Not Angry but Angy: The Rhetorical Effects of Non-Standard Language in Memes

The use of non-standard language on the internet has long been a topic of controversy, as some believe its prevalence indicates carelessness or a lack of intelligence in the (mostly) younger generations who use it. Non-standard language can refer to spelling or grammar that deviates from preferred language conventions, and is popular in what are called internet “memes.” Though the definition of a “meme” can vary, the term can be used to refer to pieces of culture that are remixed and disseminated by internet users. This thesis identifies patterns of non-standard language in memes to demonstrate that these changes are not accidental, but follow their own set of conventions. Examples of these patterns were collected and documented by the types of change that standard language undergoes. They were then matched to existing rhetorical figures, or figures of speech, that have historically been used by authors and orators to create a desired rhetorical effect. These rhetorical figures could include changing the length of a vowel sound, or adding or cutting a syllable. It was found that for each pattern of change, there was a rhetorical figure that matched in both pattern and effect. This illustrates that the presence of non-standard language in memes is intentional, and that it is often used where text, rather than tone of voice or body language, is all that the user has at their disposal. The use of rhetorical figures in memes can also textually represent paralanguage, which includes pitch and tone of voice, in order to express a more nuanced message than could be conveyed through standard text alone

Music information retrieval: conceptuel framework, annotation and user behaviour

Understanding music is a process both based on and influenced by the knowledge and experience of the listener. Although content-based music retrieval has been given increasing attention in recent years, much of the research still focuses on bottom-up retrieval techniques. In order to make a music information retrieval system appealing and useful to the user, more effort should be spent on constructing systems that both operate directly on the encoding of the physical energy of music and are flexible with respect to users’ experiences. This thesis is based on a user-centred approach, taking into account the mutual relationship between music as an acoustic phenomenon and as an expressive phenomenon. The issues it addresses are: the lack of a conceptual framework, the shortage of annotated musical audio databases, the lack of understanding of the behaviour of system users and shortage of user-dependent knowledge with respect to high-level features of music. In the theoretical part of this thesis, a conceptual framework for content-based music information retrieval is defined. The proposed conceptual framework - the first of its kind - is conceived as a coordinating structure between the automatic description of low-level music content, and the description of high-level content by the system users. A general framework for the manual annotation of musical audio is outlined as well. A new methodology for the manual annotation of musical audio is introduced and tested in case studies. The results from these studies show that manually annotated music files can be of great help in the development of accurate analysis tools for music information retrieval. Empirical investigation is the foundation on which the aforementioned theoretical framework is built. Two elaborate studies involving different experimental issues are presented. In the first study, elements of signification related to spontaneous user behaviour are clarified. In the second study, a global profile of music information retrieval system users is given and their description of high-level content is discussed. This study has uncovered relationships between the users’ demographical background and their perception of expressive and structural features of music. Such a multi-level approach is exceptional as it included a large sample of the population of real users of interactive music systems. Tests have shown that the findings of this study are representative of the targeted population. Finally, the multi-purpose material provided by the theoretical background and the results from empirical investigations are put into practice in three music information retrieval applications: a prototype of a user interface based on a taxonomy, an annotated database of experimental findings and a prototype semantic user recommender system. Results are presented and discussed for all methods used. They show that, if reliably generated, the use of knowledge on users can significantly improve the quality of music content analysis. This thesis demonstrates that an informed knowledge of human approaches to music information retrieval provides valuable insights, which may be of particular assistance in the development of user-friendly, content-based access to digital music collections

Apoya a las librerías independientes : plan de comunicación para Todos Tus Libros enfocado en la notoriedad y el posicionamiento de marca

Al llarg del projecte es desenvolupa un pla de comunicació anual enfocat a la notorietat i al posicionament de marca del projecte de comerç digital Todos Tus Libros desenvolupat per CEGAL amb la finalitat de donar suport a les llibreries físiques independents.A lo largo del proyecto se desarrolla un plan de comunicación anual enfocado en la notoriedad y posicionamiento de marca del proyecto de comercio digital Todos Tus Libros desarrollado por CEGAL con la finalidad de apoyar a las librerías físicas independientes.The project develops an annual communication plan focused on the notoriety and brand positioning of the Todos Tus Libros e-commerce project developed by CEGAL to support independent physical bookshops

