The purpose of this study is to understand culture as a factor in the motivation of heritage speakers of Spanish to study Spanish at the college level in South Florida. 59 participants divided into three groups of heritage speakers of Spanish at Florida Atlantic University at Boca Raton participated in a questionnaire survey, for a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Subjects were grouped according to the degree of involvement in Spanish-related activities at the college-level. The instrument was a combination of Likert-scale questions as well as open-ended questions aimed at clarifying or expanding on topics presented during the Likert-scale part of the questionnaire. The findings of this study indicate that most heritage speakers understood culture as a part of their identity. Students who were enrolled in Spanish classes were not just looking to expand their Spanish knowledge, but to re-connect and re-establish links with their cultural heritage. Finally, those who chose not to study Spanish cite as their most important reason a dislike for the Spanish language. The results revealed the following implications for the heritage speaker curriculum: the need to address the unique demographic make-up of Spanish heritage speakers in South Florida; the necessity for a consistent and reliable methodology for the identification of heritage speakers, and; the importance of instructors' sensitivity to regional and social dialect variation. / by Carolina M. Seiden. / Table of Contents lists pg. 258 as Vita, but that page is the last page of the bibliography. / University Library's copy lacks signatures of the Supervisory Committee. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2008. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, FL : 2008 Mode of access: World Wide Web.

<p>While the number of graduate students from different parts of the world in the United States is decreasing, the trend in Latin American populations is the opposite. Nonetheless, the current lack of information regarding the reasons behind this tendency, in terms of English language proficiency and cultural aspects, affects all parts involved: graduate students do not know what type of opportunities they can make use of; American universities do not have enough information to provide Latin American students with a sheltering environment; and Latin American governments are unable to make policies that encourage the application and facilitate admission to graduate school in American universities.</p> <p>The aim of this study is to establish a starting point for understanding the linguistic and cultural complexities of the Latin American population in graduate school in the United States. To do so, surveys and interviews were carried out to explore academic experiences, cultural influences and socioeconomic patterns that influenced the admission of Latin American students to graduate school. Mixed methods were used to describe the patterns of the survey responses quantitatively while leaving room for confirmatory quantitative analysis using the information of the interviews. The participants of this study were graduate students from Purdue University, one of the American universities with the highest number of Latin American graduate students. </p> <p>The results of this study underscore the importance of effective English language instruction during college years for reaching the graduate school admission scores, especially in cases when English language training during school was not possible or had little impact on the functional proficiency of the learner. Also, there is a large body of evidence indicating that undergraduate research internships could be one of the opportunities with the highest potential to recruit graduate Latin American students, regardless of their socioeconomic background.</p>

The concept of cultural mediation is one that all ESL teachers must deal with as an inherent part of their employment. Yet, relatively little of the current literature has examined how teachers actually perceive this aspect of their work once they have left the teacher preparation program behind. This question provided the main rationale for the present study. The current study, an adaptation of DeFoe (1986), examined the mediation of U.S. American culture in the ESL classroom by means of a written survey of 42 teachers from ten community colleges, both in the Portland/Vancouver metropolitan area and from around the state of Oregon. The four research questions of the present study sought to find a relationship between four independent variables--the kind of ESL that is taught, overseas exposure, cultural self-characterization, and explicit instruction in intercultural communication theory and practice--and how ESL teachers perceive their roles as each of these concern the four dependent variables of the study: being an example, explaining U.S. American culture, teaching interculturally, and listening and helping as a friend. A non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis analysis of the data revealed that none of the research questions achieved statistical significance. However, some of the findings did suggest several interesting relationships. The variable of cultural self-characterization did approach significance in relation to the dependent variable of explaining American culture. This, in connection with some of the findings for the respondent demographic data, appeared to indicate for this group of teachers that cultural self-perception may have exercised an influence on their explain of American culture. Second, intercultural communication theory and practice exposure seemed more of an aid to the respondents of this study in teaching about culture specific issues, as opposed to teaching about culture general issues. This would appear to raise a question as to how easily the theory and practice learned in the intercultural communication classroom translates to the ESL context.

