The Emergence of Dialogic Identities: Transforming Heteroglossia in the Marquesas, F.P.

Te \u27Enana \u27the people\u27 of the Marquesas, French Polynesia, have been engaged for some time in the dialogic negotiation of their heteroglossic identity. Based on an ethnographic study of language socialization in the Marquesas, this dissertation examines how communicative forms are acquired within a changing socio-cultural matrix, as well as on how cultural habits and beliefs are produced and reproduced via verbal interaction. My first two months of fieldwork were spent in Tahiti (the capital of French Polynesia), living and studying the language use and cultural patterns of an \u27enana family. Subsequently, I spent ten months in a village in the Marquesas, taping at regular intervals the everyday interactions of children and their caregivers within four families and transcribing these with the aid of the caregivers. The transcripts and the caregiver metalinguistic commentary were analyzed for the contexts and functions of code-switching between francais (the local variety of French), \u27enana (including several dialects of the language, spoken in the Marquesas), and sarapia (a stigmatized \u27mixed\u27 code); the communicative genres laden with cultural expectations as to how people ought to think, feel, and act; and the socializing routines influencing these beliefs and practices via participant-observation and informal interviews, I also collected a wide range of information concerning everyday social interactions, routine verbal practices, and cultural notions concerning the value, use, learning, and potential loss of the language. My findings are as follows. Despite the flowering of a cultural revival movement, a complex political economic situation (beginning with the establishment of the French nuclear testing facility in 1963) is responsible for an increase in code-switching and decrease in the acquisition and use of \u27enana by children. Nonetheless, the language continues to be learned and used by many as both medium and marker of an ethnolinguistic identity which is the syncretic product of indigenous reactions to two centuries of foreign influence and rule. Furthermore, while bearing the partial imprimatur of western thought and practice, \u27enana ways of structuring verbal interaction and the acquisition of communicative resources reveal some deeper systemic commitments to pan-Pacific cultural and communicative practices

Men reading fiction: A study of the relationship between reader, (con)text, consumption and gender identity.

This thesis is a qualitative study of men's talk about fiction reading. Based on 38 interviews with male readers and 13 book group sessions with four male participants it draws upon the theories of Bourdieu (1986) and de Certeau (1988) to analyse how men's consumption practices may in part be constitutive of articulations of gendered identity. My analysis of the qualitative data begins with a focus on the interviews, looking at how Bourdieu's conceptual apparatus can be extended to look at the power of the media as a form of 'meta-capital' (Couldry 2003) and gender as a form of symbolic power. The interview analysis identifies a link between gender and genre, with masculinity articulated by negation of culturally feminised texts. Moving towards a more specific analysis of the articulation of the self as gendered, I then consider how the book group participants talk about a series of texts. Firstly focusing on culturally masculinised genres (horror, techno-thriller, science fiction and militaristic action/adventure) the group discussions measured the value of a text by how 'realistic' it was. Subsequently the book group participants were asked to make their own selections to focus on the 'symbolic work' (Willis 2000) of consumption. Each of the books chosen contained elements of comedy pointing to the importance of this genre to performances of masculinity. The readers also revoked their previously established valuation of 'realism' in favour of proximity to the text. Finally, the analysis turns to culturally feminised genres (modern romance, chick lit, feminist fiction, and a 'classic' romantic comedy) where discussions once more emphasised readers' constructions of self in opposition to femininity

