This thesis is concerned with the Teaching of Arabic Writing for Occupational Purposes (TAWOP). Its main purpose is to develop an effective and practical approach to TAWOP in the context of Kuwait. Three research instruments were employed: questionnaire, observation and interviews. A structured questionnaire was given to the participants, all of whom were employed in various occupational fields in Kuwait, in order to measure a number of factors believed to affect the approach to the teaching of writing. Task observation was used to discover how the different writing strategies under study worked in practice. Semistructured interviews were conducted with the participants who performed the observed tasks, and also with teachers of Arabic, in order to determine the most effective strategies that could be used in TAWOP. This research provides sufficient evidence to suggest that combining two well understood approaches to the teaching of writing, known as the product and process approaches, will best fulfil the needs of learners of Arabic for occupational purposes, who are required to perform a variety of writing tasks in the workplace addressed to different readers, and using many different language aspects. This thesis consists of nine chapters. Chapter One presents the main aims of the study, and explains why it is significant. Chapter Two provides a description of the area of the study. Chapter Three discusses the concept of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP), considers its historical background, its definition and its various types, and explains the importance of taking the learner's needs into consideration. In Chapter Four we review the literature related to the teaching of writing. Chapter Five presents the proposed model of the study. Chapter Six discusses the methodology related to the research instruments used in the fieldwork. A full description is given of the aims, population, design and implementation of the research. The results of the questionnaire are analysed in detail in Chapter Seven, and in Chapter Eight the results of the observation sessions and the interviews are analyesd and interpreted. Finally, Chapter Nine summarises the main findings of the study, considers their implications, and makes recommendations for future research

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This thesis analyses contemporary understandings of identity formation as investigated by discursive and artistic practices. In order to develop an awareness of how performance and language construct identity, the thesis explores theories of performativity. Identity is shaped in accordance with ideas about the body, as the body is the means by which we achieve material existence. In masculinist discourse the body is constructed as a bound entity, and this contains identity in a singular and fixed space. This limits identity to unified and centred understandings. The contemporary feminist works explored in this thesis critique this masculinist approach to the body, and seek to assert a feminist identity based on fragmentation and multiplicity. The creative works researched in this thesis operate performatively, revealing that performative enactment is not only linked to drama but also engages different genres. As such, this thesis focuses on performativity in both performance art and works of literature, in an attempt to study the performative act in both language and performance. The work of the performance artist Orlan literally enacts ideological interpellation, exploring the ritualistic exchange of the body for a cathartic experience of identity, as do works by Karen Finley, Annie Sprinkle and Franko B. Similarly, Fools, by Pat Cadigan and Borderlands/La Frontera, by Gloria Anzaldüa question ideology and control by presenting fragmentation performatively. Through considering catharsis and technology such authors and performers attempt to construct and redefine ritual in a way which investigates the social relationship with the body and attempts to establish feminist agency in identity fragmentation. For this reason feminist practitioners often locate subversion in the examination of the boundaries between subjectivity and objectivity. As the body of the artist as object becomes increasingly central, inquiry into objectification and voyeurism may, indeed, empower female subjectivities. The use of catharsis to ground a materiality of ritualistic exchange thus becomes the means through which the processes of identity are transformed. In challenging ideological inscription many contemporary artists align themselves with a tradition of artistic `madness', thus contemplating issues around rationality and control. In fragmenting the body, the last refuge of a whole space outside of fragmentation, these textual enactments release this fragmentary `madness'. Positioned as the wild, untameable and threatening body, the `hysterical' body, women have challenged the construction of the `natural', using the ideology of technology to `reterritorialise' the female body. As the gendered female body takes control of the `hysterical', so contemporary artists enact female empowerment in response to a perceived crisis in identity formation. The assertive language and performance styles used by the discursive and artistic practices focused on in this thesis reveal a commonality which refuses gender stereotyping and negotiates new ways forward for feminist agency

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Pascal's essays De l'esprit geometrique and De l'art de persuader, together with fragments found amongst his notes for an Apology, constitute his literary theory or Rhetoric. This Rhetoric is basically psychological. Pascal recognises that in order to persuade his reader he must sway his emotions as well as convince him intellectually. The character or temperament of the person or group to be persuaded determines the adoption of a particular method. This theory is essentially similar to Ancient Rhetoric. Though the Ancients tend to be remembered only for their lists of figures and tropes, they also emphasised the orator's need, to vary his approach according to his audience, devoting as much space to "moving the passions" as to "proof". Analysis of both the Provinciales and the Pensees - aimed primarily at the honnetes gens shows how Pascal put his precepts into practice. In the Provinciales he does not simply, as critics sometimes suggest, present his reader with models of logical and cogent reasoning. By the extensive use of irony, invective, ridicule, innuendo and all the standard means of disparagement he builds up an atmosphere of hostility to the Jesuit cause and conditions his reader's reaction against it. In apologetics he rejects metaphysical proofs: intellectual conviction alone, he fears, leads todeism and not Christianity. Though he makes some appeal to the unbeliever's reason, he seeks especially to induce in him certain moods and to convince him emotionally of the desirability of belief in the Christian god. He belongs to the Augustinian tradition of apologetics. The Provinciales and the Pensees are linked by Pascal's forceful and ardently religious temperament, which is reflected in his Rhetoric. In the Provinciales his personality is an asset: in the Pensees it modifies his success as an apologist, but raises him, occasionally, to the stature of poet.

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