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An investigation into the development and evaluation of a controlled language for English language technical documentationCrabbe, Stephen J. January 2012 (has links)
The majority of existing controlled languages for English language technical documentation for industrial and consumer electronics are in-house, proprietary systems. As a result, limited information or research has been published and disseminated about them. This has created knowledge gaps that are addressed in this thesis. First, the thesis provides a detailed description of existing controlled languages with a stated aim to improve technical documentation comprehensibility and readability for native and non-native English users. This is achieved through obtaining information, much of which was previously unavailable or difficult to obtain, about their rule sets and lexicons. This fills a gap in knowledge about existing controlled languages. Second, the thesis analyses and synthesises the best-practice features of the text in modern, quality technical documentation that have been identified in government, academic and professional literature as contributing to comprehensibility (the cognitive use of the text to process and identify information) and readability (the physical use of the text to visually scan and recognise information). It then uses the identified linguistic, organisational and visual features of the text to analyse the rule sets from existing controlled languages. The main finding of the analysis is that the existing controlled languages fail to address the visual features of the text despite their prominence in the literature as contributing primarily to readability. The thesis seeks to address this failure to adopt a holistic approach to the improvement of technical documentation in existing controlled languages by developing a new, broader controlled language for consumer electronics with comprehensibility and readability-oriented rules that fully address the linguistic, organisational and visual features of the text. This is named COED (an acronym for Controlled English Documentation). Third, the thesis provides a detailed description of a study to evaluate the effect of applying the comprehensibility and readability-oriented rules from COED to extracts from existing technical documentation for consumer electronics. The findings clearly show that the application of the comprehensibility-oriented rules (that aim to make it easier to cognitively process and identify information) allows the native and non-native English users in the study to locate and understand information more accurately. With the additional application of the readability-oriented rules (that aim to make it easier to visually scan and recognise information), the native and non-native English users in the study are also able to locate and understand information more quickly. The study provides an encouraging demonstration of the potential of COED to improve both the accuracy and speed with which information in technical documentation for consumer electronics can be located and understood by native and non-native English users. It also fills a gap in research knowledge about controlled languages.
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Norms and Greek foreign policy : 1981-2000.Arghyrou, Arghyris 12 May 2004 (has links)
From the end of WWII to the end of the Cold War Greek foreign policy was shaped by the dynamics of the Cold War. The major issues facing Greek foreign policy decision makers in the post-cold war era are its relations with its Northern neighbors, Albania, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), and Bulgaria, its relations with Turkey, and Greece's future in the European Union. Although the three issues overlap there is consensus among the Greek political elite that the relationship with Turkey is the most pressing since Turkey poses the most immediate security threat. In the last twenty-five years the two countries came to the verge of war three times over the continental shelf in the Aegean and Cyprus. The latest crisis was in 1996. Since then Greek policy makers have embarked on a conciliatory road towards Turkey that has gained momentum in the last three years. The purpose of this dissertation is to describe the process of the recent change in Greek foreign policy vis-a-vis Turkey, as reflected in the words and deeds (speeches, interviews, statements, policies) of the Greek policy makers. In addition, the study seeks to understand how this change is related to rules existing at the global, regional, and domestic levels. The central question to be asked is: how do rules existing at these levels regulate and constitute the foreign policy process of the Greek government. I utilize the theoretical insights and concepts provided by constructivism in order to carry out my research. The analysis establishes the relationship between the agents (Greek foreign policy makers) and the various rules and explores this relationship as an ongoing process by ascertaining the social context within which this process is unfolding.
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The impact of the changing weaving industry on the culture and socioeconomic development of maya women in GuatemalaAshby, Kathleen A. 24 June 1994 (has links)
Growing demand for handwoven Maya textiles from Guatemala parallels recent international fascination with Maya civilization. This thesis surveys the effects of increases in demands for artisan textiles in Guatemala, and explores the reactions of women involved in Aj Quen, a weavers' association. The hypothesis is that the well-being of Maya women depends on their participation in the association. This is tested by using indicators of the weavers' attitudes defined as their "well-being" regarding 1) health, 2) education levels, 3) child care practices, and 4) economic stability. Interviews were conducted with 127 Maya women. Data were documented, providing a crucial missing link in the current literature of "women in Guatemala."
The results of this study yield baseline data demonstrating that health and child care practices are not directly related to women's participation in the association. Their education levels increased as a direct result of working with the association, as did economic stability, although less consistently.
