rules, constitute the framework that allows language to exist and to function at all, while memory serves merely as a causal enabler. To be sure, Wittgenstein does not fall prey to the inconsistency that Ayer seems to ascribe to him (that of underestimating the memory of the average user of language); it seems unlikely that Wittgenstein would deny that memory does serve as a vital component of language use, and that it might even be useable in a private language, if we imagine for a moment that a private language could exist. Wittgenstein‘s arguments strike the heart of the concept of private language, spilling its lifeblood by showing it to be logically impossible, while Ayer‘s arguments merely prick the extremities by attempting to pick apart the details of contingent causal properties.

So Ayer is wrong when he claims Wittgenstein assumes that another person must be able to understand a sign in order for it to have meaning. He has failed to grasp that the reason a rule cannot be followed privately is because then the distinction between right and wrong (following and not following) ceases to exist. We have seen how Ayer attempts to circumnavigate Wittgen-

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stein‘s claim that custom is necessary for language by insisting (rather petulantly) that memory is a valid method of verification and in so doing misses entirely the point of Wittgenstein‘s argument, which is that in the domain of private language there are no rules which can be followed, and so right and wrong do not exist. In fact, Wittgenstein is not presupposing, but rather showing, that a sign can have meaning only if more than one person can understand it. It is a consequence of, rather than a necessary condition for, private language. If he made the assumption Ayer claims he does, then his argument would be circular, an error which Wittgenstein could hardly have failed to notice.

Wittgenstein‘s view on the necessity of consequences in rule-following is further shown by his famous thought experiment of the right hand giving the left hand money, introduced in section 268 of Investigations: ―Why can‘t my right hand give my left hand money? – My right hand can put it into my left hand...But the further practical consequences would not be those of a gift.

When the left hand has taken the money from the right, and so forth, one will ask, ‗Well, and now what?‘‖ (Wittgenstein 101). Although the money has been transferred between the hands, no one would say seriously that there has been the exchange of a gift, because the exchange of money does not cause the reactions that we associate with gift-giving. Just as in order for a rule to be followed there must be some ―practical consequences‖ that occur if the rule is followed and that don‘t occur if the rule is not followed, in order for a gift to be given and received there must be some sign that this has happened, such as expressions of joy or gratitude. Wittgenstein‘s point is that if, regardless of whether the ―gift‖ was ―given,‖ the general conditions of the situation remain the same, then it cannot really be said that any gift was given at all. Likewise, if the following of a ―rule‖ and the lack of following it produce identical consequences, then it is not a rule.

A brief outline of Wittgenstein‘s argument for why a rule cannot be privately followed may be useful here. Essentially, he maintains that a rule cannot be followed in private because then there would be no consequences when the rule is followed or is not followed. This emphasis on consequences in determining whether something is a rule stems from his fundamental philosophy of language, which is that the meaning of a term is its use within the linguistic community. When we talk of rules, there is a clear connotation of gravity, of consequence. As members of a linguistic community, we would probably not call something a rule if nothing happened to us (or to anyone) as a result of not complying with it.

So a rule cannot be followed privately, because it would not have consequences. At this point, the verificationist might offer a counterargument that goes something like this: ―A privately-followed rule does not necessarily have consequences, but it may. I may take advantage of the easy availability of subjective relativism and convince myself that what I do is in accord with a rule that only I know of, but I need not. I may be equally likely to judge my actions unflinchingly by this rule, without altering my interpretation of it. Am I not able in some way to view myself from an external perspective, to determine (more or less) objectively whether my actions are in accord with the rule?‖

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This argument, however, does not work. The verificationist is still left with the problem that no definite consequences seem to turn on their ―rule.‖ Like Ayer does throughout his piece, the verificationist is thoroughly missing the point here. I allow that it may be possible to determine whether their actions comply with their interpretation of the ―rule,‖ and only their interpretation. As we have already seen, one‘s interpretation of a rule ―cannot give it [the rule] any support‖ (Wittgenstein 86), as discussed above. And since interpretation cannot give us a rule, we must look to consequences, which separate rules from nonrules beyond a reasonable doubt. Clearly, if one can knowingly comply with or refuse to comply with a ―rule‖ at will, with no definite consequences, then it is not a rule in the way we normally use the term, which by definition is also Wittgenstein‘s way. A renaming of the thing the verificationist calls a rule is now in order. In essence, Wittgenstein‘s argument is that a rule cannot be followed privately because it would not have consequences, and if it does not have consequences, it cannot be a rule. This interpretation seems dangerously close to circular, but it stands.

Now Ayer attempts to refute the first of what he calls Wittgenstein‘s false assumptions, which is that ―it is impossible, logically impossible, to understand a sign unless one can either observe the object which it signifies, or at least observe something with which this object is naturally associated‖ (Ayer 69).

Examples of natural expression are crying from pain, smiling from pleasure, etc. Ayer uses the example of false memories to attempt to show that it is possible to understand a sign for a sensation without having had the experience that gives rise to the sensation. He abandons the idea of a physically-isolated Crusoe and has us imagine that there is now another person on the island, and that Crusoe and this other person will in time develop a common language.

Ayer claims that by means of this new lingua franca and the natural expressions of the two people for sensations, they could each come to learn what the other means by their sign for a certain sensation. This seems entirely plausible; no one, Wittgenstein included, would doubt that words like ―hungry‖ and ―pain‖ are likely to be in such a lingua franca, perhaps even among the first words added to the lexicon. However, Ayer‘s argument loses steam with the introduction of false memories. He defines a false memory as ―someone‘s imagining, or seeming to remember, an experience which was unlike any that he had ever actually had‖ (Ayer 74). Ayer‘s claim is that if you have a memory, false or not, of having the same experience as your interlocutor, then you can understand their word for that sensation.

This argument fails. His claim rests on the assumption that everyone‘s sensation experiences are identical. For his argument to be convincing, it would need to be true that when someone stubs their toe, this sensation is precisely the same as the sensation everyone else gets when they stub a toe. This does not seem plausible; the qualitative characteristics of the sensation are bound to differ from person to person. Moreover, Wittgenstein would argue that even if the sensation of stubbing one‘s toe were universally, qualitatively identical in its instantiations, this would not matter because the fact that the sensations originated in different events (different instances of stubbing) fundamentally bars the sensations from being the same. For Wittgenstein, the sen-

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sation and the event that produces it are intrinsically linked, and inseparable.

