Purposeful living : an introductory occupational therapy course

Capstone project (O.T.D.)

Fixing meaning: intertextuality, inferencing and genre in interpretation

The intertextual theories of V. N. Voloshinov, Mikhail Bakhtin and the early Julia Kristeva provide the most convincing account of the processes of textual production, conceived as constitutively social, cultural and historical. However, the ways in which intertextual accounts of reading (or 'use') have extended such theories have foreclosed their potential. In much contemporary literary and cultural theory, it is assumed that reading, conceived intertextually, is no simple decoding process, but there is little interest in what interpretation, as a process, is, and its relations to reading. It is these questions which this thesis seeks to answer. The introduction sets the scene both for the problem and its methodological treatment: drawing certain post-structuralist and pragmatic theories of meaning into confrontation, and producing a critical synthesis. Part one (chapters one to three) elaborate these two traditions of meaning and stages the encounter. Chapter one offers detailed expositions of Voloshinov, Bakhtin and Kristeva, contrasting these with other intertextual theories of production and reception. Chapter two examines inferential accounts of communication within pragmatics, focusing on Paul Grice and on Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson's Relevance theory. Chapter three stages an encounter between these radically different traditions. A common ground is identified: both are rhetorical approaches to meaning, focusing on the relations between texts, contexts and their producers and interpreters. Each tradition is then subjected to the theoretical scrutiny of the other. Inferential theories expose the lack of specificity in intertextual accounts which completely ignore inferencing as a process. Intertextual theories reveal that text and context have semantically substantive intertextual dimensions, most particularly genre and register (conceived intertextually) which are ignored by inferential theories. Text and context are therefore far more semantically fixed than such theories suppose. Both traditions ignore the role of production practices other than 'speech' or 'writing', i.e. they ignore how publishing practices - editing, design, production and marketing - constitute genre and shape reading. In Part Two (chapters four to six), the critique is developed into an account of interpretation. Interpretation, conceived intertextually, is significantly, though not exclusively, inferential, but inferential processes do not 'work' in the ways proposed by existing inferential theories. Patterns of inference are ordered by the relations between discourses (in Foucault's sense) and genres in the text, the reader's knowledge and the conditions of reading. Chapter four elaborates the concepts required for such an account of interpretation, centring on the role of publishing processes and the text's material form in shaping interpretation. The limits of existing accounts of the edition and publishing, specifically Gerard Genette's Paratexts and work in the 'new' textual studies, call for a more expansive account of how publishing shapes genre and interpretation. Chapters five and six develop two case-studies which extend these concepts and arguments. These examine two contemporary publishing categories: 'classics' (Penguin, Everyman etc.) and literary theory textbooks (Introductions and Readers). Through the detailed analyses of particular editions, I develop and substantiate a stronger and richer account of interpretation as process and practice and its relation to reading. This is expanded in the final chapter

Common Ground: Discursive Practices and the Building of Trust Among Participants of Executive Training Program

In traditional academic instruction, the classroom may be viewed as a kind of speech community composed of an expert (the teacher) and those who are at various stages of socializing into the cultural models and norms of that community (students), although this is an overly simplistic and unilinear view. In executive development programs, students are already socialized into a professional community of importance to them, and many are pursuing learning to further develop skills to be applied in the organizational contexts in which they are already embedded and deeply invested. This dissertation begins with the conceptualization that a classroom is essentially a transient social network with multiple functions, and one of these functions is to create or facilitate student access to resources that generate social capital in other networks. Additionally, a classroom is structurally a type of organization and socially a type of community. As an organization, the classroom confers identities to its participants. As a social network, the classroom can be characterized as a type of speech community. Trust is “an extensive co-belonging in a social category” (Agha, December 6, 2010, personal communication)—or community—that is represented linguistically through co-constructed and mutually-enforced social and professional registers. This dissertation argues that trust and the co-construction of a classroom register are in a reflexive relationship. Together, they form the dynamic processes of social positioning and interactional footing, ideally leading to register-mediated alignment among students and instructors. It is this register-mediated alignment that I refer to as “common ground.” Thus, the overarching question this dissertation has sought to answer is: How does the enactment of certain practices move a classroom from being simply a transient social network of diverse individuals to becoming also a speech community? Findings indicate that training and development professionals facilitate the co-construction of a learning community first by dedicating an extended period of time to get to know participants. This period of building the learning community also introduces and establishes a communicative norm of recontextualizing participant speech and reframing contexts over an extended period

Genre, schema, and the academic writing process : an enquiry into the generalisability of generic structure and its relationship to schematic knowledge.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN029010 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

The Experience of a Brazilian Graduate Student in the United States in Disciplinary Writing: The Cognitive, Social, and Rhetorical Influences on a Thesis Introduction

