The American Indian concept of warriorhood is a direct reflection of their warrior ancestors. Today, many Native American celebrations and ceremonies pay homage to their warrior/veterans. Many of these ceremonies are to cleanse the veteran of the trauma of combat. This is not a new phenomenon. Native celebrations and ceremonies are a direct link to the culture, religion and ancient conception of warriorhood among American Indian nations today. In social gatherings like the American Indian Pow Wow, Native people have always honored their warriors. The only difference is that in these modern times these warriors will be called veterans. Ways of honoring these warrior/veterans may vary from nation (tribe) to nation or region to region, but the tradition of honoring ceremonies has been handed down through the centuries in social gatherings like the American Indian Pow Wow. The conception of the warrior is basically unchanged since the old days of native societies to these modern times of life on an Indian Reservation. The Indian warrior has always been a protector of his people. This warrior conception is explained in depth in the introduction. The Native concept of the warrior today is only a reflection of what that same conception was hundreds of years ago, even longer in many respects. What this means is a warrior was looked upon as a protector. The old Indian warrior codes of honor of those by gone days are now replaced by the U.S. Military code of honor. This concept fits well with the warrior/veterans of today. Because in truth, Indians have become Americans over the past one hundred years. After all is said and done, The American Indian's willingness to fight for this country is also a reflection of his ancestors' willingness to fight for this land. In the last analysis American Indians have always fought for this land.

This study seeks to ascertain the potential influence of television closed-captioning on literacy among deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Television watching has become increasingly popular among deaf and hard-of-hearing children (Hobbs, 2005), and past studies show exciting potential for the use of closed-captioning as a literacy tool (Koskinen, Wilson & Jensema, 1985; Jensema, McCann & Ramsey, 1996). The study took place over 5 weeks and was conducted with 13 middle school students at a school for the deaf. As part of the study, the 13 students were shown 10 different 30-minute captioned video segments of different genres and interests. Prior to and after each showing, the students took pre-and-post tests containing five vocabulary words that appeared in the video shown. (Each post-test contained the same five words appearing in its corresponding pre-test.) In addition, after each showing, the students engaged in classroom discussions on the recently-viewed video program, which were observed and analyzed. The findings--and, in particular, the pre-and post-test scores--showed marked improvement in vocabulary scores after each captioned program viewing. The findings also potentially indicate that closed-captioning can expose deaf and hard-of-hearing children to new and unfamiliar words to which they otherwise would not be exposed. In addition, the post-viewing discussions indicated that, throughout the study, the students employed the tri-level literacy framework, using functional, cultural, and critical literacy. And, by discussing in American Sign Language (ASL) the recently-viewed captions, the students employed linguistic interdependence, or the use of dominant and secondary languages to reinforce development in both. Closed captioning also proved to be a useful source of "triggering" words, which generated experience and funds-of-knowledge recollection among the students. As a part of media literacy, closed-captioning is a motivating tool that teachers can use to activate prior knowledge among deaf students. In sum, this study shows that closed-captioning can positively impact literacy levels among deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Accordingly, closed-captioning can play a useful role in developing literacy, and parents and educators of deaf children should devise ways to incorporate closed-captioning as part of the deaf child's literacy environment.

Described since the beginning of medicine and considered to be the oldest mental illness, depression is understood as a mood, symptom, syndrome and mental disease. It affects a large number of individuals, mainly women during their productive period, in different cultural environments. World Health officials suggest that over 200 million individuals worldwide are affected by one of the forms of depression. Epidemiological and biological studies have revealed the close relationship between depression and several factors, including sex, age, social environment, personality, and genetics. They utilize a single causal model of illness, and neglect the role played by culture in the expression and experience of depressive disorders. As a mood variation, depression is a panhuman phenomenon, but not all cultures recognize depressive disorders as a categorized ailment. Indeed, some cultures (Buddhist) give positive values for depressive complaints and even encourage them; other cultures (Western), however, tolerate depressive symptoms only as acute phenomena. Cross-cultural researchers have discussed the importance of culture for modeling the experience and effects of depression. It is culture which gives positive or negative meaning to depressive phenomena. In this way, anthropologists have questioned the universality of depressive disorders and suggested that depression is a cultural, Western construction. In the second half of the twentieth century, research studies have described the high prevalence rates of depression across cultures. Probably because of emotional and socioeconomic pressures, modern industrialized life exposes individuals to a high risk of depression. Indeed, Western researchers have demonstrated that in each new generation, a greater number of individuals have experienced depression. Contrary to the belief of Brazilian health professionals, lower class African Brazilians are at an increased risk for depressive disorders. The research study for this dissertation was realized in public health services in greater Sao Paulo, Brazil. I interviewed 565 patients and included 105 in the study. All patients presented clinical depression and the majority of them were considered to be chronically impaired. Psychosocial factors such as: gender, age, socioeconomic background, race, migration, marital status, educational background and religious preference were positively associated with the occurrence of depression.