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Translation in Lydia Davis's workEvans, Jonathan January 2011 (has links)
This thesis analyses the position of translations in the work of the American writer and translator Lydia Davis. Davis has been publishing stories and translations since the early 1970s, and has translated works by Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Marcel Proust among others. This thesis argues that her translations form a graft onto the body of her own fiction; they are both part of her work and retain their identity as being written by someone else. The first chapter builds on theory from Translation Studies and literary criticism to formulate a theory of translation as a form of writing that creates texts which are recognised to be equivalent to another, pre-existing text in another language. The second chapter posits three main tendencies for how an author’s translations may be seen to interact with their other writings: no relationship; training or influence; and dialogue. The next four chapters provide case studies which analyse Davis’s translations in relation to other texts by Davis and the author she translated. Chapter three focuses on Blanchot, who is an important figure for Davis. Chapter four analyses Davis’s relationship of influence and dialogue with Leiris. Chapter five posits that Davis creates a dialogue with Proust in her translation and her novel. Chapter six questions Davis’s rejection of some of her translations as ‘work-for-hire’, focusing on Léon-Paul Fargue, whose writing is only superficially similar to Davis’s, and Danièle Sallenave, whom Davis rewrites in her own novel. The final two chapters analyse how Davis’s own stories use translation and similar intertextual techniques, questioning the boundaries of translation as a practice. These stories make translation a central part of Davis’s work, as it operates within the structure of some of her stories as well as in the more conventional sense of her translations of other writers.
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Considerations in designing and evaluating material aimed at meeting the training and development needs of prospective teachers undertaking intensive initial ELT teacher education programmesWatkins, Peter January 2011 (has links)
There has been very little research on the effects of initial teacher education in English language teaching (ELT), especially in the context of short intensive pre-service courses. Even more scarce has been any published evaluation of material aimed at helping teachers in such contexts. This essay aims to begin to fill that gap by drawing on the author’s experience to describe and analyze the processes that led to the design and subsequent evaluation of materials aimed at such a learning context. In so doing, it develops and applies a methodology for post-use evaluation of materials and sets out opportunities for further research. The teacher education materials referred to are submitted with the essay, along with a published evaluation of one of those books, and other related publications. This essay contextualizes pre-publication evaluation procedures within the need to ensure that teacher education material is based on theoretically justifiable foundations. To that end, it briefly reviews trends in ELT teacher education and outlines the need for evidence based decisions on content before describing and commenting on pre-publication evaluation processes. The essay sets out the methodological decisions made when carrying out one published post-use evaluation before summarizing the findings and discussion of that study. It then sets out alternative post-use evaluation procedures and goes on to suggest principled criteria by which initial teacher education material can be effectively evaluated. The essay concludes by setting out two types of contribution to knowledge made by the total submission. One contribution is based on substantive findings from research. This includes the insight that early-career teachers value and benefit from discussing teaching with teachers of a similar status. Also, prospective teachers use teacher education material selectively and they value instruction in core competencies. In addition, it was found that the emotional aspects of socializing into the profession are often over-looked in initial teacher education. The second contribution to knowledge is procedural in nature. It seems axiomatic that, as part of a thorough quality control process, material should be evaluated after it has been used and this submission is based on a description, analysis and further development of a rigorous, post-use, public evaluation of teacher education material. As far as I know, this was the first systematic evaluation of teacher education material to be published that tried to gauge the impacts of specific material on users.
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Performing Gaia : towards a deep ecocritical poetics and politics of performanceSomers, Gareth James January 2011 (has links)
This thesis develops a deep ecocritical model of performance analysis. It examines historical and social structures. It asks if, in the light of climate change and ecological degradation, new ways of looking at our everyday performances in life and in art might provide clues about how we recalibrate our perspectives and practices in relation to the more-than-human world. It is concerned with critical analysis within non-theatrical and to lesser extent within theatrical performance contexts. It integrates study of representation, embodiment, landscape, materiality and metaphor to investigate relations and homologies [correspondences of position value, structure or function with shared roots] in performance relations between the human and the more-than-human spheres. It identifies developments within ecologically oriented performance practice and braids ecosophic positions to overcome methodological problems caused by dualist epistemologies. It argues that western metaphysics, hermeneutics and technological development contribute to positive feedback wherein we have become increasingly alienated from the more-than-human world. It charts progressive historical estrangement, objectification, enclosure, colonisation, de-materialisation and objectification of the more-than-human world. It does this to illuminate our anti-ecological and ecological performances in life, ‘culture’ and art.