Ayer has failed to show that it is possible to understand a sign for a sensation without having had that sensation. Hence, he has failed to show that it is possible for a person to understand a sign in the private language of another person, if we briefly accepted that a private language were possible.

Like with what he calls Wittgenstein‘s first false assumption, here again Ayer does not seem to be correct that Wittgenstein actually makes the assumption that it is impossible to understand a sign without observing the object it signifies. In fact, Ayer‘s attempt to show that the terms of a private language can be designated with a name ironically sets his argument up to be destroyed

by Wittgenstein‘s thought experiment of the beetle in the box, introduced in section 293 of Investigations: ―Suppose that everyone had a box with something in it which we call a ―beetle.‖ No one can ever look into anyone else‘s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle‖ (Wittgenstein 106). The prevalent use of the word ‗beetle‘ in the language attests to the fact that everyone believes they know what it means. However, no one has any idea what the word ―beetle‖ signifies to anyone but themselves, because no one has ever seen a ―beetle‖ other than his or her own, and everyone‘s ―beetle‖ presumably has entirely different properties. As Wittgenstein notes, these properties do not even have to be fixed but may be ―constantly changing.‖ Because the ―beetle‖ is private, nothing in the language can be named ―beetle‖ (with accommodations made for the common linguistic phenomenon of homonymy), because no one would know what the name stood for: ―The thing in the box doesn‘t belong to the language-game [of naming] at all, not even as a Something: for the box might even be empty. – No, one can ‗divide through‘ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is‖ (Wittgenstein 106). This shows that in the case of attempting to put a name to private sensations, the model of object and designation (Ayer‘s model) does not work, because no matter what name the sensation is given, this name cannot carry the information that a name for something in the public domain can carry. Even if one were to develop a name for a sensation, this name would fail to communicate the essence of the sensation, because that essence is private. In attempting to bring a private object into the public domain by giving it a name, Ayer negates the importance of the private object; he gives it a name only to find that the role the name plays in the language is not the role of naming the private object. In Wittgenstein‘s words, ―That is to say, if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‗object and name,‘ the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant‖ (Wittgenstein 107). This thought experiment, like that of the right hand giving the left hand money, illustrates Wittgenstein‘s view that definite consequences are necessary in order for a rule to have been followed.

The beetle in the box thought experiment shows that for Wittgenstein, a sensation cannot be separated from its natural expressions. In other words, the sensation and the language (or ―grammar‖) of that sensation are inseparable.

Since ―natural expressions‖ occur naturally with sensations, Wittgenstein is saying that it is a mistake to attempt to separate them. If you were to stub your toe, it would be absurd for me to categorize your utterance as something sepa-

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rate from your hopping up and down on one foot grimacing. The sensation and the sensation language are clearly connected at a deep, intrinsic level. This view fits well with the holism prevalent in Wittgenstein‘s work. Ayer, by failing to recognize that these are inseparable for Wittgenstein, has resigned himself to the hopeless task of trying to show that it is causally possible for private sensations to be signified by words. Once again, he has missed Wittgenstein‘s point that the impossibility of private language does not rest on a causal or contingent contradiction but on a logical or necessary one, in this case, the separation of sensations from sensation language.

Now that we have seen how Ayer‘s arguments for the possibility of a necessarily-private language have failed, let us return to the problem that was noted near the beginning of this essay. Ayer has held fast to his claim that all objects are knowable only through their sense impressions and yet has not addressed the looming conclusion of solipsism and idealism. This inescapable conclusion is, of course, an inherent drawback of strong empiricism; if all that can be known is sense experience, and if sense experience exists only in the mind, then it is impossible to know for certain that anything but one‘s mind exists. There is no way to prove that any physical object is in fact real in the sense that it is composed of matter and is not merely a sense impression. And any theory that requires us to dispense with our knowledge of physical objects is highly suspect. So it seems that, like in his argument against Wittgenstein‘s conclusion on the impossibility of private language, Ayer has failed in his task to retain the ability to reconstruct an external reality.

This problem is well known in philosophy. Descartes, one of the foremost modern philosophers and a critic of empiricism, famously wrote on the subject in his Meditations on First Philosophy: In which are demonstrated the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and body 2. He explains in the first meditation, ―Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even once‖ (1). Descartes realized that although much of what we know comes from sense experience, our senses can trick us, like seeing a large object at a distance and mistaking it for something small. Hence we cannot always trust our senses.

Descartes shows this again in his famous dream thought experiment, writing ―Often in my dreams I am convinced of (just such) familiar events – that I am sitting by the fire in my dressing-gown – when in fact I am lying undressed in bed!‖ (1). He uses the example of dreams that are indistinguishable from waking life to show that we can never be certain we are not asleep. And since it is our senses that ought to tell us whether we are asleep, we can‘t always trust them. He goes on to argue that it is possible that there is a ―supremely powerful and cunning deceiver who deliberately deceives me all the time,‖ and so that it is impossible to know anything at all about the external world, or even that there is an external world, with certainty (Descartes 4). He does not endorse complete skepticism, as shown by his often-quoted conclusion ―Let him [the deceiver] deceive me all he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing while I think I am something. So after thoroughly thinking the matter

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through I conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, must be true whenever I assert it or think it‖ (Descartes 4). But by the end of the second meditation, Descartes has not shown for certain that anything except his own mind exists. 3 So Ayer is making an extremely strong claim in his attempt to eliminate the distinction between the public and the private. It seems that for him, the empiricist and naturalist, all objects exist only in the mind because the only way we know about objects is through sense experience, which is contained and interpreted within the mind. This amounts to the reduction of society and indeed all of humanity to the contents of one‘s own mind, hence, a solipsistic worldview. However, nowhere in his piece does Ayer make reference to the solipsism entailed by this interpretation of his argument, and his overall philosophical position does not seem to be that of the skeptic; much of his argument focuses on showing that there are facts that are certainly verifiable by memory. Moreover, he obliquely accuses Wittgenstein of giving the memory of the average person far too little credit. Therefore, it seems safe to assume that he wishes to avoid this conclusion of solipsism while still maintaining that a necessarily-private language is possible. Since he does not address this problem, it may be fair to conclude that he has no better solution than Descartes does.