This study describes how literacy is mentally represented as cultural knowledge, referred to by educational and cognitive anthropologists as "cultural models." These models, widely shared among specific social and cultural groups, depict prototypical events in a simplified world. Despite enormous research attention identifying 'multiple literacies,' particularly emphasizing the literacies of those who live at the 'margins,' the one most closely associated with a literary literacy remains prototypical or 'normal' while terms such as "functional" reading are viewed pejoratively. This common sense reasoning is produced by the White, middle class who largely control the society, whose ideological stances of the way literacy 'ought to be' escape serious scrutiny. My research integrates sociocognitive, sociocultural, and sociolinguistic analyses by reconstructing the cultural models of literacy held by 15, White, urban, middle-class parents of kindergarten children. This reconstruction required the use of numerous interviews and interpretation of those interviews. My goal in the analysis was to search for patterns across interviewees and interview passages that would be indicative of shared understandings. I focused on two features of parents' discourse: their use of metaphors and their reasoning. The metaphor analysis identifies three schemas that parents have about literacy. The reasoning analysis provides the underlying story of the cultural model that links the three schemas. This study concludes that when middle-class parents of young children talk about reading, they conceptualize a literary literacy. Through indirect indexicality, expressing this literacy as a prototype sends a covert message which emphasizes moral worth. Such a moral attachment to reading books marks and morally elevates one's social-class membership, which is itself implicitly linked to racial and cultural status. This moral identity distances these middle-class parents from the lower and working classes as well as from the upper class. Furthermore, institutions designed to facilitate the literacy of children and families construct a similar discourse, where the goal of learning to read is secondary to the primary goal of reshaping the moral character of the families, particularly non-mainstream and minority families. This discourse hegemonically constructs as 'immoral' the kinds of literacies which do not match a 'moral literacy.'

This dissertation examines disputing and dispute resolution primarily among married couples in the small city of Saint-Louis, in the northwest comer of Senegal, West Africa. The goal of this project is two-fold: first, to locate "couples disputing" in the context of the culture and systems of power in urban Senegal; second, to analyze how this context is reproduced and contested through disputing and participation in legal (state) and informal (non-state) dispute resolution processes. At another level, this project focuses on determining how and to what degree the law enables and empowers women to resist domestic violence, and, alternatively, allows it to persist. The place of domestic violence is examined through the lens of local culture and ideology, as well as legal and conflict-oriented behavior. Central to this project is the observation of a dynamic interaction between the daily lived reality of couples and intermediate and higher-level institutional frameworks. In other words, love, cooperation, arguing, disdain, beating, rape, separation, divorce, and reconciliation occur inseparably from the authority structures of family and community, selective coercion and empowerment by state and civil bodies, and the distant impositions of international entities. An ethnographic portrait of marital disputing and domestic violence is created using court observations and recorded speech, structured and unstructured interviews, documentary research on court records, and extended participant observation in the community.

In this study, I use aspects of ethnography to explore the role of cultural narratives in the educational experiences and daily life of the Chamorro people. The major method of collecting the data used in this study included official documents, interviews, and written surveys. These different sets of data collection allowed me to cross-check the data to triangulate the evidence and to refine and validate the study. The Chamorro culture and language still exist. However, the majority of homes are practicing an Americanized lifestyle because of the influences from the United States since their invasion in the 1800s. There has been a shift from the teaching of the history, culture, language, values, and stories of the Chamorro people from the home to the school. Data show that informants agree that teachers across all disciplines should implement cultural narratives into their teaching. The University of Guam and the Guam Community College need to add courses specializing in the Chamorro culture and make this part of the requirements for earned degrees in Elementary, Secondary, and Special Education. Participants agree that cultural narratives support Chamorro values and should be visible in all public and private schools from kindergarten through higher education. The main conclusions include (1) Guam does not have a set written policy for Chamorro cultural narratives although it is an accepted and recognized part of the Chamorro curriculum, (2) the Chamorro cultural narratives should be emphasized more and expanded across the standard curriculum for all grade levels, K-12, (3) the community, the family and the school must work more collaboratively and find more innovative ways to maintain the language and culture of the Chamorro people, and (4) Chamorro narratives should be implemented in both public and private schools.

This dissertation documents historical patterns of language planning activities in American deaf education during the 19th century from a sociolinguistic perspective. This comprehensive study begins in the early 1800s, prior to the opening of the first public school for the deaf in Connecticut, tracing and categorizing available literature related to the language of signs and English as the languages of instruction for the deaf through 1900. Borg and Gall's (1989) historical research methodology was employed to ensure that a consistent historical approach was maintained based upon adequate and/or primary references whenever possible. Utilizing Cooper's (1989) language planning framework, each article in this extensive historical collection was categorized according to one of three major types of language planning activities: status planning (SP), acquisition planning (AP), or corpus planning (CP). Until this time, a comprehensive study of this nature has never been pursued in the field of deaf education. As a result, language planning patterns were discovered and a number of myths based upon inaccurate historical evidence that have long misguided educators of the deaf as well as the Deaf community were revealed. More specifically, these myths are related to the belief that 19th century linguistic analysis and scientific descriptions of the language of signs were nonexistent, and that 19th century literature related to the role, use and structure of the language of signs in education was extremely limited. Additionally this study discovered myths related to the status and use of sign language in this country, the history of deaf education programs, the growth and development of oralism and its impact upon existing programs for the deaf and the employment of deaf teachers. It was also revealed that several terms used in the 19th century have been misinterpreted by educational practitioners today who mistakenly believe they are using strategies that were developed long ago. Therefore, this study attempts to 'correct the record' by using primary sources to bring to light a new understanding of the history of deaf education from a language planning perspective.

