University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Portuguese

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Portuguese

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Portuguese

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Portuguese

This is a study of the social dynamics of the current Chinese migrant community in New Zealand through a critical analysis of the Auckland-based Chinese-language media. It combines two research fields, international migration studies and media studies, to conceptualise Chinese-language media as a specific type of alternative media in contemporary New Zealand. The Chinese population in New Zealand has rapidly increased through immigration since the passage of the 1987 Immigration Act; Chinese now comprise 3.4% of the New Zealand population, and a wide variety of Chinese-language media have accordingly thrived in New Zealand. In contrast to New Zealand mainstream media, these Chinese media serve the specific needs and interests of newly arrived and only minimally acculturated Chinese migrants. The research was conducted in three phases: quantitative and qualitative data were acquired from the content of Chinese-language media during the period of the 2005 New Zealand general election; qualitative data were obtained from focus groups and interviews with members of the Chinese audience subsequent to the election; qualitative data were generated from Chinese media personnel. The findings suggest that these Chinese-language media closely reflect and depict recent PRC Chinese migrants’ perceptions of New Zealand and aspirations towards their new life in the host country. Within the global context of the Chinese diaspora in historical and contemporary times, this research also introduces a new angle for exploring the socio-economic impacts of China as a rising superpower on New Zealand and the Pacific Rim.

This multiple-case study investigated six teachers’ perspectives on their teaching practices and cultural integration in a Chinese heritage language school. This research also explored how the teachers’ instructional practices were linked to Ladson-Billings’ theories on culturally relevant pedagogy (1994). Qualitative in nature, multiple data sources were included, such as semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and teachers’ artifacts. Data analysis included both within- and cross-case analysis. Within-case analysis showed that each teacher had her particular method of fostering students’ language learning. They also had unique ways of teaching Chinese culture; one held that culture is embedded in literature, another held that culture is the daily life of a group of people, another held that culture is gained through reading, a fourth held that culture is transmitted from one generation to the next, another held that culture is analyzed in relation to other cultures, and, finally, one teacher perceived that culture is hybrid and multifaceted. Based on the central tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy, four themes emerged from the cross-case analysis: (a) motivational and skill-building strategies to promote academic success, (b) individual, plural, and progressive ways to integrate and reconceptualize Chinese culture, (c) rebalancing authority to share power with students, and (d) culture identity development to enhance self-empowerment. Despite the link between the current study and Ladson-Billings’ theory, differences were found. For example, the Chinese teachers viewed heritage language learning as a way to help students connect their family members rather than to become active agents in the larger society. Besides cultural facts, the teachers incorporated cultural virtues and cultural reconceptualization. Instead of focusing on questioning inequities, the teachers encouraged students to build harmonious relationship with other ethnic groups. As the existing studies emphasized minority education for Mexican and African American students, the present study shed new light on language and culture instruction for Chinese Americans. This study suggests four implications: (a) developing heritage language teachers’ professional knowledge about implementing a “student-centered” approach, (b) enhancing heritage language teachers’ critical cultural awareness, (c) investigating heritage language teaching from diverse sociocultural backgrounds, and (d) introducing the theory of culturally relevant pedagogy in heritage language education. / text

This study will explore my own perception of my personal and professional roles as a language teacher in Nunavik and in Japan. In this qualitative study, I attempt to understand the negotiation of language and culture both in and out of the classroom. Using the autobiographical narrative method, I investigate questions about language and identity through my own personal lens and voice. My inquiry comprises two elements; it examines and interprets key episodes in my life as a learner and teacher, and as a researcher, I link these topics to theoretical and empirical knowledge. My narrative begins with the early years of my life as a Francophone immersed in an English neighbourhood in Montreal, grounding it in the particular experiences of my own learning and teaching. The study also includes a comparative analysis of my teaching experiences in Northern Quebec and in Japan. The journals I kept throughout my teaching assignments provide material for analysis which contributes a unique perspective to the body of literature addressing the relationship between culture, values, language and identity. I close the discussion with recommendations for the improvement of second language teaching and teacher development in intercultural contexts.

