Does the phenomenon of carnivalesque challenge hegemony and inspire social change? Mikhail Bakhtin coined the term “carnivalesque” to describe the concept of Carnival. During Carnival, social norms were overturned and ignored in favor of a chaotic atmosphere, briefly breaking down the boundaries between class, gender, and other hegemonic perspectives. Modern Carnivals, such as the Rio Carnival, still contain a semblance of the carnivalesque, as well as other holidays that celebrate the grotesque and macabre, like that of the Day of the Dead. The LGBT Pride Parade can also be seen as a modern Carnival, for it focuses heavily on sexual and gender identities that have been suppressed in most of the world. When celebrating these carnivalesque events, one can dress up and change their identity to something less tolerated in an oppressive hegemony. For example, some participants may cross-dress or act in less traditional ways, while others will dress in ways that mock the social standards of royalty or religion. Many of these identities challenged the status quo of society and slowly became accepted. This thesis explores the role the carnivalesque has in celebrating alternative identities and its use as a rhetorical tool for inspiring social change, as well as examine how Carnival uses dialogic language. The methods of exploring this topic include reading Bakhtin’s texts on language and rhetoric, analyzing other sources that also explore language and carnivalesque elements, and considering the history of Carnival and its influence on people and society.

Background: The background of this study highlights the important aspects that collaboration can contribute to, also the problems that can arise during collaboration. This study has also shown how the growth of the leisure center and school has looked like. Aim: The aim of this study is to highlight how the collaboration between the leisure center and school looks like. This study has investigated how different teachers view collaboration, opportunities and obstacles through two questions of issue. Based on theoretical points of departure, power and dialogue, the teachers in the leisure center and in school have put a word on differences from a power and balance perspective. Method: A qualitative study with, among other things, interviews with three class teachers and three leisure center teachers. Results: The results of all interviews showed that lack of time, dialogue, power and conditions from the questions of issue where reasons why collaboration did not work. Research has shown clear signs of how collaboration is affected and what the various factors can be. Educators should have more time to be able to sit and talk to each other. Furthermore, it is emphasized that the relationship and communication between different actors in the business is important. Conclusion: Leisure center teachers should have more space to implement what they are learned to do, but at the same time it is important that the management provides the conditions for being able to collaborate. The results of the entire study show that there are shortcomings in collaboration, but that there is also development potential for good collaboration.

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / This chapter will start the debate by concentrating on the phenomenon or occurrence of religious pluralism. Thereafter, the reasons for its existence and its importance in providing a system of coexistence in mutuality will be examined. The contours of interreligious interaction will be outlined as briefly as possible, by assessing the processes of interreligious dialogue and the role this dialogue must play, from a Christian perspective. An attempt will be made to show how Christianity's view of the other shifted from viewing the other as posing a threat, to regarding the other as affording an opportunity to understand personal and individual reality within a context of diversity. A further attempt is made to show how by mutual effort evil and injustice can be eradicated through dialogue, within the interreligious context.

L'interaction vocale avec des systèmes automatiques connaît, depuis quelques années, un accroissement dans l'intérêt que lui porte tant le grand public que la communauté de la recherche. Cette thèse s'inscrit dans ce cadre pour aborder le sujet depuis deux points de vue complémentaires. D'une part, celui apparent de la fiabilité, de l'efficacité et de l'utilisabilité de ces interfaces. D'autre part, les aspects de conception et d'implémentation sont étudiés pour apporter des outils de développement aux concepteurs plus ou moins initiés de tels systèmes. A partir des outils et des évolutions dans le domaine, une plate-forme modulaire de dialogue vocal a été agrégée. L'interaction continue, basée sur une "écoute" permanente du système pose des problèmes de segmentation, de débruitage, de capture de son, de sélection des segments adressés au système, etc... Une méthode simple, basée sur la comparaison des résultats de traitements parallèles a prouvé son efficacité, tout comme ses limites pour une interaction continue avec l'utilisateur. Les modules de compréhension du langage forment un sous-système interconnecté au sein de la plate-forme. Ils sont les adaptations d'algorithmes de l'état de l'art comme des idées originales. Le choix de la gestion du dialogue basé sur des modèles de tâches hiérarchiques, comme c'est la cas pour la plate-forme, est argumenté. Ce formalisme est basé sur une construction humaine et présente, de fait, des obstacles pour concevoir, implémenter, maintenir et faire évoluer les modèles. Pour parer à ceux-ci, un nouveau formalisme est proposé qui se transforme en hiérarchie de tâches grâce aux outils associés. / Recently, global tech companies released so-called virtual intelligent personal assistants.This thesis has a bi-directional approach to the domain of spoken dialog systems. On the one hand, parts of the work emphasize on increasing the reliability and the intuitiveness of such interfaces. On the other hand, it also focuses on the design and development side, providing a platform made of independent specialized modules and tools to support the implementation and the test of prototypical spoken dialog systems technologies. The topics covered by this thesis are centered around an open-source framework for supporting the design and implementation of natural-language spoken dialog systems. Continuous listening, where users are not required to signal their intent prior to speak, has been and is still an active research area. Two methods are proposed here, analyzed and compared. According to the two directions taken in this work, the natural language understanding subsystem of the platform has been thought to be intuitive to use, allowing a natural language interaction. Finally, on the dialog management side, this thesis argue in favor of the deterministic modeling of dialogs. However, such an approach requires intense human labor, is prone to error and does not ease the maintenance, the update or the modification of the models. A new paradigm, the linked-form filling language, offers to facilitate the design and the maintenance tasks by shifting the modeling to an application specification formalism.

