How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University

Hymns have always been part of Christian liturgy, expressing the faith in congregational song. The NZ hymnwriter of the late twentieth century writes within a secular society which increasingly questions the relevance of religion. This thesis examines and describes issues with which modern hymnwriters are confronted in the practice of their work, the intention being to produce a work of practical benefit to those using hymns in some way. The thesis begins with an historical overview of the ways hymnology has developed. From this background it is possible to ascertain a working definition of a hymn, and to discover how hymns have been used over the centuries to express certain theological points of view about the nature of the church, particularly as it relates to society as a whole. Hymns are a combination of doctrine and song. How words and music combine to form the complex experience of a hymn is discussed in Chapter two. Music has always been a contentious issue within the church for it brings the possibility of the "secular" into worship. Music style is an expression of a church's theology of church in the world. The choice of music as part of the experience of a hymn is a crucial issue. In a secular society, the charge of irrelevance is levelled at religion in general, and hymns in particular. Chapter Three discusses the meaning of "relevance" for hymnology. This is related to hermeneutics, liturgy, and tradition, with particular focus on Reader-Response Criticism as a tool for understanding the dynamics of the texts relationship to the reader/singer. The modern hymnwriter must overcome the conservatism of hymnbook collections. The quest for relevance and the exploration of new styles takes place largely outside the confines of hymnbooks. As liturgy is the milieu within which hymns are experienced and for which they are written, the thesis raises four questions by which to test the effectiveness of hymns in worship. During the writing of this thesis an issue arose several times which is more properly the province of religious sociology or theology; the way in which hymns express the power struggle between the "organisation" and the people. many music forms used in the church began as people's songs and dances, but church use has dampened the original liveliness of these forms. I have addressed this issue in passing without exploring it fully. Because I am a Methodist presbyter, there are times when my Methodist bias shows. I make no apology for that. The NZ context from which I write is also an important factor in the choosing of illustrative material. I have deliberately used With One Voice as a source book for most hymn quotations as it is used in many NZ churches and can therefore add to the practical nature of this work. The thesis is not a critique of With One Voice

Escalation Bargaining: Theoretical Analysis and Experimental Test

The standard chicken game is a popular model of certain important real scenarios but does not allow for the escalation behaviour these are typically associated with. This is problematic if the critical, final decisions in these scenarios are sensitive to previous escalation. We introduce and analyse, theoretically and by experiment, a new game which permits escalation behaviour. Compared with an equivalent chicken game, Pareto-suboptimal outcomes are significantly more frequent. This result is inconsistent with our rational choice analysis and possible psychological roots are explored.escalation; brinkmanship; chicken game; experiments

A preliminary investigation into the use of fixed formulaic sequences as a marker of authorship

This research unites the theory of formulaic language—prefabricated sequences of words believed to be stored as holistic units—and the practice of forensic authorship attribution with a view to developing a new marker of authorship. It stands to reason that since formulaic sequences are holistically processed as single lexical items, they are likely to elude a writer’s attempts to disguise their style. Furthermore, evidence suggests that individuals have different stores of formulaic sequences. Therefore, research into differences in formulaic language usage may assist in the development of new tools for authorship attribution. In order to test this assertion, a reference list containing 13,412 formulaic sequences was compiled from multiple online sources. This was then used to identify formulaic sequences in a 20 author corpus containing 100 personal narratives. After exploring the types of formulaic sequences used by authors, statistical tests were used to determine whether the count of formulaic words was sufficient to establish variation between authors and to attribute a Questioned Text to its autho

Comic Ritual in a Tragic World: Lessons in the Metaphor of Drama

Metaphor and drama share an essence: transformation. A metaphor carries one world of meaning to another, enlarging what it comes to by what it brings along with it. What is at stake is a meaning, which is transformed to something quite beyond its original state. Drama takes an action done by characters, and transforms it from the mundane to the meaningful, carrying meaning from the realm of its factuality to wider worlds. Seen this way, drama transforms all action to the act of understanding, of putting some sort of prop under mere fact, of supplying--by some combination of rational, imagistic, associative, and poetic means--context, explanation, cause, meaning, analogy, connection, relation

Value-led personas:a methodology to promote sustainable user-centered design?

This paper explores how values can be the focus in user-centered design through the use of value-led personas. Its starting point was exploring value-driven alternative models for micro-business based on the principles of open source. The research documented in this paper is a participatory design process with two emergent micro-businesses as co-researchers. The stakeholders of each micro-business were presented as value-led personas, representing a deep understanding of their values and beliefs gained from ethnographic data. In this project, the use of value-led personas effectively communicated the core values of each micro-business and enabled participants to visualize how stakeholders would interact with the organization. Value-led personas thus have the potential to be an effective communication technique in user-centered design that can lead to purposeful action

Open source guilds:enabling micro­ businesses to create a sustainable community of practice?

This paper outlines how the concept of open source guilds was developed through undertaking a pilot action research project with three micro-businesses in the North West of England as co-researchers. The research initially aimed to explore how a virtual guild could enable micro-businesses to move towards sustainability by creating a community of practice based on open source principles. However, research findings raised the issue of both the business and its community needing to become sustainable. The open source guild addresses this issue by adding the proprietary aspect of the original medieval guilds, enabling a micro-business to defend its core intellectual property while creating a sustainable community based on shared values that operates both off-and on-line

D-Chiro-Inositol – Its Functional Role in Insulin Action and its Deficit in Insulin Resistance

In this review we discuss the biological significance of D-chiro-inositol, originally discovered as a component of a putative mediator of intracellular insulin action, where as a putative mediator, it accelerates the dephosphorylation of glycogen synthase and pyruvate dehydrogenase, rate limiting enzymes of non-oxidative and oxidative glucose disposal

The Purpose and Power of the First Amendment: A Response to Hildon and Colitti

While it seems to me unclear that Judge Alito, who Hildon asserts was not moved by the identity of the plaintiffs in Saxe, did not take advantage of his sympathies to write what appears to be a pro-free-speech decision, I generally agree with Hildon that the effects of the decision support free speech and correctly strikes down an anti-harassment policy which is unacceptably broad and vaguely framed. Colitti’s assertion that Alito’s decision “denies constitutional protection” to minority groups misunderstands both the principles and the application of the First Amendment. Colitti believes that preventing harassing speech, even as broadly and as vaguely defined as in the State College Area School District’s policy, “upholds individual protections” and protects the right to “unrestricted access to safe and orderly schools.” It is important to Colitti to demonstrate that having such laws is “a majoritarian view” in the State of Pennsylvania, as expressed by its legislature, and he goes on to inveigh that “the instant matter illustrates how courts are also manipulated to promote minority excesses” (though he does not name them or discuss them). He takes yet one more step by asserting that these manipulations, or these excesses have “empowered the imperialistic ideology” against which Cornel West argues in Democracy Matters