Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

Program/Concentration

English

Committee Director

Daniel P. Richards

Committee Member

Julia Romberger

Committee Member

Charles B. Keating

Committee Member

Ashley Hall

Abstract

Every year, Air Force officers receive an Officer Performance Report (OPR) from their supervisory chain of commands. Air Force regulations state that officers should not write the content for their own reports; however, this is not what occurs in practice as “Ratees” usually compose their own evaluations. At the time of writing, the Air Force has not established a service-wide training or education program to teach officers how to compose these complex and career-altering documents, leaving Ratees to figure out how to navigate the genre’s unique conventions for themselves.

This dissertation examines what rhetorical knowledge Air Force officers must possess to write effective OPRs as well as how and where they accumulate this knowledge. Findings from surveys and interviews with participants—past and present Air Force officers—reveal that officers must possess the personal initiative to seek instruction and feedback from others to improve their OPR writing. Additionally, officers inherently develop a three-step learning process to teach themselves how to compose OPRs. This learning process parallels established rhetorical genre studies (RGS) teaching approaches, despite officers’ never using RGS-focused terminology.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/595c-wv82

ISBN

9798280752559

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