The society in which we live is controlled by various kinds of rules, both written and unwritten. These rules tell us not only how we should act as humans but also how we should act as women and men. Adults teach their children the rules of the society in various ways, but they also act as model figures. Children are influenced by conscious and unconscious actions and also by activities performed by the adults. Furthermore, adults write children’s books which bring the essential content into children’s lives. These books propagate the image of men and women and these images influence children’s view regarding both genders. The aim of this paper was to examine how boys and girls are represented from a gender perspective, based on the 10 children’s books most often borrowed from Stockholm City Library in the year 2010. The method used in this paper is both qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The result showed that feminine and masculine characters are presented from the stereotype gender’s point of view, especially in terms of physical appearance. Some exceptions appeared in terms of stereotypical properties and activities of the genders, but masculine rules appeared to be dominating. On the other hand, there were significantly more masculine characters than feminine characters in the examined children’s books.

The pursuit of the perfect language intrigued and obsessed the literary circle of the seventeenth century, as political turmoil and chaos initiated the desire for the stable even in the aspect of language. As the perfect language is self-explicative, it indicates a perfect correspondence between the signifier and the signified in order to guarantee the purity and singleness of the meanings to avoid confusion and ambiguity inevitably occurring, for instance, in postlapsarian language. The concept of the perfect language, nevertheless, finds evidence in Milton¡¦s prelapsarian world, where unfallen Adam is endowed with divine insights to discern the nature of the animals and translate his comprehension into perfect matching names. However, the presumption of the perfect language in the prelapsarian Eden is challenged by critics as the preconditioned absoluteness could not possibly exist for it would have preempted any possibilities of inferring, implying, and guessing from the context. In my thesis, I argue that languages marked by gender as masculine and feminine dominate in the characterization and narratives of Adam and Eve, for gender is the sole mark distinguishing the first couple along with their hierarchical roles as man and man¡¦s helper. I examine Eve¡¦s gendered discourse in particular as Eve as a lesser vessel turns out to be the main target of Satan¡¦s verbal temptations and sophistries. I analyze the traits of gendered discourses and discuss how they render Eve more vulnerable, disadvantaged, and disempowered in face of Satan¡¦s rhetoric and eloquence. Also scrutinized are the critics¡¦ viewpoints concerning Eve¡¦s gendered discourse, which significantly reveals certain ingrained biases attached to stereotypical expectations for women shown in the critics¡¦ word choices and arguments in regard of Eve.

This thesis explores the oppression of women within the gender institution of patriarchy in Margaret Atwood¡¦s dystopian novel The Handmaid¡¦s Tale, and their resistance to this male-dominated society. As a feminist writer, Atwood is very much concerned about the issue of gender, which she foregrounds in The Handmaid¡¦s Tale. In my analysis, I apply some theories of radical feminists and the French feminist who devote themselves to the study of gender--Kate Millett, Adrienne Rich, Catherine MacKinnon, and Hélène Cixous. Millett focuses on women¡¦s subordinated position that leads to women¡¦s oppression in patriarchy. Rich and MacKinnon focus on how women are controlled and oppressed in maternity and sexuality within the patriarchal society of gender inequality. Cixous challenges the validity of gender by pointing out its characteristic fluidity through creating woman¡¦s own writing in order to redefine female selfhood for women¡¦s resistance. The thesis is composed of five chapters. The Introduction presents the background materials about Atwood and The Handmaid¡¦s Tale, the motivation of the thesis, and the resonance between The Handmaid¡¦s Tale and certain feminists¡¦ theories. The first chapter analyzes the formation of the unbalanced power relations between the sexes in which women are subordinated to men through the socialization. Moreover, because of women¡¦s subordination, women are modulated as mothers through socially institutionalized motherhood such as the Wives and the Handmaids in Gilead. The second chapter further analyzes how women are formulated as sexual objects through the experience of sexual objectification within the institution of heterosexuality, such as the mistresses and the prostitutes of Gilead. The third chapter discusses how female orality empowers women to resist their patriarchal society in The Handmaid¡¦s Tale. The protagonist Offred, by ¡§writing her voice¡¨ through storytelling, resists patriarchal oppression, restores her body and self, and transforms herself from a victim in a claustrophobic world of male domination to a heroine of femininity. Moreover, her act of writing by her voice also reflects women¡¦s histories of repression, which should be reconstructed in a culture in which only males are literate. Offred¡¦s oral act of storytelling, to the reader, may also signify her resistance to reconstruct women¡¦s repressed histories. The concluding chapter reiterates the research of The Handmaid¡¦s Tale with a synthesis of Atwood¡¦s and some of the prominent feminists¡¦ points of view, namely Millett¡¦s, Rich¡¦s, MacKinnon¡¦s and Cixous¡¦s, toward the oppression and resistance of women within the institution of gender. This study hopes to explore and thus illuminate the nature, the functioning, the operation of socially constructed male domination, and then proceed to search the possible solution, or the ¡§voice;¡¨ however feeble it is, the author, or the protagonist conceives to defy the oppression imposed on women.