Process and Product: High School English Learners Redefined

Despite 21st Century technology, our nation’s high schools deliver a print-centric curriculum driven by high-stakes tests. A majority of states have adopted Common Core State Standards that incorporate producing and consuming multiple media texts. Some teachers have begun to include multimodal activities but few are exploiting the affordances of multimodal composition specifically for the benefit of English learners. Public high school teachers hold deficit views of English learners and fail to offer them challenging, creative tasks. Framed by the complementary sociocultural theories of ecological linguistics (van Lier, 2004), multimodality (Kress, 2010), and identity (Gee, 2001; Norton, 2000), this qualitative case study examined the process and product of high school English learners composing multimodally with digital video. Four questions guided the study: 1) What can we learn from adolescent English learners engaged in composing with video? 2) What identities do adolescent ELs explore while engaging in multimodal communication? 3) What processes do ELs engage in as they compose multimodally? 4) How do their multimodal compositions contribute to our understanding of ELs? Participants were enrolled in an elective English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) class at a public high school during Spring semester of 2012. Data included student generated lesson artifacts, audio/video recordings, researcher journal, and participants\u27 video compositions. Data were analyzed through an ongoing, recursive cycle to determine themes, categories, and trends. Visual and video data were examined through visual discourse analysis (Albers, 2007b; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) and multimodal interaction analysis (Norris, 2004). Addressing the process and product of learning to read and compose visual and video texts, this dissertation examines 3 pairs of student participants and their video compositions. It reveals English learners working collaboratively and creatively, exploring imagined identities, showing investment in learning, engaging in critical analysis, and effectively communicating through multiple modes. Multimodal analysis of three student videos revealed four patterns of multimodal design; less is less, layered modes, less is more, and overlapping modes. The study redefines English learners as multilingual, multimodal communicators. It illustrates the complexity and reveals the benefit of incorporating multimodal activities and provides a model for fostering multilingual, multimodal communicators

The linguistic construction of character relations in TV drama : doing friendship in Sex and the City

Die vorliegende Arbeit ist im Bereich der angewandten Gesprächsanalyse angesiedelt und beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie Freundschaftsbeziehungen zwischen den Charakteren in Fernsehserien erfasst werden können. Sie fokussiert damit zum einen auf konstruierte Dialoge und zum anderen auf Beziehungsarbeit im Gespräch. Um mediale Beziehungsarbeit zu untersuchen, wird ein Modell zum screen-to-face discourse entworfen. Freundschaft wird als dialektischer Prozess zur Herstellung einer angemessenen Balance zwischen Assoziation und Dissoziation verstanden, der anhand von Gesprächsmustern deutlich gemacht werden kann. Zuschauer/-innen gleichen vernommene sprachliche Muster mit ihrem Wissen über das Gesprächsverhalten in bestimmten Beziehungskonstellationen ab und ziehen daraus Schlüsse über die sozialen Bande zwischen den Charakteren. Die Muster, die auf verschiedenen Gesprächsebenen Beziehung generieren, bezeichnet man als interaktionale Ausrichtungen (alignments / disalignment bzw. affiliation / disaffiliation). Zwei Praktiken, die solche Ausrichtungen bewerkstelligen, werden näher untersucht: Formen der Anrede und Frage-Antwort-Sequenzen. Die Adressiertheit der Rede (Kosenamen/Vornamen) häuft sich in Kontexten, in denen die Beziehung in irgendeiner Weise bedroht ist, und ermöglicht eine affiliation im Zuge von disaffiliative moves. Fragen werden hauptsächlich als pro-aktives Mittel zur affiliation eingesetzt und bilden das Kernstück vieler typischer Freundschaftsaktivitäten. Die interaktionalen Ausrichtungen unter den Sex and the City Charakteren wechseln ständig, wobei die Komplexität der Muster mit steigender Zahl der Gesprächsteilnehmerinnen steigt, bis hin zur Ausbildung interaktionaler Teams. Sich permanent verschiebende Muster der Interaktionsordnung auf der sozialen Mikroebene führen zur Aus- und Umbildung sozialer Beziehungen auf der gesellschaftlichen Makroebene. Durch die flexiblen Ausrichtungsmuster sind dabei auch Kritik und Widerspruch möglich und es kann zu einer inneren Differenzierung des Freundschaftskreises im Sinne einer community of practice kommen. Die vorliegende Arbeit leistet damit nicht nur einen Beitrag zur Stilistik und medialen Kommunikation, sondern auch zur soziologisch orientierten Diskursanalyse.This study attempts to answer the question how the audience in front of the screen knows what kind of relationship characters on screen have from overhearing their talk. Hence, it has two major focal points: dialogue scripted for the screen and the linguistic construction of interpersonal relations. Assuming a process view of friendship relations and developing a model of screen-to-face discourse, which takes Goffman\u27;s notion of the "overhearer\u27; as a starting point and stresses the audience\u27;s central role in the co-construction of meaning, this study pins down the textual cues which lead to the viewer\u27;s formation of a relationship impression. The patterns of the interaction order commonly termed "alignments\u27; are shown to be fundamental to the friendship process in which a balance between association and dissociation needs to be achieved. Focusing on the conversational contexts in which they accumulate, the workings of two particularly interesting and versatile alignment practices are described: familiar terms of address used in direct address and question-answer-sequences. Familiar terms of address occur in contexts characterised by a temporary suspension of some fundamental component of friendship relations and function to assuage this disequilibrium by signalling affiliation. Questions predominantly initiate and maintain extended affiliative sequences such as intimacy pursuits and humorous exchanges and have thus a more active part in friendship processes. Analyses of the complex alignment practices in the women\u27;s conversations reveal that the women shift between aligning and disaligning — often even creating temporary interactional teams — and that these shifts accomplish micro-transformations of social structure, which in turn construct social relations on the macro-level. The study shows that the flexibility of the interaction order brought about by shifting alignments allows for criticism and disagreement in a friendship group and also for an intragroup differentiation with more central and more marginal members in the sense of a community of practice. The study hence not only contributes to the fields of linguistic stylistics and media studies, but also to relational communication and discourse analysis, in particular through revising the concept of alignment