Expressed Silence: A Study of the Metaphorics of Word in Selected Nineteenth-Century American Texts This dissertation explores the patterned use of certain “metaphors of word”——images of reading, writing, listening, and speaking——in four American texts: Emerson’s Nature, Thoreau’s Walden, Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, and Melville’s Moby Dick. Assumed in my discussion is the modern view of metaphor as a cognitive device used, not for mere stylistic ornament, but for creating a certain mental perspective. Based on the perspectival view and on the experiential—gestalt account of metaphor, the structures of these metaphors of word are examined in order to discern the systematic nature of their argument and to determine the cultural and historical reasons why language imagery, and not some other type of imagery, was chosen to represent this argument. After surveying the cultural influences of democracy, mercantilism, Romanticism, and Calvinism, I characterize the metaphoric systems of each text and then move on to a closer study of the role of silence within these systems. From this analysis, I conclude that these nineteenth— century texts reflect a shift away from the book toward the voice as a predominant symbol, and away from writing toward speaking as a privileged metaphor. Language imagery works to represent ways of knowing, so that linguistic and epistemic concerns become inextricably intertwined. The process of using language operates as a metaphor for the process of gaining knowledge. In this metaphorics of word, silence emerges as a particularly striking metaphor in the way that it expresses the coalescence of being and knowing, the realization that we know what we know. In this scheme, metaphors of word structure ways of understanding, and the expressed silence metaphor highlights the way interior speech can function in the discernment of knowledge. Ultimately, I contend that the perspective provided by this nineteenth—century metaphorics of word forecasts the modern view of rhetoric as epistemic. By employing linguistic action as a figure for representing epistemic action, a metaphorics of word promotes an understanding of rhetoric’s primary purpose as the interrogation of truth.

This work presents the results of a study on the development of cultural representations held by students from four public English-speaking colleges (cegeps) in the Montreal area towards the French language and Quebecers whose language of use is French. Our survey instrument aimed at knowing these cultural representations and at identifying different factors likely to influence the development of these representations according to the French level in which students are registered, either beginner or intermediate and advanced. / Our hypothesis is that students registered in the intermediate and advanced levels hold more positive cultural representations than beginners, therefore that there exists a significant difference between participants from both groups. In order to verify this hypothesis, a questionnaire, based on procedural knowledge and the affective domain, has been administered to 449 students from four different cegeps. The analysis of data linked to procedural knowledge demonstrates that there is indeed a significant difference between both groups with regards to the different factors that are likely to influence the development of cultural representations, with the exception of the travelling frequency of members of the participants' family. Furthermore, our analysis for the affective domain partly confirmed that students enrolled in intermediate and advanced courses in French generally hold more positive cultural representations towards the French language and Quebecers whose language of use is French than beginners.

This dissertation, a qualitative case study, investigates issues of language and identity among sixteen young black women studying at Technikon Natal. I examine the ways in which identities are structured by discourses of which language practices are an important part. The research participants' need to learn English is also interrogated against a scenario of South Africa during and post-apartheid. In Chapter 1, I give historical background on the educational structures and legislation which affected my research participants before 2000, and then briefly describe their present context of study. The literature on which my dissertation is based is reviewed in Chapter 2. Humanist theories of motivation for second language learning, for example, Gardner's (1985), are rejected in favour of Norton Peirce's (1995) notion of investment in second language learning, which builds on Bourdieu's (1977 - 1991) concepts of capital, and views the second language learner as inseparable from her social world. However, the emphasis in Chapter 2 is given to some of the central ideas of poststructuralist thinking, particularly those pertaining to the undermining of totalising theories, and those arguing in favour of multiple subjectivity. Chapter 3 contains both my research methods, which were mainly social constructionist, as well as the broad discourse analysis techniques I deployed for my data analysis. Notable in Chapter Four, in which I present and analyse my findings, is the power of ethnic discourses to govern the use of their own and other languages by their subjects. Significant, too, are the shifts in subjectivity which individuals experience as they integrate new discourses into their lives. Amongst my conclusions in the final chapter is the notion that, from a poststructuralist perspective, code switching may allow the simultaneous display of more than one identity; that the use of English by black South Africans is fraught with contradictions, and that indigenous African languages appear vulnerable to the pressure from powerful English discourses. I also discuss the limitations of this research and make recommendations for future research, and end with the particular insights into language and subjectivity I have gained as a lecturer in my current teaching context. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002.