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Tout! in context 1968-1973 : French radical press at the crossroads of far left, new movements and countercultureMcGrogan, Manus Christian January 2010 (has links)
With this thesis on the aftermath of 1968 in France, I have recreated the moment and environment of the libertarian paper Tout! Usually associated in historiography with the birth of the gay liberation movement in France, my initial research revealed its influence as more penetrative and revealing of the diverse left and new, countercultural movements of the early 1970s. I sought the testimony of former militants, writers and artists to uncover historical detail and motivations, and consulted relevant textual archives, aiming to situate and examine the paper within a number of interrelated contexts. Results showed the paper's historical touchstones of scurrilous Revolutionary papers and 19th/20th caricature typified by L’Assiette au Beurre. The parallel paths of Dada, surrealism and situationism, and the Marxisant legacy of the Russian Revolution, foreshadowed the blend of cultural and political in Tout! May „68 was the crucible of militant, festive currents and speech, a time of rupture and reorientation for the various activists later at Tout!, the paper Action and posters of the Beaux-Arts inspiring new forms of agit-prop. In the aftermath of 1968, mao-libertarian current Vive La Révolution converged with an ex-Trotskyist, faculty-based group seeking cultural revolution. Figureheads Roland Castro and Guy Hocquenghem oversaw the merger of these groups and outlooks, coinciding with the launch of Tout! as a „mass‟ paper. With a new look and „new political attitude‟, influenced by Italian radicals and the US underground, Tout! challenged all forms of authority in Pompidou‟s France, climaxing with the eruption of gay liberation in no.12. It was Tout!‟s role in promoting „autonomous‟ gender, sexual and youth movements that led to the disaggregation of Vive la Révolution, and despite successful sales the paper came to a sudden end in the summer of 1971. Like the rest of the far left, Vive La Révolution and Tout! suffered State repression, but evolved from a „proletarian‟ Marxist critique of capitalism to attack the life routine of work, school and the family, judging the political Right and the Parti Communiste Français as equally reactionary. The paper testified to the importance of international, indeed transnational activities of the far left in the early 1970s. It provided a formidable impulse for the gay liberation movement FHAR, and foreshadowed the first feminist paper Le Torchon Brûle. As such it was a crucial press conduit for American radical left forms and practices, spearheading a shift from gauchisme to the growing counterculture. Tout! exemplified a brief, intense and fast-changing moment in French subcultural history and set new trends in left political journalism for the 1970s.
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Reactions to the Soviet interventions in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, amongst French and Italian Communist Party members in the shipbuilding towns of La Seyne and MonfalconeHaig, Fiona January 2011 (has links)
1956 was punctuated by a series of events that shook the world, and is seen as having been not only a watershed for the international communist movement but also a turning point in the Cold War. This thesis is an in-depth study of a specific and under-researched aspect of French and Italian communism i.e. the responses of ordinary Communist Party members of what were the two largest and most important non-ruling Communist Parties to these historic events. Its aim has been to recover thoughts, feelings and responses of those 'on the ground' to these events via a series of personal interviews supported by national, regional and local archive evidence in a multiple case study.
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A framework for designing and evaluating ESP materials for English and communication skills in the doctor-patient interviewMcCullagh, Marie January 2015 (has links)
Effective medical consultations make an important contribution to positive outcomes for patients. For the large number of international doctors working in English speaking countries, deficits in language and communication skills can be a barrier to this effectiveness. This reflective report evaluates the effectiveness of 'Good practice' (McCullagh and Wright, 2008), a course book and related components, in addressing those deficits. The book filled a gap in the English for Medical Purposes literature, by providing learning materials with a clear focus on communicating in the doctor patient interview. Existing tools for evaluation which these materials can make to improving doctors' skills and knowledge.
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France in Rhodesia : French policy and perceptions throughout the era of decolonisationWarson, Joanna Frances January 2013 (has links)
This thesis analyses French policies towards and perceptions of the British colony of Rhodesia, from the immediate aftermath of the Second World War up until the territory’s independence as Zimbabwe in 1980. Its main objective is to challenge notions of exceptionality associated with Franco-African relations, by investigating French engagement with a region outside of its traditional sphere of African influence. The first two chapters explore the development of Franco-Rhodesian relations in the eighteen years following the establishment of a French Consulate in Salisbury in 1947. Chapter One examines the foreign policy mind-set that underpinned French engagement with Rhodesia at this time, whilst Chapter Two addresses how this mind-set operated in practice. The remaining three chapters explore the evolution of France’s presence in this British colony in the fourteen and a half years following the white settlers’ Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Chapter Three sets out the particularities of the post-1965 context, in terms of France’s foreign policy agenda and the situation on the ground in Central Southern Anglophone Africa. Chapter Four analyses how the policies of state and non-state French actors were implemented in Rhodesia after 1965, and Chapter Five assesses the impact of these policies for France’s relations with Africa, Britain and the United States, as well as for the end of European rule in Rhodesia. This thesis argues that France’s African vision began to expand to include Anglophone Africa, not in the post colonial or post-Cold War eras, but immediately following the Second World War, thus challenging the view that France was solely concerned with its own African Empire at this time. Throughout, Rhodesia was intertwined with France’s policies towards Francophone Africa in terms of motivations, methods and men. This, in turn, had far reaching consequences for France’s presence on the African continent, its relationship with “les Anglo-Saxons” and the course of Rhodesian decolonisation.
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