Ayer has failed to refute Wittgenstein‘s argument for the impossibility of a necessarily-private language. By failing to recognize that, according to Wittgenstein, language is not possible without the framework of custom and that custom is not merely a method of verification of the use of a sign, Ayer has consigned himself to a verificationist interpretation of Wittgenstein‘s argument and consequently missed the point. Furthermore, by adopting a strong empiricist perspective and claiming that all objects are really private objects, he has opened a gulf of skepticism about the existence of an external world and in particular the minds of other people. His reduction of the public domain to private sensations seems to lead inexorably to solipsism and idealism, which do not seem to be views Ayer would wish to adopt, and yet he does not address this conclusion in his essay. It seems that if we accept Ayer‘s claim that to talk of any object is really to talk of a private object, then we have taken a step backwards. Ayer, it would seem, has failed in his attempt ―to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle‖ (Wittgenstein 110).

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Notes 1.) Imagine if you became convinced that the universe did not extend beyond your own consciousness. You might be strongly tempted to live a life of extreme egoism, causing great injury to others, concerned only with your happiness because you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;t believe there are any others. Such a life would clearly be harmful and morally repugnant.

2.) It should be noted that despite finding himself unable to maneuver out of solipsism (or at best out of the problem of other human minds), Descartes does not address in depth the problems entailed by solipsism. Rather than interpreting this as Descartes not thinking that such issues are not worthy of discussion (which seems uncharitable), I believe we should take for granted that Descartes recognizes and appreciates the problems posed by solipsism and is primarily concerned, at least here, with accepting or rejecting the possibility of solipsism.

3.) It should be noted that in the following meditations Descartes does seem to succeed in showing that god, as well as an external world, exist (as implied by the full title of his book); however, he never proves the existence of the minds of other people, which is the primary issue of solipsism dealt with in this essay.

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Drew Nevitt Works Cited Asaro, Peter. ―A Case for Private Language.‖ Digital Commons @ IWU, 1994. Internet resource.

Ayer, A J, and R Rhees. "Symposium: Can There Be a Private Language?"

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes. 28 (1954): 63-94. Print.

Descartes, René. ‖First Meditation: On what can be called into doubt.‖ Early Modern Texts. Bennett, Jonathan, July 2004. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.

Temkin, Jack. "A Private Language Argument." The Southern Journal of Philosophy. 24.1 (1986): 109-121. Print.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. Anscombe, G. E. M., Peter M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. 4th ed. P.M.S. Hacker, Joachim Schulte. West Sussex, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2009. Print.

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Unsupervised Part-of-Speech Tagging: An Introduction Alex Brooks Monmouth College

Mike Stees Monmouth College The process of assigning parts of speech to words based on context is known as part-of-speech tagging. One traditional approach is to use labeled instances of text in order to train an algorithm for the part-of-speech tagging process.

However, labeled data is often very difficult or time consuming to obtain depending on the domain. That said, unlabeled data can be relatively easy to collect. Unsupervised learning uses strictly unlabeled data to solve a problem.

In this paper we provide an introduction to statistical unsupervised part-ofspeech tagging with a focus on methods using Hidden Markov Models and extensions proposed in some of the relevant literature to date. We provide some historical background on corpora development and automated tagging, discuss the use of lexicons in unsupervised methods, present a general method using Hidden Markov Models, and conclude with a presentation of extensions and other approaches.

1. Introduction to Part-of-Speech Tagging As early as elementary school, humans learn about various parts of speech and how those parts of speech help define the structure and meaning of a sentence. Oftentimes, many words have many different associated parts of speech, each of which can be expressed with labels, or tags. The word model can be described as either a verb or a noun, for instance. In order to determine which tag is associated with model, a context must be given. In the sentence The class was going to model the experiment based on previous research, model is a verb. However, in the sentence The model of the boat was almost complete, model is a noun. The process of assigning parts of speech to words based on context is known as part-of-speech tagging [4]. Part-of-speech (POS) tagging is one of the early tasks in processing natural languages. Some of these tasks include parsing, information extraction, and information retrieval. Small improvements in the tagging process have the potential to yield larger improvements overall in many advanced natural language tasks, since POS tagging is a vital pre-processing step [10]. For this reason, research has focused on practi-

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cal methods that yield the highest accuracies for POS tagging.

This paper provides an introduction to statistical unsupervised part-ofspeech tagging with a focus on methods using Hidden Markov Models and extensions proposed in some of the relevant literature to date. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 will provide some history on automated tagging and corpora1 development, specifically the Penn Treebank and the Brown Corpus. Section 3 will introduce unsupervised learning, discuss the use of lexicons in unsupervised POS tagging, and present a general method for unsupervised POS tagging. Section 4 will review some extensions of the method presented in Section 3, as well as other statistical approaches that do not use HMMs. Finally, Section 5 will present a non-statistical approach.

2. History of Corpora and Automated Tagging Part-of-speech (POS) tagging has been performed by humans for decades.

Most research in POS tagging resulted from work on corpora or large sets of structured text. One key use of corpora in natural language processing tasks requires sections of text to be annotated. Annotated corpora are usually known as Treebanks or Parsed Corpora. The most popular annotated corpora today are the Brown Corpus and the Penn Treebank.

