Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Theses and dissertations constitute a substantial platform for the documentation and dissemination of research findings, and the professional presentation of such findings is crucial for maintaining scientific integrity. Highly effective fact finders may lack writing skills and experience, or they may simply encounter barriers when expressing ideas, and thus perhaps inadequately present what they have so adequately found. In short, adequate editing of theses and dissertations is essential. Whereas a multitude of guidelines is available for thesis and dissertation writing, there is little guidance available on the editing of such works. Thus, with the latter objective in mind, this thesis is dedicated to developing a practical model to editing postgraduate research papers. Despite a notable lack of theory in the field of thesis editing, which became apparent while reviewing the respective literature, the most suitable sources of theory were selected to provide a basis for developing a model for thesis editing. These sources, combined with insights from a practical dissertation editing assignment, allowed for the design of a model for the practical editing process of postgraduate research texts. The editing model is based on a process-oriented approach, i.e. one which focuses on the learning process of the student. Moreover, the model promotes a level of editorial intervention that conforms to the current perception of ethical intervention in thesis editing. Ethical intervention is currently being negotiated against the backdrop of such standards as the purpose of thesis writing as well as the requirement of originality of theses and dissertations. In a testing phase the model was applied in a thesis editing assignment and emerged as a valuable guide in the process of editing. It also proved practicable in all its major aspects. Nevertheless, since a single testing assignment is not sufficient to prove the general practicality of any model, the model is still to be considered a prototype and may have to undergo further refinement after additional comprehensive testing. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Tesisse en verhandelinge is 'n belangrike basis vir die optekening en verspreiding van navorsingsbevindinge, en die professionele aanbieding van sodanige bevindinge is noodsaaklik vir die behoud van wetenskaplike integriteit. Tog is kom hoogs doeltreffende navorsers soms minder bedrewe of ervare skrywers, of hulle bloot voor hindernisse te staan wanneer hulle hul gedagtes moet verwoord, wat tot die ontoereikende aanbieding van bevredigende bevindinge lei. Kortom die toereikende redigering van tesisse en verhandelinge is van die allergrootste belang. Hoewel daar etlike riglyne vir die skryf van tesisse en verhandelinge bestaan, is daar weinig leiding beskikbaar vir die redigering daarvan. Gedagtig hieraan is hierdie tesis daarop toegespits om 'n praktiese model vir die redigering van nagraadse navorsingstekste te ontwikkel. Ondanks 'n merkbare gebrek aan teorie op die gebied van tesisredigering, wat baie duidelik uit 'n oorsig van die betrokke literatuur blyk, is die mees toepaslike teoretiese bronne as grondslag vir die ontwikkeling van 'n model vir tesisredigering gekies. Met behulp van hierdie bronne, tesame met die insigte verkry uit 'n praktiese redigeeropdrag, kon 'n praktiese model vir die redigering van nagraadse navorsingstekste ontwerp word. Die redigeermodel berus op 'n prosesgerigte benadering, dit wil sê 'n benadering wat op die student se leerproses konsentreer. Daarbenewens argumenteer die model ten gunste van redaksionele ingrepe wat met huidige opvattings oor etiese tesisredigering strook. Dit geskied teen die agtergrond van die huidige gesprek oor etiese intervensie, wat onder meer teen die agtergrond van standaarde soos die doel van die tesis sowel as die oorspronklikheidsvereiste vir tesisse en verhandelinge gevoer word. Die model is tydens 'n toetsfase in 'n tesisredigeringsopdrag toegepas en blyk nuttige riglyne vir die redigeerproses te bied. Ook het al die kernkomponente daarvan geblyk prakties bruikbaar te wees. Aangesien 'n enkele toetsopdrag nie voldoende is om die algemene bruikbaarheid van 'n model te bewys nie, word die model steeds as 'n prototipe beskou en dit sal waarskynlik ná bykomende omvattende toetsing verder verbeter word.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / The purpose of this research study is to understand the impact of key life experiences on the authentic transformational leadership development of the researcher. The document outlines the events that signify the leadership development of the researcher, from his earliest years in the fishing village of Mossel Bay, through to the tertiary years in Cape Town, to where he finds himself working for a Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed corporate company. The researcher makes use of autoethnography as a research method. Narratives are used to capture life or to trigger events in a way which enables the researcher to get a better understanding of whom he has become as a leader. The researcher has reviewed positive events, as well as events which had a negative impact on his development as leader, such as the low level of involvement of the father figure during his upbringing. The narratives draw a lot from the experience of being raised predominantly by the mother and how this shaped certain transformational aspects of the researcher’s leadership profile. Furthermore, the narratives also viewed the impact of certain early interactions and experiences in the researcher’s work life which influenced the ethical development of his leadership approach. The researcher concludes with a summary of key themes that emerged during reflection of trigger events and experiences, which he hopes may contribute toward others finding their own leadership profiles.

