Exploring the need to mean : a multimodal analysis of a child's use of semiotic resources in the mediation of symbolic meanings

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Icelandic plus English: language differentiation and functional categories in a successively bilingual child

This thesis investigates the formal and functional properties of the linguistic knowledge of a young bilingual child 'Katla' who successively acquires Icelandic (L1, from birth) and English (L2, from age 1:3). I present new longitudinal natural speech data which I collected in both Icelandic and English from Katla at regular intervals. Audio-recordings were made roughly three times per month at age 1 ;0-4;7 and transcribed in adapted CHILDES/CHAT format. Using a generative framework, I analyse Katla's data qualitatively and quantitatively, focusing on her morphology and syntax during the period 1;6-3;6: determiners and word order in nominals, copula constructions, progressive constructions, imperatives, negation, verb placement, verb inflections, auxiliaries, and periphrastic do. Katla's development is compared with monolingual English-speaking and Icelandic-speaking children, and, where applicable, with other bilinguals. Particular attention is paid to early grammar differentiation and cross- language influence, and to the relationship between child language and input (construction types and frequencies). The empirical results are evaluated in the light of current theories of language acquisition and generative approaches to syntax. Katla's first multi-word combinations (1;6) show productive use of functional morphology (determiners, copulas). Early on, there is evidence of movement into the DP, IP and CP domains, indicating continuity of these functional categories. Moreover, translational equivalents, language-specific functional morphemes and language-specific word orders in Katla's Icelandic and English bear evidence of early language differentiation in successive child bilingualism. The longitudinal development of morpho-syntax largely progresses along separate lines for Katla's two languages; there is no cross- language influence as regards head parameter and movement parameter settings. Some construction transfer occurs where L1 and L2 linear orders are similar. Ensuing implications for transfer and (de)learnability are addressed

Reading tween franchises : cross-media practices and the discourses of tween girlhood

THESIS ABSTRACT\ud The 'tween' age group, particularly preadolescent females between the ages of 8\ud and 12, constitutes a heavily targeted niche for the branding and cross marketing of\ud products. Consequently, books aimed at tween readers are often part of cross-media\ud franchises that may include film and television adaptations, affiliated music albums,\ud online fan clubs, video games, clothing, and cosmetics. In this context, representations\ud may be adapted across a number of media forms, and conversely, responses to texts may\ud be facilitated by engagement with diverse media. In light of these trends, this research\ud explores how intersecting discourses of tween girlhood are negotiated through crossmedia\ud practices by both producers and consumers of tween franchises.\ud The thesis begins with a review of research from the fields of children's literature\ud criticism, cultural and media studies, girlhood studies, and New Literacies. Building on\ud this review, I outline a theoretical and methodological frame rooted in theories of\ud discourse as articulated through multimodal design and cross-media play. The analysis\ud traces a cultural history of key discourses in Anglo-American texts for and about\ud preadolescent girls. In the following chapters, two tween-oriented cross-media worlds,\ud The Chronicles ofNarnia and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, are used as case studies to\ud examine the roles of multi modal design and cross-media play in the articulation of these\ud discourses of tween girlhood. Each case study addresses the design of franchise texts (i.e.\ud books, DVDs, tie-in texts); fan cultures related to these texts; and the responses of eightyear-\ud old participants during fieldwork in Toronto, Canada. The conclusion of this thesis\ud discusses the potential application of this doctoral study in future research on crossmedia\ud texts and practices

Convergence markets: Virtual Corpo[reality]

open access articl

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

“/ENTEE MIN FAINE/? [WHERE ARE YOU FROM?] : THE RHETORIC OF NATIONALITY OF MUSLIM WOMEN IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHEAST

Nationality is a powerful modern concept. It allows people legal and political rights, but nationality is also rooted in our language. Nationality is essential to designate populations together as an entity. But in America, where individualism is essential, nationality can be expressed in various ways. Historically, there is little research done on the construction of nationality from a rhetorical lens. This project aims to investigate that very issue. Moreover, the sampled population was Muslim women in the American Southeast to rarify and observe a marginalized group. The primary research question of this project is, “How do Muslim women articulate their sense of nationality?” To this effect, five case studies are presented to begin formulating a sense of the rhetoric of nationality. Using Wayne Booth’s theoretical framework of the rhetoric of assent and M. Lane Bruner’s initial description of the rhetoric of nationality, this project highlights subjective representations of nationality. A multi-modal data set was collected from each participant: a questionnaire, photographs, and an hour-long interview. A rhetorical analysis crystallized various themes across each participant to synthesize a view on the rhetoric of nationality. Many of the participants used a Boothian rhetorical style to argue their sense of nationality. Booth describes that modern rhetorical practices situate ethos (author credibility) and pathos (emotional connection) as essential appeals in arguments. Logos (logic) is a secondary characteristic. In the case of expressing nationality, ethos was a matter of creating identifying terms, such as “German” or “Southern”; pathos was a matter of the rhetor feeling an emotional conviction; logos was the narrative explained to an outsider, such as the researcher. Most participants privileged the former two appeals to define their sense of nationality. In some cases, however, nationality was buried within other identities that were more significant to the participant. Nationality is powerful because of its subjective measure in people’s lives. More research is needed to detail the rhetorical structure of nationality to consider its representative characteristic across the large populations who use its identification as essential

Filling The Gaps: Playing The Semiotic Network In The Extemporization Of Scores For Improvisational Theater

The Art of Scoring for Improvisational Theater draws on traditions whose origins are obscured by the fog of History and Myth. With no prior plan, a musician is tasked with providing accompaniment that creates or reinforces mood, era, location, or genre. Through such accompaniment, a musician reads and activates nodes in a semiotic network, to generate context, subtext, or both. Drawing from sources in Semiotics, Multimedia, Marketing, Sociology, Artificial Intelligence, Film Music History, Theater, Music Theory, and Musicology, as well as interviews with an array of Participants and the Author\u27s personal experience, this paper seeks to articulate a framework of musical understanding that is uniquely in-the-moment, yet ever-present