The main aim of the study was to determine which measurement tool, existing or adapted, would be able to determine the levels of customer centricity within the sales channels of a specific organisation, operating in the South African financial industry. A literary study showed that in order to determine the levels of customer centricity, customer experience should be measured. Six questionnaires were administered, namely, EXQ, NPS, CES, Customer satisfaction, Word-of-Mouth and Behavioural loyalty intention. The data showed a statistical significance and a positive relationship between all the constructs within all the questionnaires except with that of CES. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This thesis describes basic research into visual word recognition and decision making. Determining the best matching lexical representation for a given stimulus involves interactions between representations. The standard task for studying these processes is the lexical decision task (LDT), but there is still debate regarding the factors that affect how individuals make lexical decisions. The nature of lexical interactions and the processes underlying lexical decision-making were addressed here by testing response congruency effects in the masked priming variant of the LDT. The results of seven masked priming experiments showed a robust response congruency effect that depends on the difficulty of the word-nonword discrimination. This finding resolved apparent inconsistencies in previous research. The experiments were simulated using the Bayesian Reader and the Spatial Coding Model (SCM). The probability based Bayesian Reader model failed to accommodate the findings. However, a good fit to the data was provided by a modified version of the SCM in which the assumptions regarding the nature of lexical interactions were changed such that word nodes inhibit only (closely) related competitors. The model also assumes that the difficulty of the word-nonword discrimination affects the degree to which stimulus typicality informs lexical decisions. A critical issue for these experiments involved the definition of orthographic typicality. An algorithm for measuring orthographic typicality and for generating nonwords with a specific level of orthographic typicality (OT3) was developed. An unprimed LDT experiment showed that OT3 affected decision latency even when other standard measures of orthographic typicality were controlled. Two additional masked priming experiments showed that highly typical primes lead to faster word responses and slower nonword responses than less typical primes. Overall, the results of this research enhance our understanding of the processes underlying visual word recognition and lexical decision making, and also have important methodological implications for the field.

This thesis investigates the strategies infants use to generalise labels to different objects in the early stages of lexical development. It aims to directly test the assumption that a taxonomic bias exists which guides infants to extend words to categories of objects instead of individual instances of them, against the hypothesis that infants discover the extension of words through exposure to multiple naming instances of different objects.Experiments One and Two attempted to teach two object-label pairings to infants at the end of their first year of life, and test generalisation of those labels to new objects from the same adult linguistic categories. This aim failed because infants showed evidence for prior knowledge of the words. Experiments Three and Four employed a more infant-controlled procedure using a habituation task during training; in the former a single exemplar from each adult category was used, whereas in the latter multiple exemplars from each category were used. In both Experiments evidence for word learning was provided at test, but infants failed to generalise the labels to other objects. Experiment Five used a training phase identical to Experiment Four but tested infants for perceptual categorisation in the absence of any labels. Some infants showed evidence for their ability to create such categories on the basis of the training set, suggesting that the inability to generalise in Experiments Three and Four was not due to a perceptual limitation. These findings suggest that infants at the end of their first year do not seem to be guided by any linguistic biases in their generalisation of labels. This thesis concludes that 10-month-old infants seem to have more advanced linguistic abilities than has previously been thought and constraint-like behaviour in later stages of lexical development might be a result of experience instead of a qualitative shift in cognitive processes.

Although most people have experienced word-finding difficulty at one time or another, there are no clinical instruments able to reliably distinguish normal age-related effects from pathology in word-finding impairment. Two experiments were conducted to establish a modified version of the Boston Naming Test (BNT) that includes latency times, the Boston Naming Test of Latencies (BNT-L), in order to improve the instrument's sensitivity to mild to moderate word-finding impairment. Experiment 1: Latency times on the 60-item BNT (Goodglass et al., 2001) for 235 healthy adults' ages 18-89 years were collected on a representative sample. Qualitative features of the BNT items, statistical analyses, IRT, and demographic considerations of age, gender, education, vocabulary, race and culture, helped create a reduced BNT-L version with 15 of the most discriminating items. Statistically sound and sophisticated normative tables are provided that adjust for unseen covariates. Response latencies did not indicate earlier age-related decline in an optimally healthy sample. Experiment 2: Twenty-three patients referred for neuropsychological testing were administered the BNT-L. Patients referred for evaluation of mild cognitive impairment or possible dementia produced significantly different response BNT-L latencies from the healthy sample whereas patients referred for mild brain injury evaluation did not. Normal word-finding problems were discussed in terms of serial stage models of lexical access, as well as in terms of automatic and controlled cognitive processes in younger and older adults. Statistical process for creating a psychometric instrument using latencies is illustrated.