In her introduction to a special issue of the South Central Review on literary biography published in 2006, Linda Leavell writes, "Many would trace the disdain for literary biography—in both senses of the word “literary”—back through Roland Barthes’s “death of the author” to the New Critics’ division of text from context all the way to T. S. Eliot’s theory of impersonality. Critical theory of the past century has generally deemed an author’s life, personality, and intentions irrelevant to the text" (1). Leavell’s explanation of how critical theory of the twentieth century came to shape the current scholarly attitude towards literary biography establishes the genre’s status in an era of literary theory that is commonly characterized by the diminishment of the author as the source of meaning in a text, an era in which we remain. This characterization, however, overlooks the different ways that the theorists of the era displaced the author as the dominant figure in literary studies. This paper demonstrates how these different ways, despite whatever damage they might have done to the status of literary biography, actually benefit the study of the genre. Additionally, this paper argues that they not only comprise one side of Vladimir Nabokov’s contradictory views on his own authorship, which makes him an ideal subject for the study of authority over biographical representation, but also gave rise to new methodologies of literary biography, which are the methodologies of Nabokov’s biographers themselves. As a result, this paper concludes, “an author’s life, personality, and intentions” in turn have assumed new relevancy in literary studies. / text

Contempory writing theories do not explain many of the writing behaviors exhibited by basic writers in the classroom. Many theorists (Emig, Fitzgerald, Rose, and Perl) have identified similar and distinct writing behaviors which have also been identified by instructors of basic writers. This study focuses on two college-level basic writing students by using the results of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and identified writing behaviors of theorists; these case studies shed light on writing processes in relationship to personality. The results suggest a correlation between writing behaviors and personality types which affects the writing and the teaching of the writing processes. / Department of English

In recent years, many composition teachers and theorists have turned to the process approach to writing in an attempt to better understand both the act of writing and the writers themselves. Even though various theorists have made headway in the analysis of students' writing processes, further research is needed to explore whether college basic writers are aware of their own writing processes and whether this awareness can lead to discovery of the self as a writer and to diminished writing anxiety.One way for students to become aware of their composing processes is through process journals, in which they write about their actions in creating and revising their papers. Using process journals as an independent variable, this project studied differences among three groups of basic writers at Ball State University: those who wrote process journals frequently, infrequently, and not at all. I evaluated effects of process journals on self-reported awareness of process, as measured by a Writing Skills Questionnaire, and on writing apprehension, as measured by the Writing Apprehension Test (WAT). To measure changes among groups over two semesters, I analyzed students' questionnaire responses using mean scores and two Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests.Results showed that process journals did have a significant impact on students' attitudes about themselves as writers and on their awareness and control of writing processes. This study did not find, however, that process journals significantly decreased students' writing apprehension scores. In addition, it did not find Ball State University's basic writing students to be highly apprehensive writers. Although further research is needed to verify these results and expand the scope of research in process journals, the initial findings here suggest that process journals can be an important part of many students' writing experiences. / Department of English

The perspectives of gay men on college and university campuses is informed by a rich gay social history and extensive roots of community politics. The experiences of gay undergraduate men have been illuminated in segmented ways in scholarly literature to date. This narrative inquiry develops and advances those efforts by exploring how gay undergraduate men construct, experience, and make meaning of their gender as a population ascribing to both liberationist and assimilationist viewpoints. Data for this qualitative study were collected at one public, four-year research university in the southeastern United States in the fall 2015 semester using recorded personal interviews with eleven men. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed for data analysis. The men included in the study represent a broad range of personal identity backgrounds, including a variety of college majors and years of experience in university study. Self-authorship and queer theoretical frames were used to analyze participants’ gender interpretations. Findings suggest men do not understand gender in isolation, but in tandem with intersections of familial ethnic and cultural backgrounds, social class status, and involvement on campus. Four major themes of experience that effect self-authorship of gender evolved from narrative analyses: masking, agency, costs, and policing. Implications for higher education professionals, including faculty, staff, and administrators, are discussed. Opportunities for further research in navigating lived experiences of marginalized campus subpopulations are also suggested and explored.

