At its core, “The Dialogues” is a collection of memories about my past relationships with many people. Instead of traditional plot, something closer to argumentative logic drives the poems. I like this idea of argumentation because it’s more open-ended and makes the reflective moments take on a present-tense voice about the Yankee Candle-esque fragments of the past. I sometimes think of how the poems present memory and nostalgia as a four stage process: There’s the experience as it transpires, the attentional filter that determines what gets remembered, the later nostalgia, and the act of questioning or refusing to question nostalgia’s credibility. A little four act play of Nostalgia v.s. Why Feel Nostalgic? That’s the theory about the book’s tension at least, but the question’s never directly asked and I think rarely answered, serving only as a lead into speculation about what larger effect the collection delivers as a whole. While some of the poems stand alone as reflective and nostalgic moments, others get meaning mostly by proximity.

No / The aim of this article is to describe a dialogical approach to inquiry that differs somewhat from those that are now influential in psychology, including Shotter's, Wertsch's, Hermans's and Hicks¿s. Although these authors have very usefully drawn attention to dialogical approaches to understanding experience, the academic style of their writing underplays their own responsivity as participants in these dialogues. Whereas some adopt an authoritative or Magistral genre in reporting dialogue with participants, others adopt an explicitly Socratic dialogue that nonetheless tends towards monologue. We suggest that these ambiguities and paradoxes can be traced to Dilthey and Gadamer and the debate associated with their work about the relative weight to be given to content and experience in interpreting dialogue. Furthermore, we use Bakhtin's classification of genres of dialogue to argue for the benefits of a Menippean genre of dialogue, based on imagination and ethics, both as a corrective to the tendency to monologue in Socratic and Magistral dialogues and as a contribution to our understanding of the possibilities inherent in dialogical inquiry. In particular, Menippean dialogue points us in the direction of inquiry as a personal and creative act that places voices (including the authorial voice) in contact with each other with the capacity to enrich and change each other.

Narratives are used to explore personal beliefs and assumptions about caring in one's personal and professional life. This dissertation recognizes the process of caring is interpretative and evolves from personal experience. I address issues of caring within the practice of nursing and nursing education from a feminist perspective. I begin with my own personal narrative in which I seek to uncover my own caring essence as a basis for inquiring into issues of caring and feminism in nursing education. Theoretical constructs from educational nursing and feminist literature are explored to develop a personal model of caring within nursing education. Nursing students must be educated within a caring learning environment so they can develop a caring stance with patients. Dialogue within teacher-student interaction is at the center of such an environment. This dialogue encourages authentic presence with students that leads to an intuitive knowing. Nursing students need to learn to let their intuitive sense guide the use of technology. Of course, that means educating their intuitions. Autobiographical vignettes are used to reflect on the experience of a nurse educator as caring guides teaching-learning activities in a nursing curriculum. Caring within clinical teaching encourages reflection and increases self-awareness. Clinical teaching is seen as an opportunity to unite theory and practice. It encourages students to be receptive to patients and places value on contextual experiences. An examination of contextual experience shows that care is relational and encourages connections with others. Care is sustained through relationships that give voice to nursing students and patients. This process of giving voice makes caring more visible to others. This visibility allows nurses to celebrate caring occasions and validates worth of caring in nursing. Caring practices within nursing education help students recognize the power within themselves to institute change. Nurse educators must encourage students to care for themselves. This process will help them stay in touch with what they need as individuals as they provide care to others. / Ph. D.

Environmental degradation limits the prospects of sustainable economic development and the pursuit of a life of better quality. An informational approach to environmental regulation, a policy innovation implemented after direct regulation and economic incentive mechanism, has exhibited its positive results on pollution reduction. Since 1995, this approach has been exported from the developed world to more than ten developing countries by international policy advisors. China experimented with environmental performance information disclosure (EPID) pilot programs in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province and Hohhot, Inner Mongolia between 1999 and 2000. Mixed results have been found. The disclosure program was sustained in Zhenjiang but was stopped in Hohhot only after the pilot phase. Furthermore, there has been no extensive research on how an informational approach to environmental regulation worked in a developing country context such as China, where private environmental enforcement by civil society and markets are lacking. This comparative case study advances our knowledge of the informational approach to environmental regulation by examining its implementation and impact. The following factors are found to be critical for policy implementation: perceptions of the policy innovation by local leadership and implementers, capacity of local environmental protection agencies, and the contexts in which the policy was carried out. Disclosed environmental information was able to induce better industrial environmental performance and incorporated the environment into development decision making by local government officials. However, environmental performance information disclosure alone was not sufficient to involve the public in environmental protection in China. For administrative, legal, market, and public forces to converge in environmental compliance and enforcement in China, building better institutional infrastructure is in order. / Ph. D.

