This thesis investigates sociological understandings of language in texts deeply resonant for sociology today. It offers a comparative and analytical investigation of social-language projects written before the discipline was established. Sociologists have struggled to establish a field investigating arguably the most social arena of social life, namely, language as witnessed by insubstantial attempts to sociologically study language and unfulfilled promises in social theories of language or sociologies of communication, culture, media, etc. Chapter 1 critically reviews social scientific research approaches to language. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 examine carefully selected sites in European thought where language and social life interpenetrate too much to be disentangled, wherein there are ‘folk sociologies of language’. Chapter 2 looks at attempts to rectify a deep confusion pulling society apart and corroding language. Three social-language projects compose language: a gesture language (Bulwer), a philosophical language (Wilkins) and combination of both (Dalgarno). Chapter 3 looks at two critical dictionaries intended to fix language to help the realisation of the ideal society (Johnson’s Dictionary and Diderot’s Encyclopedié). Chapter 4 explores projects that capture historically changing nationhood: the OED and the work of the Grimm Brothers. These social-language projects are attempts to change something in the social, on a continuum of less to more radical interventions. These social-language projects are significant, but have been ignored by sociologists. As ‘language’ projects, they are assumed irrelevant in relation to power, knowledge, or nascent nationalism. As ‘social’ projects, they have been considered tangential to an increasingly narrow and technical linguistics. By mining this rich seam of sources, this work draws attention to elements central to sociology (about the nature and roles of collectives and individuals, about agency, structure, the subject, institutions) in light of key questions about language (its aspects, form, roles in relation to knowledge, law, politics). This is a first step towards analysing language events from a sociological perspective. The intended contribution of this research to current sociology is three-fold. Firstly, it outlines a distinctive approach by using sources from outside the discipline in order to get at problems at its core. Secondly, it shows how language is empirically current in ways that are central to the discipline (e.g. the ‘endangered languages movement’). Finally, it shows that without the distance gained by stepping outside we cannot see that the way we think about language and the social are mutually constitutive, indeed each shapes and conditions the other. In sum, language is much too sociologically important to be left to linguists.

Qu'est-ce qu'une ville photographiée ? Comment le medium peut-il rendre compte du territoire physique et de sa communauté de citoyens ? Existe-t-il un modèle plus fiable, plus "vrai" que les autres ? Si la problématique de la photographie urbaine dans cette étude devait être résumée, la phrase la plus concrète serait : comment dire la ville avec l'autonomie de la photographie ? Pour proposer une réponse à cette question, nous utilisons dans cette étude une vaste boîte à outils d'analyse d’images urbaines ; historiques ou modernes, orientées esthétiquement ou davantage documentaires, les photographies deviennent des supports analytiques, conséquences formulées de propositions réflexives utilisant la sémiologie de l’image comme préalable à la construction du substrat iconique. Ainsi, l'approche photographique de la ville de Brest se base sur une démarche d'analyse du signe visuel. Posant les bases réflexives à partir d'un corpus photographique issu de l'espace détruit pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les réflexions s'orientent ensuite vers l'espace moderne reconstruit et les enjeux photographiques qu'un tel territoire peut représenter en terme d'image. En utilisant des corpus artistiques, publicitaires, communicationnels, ou également en exploitant une production d'auteur construite pour répondre à la problématique, nous proposons un ensemble de modèles d'analyse pour favoriser la compréhension de l'identité d'un site urbain à travers la photographie. / What is a photographed city ? How can the medium depict the physical territory and its community of citizens ? Is there a more reliable model, more “genuine” than the others ? If the problematic of urban photography in this study had to be summarized, the most concrete sentence would be : how can the city be expressed with the photography autonomy ? In order to offer an answer to this question, we use in this study a large tool case for urban image analysis: historical or modern, biased or objectively documentary, photographs become analytical supports, articulated consequences of reflexive propositions using the image semiology as precondition for the construction of the iconic substrate. Thus, the photographical approach of the city of Brest is based on the analysis of the visual sign. Establishing the analytical bases from a photographic corpus, which results from the area destroyed during World War Two, the reflections then focus on the rebuilt modern area and the photographical issues represented by such a territory in terms of image. Through the use of various corpuses such as art, advertising and communication, or even utilizing an author’s production built to answer the problematic, the thesis proposes a set of tools and analysis models for a better understanding of an urban site’s identity through photography.