This research examines the extent to which U.S.-Mexican households invest in the training or education of their female members as an economic strategy in Nogales, Arizona. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, the study aimed at three objectives. One objective was to isolate those factors that influence the household's ability or willingness to invest in education as a strategy in order to increase its economic stability. These factors were observed operating at two levels. At the level of labor market structure are those factors that precondition a household's ability to take the risks associated with long-term investments, such as education. At the household level, were factors that constituted sets of socially defined practices affecting the nature of an individual's productive and reproductive labor. The second objective was to analyze the interrelationship of those factors in an attempt to define comparative models of social interaction that explain how educational goals are negotiated. A final objective was to document the experiences and histories of Mexican-origin women, who in negotiating multiple roles, represent an interface between the labor markets and households; and through this information, offer new interpretations and solutions to the problem of their under-education in a region of global transformation. The results of the study indicate that investment in women's education is significantly increased with household stability. In addition, the level of investment for education of household members is raised with her increased educational attainment. It is argued that social exchange mechanisms can be used to improve the rate of education acquisition for women, and by so doing, empower the household economically.

Collaborative plant breeding (CPB) is an approach to crop improvement incorporating close attention to local biophysical and sociocultural environments and interaction between farmers and plant breeders. CPB may have particular potential for improvement in highly stress-prone environments and for low-resource, traditionally based agricultural communities, situations where more conventional approaches have not been effective. However, CPB will require methodological adjustments or innovations relevant to the smaller scale of its target area and its participatory approach. This study investigated methodologies useful to CPB, working with maize farmers from two communities in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico. A method for rapid estimation of broad sense heritability (H) was applied in farmers' maize fields. H estimates for morphophenological traits were compared with narrow sense heritability (h2) from half sib family analysis of five of the same populations and with published estimates. Absolute values of H were larger than h2 from this study and the literature, however trait ranking was the same as in the literature, but differed from h2 rankings from this study. With an understanding of their limitations, these rapid, economical estimations provide useful information for CPB work on-farm, where empirical information is frequently lacking. Collegial interaction based on the knowledge and skills of farmers and breeders will depend upon understanding those in terms relevant to each group. Methods from social and biological sciences were integrated to understand selection and its consequences from farmers' perspectives but based on concepts used by plant breeders. Information was elicited regarding farmers' perceptions of their maize populations, growing environments and expectations for response to selection. Farmers' decisions about varietal repertoires imply assessments of local genetic and environmental variation. Traits of high and low heritability are distinguished, as reflected in expected selection response. Farmers' selection practices were not always effective yet they understood the reasons for this and had no expectations for selection response in some traits given the methods available. Farmers' statements, practices and perceptions regarding selection and the genetic response of their maize populations to their selection indicate selection objectives different than may be typically assumed, suggesting a role for breeder and farmer collaboration.

This study examines person pronoun use in the discourse of TAs teaching freshman composition. Specifically, it analyzes participant structures and construction of social groups/entities and identities in the classroom talk of four Chinese international TAs (ITAs) and four US TAs. Data are drawn from observation notes, audiotapes, and resulting transcriptions of sixteen class sessions, as well as interviews with each participant. The most common participant structure involves the teacher interacting with the whole class. Analysis of social constructions of you reveals preference for constructing you as the copresent students. I propose that we recognize two categories of you, Individuating and Distributive. These forms function outside the conscious awareness of the participants. Examination of we shows preference for constructing we as the inclusive group of teacher and students. Activities of this group function on a continuum with varying roles and levels of responsibility for teacher and students. Analysis reveals that in the composition classroom the semantic value of the verb write is broader than its core semantic value. Other inclusive wes include the teacher and students but are larger entities. The only common exclusive we is the group of 'experts in the field,' whose membership is in flux; students are invited to be members as they are socialized to the academy. In addition to canonical uses of pronouns, in moments of deictic shift TAs take other voices highlighting pedagogical points. Analysis of social identity through group membership maps illustrates the overlapping nature of group memberships. Some TAs disclose little about themselves in their classroom discourse. This style may be more damaging for ITAs. Analysis reveals that construction of identity as instructor of composition does not include the activity of writing. Statistical analysis of pronoun frequencies shows more consistency among participants as a group than differences between the groups of Chinese ITAs and USTAs. The participants use more yous than other pronouns. The single difference between the groups is the significantly higher frequency of second person plural pronouns for the Chinese TAs. This may reflect the cultural distance between the Chinese TAs and their US undergraduate students.