Doing feminist text-focused institutional ethnography in UK universities

My thesis concerns how to do feminist sociology using Dorothy Smith’s ideas about Institutional Ethnography (IE), exploring the textually-organised relations of ruling focusing on UK higher education. How and in what ways do texts organise UK higher education, and what can a feminist research approach add to understanding this? The first part of the thesis charts the development of Smith’s ideas and how they have been received and used by others. From this, I develop a typology of IE approaches and commit to doing text-focused IE, alongside considering whether and how IE can retain its feminist roots. This requires consideration of what makes research feminist and how to do it in practice, resulting in feminist epistemological discussions and a consideration of how to do reflexive and accountable text-focused IE. This sets the scene for a methodological experiment in the second part of the thesis, in which three different IE text analysis methods are developed, based on Smith’s work. These are then used to investigate in detail key texts which help organise UK higher education: (i) a close-reading of one specific text, the National Student Survey; (ii) an analysis of the Economic and Social Research Council’s research funding application process as a textually-mediated process; and, (iii) an investigation of the Research Excellence Framework as a discourse. These later chapters explore different but intertwined ways in which UK higher education is textually-organised through how teaching and research activities are assessed and funded. By focusing on the ways in which the accountability processes involved are negotiated at a local-level, I explore how much agency people have in interpreting texts into activity and the translation involved in fitting their work into textual forms for evaluation purposes. In answer to my overarching question, how do texts organise UK higher education, while texts help organise and regulate people’s everyday activities within an institutional framework, authors and readers have interpretative agency in negotiating and translating the meaning of institutional texts. This applies to the researcher as an authoritative reader and as a writer of texts concerning academic working processes. Interpretative agency also differs depending on someone’s role and associated authority, which also has to be inscribed in the process of textualisation. The ‘moment’ of textualisation is important because texts often stipulate who or what is legitimate and who and what has authority within a particular context. In this sense, people are always behind and in front of the texts, both as authors and readers and as the collective weight of people’s interpretations in producing ‘correct’ readings of authoritative texts becomes solidified into further texts within a web of institutional texts. Thus, an authoritative individual or collective readership can give weight to and popularise unintended interpretations of texts, as has been the case with some key UK higher education regulatory texts. The interplay between textual requirements, interpretations seen as authoritative, and agency in reading and writing texts, comes out in all three of my focused investigations as an ongoing and cumulative negotiation of institutional power through textual gaming. Although in Smith’s sense the textually-organised relations of ruling are present and have impact, this occurs differently regarding the three different textual organising processes investigated, and interpretative presence continues to be exercised through the agency and translation work involved in reading and writing organising texts in UK higher education. The thesis concludes by returning to the question of how and in what ways a feminist approach, and in particular a more text-based way of carrying out Smith’s IE, can aid in understanding these processes

The death of God and the negation of eternal return in the theology of Thomas J.J. Altizer and the fiction of A.S. Byatt

This thesis is an attempt to explicate the concept of the death of God as it arises within Thomas Altizer's theological writings and the fiction of A.S. Byatt, paying special attention to the idea of the negation of eternal return. The negation of eternal return not only informs Altizer's theology, but also provides a metaphor with which to critique not only the traditional theological idea of God, but also the self-sufficiency of the theological tradition. As Altizer's theology is informed by a literary tradition outside the circle of traditional theological reflection, so this thesis suggests that theology comes about necessarily through self-emptying fictions, and not through the closedness of scholasticism; therefore the fiction of Byatt becomes a point of entry into theological reflection. The negation of eternal return also provides a useful metaphor for the metaphysics of the Proper, and economies of the Same.An intertextual consideration of Altizer's influences and theological development alongside the works of Byatt (specifically Possession, The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life), the thesis is informed also by thinkers such as Mark C. Taylor, Jacques Derrida, and Julia Kristeva, disciplines such as modern physics and nineteenth century biology, and literary works such as "The Dream of the Rood" and Iris Murdoch's The Time of the Angels

Romanticism and the Temporality of Wander

This dissertation contextualizes and accounts for the proliferation of representations of wander that permeate British Romanticism. The prominence of wander in this writing is an articulation of the embodiment of a new temporal mode, namely the quantified temporality of modernity. The study begins by identifying two main versions of Romantic wander: one that is free and naturalized, and one that is monotonous and dispossessing. The duality of wander maps onto two distinct aspects of clock time; a temporality that becomes increasingly entrenched, socially, culturally, and economically, over the course of the eighteenth-century. Through reading four explicit representations of Romantic wander, the dissertation argues that clock times open permissiveness is performed in Romanticism as a rhetoric of free wander, while clock times structured monotony is demonstrated by the experience of displaced and alienated wander. William Wordsworths The Excursion (1814) rhetorically positions free wander as an antidote to the industrialization and solipsism of modernity that is encroaching upon the poems pastoral space; however, the rhetoric of wander in the text becomes ideological, in its naturalization of an economical temporal expenditure. Frances Burneys The Wanderer (1814) demonstrates how the rhetoric of free wander is a privileged fiction, and shows how wander, when experienced by a nameless, connectionless young woman, is not only alienating, but dangerous. Samuel Taylor Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798, 1817) draws a link between the dispossessed wander of the Mariner and the newly mechanized, rationalized, and instrumental world he uncovers inadvertently on his voyagethe wandering Mariner becomes the first itinerant, individuated, and time-bound subject of modernity. Finally, Charles Robert Maturins Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) functions as a cautionary tale of the alienation that accompanies modern subjectivity and its quantified temporality. Ultimately, wander functions as a kind of warning, as Romanticism paces the uncertain ground of modernity. The duality of wander makes intelligible the duality of the temporality of modernitya time that is alternately the rhetorical buttressing of class and gender privilege, as well as a means of discipline and a form of dispossession

Update culture and the afterlife of digital writing

Includes bibliographical references and index.Explores "neglected circulatory writing processes" to understand why and how digital writers compose, revise, and deliver arguments that undergo (sometimes constant) revision. Also looks at how digital writers respond to comments, develop a brand, and evolve their arguments-all post-publication.--Provided by publisher.Methods and participants -- Template rhetoric -- Textual timing -- Textual attention -- Textual management -- Ethics in update culture -- Learning and pedagogy in update culture -- An epistemology of change