Eighty percent of the international students in the US are pursuing their post-graduate degrees (Institute of International Education, 2017) and studies show that the introduction of the thesis or dissertation is the most challenging section for this population to compose. However, most of these studies are based on textual analysis and overlooks the social factor and cognitive processes underlying the composition of this intricate section. Another gap in the literature is the lack of attention to how Latin-Americans develop their writing in master’s programs, especially to Brazilian students, the ninth largest international student population in the US. Therefore, this study aims at narrating and investigating the cognitive processes and socials factors that influence the rhetorical choices of a Brazilian graduate student in a US university. A ten-month case study was conducted, and data were collected through ethnographic and discourse-based interviews and analyzed on the basis of the Cognitive Process Theory of Writing (Flower and Hayes, 1981), Sociocultural Cognitive Theory (Bazerman, 2009), and CARS (Creating of a Research Space) model (Swales, 2011). Results suggest that international students’ home literacy experiences are transferred to the US context and, as Bazerman suggests, their cognition is transformed through the interaction with the research community. This study also confirms that reviewing the literature is the most challenging rhetorical move because of the limited rhetorical awareness developed in both Brazil and US universities

Adventures of Ludom: a Videogame Geneontology

Within the last few decades, the videogame has become an important media, economic, and cultural phenomenon. Along with the phenomenon’s proliferation the aspects that constitute its identity have become more and more challenging to determine, however. The persistent surfacing of novel ludic forms continues to expand the conceptual range of ‘games’ and ‘videogames,’ which has already lead to anxious generalizations within academic as well as popular discourses. Such generalizations make it increasingly difficult to comprehend how the instances of this phenomenon actually work, which in turn generates pragmatic problems: the lack of an applicable identification of the videogame hinders its study, play, and everyday conceptualization. To counteract these problems this dissertation establishes a geneontological research methodology that enables the identification of the videogame in relation to its cultural surroundings. Videogames are theorized as ‘games,’ ‘puzzles,’ ‘stories,’ and ‘aesthetic artifacts’ (or ‘artworks’), which produces a geneontological sequence of the videogame as a singular species of culture, Artefactum ludus ludus, or ludom for short. According to this sequence, the videogame’s position as a ‘game’ in the historicized evolution of culture is mainly metaphorical, while at the same time its artifactuality, dynamic system structure, time-critical strategic input requirements and aporetically rhematic aesthetics allow it to be discovered as a conceptually stable but empirically transient uniexistential phenomenon that currently thrivesbut may soon die out.Videopeli on kasvanut edellisten vuosikymmenten aikana tärkeäksi ilmiöksi niin median, talouden, kuin kulttuurinkin näkökulmasta. Kasvun myötä ilmiön itsensä määrittäminen on kuitenkin muuttunut yhä haastavammaksi: uudet leikin ja pelaamisen muodot venyttävät jatkuvasti ’pelin’ ja ’videopelin’ käsitteitä, mikä on jo nyt johtanut kivuliaisiin yleistyksiin sekä akateemisessa että populaarissa kielenkäytössä. Kyseisten yleistysten seurauksena ne asioiden joukot, joihin ’pelit’ ja ’videopelit’ tänä päivänä viittaavat, ovat hämärtyneet äärimmäisen epäselväksi. Tämä hämärtyminen on tuonut mukanaan lukuisia käytännön ongelmia, jotka nousevat esiin ilmiöitä koskevassa tutkimuksessa, kulutuksessa, kuin myös journalistisessa käsittelyssä. Edesauttaakseen näiden ongelmien ratkaisua luettavanasi oleva väitöskirja esittelee lajiontologisen tutkimusmetodologian, joka mahdollistaa videopelin tunnistamisen suhteessa sitä ympäröiviin ja sitä muistuttaviin kulttuuri-ilmiöihin. Lajiontologista tutkimusmetodologiaa hyödyntäen väitöskirja ottaa tehtäväkseen tarkastella videopelin suhdetta neljään sitä ympäröivään tai muistuttavaan kulttuuri-ilmiöön: ’peleihin’, ’puzzleihin’, ’tarinoihin’, ja ’esteettisiin artefakteihin’ (ns. ’taideteoksiin’). Tarkastelut tuottavat videopeli-ilmiötä selittäviä aspekteja, joiden avulla sille rakennetaan alustava taksonominen identiteetti itsenäisenä kulttuurisena lajina (Artefactum ludus ludus, lyhyesti ludom). Löydetyt aspektit ja niiden mukainen taksonominen identiteetti puoltavat näkemystä siitä, että videopelin historiallinen asema ’pelinä’ on lähinnä metaforinen. Videopelin esineellisyys, dynaaminen systeemirakenne, aika-kriittiset strategiset manipulointivaatimukset sekä (aporeettisesti) remaattinen estetiikka tuntuvat sen sijaan muodostavan vankan pohjan käsitteellisesti vakaalle mutta vain hetkellisesti menestyvälle kulttuurilajityypille, joka parhaillaan kukoistaamutta saattaa pian kuolla pois.Siirretty Doriast