This thesis is an investigation and an attempt at understanding the connection between the act of building and the act of being. Buildings are developed in the realm of ideas and images. This thesis speaks of a construct wherein the buildings act as a medium by which a dialogue takes place: a discussion of the ideas and conditions of their being. The project, which consists of two buildings, a house and a gallery for an artist, acts as the vehicle of investigation and finds its order through the basic diagram of a line and a curve. The project defines the juxtaposition of the static rigid line and the dynamic moving curve with respect to contextual sensibilities and a metaphorical dimension. The use of metaphor employs an experiential anchor in form of the human dimension. The house, a state of being, is a beginning in creativity. It is a place where water and fire meet. The gallery is a path of spatial perception and procession. It is filled with elements of movement and the metaphor of birth. This thesis is a search for an architecture that is inseparably universal and inherently specific. / Master of Architecture

No / Managers today increasingly find themselves facing unexpected problems, needing to learn how to cope with complex environments and to take action in an often chaotic flow of events. This paper discusses how researchers can engage managers in a form of dialogical action research, capable of nurturing meaningful knowledge and facilitating change. This is achieved by creating space for collaborative dialogue between managers and researchers, and supplementing it with the integration of a reflexive writing practice that can be used to create ‘generative moments’ for learning within experience. The paper first presents methodological reflections related to the challenges of sustaining management practice through action research. Second, we explicate dialogical action research and illustrate the reflexive writing practice through two vignettes, which provide opportunities to reflexively explore “how things work” in managers’ organizational contexts. This forms the basis for sustaining participation and learning at individual and collective levels. Finally, we identify and discuss the specific conditions and limits of such an approach.

Différents courants théoriques, principalement les courants collaboratifs et égocentriques, ont été élaborés pour expliquer l’adaptation de la production verbale lors d’une interaction avec une autre personne. Toutefois, ces courants s’opposent concernant la considération des besoins réels de l’interlocuteur dans la planification initiale des productions verbales. Ce mémoire comprend deux expérimentations réalisées sous un même devis expérimental. Une tâche a été développée pour départager différents types d’adaptation et sources d’information possibles. Les résultats suggèrent que généralement, les personnes produisent de l’information qu’elles-mêmes connaissent et rajoutent de l’information dans un deuxième temps, lorsque nécessaire. Toutefois, lorsqu’elles rencontrent une personne aux connaissances atypiquement restreintes, elles peuvent prendre en considération le vrai niveau de connaissance et produire les informations les plus utiles. Les résultats suggèrent donc que les personnes sont collaboratives pour produire leurs expressions référentielles et qu’elles s’ajustent au réel niveau de connaissances tôt dans l’interaction, lorsqu’elles peuvent utiliser une heuristique de connaissances prototypiques. Avec un interlocuteur aux connaissances atypiquement restreintes, elles produisent cependant des références ciblées, mais spécifiquement lorsqu’il est rencontré avant un interlocuteur prototypique. / Theories from collaborative and egocentric views of language research have been elaborated to explain adjustments in verbal productions when a speaker interacts with an addressee. These theories are in conflict on the view proposing that perspective-taking occurs during the initial planning of the verbal production, allowing the speaker to meet the real needs of the addressee. The current project addresses this issue with two experiments, both utilizing the same experimental design. The task in this study was developed to differentiate between different types of adjustment (i.e. adjustments based on different sources of information). Results suggest that speakers first produce information that they themselves know and subsequently add information when needed. Overall, speakers were collaborative and adjusted their speech in a second stage during the interaction to meet the addressee’s real needs. This adjustment occurred early in the interaction, and particularly when speakers could rely on a heuristic of prototypical knowledge about their addressee. Under certain circumstances though (for instance, when meeting an addressee with extremely limited knowledge), speakers took into account their real addressee’s needs and introduced the stimuli with the most relevant information, but specifically when this addressee was met before an addressee with more prototypical knowledge.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

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In this thesis, the design and use of ontologies as domain knowledge sources in information-providing dialogue systems are investigated. The research is divided into two parts, theoretical investigations that have resulted in a requirements specifications on the design of ontologies to be used in information-providing dialogue systems, and empirical work on the development of a framework for use of ontologies in information-providing dialogue systems. The framework includes three models: A model for ontology-based semantic analysis of questions. A model for ontology-based dialogue management, specifically focus management and clarifications. A model for ontology-based domain knowledge management, specifically transformation of user requests to system oriented concepts used for information retrieval. In this thesis, it is shown that using ontologies to represent and reason on domain knowledge in dialogue systems has several advantages. A deeper semantic analysis is possible in several modules and a more natural and efficient dialogue can be achieved. Another important aspect is that it facilitates portability; to be able to reuse adapt the dialogue system to new tasks and domains, since the domain-specific knowledge is separated form generic features in the dialogue system architecture. Other advantages are that it reduces the complexity of linguistic produced in various domains.