The Brown Corpus was first prepared between 1963 and 1964 and is currently available in six versions, each containing the same basic text consisting of over 1 million words. Form A, the original version, simply contained text which was not tagged. Form B, the second version, is a stripped version of Form A, where all forms of punctuation symbols, excluding the following, have been removed: hyphens, apostrophes, and symbols for formulas and ellipses. Form C, the third version, is the first to be tagged and have an associated tagset2 which is found in Appendix A. The final three versions, Bergen Form I, Bergen Form II, and Brown MARC Form, are all versions which contain minor revisions of the first three versions. Overall, the corpus is divided into 500 samples, each consisting of 2,000+ words. Every sample begins at the beginning of a sentence but not necessarily at the beginning of a paragraph or larger contextual divider. Once a sample exceeds 2,000 words the sample is ended after the final sentence, is complete. Some of the texts included are press reports and editorials, religious texts, general fiction texts, science fiction texts, and romance and love story texts. [6] The Penn Treebank project was developed between 1989 and 1996 at the University of Pennsylvania. The corpus includes approximately 7 million words of tagged text, 3 million words of skeletally-parsed text, over 2 million words of text parsed for predicate-argument structure, and 1.6 million words of transcribed speech annotated for disfluencies. The treebank uses a tagset of 48, found in Appendix B, where 36 tags are allocated for parts of speech and 12 tags are allocated for punctuation and currency. Some of the annotated texts included in the treebank are Department of Energy scientific abstracts, Department of Agriculture bulletins, IBM computer manuals, and a retagging of the Brown Corpus material. [16] [26]

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Although both corpora provide the same functionality, there are many differences between the Brown Corpus and the Penn Treebank. For instance, the Brown Corpus allows for compound tagging and the Penn Treebank does not.

Consider tagging the contraction I’m. By using the Brown Corpus tagset, I’m would be annotated with two tags, I’m/PPSS+BEM [6], whereas using the Penn Treebank tagset, I’m would be split and separately tagged, I/PPSS ’m/ BEM [16]. Although the Penn Treebank tagset is based off of the Brown Corpus tagset, many tags and properties of the set were removed [16]. For instance, compound tagging was removed in favor of splitting contractions into the corresponding separate parts, as seen above. Further, the Brown Corpus tagset includes tags that are specific to particular lexical items. For example, the Brown Corpus distinguishes three forms of do and eight forms of be [16].

Although the goal of the Brown Corpus was to be robust in distinguishing tags for certain lexical items, the goal of the Penn Treebank developers was to remove possible redundancies from the Brown Corpus tagset. As such the developers attempted to make the Penn Treebank more concise, resulting in a reduced tagset of 48 tags [16] [26].

Considering the size of the Brown Corpus and the Penn Treebank, tagging either corpus is by no means a simple feat. To elaborate, consider the sentence The lazy gray sloth climbed up the tree

(1)

There are two main ways to visualize the tagged version of (1): by an intext tagged sentence or by a parse tree. Using the Penn Treebank tagset, we can generate the corresponding tagged sentence and parse tree for (1), as seen in (2) and in Figure 1, respectively.

The/DT lazy/JJ gray/JJ sloth/NN climbed/VBD up/IN the/D T tree/NN

Figure 1 Parse Tree for The lazy gray sloth climbed up the tree

(2)

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Regardless of which approach is considered, there are clear complexities in tagging even this simple sentence. Consider the possibility of having three distinct tags for each word in (1). By disregarding context, this results in 6,561 possible tag sequences for this single sentence. For an average sized paragraph, this escalates to 3Ă&#x2014;1030 possible sequences. With this in mind, there is an inherent difficulty in hand tagging large sets of data. Consequently, interest arose in automating the tagging process by using computers beginning in the 1950s and 1960s [5]. One of the earliest programs for performing automatic POS tagging was the TAGGIT system designed by Greene and Rubin in 1971 using a transformation-based3 approach [4]. The system was a major step in fully tagging the Brown Corpus generating Form C. The program was initially run on the corpus, correctly annotating roughly threefourths of the text, and the remaining text was manually annotated [4]. As research continued, entirely automatic transformation-based methods began to arise. Most systems required the use of lexicons, or dictionaries, which contained every possible tag for the words that were provided [5]. The systems annotated text by first assigning every possible part of speech to all of the words in the text. Then, the sequence of rules was consulted, eliminating tags which were not possible in the given contexts. Multiple passes through the text were done using the rules until each word was annotated with only one tag.

There are many issues associated with hard-coding rules for transformation-based methods. They do not transfer nicely to new tagsets, languages, or corpora [5]. This is because not all tagsets have the same tags and not all languages have the same words or words with the same meaning. Further, sentence structure for languages can be different and thus the context for rules do not transfer easily. Finally, the transformation-based methods require that humans write the rules, which can be a very lengthy and complicated task. For these reasons most of the research transitioned away from transformation-based methods and focused on statistical approaches. Although these statistical approaches will be the focus of this paper, there will be some discussion on the transformation-based methods in Section 5.

3. Unsupervised Part-of-Speech Tagging Unsupervised learning methods learn patterns with the absence of explicit feedback [22]. Unsupervised methods operate on data that have not been tagged with expected results. When applying unsupervised learning to POS tagging, the only information available in some cases is a lexicon. In other cases no lexicon is provided and the process relies completely on the given data.

In the following subsection a discussion on the use of lexicons in unsupervised learning methods is provided. Afterward, a general unsupervised learning method using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) for POS tagging is presented. For readers unfamiliar with HMMs, please refer to Appendix C.

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3.1 Lexicons in Unsupervised Learning It has been shown in [1] that using a reduced lexicon greatly improves the tagging accuracy of unsupervised methods. This is because filtering the lexicon removes tags that are statistically unlikely to occur. As a result, noise is removed from the lexicon and processing becomes more efficient and more accurate, since the more statistically likely cases are favored. However, as pointed out by [1], obtaining a reduced lexicon is dependent on some form of human intervention. In other words, the method can no longer be classified as unsupervised as it requires some form of manually tagged data or a lexicon that has been manually edited by a human. Future research might consider focusing on methods of coping with noisy lexicons.

The use of lexicons in general should be further discussed within the context of unsupervised methods. An important thought to consider is how the use of any kind of lexicon affects the classification of a POS tagging method. Reviewing our definition of unsupervised learning, feedback is not received on any decisions made by the tagger. Although using lexicons does not result in any direct feedback on any attempted tagging, it certainly limits the possible classifications a word can be given. With this in mind, any results presented in the following sections will be clearly separated based on whether the lexicon is a full lexicon or an optimized lexicon.