"Why did George Eliot live and Currer Bell die?" Victorian pseudonymity is seldom treated to any critical scrutiny - the only sustained interest has been in reading masculine pseudonyms as masks for "disreputable femininity," signs of the woman writer's "anxiety of authorship." This thesis proposes that pseudonymity is not a capitulation to gender ideology, but that a nom de plume is an exaggerated version of any authorial signature - the abstraction (or Othering) of a self into text which occurs in the production of "real" authors as well as fictional characters. After an introductory chapter presenting the theoretical issues of selfhood and authorship, I go on to discuss milieu - the contexts which produced Bronte and Eliot - including a brief history of pseudonymous novelists and the Victorian publishing and reviewing culture. The third and fourth chapters deal with pseudonymity as heccéité, offering "biographies" of the authorial personas "Currer Bell" and "George Eliot" rather than the women who created them, thus demonstrating the problems of biography and the relative, multiple status of identity. The three following chapters explore the concerns of pseudonymity through a reading of the novels: I treat Jane Eyre, Villette, and even Shirley as "autobiographical" in order to address the construction of self and narrative; I examine how Eliot's realist fictions (notably Scenes of Clerical Life, Romola, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda) trouble the "reality"/"fiction" binary; and finally I read Bronte specifically for her engagement with "dress," using queer theories of performativity with Victorian theories of clothing and conduct to question "readability" itself. My final chapter is concerned with agencement (adjustment) and "mythmaking": the posthumous biographical and critical practices surrounding these two writers reveal that an author's "name," secured through literary reputation, is not static or inevitable, but the result of constant process and revision.

The purpose and problem of this thesis is to formulate a theory on screenplay aesthetics with Eisenstein's montage as the mother theory providing the aesthetic nourishment for the proposed concept of imaging. The theory of screenplay imaging proposes that the screenplay is a montage of sub-narratives occurring in the sensual, emotional, and intellectual dimensions and expressing the grand narrative theme. It further suggests that the interaction between the screenplay and the reader-interpreter should yield a prolificity of interpretation with a unified meaning. The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter I, Introduction, lays the background for subsequent arguments. Chapter II, The Principles of Montage, discusses Eisenstein's theory. Chapter III, The Theory of Imaging, explains imaging and develops Gonzalez's Model of Imaging. Chapter IV, The Principles of Sensual, Emotional, and Intellectual Imaging, explains the three dimensions with examples. Chapter V, Conclusion and Recommendation, suggests improvements and applications of the theory.

Scholars and literary enthusiasts have struggled for decades to account for editor Maxwell Perkins’s unparalleled success in facilitating the careers of many of the early twentieth century’s most enduring and profitable writers, among them F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. This study seeks to penetrate that mystery by dissecting Perkins’s editorial practice and examining how he navigated the competing tensions between commercial success and aesthetic integrity in various circumstances. At play in the construction of his literary legacy are prevailing perceptions of authorship, complex interpersonal relationships, and the inherent battle between art and commerce. Focusing on his day-to-day activities, it is apparent that Perkins was guided by a unique editorial double vision—the propensity to appreciate the aesthetic experience while retaining the critical detachment necessary to appraise a literary work from a commercial standpoint—when solving the paradoxical dilemmas inherent in modern publishing.

This project is about giving in to the impulse of ideas. My mind is a little messy and cluttered, swirling with bits of stimuli. The spark of an idea happens when the bits collide. I prefer not to initiate or control the process so much as keep it fed and active. Through graphic design, I bear witness to these ideas, giving them form as a series of visible, tangible objects. Viewed comprehensively, the work establishes an ongoing chronicle of my creative life and mind.