Spotlight: Chris Strelluf

Chris Strelluf
PhD Candidate, English

As a Ph.D. candidate in English, Chris primarily studies linguistics with his secondary emphasis in rhetoric and composition. He sums this up by saying he studies how people do things with words. “People make countless conscious and unconscious decisions about language strategies, from word choices to sentence structure to variations in dialect features, and that’s just in spoken parts of language,” Chris says. “I’m interested in why people make those decisions and what we can figure out about their intentions from them.”

Currently, Chris is watching how language is being used to talk about the elections in Afghanistan. “Language strategies change when the same Afghan newspaper publishes the same story in English versus Dari,” Chris explains. “American media take different approaches to election fraud in countries the Government treats adversarially, like Iran, compared with countries like Afghanistan. Fox News and MSNBC will make reporting decisions that reflect their audiences’ views of President Obama and disposition of war.”

Having served in Afghanistan last year, Chris earned a Bronze Star and the Joint Service Achievement Medal. His achievements at MU include being awarded the GI/TA Award for Excellence, which recognizes excellence in the efforts of graduate instructors and teaching assistants who use educational technologies to improve teaching and learning at MU. Chris received this award for a course he teaches that focuses on the rhetoric of terrorist organizations. “It is web based writing where students are able to use wikis and videos,” Chris says.

Chris has been teaching courses for five semesters, which also includes an English 1000 level course that is restricted to Engineer majors. “It’s a pilot to look at if students benefit from a focused discipline,” Chris says. For students hesitant about their choice of an English degree, Chris believes they should not worry.

“Any major in language is a good way to experience life, and the time in college is an opportunity to grow, look at the world in different ways, and be enlightened.”

Chris plans to complete his Ph.D. in May 2012.

(Story and photo by Samantha Abbott)