The thesis analyses contemporary South Korean films from the late 1980s up to the present day. It asks whether Korean films have produced a new cinema, by critically examining the criteria by which Korean films are said to be new. Have Korean films really changed aesthetically? What are the limitations, and even pitfalls in contemporary Korean film aesthetics? If there appears to be a true radicalism in Korean films, under which conditions does it emerge? Which films convey its core features? To answer these questions, the study attempts to posit a universalising theory rather than making particular claims about Korean films. Where many other scholars have focused on the historical context of the film texts’ production and their reception, this thesis privileges the film texts themselves, by suggesting that whether those films are new or not will depend on a film text’s individual mode of address. To explore this problem further, this study draws on the concept of ‘concrete universality’ from a Lacanian/Žižekian standpoint. For my purpose, it refers to examining how a kind of disruptive element in a film text’s formal structure obtrudes into the diegetic reality, thus revealing a cinematic ‘distortion’ in the smooth running of reality. The thesis will demonstrate that Im Kwon-taek’s Beyond the Years, Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host, and Zhang Lu’s Grain in Ear and Hyazgar show how an excessive element in the formal aspect of the film text explodes an explicit narrative line, thus allowing us to redefine the whole narrative line. In my chapter on how Korean films screen the past, I find that Beyond the Years provides a dialectical way of moving out of the alleged Koreanness, by posing a third party between official historiography and popular memory. In the chapter on how Korean blockbusters invent the Other and how the subjects respond to the encounter with the Other through an ethical framework, I suggest that The Host reveals the fundamental antagonism at the heart of contemporary South Korean society, thus confronting viewers with truly ethical concerns. In the chapter on how cinematic strategies are used in depicting the shadowy underside of the law, I demonstrate through a close reading of Zhang Lu’s films that the radicalism of Korean cinema does not stem from the empirical description of a wretched reality but from disclosing an ontological shift in filmic images.

This thesis analyzes the representation of and affects associated with the five class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur in the films of the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. They are the descendents of the five main Confucian class figures, and have also been socially, politically, and culturally significant throughout China’s modern history. The questions that guide this analysis include: How are these figures represented? How do their representations and cinematic tropes operate in the films? What feelings do they evoke? To answer these questions, I engage with scholarship in Chinese sociology and visual culture, Raymond Williams’s concept of “structures of feeling,” and theories on film phenomenology and affect. I examine Jia’s entire oeuvre (1994-2013), including his shorts, documentaries, narrative films, and advertisements. In the core chapters, I examine each figure’s socio-historical and cultural contexts, its representation in the films, and the cinematic tropes and feelings that are associated with it. I argue that the Maoist figures are in decline and will soon disappear, while the “new” class figures of intellectual and entrepreneur survive and thrive in the Reform era. Regarding cinematic tropes, I analyze the moving portraits, interviews, and constructions of memory for the figure of the worker; for the peasant, I focus on the POV shot, observation, and the gaze; for the soldier, I discuss the figure’s “absent presence” and its degraded appearance in simulacra; for the intellectual, I examine the voice, the pseudomonologue, and the observatory and exploratory lenses; and for the entrepreneur, I explore the close-up, speed, and film as advertisement. Finally, I examine how these figures produce what Raymond Williams describes as “structures of feeling,” and how these various feelings transition over time – from anxiety over the threat of Reform, to decrying its negative effects, to welcoming its opportunities, to finally demanding solutions to the problems it has caused.