3.2 Generalized Process with Hidden Markov Models In part-of-speech tagging, we can use HMMs to model the dependency of the context of words based on associated lexical tags [4]. This is done by estimating the model parameters A (state transition probabilities), B (emission/observation probabilities), and Î (initial state probabilities) from a training set. The state transition probabilities represent the probabilities of a certain tag following a given tag and the emission probabilities represent the probabilities of a word being labeled a tag. The "hidden" aspect of the HMM refers to the set of states. The "observed" aspects of the HMM are the sets of words for each tag in a lexicon. Since, in any given context, only one part of speech is correct for a single word, we must use the HMM to identify the most likely sequence of tags associated with our set of text.

In the example in Appendix C, the employer set the model parameters.

This is not done for unsupervised part-of-speech tagging. Rather, we must begin with a set of, usually uniform, probabilities and train the HMM to reflect statistically accurate sets of probabilities. Through training the HMM we maximize the probabilities of the parameters, a process known as maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE). The maximization is done by using an algorithm known as the Baum-Welch or Forward-Backward algorithm [4].

This algorithm iteratively constructs a sequence of models (sets of parameters) which improve the probability of the training data [18]. This algorithm is labeled as an Expectation Maximization method for MLE.

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Let N be the number of possible tags, o be the output sequence (the sentence), and ot represent the individual words in the sentence at "time‖ t. The algorithm begins by recursively defining two sets of probabilities: the forward probabilities:

(3)

Where is the emission probability given state j at time t and backward probabilities:

(4)

where

is the emission probability given state j at time t+1 and for all j, where T is the final time in the iteration. At time t, the forward probability αi(t) is the joint probability of the sequence of observations {o1, o2, …,ot} up to time t and the likelihood of observing oi at time t. Similarly, the backward probability βj(t) is the probability of the sequence of observations {ot+1, ot+2, …, oT} given that we observe oj at time t. It follows that the probability of the entire sequence {o1, o2,…, oT} is

(5)

Note that (5) holds true regardless of the value t. Further, given an initial choice for A, B, and Π, we may compute the probability of a transition between state si at time t and state sj at time t+1, identified as γi j(t): (6)

By summing γi j for all t = 1...T, we have the expected number of transitions from state si to state sj in the sequence. This allows us to estimate the values for ai j, bj k, and πi:

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(7)

(8)

(9) To clarify, equations (7 - 9) represent the following information [21]: is

In most cases the initial probabilities for the parameters are uniform [28]. That is, the state transition parameters are uniform over all tags and the emission probabilities are uniform over the set of possible words for a given tag.

In summary, to find the ML estimates for our parameters A, B, and Î using the Baum-Welch algorithm, we choose some starting values and then apply equations (7 - 9) to compute new values. We iterate through this process until the parameters converge to maximum values. Note that regardless of the initial parameter values, the parameters will always converge to a local maximum [28]. Once the parameters are maximized we can produce the most likely sequence of tags for our text. This process can be thought of as maximizing over all sequences which might generate a sequence of tags S [4]. The algorithm we will be using to perform this task is a dynamic programming algorithm called the Viterbi algorithm [27].

In order to find the most probable sequence of states V for the given sequence of observations O we must define the following quantity: (10) (11)

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This represents the highest probability along a single path at time t, ending at state sI and accounting for the first t observations. By induction we can show (12) To retrieve the state sequence, we need to keep track of the argument which maximized equation (12) for each t and j. To do so, we must define a new function, Ď&#x2C6; (13)

(14) Finally, to find the most probable sequence of states or Viterbi path we must perform backtracking, (15)

(16) For more information on the algorithms and other applications of HMMs see [21].

4. Extensions and Other Statistical Models We have divided the extensions of approaches using HMMs into Expectation Maximization (EM) and Bayesian. Following the extensions are other statistical approaches to unsupervised POS tagging, which do not require a HMM, including clustering, prototyping, and methods for multi-lingual POS tagging.

4.1 Expectation Maximization For most problems using HMMs, there are many mappings between an underlying distribution and the distribution regarding the observation [19].

The EM algorithm seeks to produce Maximum Likelihood Estimates (MLEs), or estimations of the parameters of a statistical model. The EM algorithm is defined in two steps: an expectation step followed by a maximization step [19]. This first step is with respect to the unknown variables and uses the current estimates of the parameters [19]. The second step provides a new estimate [19]. The algorithm is iterative and thus steps 1 and 2 are repeated until the estimates converge.

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The first modifications we will present come from [15] and are extended in [13] [14]. The goal in [15] was to introduce equivalence classes to reduce the number of parameters in the model, alleviating problems in obtaining reliable estimates for individual words. Each class contains a set of words that have the same parts of speech. For example, words that can only be nouns belong to the noun class, words that can be nouns or verbs belong to the noun-or-verb class, and so on. The number of equivalence classes required becomes independent of the size of the dictionary, accommodating new words without any need for retraining [14]. By using equivalence classes, dependency on the subject domain is removed as well. Rather than assigning probabilities to single parts of speech and training the HMM accordingly, parts of speech are replaced with the equivalence classes. Each equivalence class is initially assigned equal probabilities.

Once the HMM is trained, the probability for an equivalence class is divided evenly between the parts of speech the class represents. For example, if the equivalence class noun-or-verb class has a probability of 0.3, the noun and verb parts of speech each receive 0.15 probability. By using equivalence classes within the HMM, dictionaries containing hundreds of thousands of words can be represented by only a few hundred classes. The results in [14] report errors as low as 4% for an optimized lexicon and errors around 22.9% for a full lexicon [1].

Another modification to the typical HMM is presented in [1]. The goal of [1] was to introduce more context into tagging. Originally, the probability of a word was conditioned only on the current tag. However, there may exist dependencies between a word and the parts-of-speech of the words preceding and following it. With this in mind, [1] modified the structure of the HMM to estimate the probability of a word based on the tags immediately preceding and following it. They called this structure a contextualized HMM. By increasing the context size during the estimation, it was found desirable to further smooth the estimations using a technique found in [20]. These modifications result in errors around 6% for an optimized lexicon and 23.1% for a full lexicon [1].