This degree project essay examines the literary culture phenomenon known as poetry slam, a competitive format for performance poetry, with the purpose of discussing whether poetry slam could contribute to upper secondary school Swedish teaching or not. The essay consists of two parts, one where poetry slam is presented and one where poetry slam is discussed from a didactic perspective. In the first part, a brief history of poetry slam and its origins in the U.S. is presented, followed by a discussion of the ideology within the slam movement. Furthermore, the set of rules that regulate poetry slams are presented and finally the first part of the essay is ended with a discussion of poetry slam as a poetic genre of its own. The second part starts by presenting and discussing the concept of aesthetic learning processes and how poetry slam might enable such processes. Poetry slam is then related to the Swedish subject syllabus for upper secondary school in order to analyse whether there is any rationale for poetry slam in Swedish teaching or not. Furthermore, poetry slam is related to literacy development, first by discussing creative writing and then by discussing oral performance. The results of the analysis shows that poetry slam is foremost motivated in Swedish teaching as a literary historical content, partly as an opportunity to work with oral performance, and also to cultivate students’ linguistic subjectivity. Poetry slam could possibly enable aesthetic learning processes, although it may be questioned whether poetry slam qualifies as an artistic community professional enough to provide artistic working methods. The very concept of a school poetry slam could also be seen as a contradiction, when considering the slam movement’s self image of counter culture, as schools themselves could be interpreted as dominant literary establishments. Possible pitfalls related to poetry slam in Swedish teaching are the competitive format’s effect on students socio-emotional safety and the scoring system that may be hazardous for students’ linguistic subjectivity. Also, poetry slam may not meet the curricular demands on rhetoric performances which are mandatory in the upper secondary school Swedish courses, and thus questions may be raised if oral poetic performances can be prioritised at the expense of oral rhetoric performances. Moreover, the free, creative space provided to students within creative writing processes puts high demands on the teacher balancing students’ creative freedom, in order to possibly articulate hidden knowledge, with making sure that students do not spend time procrastinating.

”The singer is always working through a text that in some way or another inspired the vocal line and its texture,” wrote American pianist, pedagogue, and author Thomas Grubb. But exactly how does a text inspire a composer to create this synergy between words and music? During the course of my studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, I gradually began to deepen my knowledge and awareness of Henry Purcell and Franz Schubert. I was at once astounded by their ability to seemlessly amalgamate the chosen texts to their music, and decided that this connection required greater research. The purpose of this study was thus to gain a deeper understanding of how Purcell and Schubert approached the relationship between text and music by studying the two pieces Music for a while and Erlkönig. I also wished to discover any similarities and differences between the composers’ approaches to word painting, in addition to discerning the role of the accompaniment to further illustrate the narrative. I began by reading literature about the two composers as well as John Dryden and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the poets whose texts were set to music. Once a greater understanding of them had been attained, I proceeded to analyze the texts and music for a greater comprehension of Purcell’s and Schubert’s methods. For early inspiration, I listened to numerous versions of the pieces by different musicians on YouTube. Both Purcell and Schubert used various tools in their compositional arsenals to accomplish their effortless combination of text and music. Amongst others, Purcell employed tonal ambiguity, unexpected harmonies, and repetition, while Schubert made use of vivid imagery, inventive treatment of chromaticism, and unmistakable rhythmic motifs. The analysis demonstrated that, while both composers painted lively and dramatic pictures in their compositions, their methods were strikingly different. The role of the accompaniment in Music for a while leaves much to the individual taste and ability of the instrumentalist(s) performing to assist the singer in setting the scene. In contrast, Schubert instructs the pianist in Erlkönig explicitly how they are to play, while additionally the piano personifies the fifth character in the story, the horse. Indeed, the role of the singer in the two pieces is equally at variance with the other. With Purcell, the singer portrays a priest, while the singer in Erlkönig personifies four different voices, each with their own melody, character, and tessitura. I hope this study will inspire others to delve deeper into the material with which they work to offer a more profound understanding to themselves and, ultimately, the listener.