Models and analysis of vocal emissions for biomedical applications: 5th International Workshop: December 13-15, 2007, Firenze, Italy

The MAVEBA Workshop proceedings, held on a biannual basis, collect the scientific papers presented both as oral and poster contributions, during the conference. The main subjects are: development of theoretical and mechanical models as an aid to the study of main phonatory dysfunctions, as well as the biomedical engineering methods for the analysis of voice signals and images, as a support to clinical diagnosis and classification of vocal pathologies. The Workshop has the sponsorship of: Ente Cassa Risparmio di Firenze, COST Action 2103, Biomedical Signal Processing and Control Journal (Elsevier Eds.), IEEE Biomedical Engineering Soc. Special Issues of International Journals have been, and will be, published, collecting selected papers from the conference

Teaching as Analogous Personalization: A pragmatic inquiry into expert teachers' process for fostering synchrony in educational dialogs, in post-secondary writing

Descriptive understandings of what human learning is, and so normative expectations of what teachers can and should do as educational leaders, has shifted greatly in society over the past century. The learning metaphors have moved from mechanical transfer to organic transformation; the educational approaches have moved from behavioral response-training to social-emotional facilitating: encouraging students not merely to repeat experts but to think like members in those knowledge-based communities, not merely to mimic disciplines' methods but to participate personally in the ongoing discourse of those fields. In an immediate sense, this shift is progress. Yet, in a larger sense, it is merely cycling back to acknowledge an old and persistent thread of practical wisdom among educators: that people learn complexly as emotional-social-intellectual creatures, and so that a teacher's work is to entice interest and effort, to foster a sense of belonging and trust, and to persuade students toward personally connecting with and valuing those same integral parts of a subject-matter that the teacher has already beneficially personalized for themselves. This longstanding rhetorical and pragmatic view of a teacher's educational role is now being supported directly by empirical research that shows the sense-bound, neurologically integrated, socially attuned, identity-and-meaning motivated character of human feelings, thoughts, and dispositions. I introduce the term “analogous personalization” to capture this synthetic (experience-based, scientifically supported) understanding of teaching as complexly social-emotional, intellectual, persuasive work. I then focus on educational dialogs—specifically within post-secondary writing-based courses—as a means of exploring how expert teachers foster synchrony between their own and their students' personal connections to (i.e., emotional inclination toward, social affiliation with, intellectual/practical understanding of) subject-matter. First, this dissertation offers a synthetic overview of some emergent mind-brain-body findings, and points out the fundamental educational realities that those findings substantiate. On that foundation, it next overviews insights from the field of rhetoric-and-writing about how teachers can usefully conceptualize the learner-knowledge-environment relationship from a dialogic perspective, to achieve effective (intentional, situated, synchronous) educational exchanges. Building from those scientific and practical literatures, it offers a flexible research method for studying the pragmatic arc of an educational exchange (from teacher intention to student take-away): by using the teacher's own personal, practical, principled framework of educational ideals and approaches; comparing their stated intentions with students' stated learning experiences, and tracing the arc of that educational dialog through actual classroom recordings. Finally, it enlists this radically situated research method to analyze three expert university writing teachers' practices: their idiosyncratic understandings of a teacher's role (from their own perspective); their experience-based manner of forming learning-centered relationships with students (from my observing perspective); and their apparent, persuasive self-investment in the course's subject-matter and the students' learning (from students' perspectives). It concludes with observations about the role of a teacher's sincerity (both practiced and perceived) in developing professional expertise and achieving synchrony with students in educational exchanges