The final two modifications to the EM approach we will present are discussed in [28]. The goal of [28] was to continue using a simple HMM with improvements on the state transition probabilities and emission probabilities, while still using a full lexicon. The first improvement looked at constraining the HMM, specifically the state transition probabilities, to maintain a specified marginal distribution. The goal of this improvement was to improve the quality of the transition probabilities by keeping the parameters to reasonable values [28]. The target distribution is found using the probability of each tag in the complete text being tagged [28]. After finding the target distribution, the Mstep of the EM task is modified, adding a constraint requiring that the transition probabilities stay within the defined distribution. By including this constraint, the tagging error rate from a uniform initialization of the parameters improves from 18.7% to 9.5% after several iterations of the Baum-Welch algorithm in each case [28]. These results, however, require having a reasonable tag distri-

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bution.

The second improvement from [28] focuses on improving the emission probabilities. The issue found with using the standard EM process is that it does not incorporate any form of "parameter tying" over the word emission probabilities [28]. In other words, the parameters are treated independently, when many words play similar syntactic roles. They add feature vectors for each word, each consisting of mutual information between the word and a context. Once the feature vectors have been determined, the similarity between two words is computed. Then, a similarity measure is used to smooth the parameters by taking similarity weighted averages. Specifically, the emission probabilities are smoothed. By performing this modification, the tagging error rate improves from 18.7% to 12.6%. After combining the two modifications the tagging error is slightly worse than strictly using the first modification, with an error rate of 9.97%.

4.2 Bayesian Inference Unlike the EM approaches where the parameters are maximized, a Bayesian approach integrates over all possible parameter values [8]. This difference allows the learned structure to have a high probability over a range of possible parameters and permits the use of a prior probability distribution, hereafter termed a prior. Most words are associated with very few parts of speech as previously mentioned, which results in sparse emission probabilities. Priors allow us to preference the models that have these sparse emission probabilities [7]. The goal is to use a prior and the likelihood estimation (Equation (5)) to estimate the posterior distribution. The posterior distribution equates to the probability of the estimated model given a corpus to tag. In most cases, the posterior distribution does not have a closed form. However, there are two main techniques to approximate the distribution: Variational Bayes and Markov Chain Monte Carlo [11]. In [8], Gibbs sampling, a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, is used to produce samples from the posterior distribution. This process is done by iteratively re-sampling each tag according to its conditional distribution given the current values of all other tags [8]. In contrast, Variational Bayesian inference attempts to find a function which minimizes an upper bound called the Variational Free Energy [11]. We can use the factorized form of the function to accurately approximate the posterior distribution [11]. The process requires only minor modifications of the M-step in the Baum-Welch algorithm.

4.3 Other Models 4.3.1 Clustering The approach taken in [23] is similar to the contextualized HMM found in [1] where context of a word is increased by adding dependence on the immediately previous and following tags. The context is incorporated through feature vectors labeled left context and right context vectors, respectively [23]. The

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difference between [23] and [1] is that the underlying model was not a HMM. The vectors are composed into a matrix and singular value decomposition (SVD) is applied, which is a method for factorizing matrices. For more information on SVD, refer to [12]. There are four different tagging approaches [23] considered, including: induction based on word type only; induction based on word type and context; induction based on word type and context, restricted to "natural" contexts; and induction based on word type and context, using generalized left and right context vectors [23]. For more information on the different approaches see [23].

In context distribution clustering, as presented in [3], each word defines a probability distribution over all contexts, notably the probability of the context given the word [3]. Since data is generally too sparse to estimate context distributions for most words in a corpus, [3] approximates the context distributions as probability distributions over ordered pairs of clusters. In other words, the same idea of introducing context through adding dependencies on the immediately previous and following words is done. In [3], an iterative algorithm is presented to estimate the context distributions, further using ideas from EM and Bayesian Inference to define the categories of a text.

4.3.2 Prototyping In a prototyping approach, prototypical examples are specified for each target label or label configuration. For example, when modeling the Penn Treebank, the treebank tagset and a few examples of each tag are listed [9]. The general approach taken in [9] is to use distributional similarity to link a given word to similar prototypes. These links are then encoded as features in a loglinear generative model [9]. The model used is a chain of Markov random fields, which are the undirected equivalent of HMMs [9]. For more information on prototype-driven learning applied to POS tagging, see [9].

4.3.3 Multilingual Learning The key hypothesis of multilingual learning is that by combining cues from multiple languages, the structure of each becomes more apparent [24].

The work in [24] is based on the idea that patterns of ambiguity inherent in POS tags differ across languages. At the word level, a word with tag ambiguity in one language may correspond to a word with an unambiguous tag in another language [24]. Although the learning style can address ambiguities in each language, it must be flexible enough to accommodate cross-lingual variations such as the tagset and the syntax of a sentence [24].

Within multilingual learning, training occurs on parallel data and distinct tagsets. In other words, the training data contains the same text presented in multiple languages where each sentence contains the same content in its respective language. Further, each tagset available to the learner is tied to a specific language. There is a possibility for the tagsets to be the same, however this does not always occur since some languages do not have certain parts-ofspeech. For example, Serbian is a language without articles [24].

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Figure 2 Graphical structure of the bilingual model based on word alignments [24].

A bilingual model for jointly tagging parallel streams of text in two languages is proposed in [24]. The model is designed to permit information to flow across the language barrier [24]. They assume that for pairs of words that share similar semantic or syntactic functions, tags will be statistically correlated [24]. After using techniques from machine translation to align similar words as seen in Figure 2, a hierarchical Bayesian model is formulated in [24] that exploits both language-specific and cross-lingual patterns to explain the observed bilingual sentences. After constructing the model, Bayesian inference is used across the defined parameters to construct the emission probabilities for generating sequences of tags [24]. Tests were run across all pairs of the following four languages: English, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Slovene. Of the tests run, the highest accuracies achieved using full lexicons for each language are 92.01%, 91.75%, 94.48%, and 95.10%, respectively [24]. Tests were performed using reduced lexicons containing only the 100 most frequently used words for all pairs of the four languages, resulting in 71.34% 56.91%, 62.55%, and 59.68%, respectively [24]. All results were improvements on mono-lingual models of the same structure [24].