Constructions of home, family and community as ways of belonging have been ongoing discourses in New Zealand. This thesis examines constructions of home and family in works of fiction by four contemporary New Zealand authors: Alice Tawhai, Charlotte Grimshaw, Witi Ihimaera and Damien Wilkins. It asks how the main sociological characteristics of the period are presented and performed through fiction. Through these characters and their situations these authors expose the social fantasy of contemporary New Zealand society: that of individual reflexive opportunity. The twentieth century has seen a changing social fabric with loosening of bonds and the increase of individualism. The New Zealand way of life is changing, with increasing interconnectedness of the world through globalisation. Neo-liberal ideology, itself a response to globalising effects, has exacerbated social fragmentation and income disparity. Neoliberalism, a retreat of the state from both financial control and support of individuals, presumes a logic of market-forces and rational choice based on the maximisation of opportunity. This has implications for the individual’s sense of self and ways of belonging as the New Zealand subject is increasingly premised on personal responsibility. This thesis looks at the economic and sociological analyses of neoliberalism and asks if they are confirmed in the fiction.

This thesis examines how cultural perceptions of Wellington’s environment changed from the 1870s to the early 1900s. The historical material shows how clearing the New Zealand landscape of its forest cover in the early settler years reflected a particular cultural perception of the New Zealand bush. By 1900, this cultural perception had changed indicating that not only was the New Zealand landscape different, but New Zealand society had changed. These changes can be seen in the geographic historical accounts of clearing New Zealand’s bush and the parliamentary debates of the 1875 Forest Act, 1885 State Forest Act and the 1903 Scenery Protection Act. The anthropological theories of dwelling, taskscape, phenomenology of landscape and the hybridity of nature are used as a contemporary synthesis of ideas to examine cultural perceptions of the Wellington bush. An anthropological approach is also used to bring together diverse historical material in a way that allows these ideas to be applied. Cultural perceptions of the Wellington landscape can be understood in the way the bush was cleared for pasture, how the landscape was depicted in paintings and photography and in the case study of the establishment of Otari-Wilton’s Bush. The thesis argues that cultural perceptions can be appreciated historically by understanding how people lived within the Wellington landscape, and how this was reflected in attitudes towards the New Zealand bush. Cultural perceptions of New Zealand’s bush were a combination of existing cultural attitudes, the practicalities of living within the New Zealand environment and a direct perception of the bush itself. It is the shifting influence of all three of these aspects that determines overall cultural perceptions of the bush in any particular period in New Zealand’s history. The establishment of Otari-Wilton’s Bush shows how the cultural perception of Wellington’s bush had changed from seeing it as an obstruction covering potential farmland to having a defined place and purpose within the Wellington landscape.

The literature on the use of public journalism suggests that it can lead to different news coverage than is traditionally provided by the news media. Specifically, these differences have been identified in story content, use of different sources and use of mobilising information. This thesis asks whether such differences can be identified in newspapers’ coverage of the 2001 Local Body Elections in New Zealand. The research involved content analysis of New Zealand’s six largest daily newspapers, three of them with experience of using public journalism and three with no such experience. Interviews were also conducted with two or three senior journalists involved in organising each paper’s election campaign in order to explore their goals for the election coverage and evaluation of it. The results mirror those of previous research by showing significant differences in the coverage of the newspapers with public journalism experience in relation to some factors, but not others. The papers with a public journalism background consistently used more non-elite sources than the traditional papers, but did not consistently use more female sources. They also included mobilising information in stories more frequently and made greater use of story features, or “elements”, associated with public journalism. However, one of the papers with no experience of public journalism also ranked highly in relation to these two factors. The interviews revealed some differences in goals among the journalists, but this was not a simple split between the journalists on papers with public journalism experience and the other journalists. For example, not all interviewees working for the papers experienced in using public journalism agreed that their goal should be to boost voter turnout. Nor was an overt commitment to supporting the democratic process expressed only by staff on the papers with public journalism experience. The interviews did, however, identify that only the three newspapers with a public journalism background used polling to identify the issues that were important to the public and proceeded to cover these issues during their election campaign

This research studies Pakeha who have engaged with Maori cultural learning contexts. Within a social constructionist theoretical framework, and with a combination of the critical and communicative approaches to cultural identity, the research explores the meaning these Pakeha bring to being Pakeha. Discourse analysis tools of interpretative repertoires and linguistic resources are used to analyse data from semi-structured interviews with six Paheha participants. Participants have experienced Maori cultural learning contexts before or during the research, through learning te reo, tikanga Maori and about nga ao o nga iwi Maori. The research found that, largely, meanings participants brought to being Pakeha were in contrast to stereotypical notions of what it means to be Pakeha. Participants demonstrated that for them being Pakeha meant being connected to nga ao o nga iwi Maori; being aware of Pakeha privilege; mediating and negotiating being Pakeha with dominant notions of Pakehaness; valuing the history of Aotearoa-New Zealand, along with valuing te reo me ona tikanga. Furthermore, the research also found that the consistently postcolonial identity participants brought to being Pakeha shifted according to context, troubling the meanings of Pakeha also.