Many scholars who study in social mobility have observed that the social status of the father does influence their children on how they will gain their social status in the future; however, it is the education those children receive that strongly influences their status in society. As the government proceeds with the policy of "Go South" and grants people the permission of visiting their relatives that dwell in Mainland China, an unrest wave of cross-border marriage was thus brought up. At the moment, it has been the time that the second generation of these cross- border marriages enters school and begins their compulsory education. According to several scholars' observation, these people who are cross- borderly engaged receive lower social status; therefore, the issue that whether their children would confront difficulties when they receive education has obviously become a fervent topic of public affairs. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the children of the newly immigrant brides who have been in the elementary schools of Peng-hu County in the school year of 2003. In this research, the family background of the students is independent variable while the students¡¦ self-adaptation in elementary school is a dependent variable. How these variables influence one another are discussed in this study in order to figure out whether these children of newly immigrant brides confront any specific difficulties if they are facing problems in their learning at schools. Questionnaires were distributed for the empinical data, and the results were examined through descriptives, t-test,ANOVA and chi-square test, and after which, further inference and calculations were made. The findings of the study show as follow: 1. The school performance, learning attitude and the self-adaptation of the children of newly immigrant brides in Peng-hu County does not fall behind those of native children. This result differs to the general perceptions that the adaptation of these children from newly immigrant brides can not catch up with other native children. 2. The families of these newly immigrant brides in Peng-hu tend to be with low social and economical status. 3. The children whose mother come from Mainland China embrace better performance in language learning than native children, especially in learning ¡§Chinese spelling alphabets¡¨ and ¡§oral speaking competence.¡¨ However, no significant differences were found among these children in learning mathematics . 4. A mother¡¦s Mandarin ability influences her children¡¦s academic performance. 5. The writing ability of children of newly immigrant brides in Peng-hu County depends on the proportion between teacher and student at school. Suggestion: It is the first time we face the issue that the second generation of these cross- border marriages begin their education in school in Taiwan. If the survey could be directed and made by the Ministry of Education, different results come from differednt region study and different approaches could possibly be avoided, and the wrong decision making could also be prevented.

This thesis aims to explore the categories of sexuality and gender through an analysis of Jeanette Winterson&rsquo / s well-known novels, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Written on the body, against the background of Butler&rsquo / s concept of performativity and Cixous&rsquo / s &eacute / criture feminine. By underlining the constructedness of these categories and questioning the boundaries of patriarchal concepts and transgressing them, Winterson deconstructs the binary oppositions created by phallocentric discourse and problematizes the verdict that sexuality is inborn. Instead of this ingrained notion, she asserts that gender and sexual identities are culturally and discursively constructed by the dominant discourse. Although the dominant discourse favors heterosexuality over homosexuality and degrades sexuality into a binary frame of oppositions such as masculinity/ feminity and male/female, Winterson, in her novels, seeks an alternative to escape this ideological binarism and achieves to subvert the binary oppositions by highlighting the fluidity of sexuality and gender, and by creating amorphous characters like the ungendered narrator in Written on the body or by bestowing on them bisexuality or homosexuality as in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Hence, the main argument of this thesis will be to display Winterson&rsquo / s deconstruction and dissolution of the patriarchal categories in her novels and to emphasize her escape from the binary charade, in a fictional universe, with references to Butlerian performativity and Cixousian &eacute / criture feminine.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 225-235).