Joking a part : the modalities of feminist humour in performance

This thesis examines the social semiotics of difference within feminism's joking relations in the production and reception of performance texts. It hypothesises that the signifiers of the modality system in the verbal and visual channels of the constructed world of performance are the key markers of joking relations. It further proposes that certain contextual and rhetorical markers of modality maintain, decentre or reinvent the social and subjective positioning of interactive participants (the producers and receivers of the text) within discursive formations of power, solidarity and subordination. The major discursive formations under investigation are the complex imbrications of gender with age, class, race, sexual preference, and region. Part One orients the reader to the three epistemological concerns in the study of subjectivity: definitions of modality and social control; constructions of identity politics; and the effects of postructuralist and material theory and praxis. Chapter One, the Introduction, outlines current debates of difference in the various feminisms (indicated as "feminismS"), and explains the impetus to the study. Chapter Two includes historical, social and cultural examples of performance for a metonymic demonstration of the ways in which the material signifiers, the performative strategies, and the effects of modality values are brought to bear on the logics through which the discourses of difference come to be constructed, enmeshed, and destabilised. Chapter Three traces the development and transformation of the sign-referent "Woman" within sociological knowledge formations of humour, and within media constructions of the historical subject of comedy. Part One thus addresses certain logics and effects that are deemed significant to the formulation of a feminist model of context of culture beyond the exclusionary "either/or" logic of the dominant model in social semiotics. Three metafunctional types of contradictory logic are located which signify semantic relations between the historically specific social and textual feminist subject: the "both/and" logic of the oxymoronic subject of the interpersonal and intrapersonal dimension; the (non)transactional logic of the mimetic subject-object of the ideational dimension; and the (non)cohesive textual logic linking the subject of the narrative code to the subject of the performative code. Part Two, entitled "The Modalities of Difference", consists of three chapters which each foreground a particular discursive formation - gender, race, and class - while also demonstrating the subtensions of each of the other identity positions. Chapter Four examines the resonances between gender and genre in texts which both represent the vocation of comedian and posit theories of comedy's potential to social transformation. Chapter Five analyses the mediating performance structures and evaluative modalities of an African American narrative about race, and raises the hierarchical issues of generic and linguistic classification from the viewpoint of a white middle class feminist critique in relation to the differentially located critiques of American and Australian black feminism. Chapter Six focuses on the contextual determinations of class, power, status, authority and money in producers' modes of address specific to the documentary representation of feminist comedy. Chapter Seven, the conclusion, examines the typology of modalities to emerge from the study, and attempts to formulate a cultural model of the social semiotics of feminismS' joking relations in performance

Intelligence, Creativity and Fantasy

UID/HIS/04666/2019 This is the 2nd volume of PHI series, published by CRC Press, the 4th published by CRC Press and the 5th volume of PHI proceedings.The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) - INTELLIGENCE, CREATIVITY AND FANTASY were compiled with the intent to establish a multidisciplinary platform for the presentation, interaction and dissemination of research. The aim is also to foster the awareness and discussion on the topics of Harmony and Proportion with a focus on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design, Engineering, Social and Natural Sciences, and their importance and benefits for the sense of both individual and community identity. The idea of modernity has been a significant motor for development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts.authorsversionpublishe