This thesis deals with collective nicknames denoting the inhabitants of a place (parish, village etc.) in northern Sweden, i.e. names of the type arnästjuvar (denoting the inhabitants of the parish of Arnäs; tjuv 'thief') and tynderötuppar (denoting the inhabitants of the parish of Tynderö; tupp 'cock'). The main aim of the thesis is to explain why various nickname elements were chosen and to describe the general character of the nicknames of northern Sweden. These nicknames have been used collectively about the inhabitants of a certain place in a jocular or derogatory sense. They have been used above all in male-dominated contexts, e.g. in military camps. The nicknames are ethnocentric: they denote individuals in their capacity as members of a group. They are often related to other, similar names, so that they form series which are connected phonetically, semantically or from the point of view of word formation. The discussion of these aspects is based on Hugo Moser's research on "Namenfelder". Sources from about 1600 to the present day have been used as material. The bulk of the material consists of answers to questionnaires from the 20th century. Because of the construction of the questionnaires the material is to some extent imperfect. The nicknames often reflect various aspects of the society of the individuals, but today the explanation for names is quite often secondary and a result of folk-etymology. Some nicknames reflect the trades of the inhabitants, others social conditions, diet or dress, others ethnic conditions. The nickname strömmingar was often given to people living on the coast where fishing was an important source of income. The nickname element finnar reflects local settlement by Finns. Some nicknames probably reflect various linguistic conditions (dialectal pronunciation, characteristic place-names or personal names), pictures in local seals or historical events. Several nickname elements have been chosen through association with the form of the place-name or the name of the inhabitants, or with existing nicknames, referring either to the inhabitants themselves or their neighbours. There is often a similarity in sound between the place-name (or the name of the inhabitants) and nickname elements. We find e.g. alliteration, assonance and rhyme, or formations in which the place-name (or the name of the inhabitants, or part of it) is compounded with a nickname element to make up an appellative which already exists. The latter kind of formation may be illustrated with the nickname bergtroll ('mountain trolls') to denote those who live in S'àvaiberg (in the parish of Sävar). Some nicknames have as their basis an association from the place-name (or the name of the inhabitants) to the nickname element chosen. The associations are frequently difficult to trace. A nickname like orrlidtuppar (denoting those who live in Orrliden in the parish of Skellefteå) was no doubt chosen through association with the appellative orrtupp 'blackcock'. When the nickname smedstaspiken (denoting the inhabitants of Smedsta in the parish of Lit) was coined, the place-name element smed 'smith' was associated with the closely related spik 'nail'. A close analysis of nicknames denoting parish inhabitants in northern Sweden shows that there are often pairs (or series) of nicknames which are related phonetically (through alliteration, assonance or rhyme), semantically or morphologically, just as nicknames denoting neighbours may be connected in a similar way. Frequently, parish inhabitants have different names in relation to different neighbours. How innovations are introduced and spread is shown by the sfw/"/Z?wf-nicknames in the province of Ångermanland. An analysis of the nicknames denoting the inhabitants of parishes in north-eastern Ångermanland shows that the inhabitants of the old parishes have only one nickname each-a name which is known over a large area-while the inhabitants of the newer parishes have several nicknames. The reason why several nicknames are used to denote inhabitants in newer parishes seems to be that there was no old, unequivocal nickname tradition to fall back on. In the final chapter the importance of patterns for the formation of nicknames is stressed, but also the importance of creativity and coinages. A striking coinage has a great chance of becoming generally accepted and also of becoming the centre of new groups of nicknames. / digitalisering@umu

The purpose of this survey is to investigate librarians' knowledge and insight on marketing and how they work with marketing based on the issues: How do the surveyed libraries with marketing, what methods/tools/techniques use the surveyed libraries themselves and the knowledge of the responsible librarians about marketing in libraries? Theories used to investigate the marketing of libraries and librarians' knowledge of marketing is mainly the comparative method but also Singh's research on attitudes to marketing and SWOT analysis. The survey focuses on two public libraries in southern Småland, Sweden. The librarians responsible for marketing have been interviewed.The results revealed that the interviewed librarians have good knowledge and understanding of marketing. They use many different marketing methods and marketing strategies. The libraries use their websites and local newspaper advertising in order to market themselves to the public. The libraries consciously and unconsciously use the marketing strategy word-of-mouth. Both libraries in the survey have participated in a project Futurum.Kom where the focus was on marketing.Librarians' knowledge, insights and view on marketing will be described in three themes; the librarians' knowledge, understanding and use of marketing strategies, the librarians' knowledge and the use of marketing strategies and views on marketing strategies and SWOT analysis.

Research on underdogs has suggested that consumers feel sympathy for and a desire to support the underdog. However, it is unclear how their evaluations of the underdog will change if they receive negative information about it. The current research aims to explore the role of negative word-of-mouth of the underdog, compared to the top dog, in consumers’ brand attitude, brand value, and purchase intention. Specifically, drawing on two streams of research, two competing hypotheses are proposed and tested. An experiment was conducted with online consumer panel members. Consistent with confirmation bias and familiarity principle, the results supported a hypothesis that an underdog brand suffers more than a top dog brand from negative online word-of-mouth. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings along with future research directions are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not Public Service Announcements (PSAs) were an effective tool at modifying young adults’ perception of the r-word (the word “retard” or “retarded”). The PSAs included in this study were part of the Special Olympics’ “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign. This study examined the efficacy of these PSAs by comparing three groups’ perception of the r-word: experimental group 1 who watched a PSA titled “It’s Not Acceptable” (PSA 1 group), experimental group 2 who watched a PSA titled “We Need a New R-word” (PSA 2 group), and a third control group who watched no PSA. The purpose of the control group was to gain a baseline of how today’s young adults perceived the r-word with no influence from PSAs. Six hundred and seventy-five participants were randomly assigned to one of the three groups. The two experimental groups watched their respective PSAs and completed the survey materials comprised of a consent form, their affective and cognitive responses to the PSA, their ratings of the r-word and their demographic information. The control group watched no PSA but completed the survey materials comprised of a consent form, their ratings of the r-word and their demographic information. This study then examined what the differences were between the three groups’ perception of the r-word. It was hypothesized that PSA 1 group would have a more negative perception of the r-word than PSA 2 group and the control group, due to PSA 1’s framing the r-word as similar to other minority slurs, and using affect to facilitate message acceptance. The PSA 1 group participants thought more about the argument within their PSA, and rated higher affective responses to their PSA, when compared to the PSA 2 group; however, PSA 1 group did not have a more negative perception of the r-word than the other two groups. Results found that the PSA 2 group perceived the r-word as significantly less respectful than the participants in the control group. These findings are discussed in terms of message design for future PSAs regarding the r-word