Not available / text

Joniškio šnektos apima Joniškio miestą ir maždaug 15–20 kilometrų plotą į pietus Šiaulių link. Šnektos mažai tyrinėtos. Darbe analizuojami asmenų pavadinimai, aptariama jų daryba. Tyrimo medžiagą sudaro asmenų pavadinimai, išrinkti iš DLKŽe ir skirtingi jų variantai, rasti rengiamo Joniškio šnektų žodyno kartotekoje. Visi asmenų pavadinimai buvo suskirstyti į 5 leksines grupes, kurios pagal leksinių vienetų gausumą išsidėsto tokia tvarka: 1) giminystės asmenų pavadinimų grupė; 2) amžiaus grupė; 3) tam tikro socialinio statuso asmenų pavadinimų grupė; 4) kraujo ryšį nusakančių asmenų pavadinimų grupė; 5) kultūrinio bei tradicinio lygmens grupė. Visi šie pavadinimai darybos aspektu skilo į 4 grupes: priesaginių vedinių, kurių didžiausią dalį sudaro maloninių priesagų vediniai, priešdėlinių ir galūninių vedinių grupę ir dūrinius, kuriuos dažniausiai sudaro du daiktavardžiai. Dažniausiai Joniškio šnektų atstovai vartoja vyriškosios ir moteriškosios lyties asmenų pavadinimus, įvardijančius asmenų giminystę ar amžių. Tačiau kartais joniškiečiai vietoj vyriškosios giminės gramatinės formos vartoja moteriškąją ir atvirkščiai. Visoms leksinėms grupėms būdingi maloninių priesagų vediniai. / Joniškis Subdialects take the town of Joniškis and about 15–20 kilometres area to the south, toward Šiauliai. The subdialects are studied little. In this paper the names of persons are analyzed, their composition is discussed. The research material consists of the names of persons, which are selected from an electronic version of Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian Language and different variants of these persons names, which are found in the card file of Dictionary of Joniškis Subdialects. All names of persons were divided into 5 lexical groups, which are graded according to lexical units number in this order: 1) the group of the names of kinship; 2) the group of persons with different age; 3) the names of persons from a certain social status; 4) the group of the names of persons that define ties of blood; 5) the level of culture and traditions. All these names were divided into 4 groups acording to their composition: suffixal derivatives, where the bigest part consists of diminutive suffixes, prefixal and inflectional derivatives and compound words, where the biggest part consists of two nouns. In conclusion, people of Joniškis Subdialects frequently use the names of masculine and feminine gender, which name the kinship or the age of persons. However, sometimes people of Joniškis instead of masculine gender use feminine gender and conversely. In all lexical groups dominate diminutive suffixes.

This thesis is a study of magazine advertisements for beauty products in Canada between 1901 and 1941. It looks at the use of cosmetics and the growth of advertising in the context of the development of North American consumer culture, highlighting the role of gender in that culture. The period studied is divided in two by the mid-1920s to reflect changes in advertisers' views of consumers--from rational decision-makers to irrational creatures driven by their emotions--and in ideals of feminine beauty, as the use of cosmetics became an essential part of the ideal perpetuated by advertising. The thesis attempts to show the link between business history and cultural history by demonstrating how marketing professionals co-opted cultural trends in order to create effective advertising, and how traditional relationships and values were modified by the purchase and use of mass-marketed goods.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal / Pour respecter les droits d'auteur, la version électronique de cette thèse ou ce mémoire a été dépouillée, le cas échéant, de ses documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale de la thèse ou du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.