A multilingual model allowing the inclusion of more than two languages in the training process is proposed in [25]. Three tests were performed on sets of eight languages including Bulgarian, Czech, English, Estonian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovene, and Serbian, where each test varies the amount of information provided in the lexicon [25]. Results for a full lexicon are less than ideal, improving accuracy of only four out of the eight languages, compared to the bilingual model from [24]. For the two reduced lexicon tests, where words were included based on frequency of the words (frequency of greater than 5 and 10 respectively), five of the eight languages improved in accuracy over the bilingual model [25]. Of all tests performed, English did not improve over the bilingual model.

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Unsupervised Part-of-Speech Tagging 5. Transformation-Based Learning

Training a part-of-speech tagger using transformation-based learning requires a simple set of deterministic rules [2], as opposed to statistical approaches, which require large sets of probabilities. An unsupervised transformation-based learner is comprised of three components: the initial state annotator, the set of transformation templates, and the scoring criterion [2]. Initially, the learner has access to an unannotated corpus and a lexicon with words and the allowable tags for each word [2]. The initial state annotator tags each word in the corpus with a list of allowable tags. The transformation templates are for reducing the uncertainty of the correct tag of a word in a particular context [2]. All learned transformations in [2] will have the following form: Change the tag of a word from X to Y in context C

(17)

X is defined as a set of two or more tags and Y is a single tag where Some example transformations which were learned by the learner in [2] are:

.

Change tag from NN_VB_VBP to VBP if the previous tag is NNS Change tag from NN_VB to VB if the previous tag is MD Change tag from JJ_NNP to JJ if the previous tag is NNS In the scoring criterion, for each learning iteration, the score of a transformation is computed based on the current tagging of the training set. To score the transformation in (17), for each tag where , define the following: (18) Where freq(Y) is the number of occurrences of words tagged with Y in the corpus, freq(Z) is the number of occurrences of words tagged with Z in the corpus, and incontext(Z, C) is the number of times a word tagged with Z occurs in context C in the training corpus [2]. In (18), freq(Y) â&#x20AC;&#x2122; freq(Z) represents the relative frequency of tag Y to tag Z. Note that when evaluating (18) for different tags Z, freq(Y) remains constant. Thus for larger values of F, the less likely Y is a better choice than Z (i.e. this occurs when Z is used relatively infrequently for different words but occurs many times in the context of C in the training corpus). Therefore, F gives us a way to quantify the benefit of choosing tag Y over tag Z or vice versa. Now, this calculation is used to find the "best" relative alternative tag choose for the transformation in (17) by defining the following: (19)

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Finally, R is used to determine the validity of choosing Y. This is done by scoring the transformation as follows: (20) This recalculates F for choice Z = R and compares it to the number of times Y shows up in context C. If (20) is positive, than Y is a better choice than R; the higher the score is, the better the choice Y is for the transformation in (17).

Now that a method is defined for scoring the transformations, the learner calculates the scores for each transformation and chooses the transformation with the maximum score for each iteration. Once no positive scoring transformations can be found, learning is halted [2].

Training on the Penn Treebank and the Brown Corpus, the tagging accuracy converged to an error of 5% after learning over 1,150 transformations, with an initial tagging accuracy of a 9.3% error [2]. While these results are promising, the vast majority of research on transformation-based learning was conducted in the 1990s and interest has since declined.

6. Conclusion Techniques exploring unsupervised part-of-speech tagging are motivated by the increasing availability of unlabeled data. With current research presenting extensions of a general Expected Maximization method and other approaches for unsupervised POS tagging, accuracies are showing overall improvements. As we discussed earlier, small improvements in the tagging process have the potential to yield larger improvements overall in many advanced natural language tasks, since POS tagging is a vital pre-processing step [10].

Although many different approaches have been developed for the tagging process, unsupervised methods which utilize Hidden Markov Models seem to be the most popular and perform the best. It was our goal in writing this paper to introduce material associated with part-of-speech tagging. In particular by focusing on corpus history, automated tagging, lexicons, a general model, and extensions on the general model for unsupervised POS tagging, we hoped to present a comprehensive introduction to this material.

130 Notes 1.) Plural of corpus, or large set of structured text 2.) Set of tags 3.) Methods using rules 4.) Hyphenated before regular tag 5.) Hyphenated after regular tag

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Appendices Brown Corpus Tagset 1.

Sentence closer

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

( ) * â&#x20AC;&#x201C; , : ABL ABN ABX AP AT BE BED BEDZ BEG BEM BEN BER BEZ CC CD CS DO DOD DOZ DT DTI DTS

Left parenthesis Right parenthesis not, nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Dash Comma Colon Pre-qualifier Pre-quantifier Pre-quantifier Post-determiner Article be were was being am been are, art is Coordinating conjunction Cardinal numeral Subordinating conjunction do did does Singular determiner Singular or plural determiner/quantifier Plural determiner

30 31 32

DTX EX FW

Determiner/double conjunction Existential Foreign word 4

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

HL HV HVD HVG HVN HVZ IN JJ JJR JJS

Word occurring in headline 5 have had (past tense) having had (past participle) has Preposition Adjective Comparative adjective Semantically superlative adjective