Computer games with complex virtual worlds, which are populated by artificial characters and creatures, are the most visible application of artificial intelligence techniques. In recent years game development has been fuelled by dramatic advances in computer graphics hardware which have led to a rise in the quality of real-time computer graphics and increased realism in computer games. As a result of these developments video games are gaining acceptance and cultural significance as a form of art and popular culture. An important factor for the attainment of realism in games is the artificially intelligent behaviour displayed by the virtual entities that populate the games' virtual worlds. It is our firm belief that to further improve the behaviour of virtual entities, game AI development will have to mirror the advances achieved in game graphics. A major contributing factor for these advancements has been the advent of programmable shaders for real-time graphics, which in turn has been significantly simplified by the introduction of higher level programming languages for the creation of shaders. This has demonstrated that a good system can be vastly improved by the addition of a programming language. This thesis presents a similar (syntactic) approach to the definition of the behaviour of virtual entities in computer games. We introduce the term behaviour definition language (BDL), describing a programming language for the definition of game entity behaviour. We specify the requirements for this type of programming language, which are applied to the development and implementation of several behaviour definition languages, culminating in the design of a new game-genre independent behaviour definition (scripting) language. This extension programming language includes several game AI techniques within a single unified system, allowing the use of different methods of behaviour definition. A subset of the language (itself a BDL) was implemented as a proof of concept of this design, providing a framework for the syntactic definition of the behaviour of virtual entities in computer games.

This dissertation examines the rise of English language commercial radio broadcasting from the Continent to Britain prior to World War Two, and its effect on the Public Service monopoly defended by the BBC. It explores the long-term effect on the history of British broadcasting caused by this competition, and argues for a reasoned consideration of the role of commercial broadcasting in the development of British media. Aller its introduction, which sets out the author's case for the fuller examination of this subject, Part One addresses the context of early broadcasting in Britain, and the guiding principles behind the Public Service ethic. Part Two extends this context to examine firstly the cultural climate in Britain between the wars, proceeding to discuss parallels, divergences and influences between the emerging broadcasting industries of the United Kingdom and the United States. Part Three explores important areas in which commercial operators played a major role in the development of broadcasting, namely scheduling and audience research, and the development of broadcast technology, notably recording processes. In Part Four the dissertation details the central issue of concerted commercial attacks on the BBC's monopoly, exploiting in particular its controversial Sunday Programmes Policy. It further charts the response of the Corporation to these challenges, and the gradual changes to Public Service Broadcasting as a result. The effects of competition were long-term, and to demonstrate this it is necessary to extend the study beyond the main historical area; Part Five therefore takes account of the Post-War climate, the parallels between 1930s and 1960s pressure from commercial interests, and the eventual arrival of land-based Independent Radio, initially governed by a Public Service Ethic. Finally, the Conclusion proposes that the thus Far undervalued role of Commercial radio in the United Kingdom belies its importance as a presence and influence in the medium dating hack to the very earliest years of British broadcasting.

After approximately 100 years of radio, it is inevitable that radio in Western countries not only survives but also develops, despite fierce competition with visual media. However, having competed with other media for more than 15 years, radio in Vietnam is experiencing a significant loss of audience (especially the youth, the well-educated, and the people in urban areas). It should be noted that due to a 30 year war and 20 years of embargo by the US and other Western countries, information about Western countries in general, and journalism in particular, was in short supply in Vietnam. For this reason, gaining experiences from radio's developments and its adaptability in Western countries - in order to apply these to Vietnamese radio - is an imperative need. However, at present, radio in Western countries has reached a significant turning-point, when a number of terminologies - which are used according to the radio's variants, including web radio, digital radio, and visual radio - have challenged the perceptions of radio which have been accepted for almost a century. The questions 'What is radio?', 'Is web radio 'radio'?' and 'Does web radio enhance radio development?' are contentious issues which have been discussed for some time without a conclusion. On the other hand, web radio has a significant impact on Vietnamese radio in the sense that it brings radio to the Internet community who are generally believed to be the young, well-educated and people in urban areas who listen to traditional radio the least. It is suggested that web radio is potential way to capture the neglected traditional radio listeners in Vietnam. From an historical point of view, this thesis will investigate the changes of radio in terms of technology, radio programming and ways of listening, in order to understand the development of radio from its inception to date. Moreover, radio will be placed in the context of the competition and interplay between mass media. This will be done in order to explore the contention that the existence and development of each medium depends not only on its own characteristics, but also on its ability to adjust itself to a new technological environment - as well as the ability to adapt methods and tools from other media to strengthen its position. It is contended that web radio is the product of the competitive and interactive environment in which it operates: and its characteristics can only be clarified with reference to those relationships between mass media systems. Having investigated the political, historical, sodo-economical and cultural contexts of radio and web radio in Vietnam, the thesis explores the ways in which modem radio theories and practices from Western countries can be applied to Vietnamese radio, and examines if web radio is a means to capture new audiences, particularly the groups who have neglected traditional radio. In order to achieve this aim, three major research methods will be applied: historical and secondary data; online and offline surveys and in-depth interviews of radio listeners, non-radio listeners, and web users about their habits of consuming media, the impact of the Internet on their habits, and their needs towards web radio also will be undertaken.