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How the Sky Tastes is not simply a collection of stories. It is my representation of moments in life, social commentaries, bits of humor, and pure entertainment all in one. Each story, although unique and easily able to stand alone, shares qualities I find important in writing fiction. First, each story features realistically flawed, yet sympathetic characters dealing with difficulties in life. Secondly, the actual moment is important in each story--whether that moment is something shared between two or more characters or simply the time a certain character comes to a serious realization. Finally, the style can make or break the story. I do not believe in gimmicky writing--form must always have function--but I do feel that the writing must be representative of the characters and the stories that it serves. Experimentation is important in writing. Each story should have its own way of telling itself. All these stories can be seen as experimental in some way, but also all these stories are told the way they have to be told. The characters tell the stories themselves and the writing just follows suit. It is my hope that readers can identify with most, if not all, of these stories, and engage interest in these characters enough to care about what happens to them, even if they don't necessarily like them.

Title: Dialogue education is effective as a method to teach maternal toddler feeding practices Objectives: 1) Measure the effectiveness of one or two workshops using dialogue education to teach healthy toddler feeding practices, specifically a) to allow child self-regulation of satiety, b) to maintain a schedule for meals and snacks and c) to role-model healthy eating when compared to a control group. 2) Measure the effectiveness of dialogue education to teach appropriate stages of growth in order to increase mothers’ ability to know when their children are at a healthy weight compared to a control group 3)Compare baseline maternal toddler feeding practices between low-income Latina mothers participating in Early Head Start (EHS) and Early Migrant/Seasonal Head Start (EMSHS). Methods: Sixty six mothers participating in EHS (n=25 and EMSHS (n=41) completed a 24 item Likert scale (1 to 5 with 1=Never/Not confident/Extremely unlikely, 5=Always/Very confident/Extremely likely) to assess behavior, self-efficacy and intent regarding 3 domains of toddler feeding practice: self-regulation of hunger and satiety, scheduling meals and snacks, and parental role modeling. Mean Likert scores for each question were analyzed by subgroup. A two-part educational intervention was developed to improve these three domains of healthy toddler feeding practices and knowledge of stages of growth. Participants were recruited primarily from EMSHS and were grouped based on level of participation (1 workshop, 2 workshops or control). Results: Objective one:One-way ANOVA analysis showed improvement from baseline to post-intervention for self-regulation (baseline x=3.130 0.499; post-intervention x=3.496 0.603; p=0.030) and role-modeling behavior (baseline x=3.757 ; post-intervention x=4.096 0.581, n=23, p=0.035) for those who participated in one or two workshops. Two-sample t-tests of post-intervention scores between control and a combined intervention group (Group 1 and Group 2) showed that the combined group scored significantly higher in allowing self-regulation behavior (control x=3.036 , n=11; combined intervention group x=3.496 0.603, n=23, p=0.016). Regression showed that intent (p=0.03) and self-efficacy (p Objective two: No significant changes in self-efficacy or knowledge of stages of growth were observed among the three treatment groups. Perceptions of healthy weight did not change significantly from baseline to post-intervention. Objective three: Mothers in EHS and EMSHS groups were similar for the most part in their parental feeding practices. The EMSHS mothers maintained a schedule for meals and snacks more than EHS mothers (EMSHS x=3.323 , n=41, EHS x=2.850 , n=25; p=0.004). The EHS mothers, however, limited sweets more frequently than EMSHS mothers (EMSHS x=3.28 , n=41, EHS x=2.66 , n=25; p=0.024). Levels of self-efficacy and intent were similar for both groups, with EHS mothers scoring higher for confidence in staying calm during stressful meal times (EHS x=3.24 , n=25; EMSHS x=2.56 , n=41; p-value=0.004) and intent to allow self-regulation (EHS x=4.125 , n=8; EMSHS x=3.532 , n=25; p-value=0.068). Early Head Start mothers also identified the importance of exercise in maintaining a healthy weight significantly more than EMSHS mothers (p=0.031). Conclusion: Dialogue education is effective as a method to improve some aspects of authoritative feeding behavior. One workshop was sufficient to observe improvements in self-regulation and role-modeling behavior. No improvements were observed in self-efficacy or knowledge of healthy weights. While similar for the most part, EHS mothers are more authoritative in their feeding practices compared to EMSHS. Keywords: Toddlers, Head Start, Division of Responsibility, Dialogue Education

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