43

JJT

Morphologically superlative adjective

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Modal auxiliary

45 NC

Cited word

46 NN

Singular or mass noun

47 NN$

Possessive singular noun

48 NNS

Plural noun

49 NNS$

Possessive plural noun

50 NP

Proper noun or part of name phrase

51 NP$

Possessive proper noun

52 NPS

Plural proper noun

53 NPS$

Possessive plural proper noun

54 NR

Adverbial noun

55 NRS

Plural adverbial noun

56 OD

Ordinal numeral

57 PN

Nominal pronoun

58 PN$

Possessive nominal pronoun

59 PP$

Possessive personal pronoun

60 PP$$

Second (nominal) possessive pronoun

61 PPL

Singular reflexive/intensive personal pronoun

62 PPLS

Plural reflexive/intensive personal pronoun

63 PPO

Objective personal pronoun

64 PPS

3rd person singular nominative pronoun

65 PPSS

Other nominative personal pronoun

66 QL

Qualifier

67 QLP

Post-qualifier

68 RB

Adverb

69 RBR

Comparative adverb

70 RBT

Superlative adverb

71 RN 72 RP

Nominal adverb Adverb/particle

73 TL 74 TO

Word occurring in title Infinitive marker to

75 UH

Interjection, exclamation

76 VB

Verb, base form

77 VBD

Verb, past tense

78 VBG

Verb, present participle/gerund

79 VBN

Verb, past participle

80 VBZ

Verb, 3rd person singular present

81 WDT

wh-determiner

82 WP$

Possessive wh-pronoun

83 WPO

Objective wh-pronoun

84 WPS

Nominative wh-pronoun

85 WQL

wh-qualifier

86 WRB

wh-adverb

5

5

136 Penn Treebank Tagset 1 CC 2 CD 3 DT 4 EX 5 FW 6 IN 7 JJ 8 JJR 9 JJS 10 LS 11 MD 12 NN 13 NNS 14 NNP 15 NNPS 16 PDT 17 POS 18 PRP 19 PP$ 20 RB 21 RBR 22 RBS 23 RP 24 SYM 25 TO 26 UH 27 VB 28 VBD 29 VBG 30 VBN 31 VBP 32 VBZ 33 WDT 34 WP 35 WP$ 36 WRB 37 # 38 $ 39 .

40 , 41 : 42 ( 43 ) 44 " 45 ‗ 46 ― 47 ‘ 48 ‖

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Coordinating conjuction Cardinal number Determiner Existential there Foreign word Preposition/subordinating conjunction Adjective Adjective, comparative Adjective, superlative List item marker Modal Noun, singular or mass Noun, plural Proper noun, singular Proper noun, plural Predeterminer Possessive ending Personal pronoun Possessive pronoun Adverb Adverb, comparative Adverb, superlative Particle Symbol (mathematical or scientific) to Interjection Verb, base form Verb, past tense Verb, gerund/present participle Verb, past participle Verb, non-3rd person singular present Verb, 3rd person singular present wh-determiner wh-pronoun Possessive wh-pronoun wh-adverb Pound sign Dollar sign Sentence-final punctuation Comma Colon, semi-colon Left bracket character Right bracket character Straight double quote Left open single quote Left open double quote Right close single quote Right close double quote

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HMM Introduction The goal of this Appendix is to introduce the construction and use of HMMs through a working example. Note that the example presented does not relate to POS tagging.

Consider a manager of a door-to-door sales company. The manager finds that one of the employees has not been doing well in sales. The manager wants to develop a model to determine whether the employee is genuinely struggling to sell products or if the employee is not going doorto-door during the shift. If the employee is not going door-to-door, the employee will be terminated. However, if the sales are down even though the employee is going door-to-door, the employee will not be terminated. To generalize the possibilities, let‘s say there are only three things the employee could be doing during the shift: going door-to-door and successfully selling products, going door-to-door and not successfully selling products, or not going door-to-door. We will refer to these possibilities as a set of states, , respectively. The manager wants to be able to determine if the employee is not going door-to-door. However, the manager cannot simply ask whether or not the employee is going door-to-door, as the employee would probably lie to prevent termination. Therefore, the only thing the manager can do is attempt to make observations about the employee‘s behavior and appearance to determine if the employee is going door-to-door. Let‘s assume that the employee either looks happy, irritated, or nervous. We will refer to these observations as, , respectively.

The goal is for the manager to use observations in order to determine what the employee did during the shift. However, the manager cannot definitively determine what caused the employee‘s appearance. Therefore, the manager must make reasonable assumptions as to what caused the appearances. The manager can do so by assigning probabilities to the observations, given the actions of the employee during the work shift. These probabilities are known as emission or observation probabilities, and will be referred to as the set , where , such that . That is, given the employee did not successfully sell products door-to-door (s1), the probability that the employee looks happy (c0) is . Let‘s assume the manager assigns the emission probabilities in Table I. The manager must also consider the likelihood of the employee‘s state today, given the state yesterday. For instance, the manager needs the probability the employee will go out and successfully sell products today, given that the employee did not go out yesterday. These variables are known as transition probabilities and will be referred to as , where , such that . So the probability of the employee going door-to-door and not successfully selling products (s1) today, given that the employee went door-to-door and successfully sold products (s0) yesterday is . Let‘s assume the manager assigns the transition probabilities in Table II. The final thing that needs to be considered is the initial state. Since this decision does not involve using information from the previous days, the manager assigns the probabilities for each state to be equal. We will refer to these initial state probabilities as , where , such that for . The manager can now use all of this information to define a model, called a Hidden Markov Model. See Figure 3 for a diagram of the HMM. Further, the manager‘s model can be defined as the five-tuple : 1.

Set of States

2.

Set of Observations

3.

Initial State Probabilities

4.

State transition probabilities

5.

Emission Probabilities

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Happy Irritated Nervous

Successful Selling 0.90 0.02 0.08

Unsuccessful Selling 0.05 0.80 0.15

Not Going 0.14 0.08 0.78

Table 1 Emission Probabilities

Successful Selling Unsuccessful Selling Not Going

Successful Selling 0.30 0.50 0.20

Previous Day Unsuccessful Selling 0.45 0.35 0.20

Not Going 0.25 0.50 0.25

Table 2 Transition Probabilities The manager can now use this model for two purposes [17]: 1. Find out how well the sequence of observations made by the employer match the current HMM. 2. Find the most probable sequence of states that the employee has been in, based on the observations of the employer.

For purpose 1, the Forward Algorithm is used to calculate the forward probabilities (see Section 3.2). These are used to determine how well a current HMM matches the managerâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s sequence of observations. For purpose 2, the Viterbi Algorithm is used to find the most probable sequence of states (see Section 3.2). This process is the primary focus of unsupervised POS tagging methods. Finally, it is important to note that the Baum-Welch or Forward-Backward Algorithm can be used to generate a good HMM based on observations made by the employer. For more information on the three tasks and a more in-depth introduction to HMMs refer to [17] and [21].

Figure 3 Diagram representing the example HMM with transition and observation probabilities