The present research consists of an interdisciplinary approach which combines mainly sub-disciplines from the anthropological and psychological perspectives as theoretical background. Regarding the latter, from the cognitive anthropology perspective the research highlights Bradd Shore’s (1996) view on cognitive models, together with the theories put forward by the sociocultural approach in psychology based on Vygotsky’s school of thought. The main objective of the study is to achieve a broad view on the use of traditional korero paki and korero o nehera (Maori folktales/legends and myths) as pedagogical tools and as cognitive models. The latter includes a bibliographical review which covers the analysis of narratives and their usage from different areas, such as Maori epistemology and education, cultural psychology and cognitive anthropology. Being a research stemmed from an anthropological concern –how do people from different sociocultural backgrounds construct and transmit knowledge- it considered as a fundamental element an empirical or “fieldwork” approach to the matter. Therefore, the research analyses –based on semi-structured interviews- the perspectives and understanding of the usage of traditional Maori narratives as educational tools of scholars in the Maori studies/education field and of a sample of Maori teachers, most of them connected to a Kura Kaupapa Maori school, constituting a “study case” for this qualitative study. A period of complementary participant observation was also carried out, focusing on the pedagogical practises and styles of the participant teachers. Through this, the research aims to contextualise the bibliographical and theoretical findings, considering the contemporary applications, limitations and understandings encountered through concrete experience.

This study evolved from concerns about the number of young people drowning in New Zealand (544 deaths between 1980-1994), the author’s long experience with surf life saving and the suspicion that participation statistics on aquatic recreation do not adequately explain why so many young people drown. It was postulated that the risk of drowning associated with aquatic recreation also was the consequence of many underlying water safety influences that operate at intrapersonal, interpersonal and community levels. Thus the purpose of the study was to obtain comprehensive data on what young people know, think and do about their safety during aquatic recreation. A 25-item questionnaire was designed to survey a randomised sample of New Zealand youth (2202, year 11, 15 – 19 year olds) to assess their participation in, knowledge about and behaviour during aquatic recreation. To develop the questionnaire, a conceptual framework was devised that constructed the risk of drowning as a complex phenomenon dependent on how often young people participate in various forms of water-based activities, but largely influenced by their water safety knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, all of which are shaped by social, cultural and demographic variables. Almost all New Zealand youth had taken part in some swimming (98%) or other aquatic activity (94%) in the previous year. Risk of drowning was exacerbated among many students because they had poor water safety skills and knowledge, held unsound water safety attitudes, and often practiced at-risk behaviours. For example, many students estimated that they could not swim more than 100 m (54%), thought that swimming was acceptable at a surf beach after patrol hours (61%), and had swum outside patrol flags (61%) or never worn lifejacket (19%) during aquatic recreation. Taken separately, any one of these dispositions is capable of heightening drowning risk; taken collectively they offer strong explanation as to why youth are at greater risk of drowning than others. When analysed by gender, the lack of water safety knowledge, the prevalence of unsafe attitudes and at-risk behaviours among males was consistent and pronounced. The effect of socio-economic status and ethnicity on these risk-enhancing dispositions was less pronounced, although the data did suggest that the knowledge base of youth from low-decile schools and of Pasifika and Asian ethnicity provided least protective potential in the event of unintentional submersion.

The present dissertation examines how culture in terms of webs of significance comprises even everyday genres, and how everyday genres in turn partake in creating cultural contexts. The theoretical cornerstones of this study are to be found in a dialogical notion of context and a semiotic notion of culture. Furthermore, the study benefits from the analytical concept of communicative genre by which texts can be set in the broader context of societal or socio-cultural relevancy. The methodological framework – with contrastive viewing as an overall heuristic approach – has been developed by combining elements from linguistic hermeneutics, literary cultural analysis, and critical discourse analysis. The study shows that the most significant trait of Swedish milk package texts is the recontextualization of national historical topics, closely entangled with elements of school discourse and children’s literature. This endows the texts with a certain socio-cultural meaning, even though this meaning is dependent on other interactive resources. However, on recent milk packages, changes of communicative patterns can be seen, indicating socio-cultural change. The most significant trait of German milk packages is – besides the ubiquitous use of fresh generating an advertising context – the recontextualization of the fictionalizing topos of locus amoenus, closely intertwined with control and surveillance. The contrastive viewing of 19th-century texts in the dissertation makes clear that contemporary German milk packages still imply urban-bourgeois perspectives on rurality. Finally, the study shows that culture in terms of webs of significance has no location where it is, but a location where it is represented – for instance in everyday genre texts. It illustrates how linguistic hermeneutics can be done.