No description available.

Studies of source-media relations have tended towards two principal frameworks for analysis: developing a structural approach, where access is determined by the source's position within the dominant hegemony (Hall et al. 1978); or through sociological enquiries, which examine the relationship between journalists and their news sources (Gans 1979; Schlesinger 1990). There is, however, a much smaller body of research that has considered the influence of news sources upon audiences. This thesis develops an audience centric approach to sourcing, in order to understand how journalists may influence audiences' interpretation of a story through the attribution of information to particular types of institutional sources. This issue is considered through the media discourse of Islamist terrorism, to explore the potential for source attribution to influence audiences' perceptions of alleged terrorist plots. The justifications for focusing upon this issue are twofold. First, news coverage of suspected terrorist plots has raised questions over the position and types of sources appearing in reports. Second, news media reporting of terrorism has become synonymous with unofficial sources and leaked information. Accusations have been made, particularly following news of a foiled kidnap plot in January 2007, that government sources had relayed intelligence or operational information about the threat to a select group of journalists. For some, these charges evidence the social and political construction of contemporary terrorism, a condition, which it has been argued, is engineered by elites to make a raft of legal responses politically acceptable to the electorate (Jackson 2006; Mythen and Walklate 2006). This thesis explores source attribution upon audiences' perceptions of terrorism through two stages of empirical research. A content analysis of UK newspaper coverage of five alleged terrorist plots and a media experiment that simulates exposure to three different types of source attribution. The results reveal that veiled references to public institutions were predominant within coverage, however, contrary to conspiratorial approaches to political discourse,government sources were not influential in supporting details of a specific threat.Furthermore, that sourcing may simply arise as a feature of the news narrative to each event. The findings also suggest that sourcing was indicative of a broader shift in the media discourse of terrorism, with more recent coverage seeking to address public concerns over the way official or government sources communicate information about the threat from terrorism. For news audiences, the results show that the more powerful cumulative effects of trust in the media and concern over terrorism undermine any influence source attribution may have upon audiences' perceptions of the credibility of a story reporting an alleged terrorist plot. Moreover, taken together the findings demonstrate that the effect of subtle or nuanced variations in the presentation of media content upon audiences is limited and that the attitudinal and demographic characteristics of audiences serve as more significant determinants of audiences' perceptions of news.

Today's British commercial radio environment consists of over three hundred local, regional and national radio stations. Many operate a concentrated music format, designed to meet the demands of a defined target audience. This is in contrast to the commercial radio model in existence between 1973 and 1990, where local stations were required, as part oftheir contract, to broadcast speech-based programming, in addition to music, to a wider audience profile. One reason for speech programming on commercial stations was the strict regulation laid down by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA). Regulatory policy coupled with societal and political changes had a major influence on the creation of programme output from 1973, when commercial radio was established, until new broadcast legislation was passed which transformed the business model under the Broadcasting Act 1990. Programme content was constrained by the regulator's demands for what they referred to as 'meaningful speech' and the stations' desire to be more commercial in line with the demands of the audience. The intention ofthis research project is to explore the impact of regulation upon the commercial radio programming model between 1983-85, and to uncover why this period was pivotal in bringing about change within the regulatory framework. This examination will be carried out by drawing on IBA policy papers, media reports and personal accounts from interviews with key radio station personnel, such as broadcasters, station producers, managers and regulation staff The project draws on original sources of both primary and secondary data, including information held in the archives of the current radio regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), who has granted unlimited access to previously unseen confidential archives. This provides an exclusive data source allowing the research to make an original contribution to broadcasting history, which is pertinent given the current debate on deregulation within UK commercial radio.