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The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers
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Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
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Showing 171 to 180 of 180 (0.091 seconds)Spelling suggestions: "subject:"communmunication anda culture."" "subject:"communmunication ando culture.""
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Language use in industryRibbens, Irene Rita 09 1900 (has links)
An immense degree of linguistic diversity exists in the work force where it is possible
for speakers of twenty-three home languages to come into contact on the work floor.
The language of management in industry is predominantly English; while supervisors
are primarily English- or Afrikaans-speaking. Misinterpretation of speaker intent plays
a significant role in communication breakdown that occurs when management or
foremen/supervisors communicate directly with workers who do not understand the
two erstwhile official languages sufficiently or not at all.
Reagan ( 1 986) hypothesized that the greatest number of problems are caused by what
might be termed mutual ignorance, rather than by language difficulties. The aim of the
thesis was therefore to establish what constitutes the mutual ignorance that leads to
misinterpretation of speaker intent.
The Hymesian model, the ethnography of speaking, was used as a model for an
analysis of sociolinguistic features in factories in the Pretoria-WitwatersrandVereeniging
area.
For data collection a process of triangulation was used and qualitative and quantitative
methods used. The Free Attitude Interview technique was used for unstructured
interviews. Other methods include observation, and elicitation procedures such as the
Discourse Completion Test, which were used in structured interviews. Language
preference, forms of address and politeness markers were examined.
Findings revealed that the major differences were found to be in the area of non-verbal
behaviour. Speakers of Afrikaans and English are, on the whole, unaware of politeness
markers used by speakers of African languages. Afrikaans and English speakers are
unaware of offensive non-verbal behaviour used by them. It is revealing that speakers
of the official languages believe this to be the very area that makes communication
possible, but it is the area in which they may cause offence. It was also found that
speakers of African languages have adopted many of the features of the power
dominant group at work.
The findings of the research are important for the development of strategies for
overcoming misinterpretation of speaker intent and negative stereotyping.
This research was undertaken as part of the Human Sciences Research Council's
programme entitled Language in the labour situation. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)
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| 172 |
Digital Age: A Study of Older Adults' User Experiences with TechnologyAllegra W Smith (11104764) 23 July 2021 (has links)
<div>Older adults aged 60+ represent the fastest growing segment of the US population, yet they are rarely seen as users of technology. Members of this age cohort often struggle with the material and conceptual requirements of computing—such as clicking small targets or remembering usernames and passwords for account logins—leading them to adopt technologies like smartphones and social media at much lower rates than their younger counterparts. Digital devices and interfaces are not typically designed with older adult users in mind, even though all users are always aging, and the “silver economy” represents a powerful, and often untapped, market for technological innovations. The little existing research in this area often conflates age with disability, framing elders according to a deficit model. While it is certainly important to consider the impacts that aging bodies have on technology use, they are not the sole factor shaping usage for older age cohorts. Moreover, if we reduce elder users to their “impairments,” we risk stereotyping them in ways that curtail design possibilities, as well as these users’ possibilities for full participation in digital life. For this reason, studies of technology users aged 60+ and their communities are necessary to shed light on the multifaceted needs of older age cohorts, and the interventions into technology design, documentation, and education that can help them reach their digital goals. </div><div><br></div><div>To build an understanding of the unique technology use of a group of the oldest Americans (aged 75+), as well as to assess their needs and desires for digital engagement, I conducted interviews and observations with computer users in a senior living community. Data collection revealed a great diversity of computing purposes and activities, ranging from social functions such as email and messaging, to managing finance and medicine, to art and design applications, and beyond. Moreover, participants’ accounts of how and where they developed their computing skills shed light on their motivations for engaging with technology, as well as their fears of technology’s intrusiveness. Analysis of participants’ performance on a series of digital tasks yielded insights into physical and cognitive factors, as well as a clear divide in forms of knowledge and mental models that older adults draw upon when attempting to engage with technology. To conclude, I provide recommendations for technology design and education, as well as future research to account for age as a factor mediating user experience.</div>
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| 173 |
A sociolinguistic investigation of gender stereotypes in AIDS discourseVan de Wouwer, Pascale Martine 30 November 2003 (has links)
This research investigates how the speech community living in Maputo city uses language in relation to HIV/AIDS and studies related stigmas which impede women's access to HIV/AIDS counselling services. My hypothesis is that frequent use of gender stereotypes in AIDS discourse aims at stigmatising women as AIDS propagators, while minimizing male sexual transgressions in the AIDS crisis. Interpretation of primary data collected via focus group discussions and interviews is done with five different approaches that study respectively: social meanings and representations of AIDS embedded in context, the stigmatising process correlating gender stereotypes and discrimination against women, stereotypical speech attitudes and speech mechanism as well as the functions and effects of stereotyping. My conclusion is that deeply rooted gender barriers are to be removed in order to combat the social plague of AIDS and that ethnography of communication offers interesting models for development projects that can initiate behavioural changes through speech. / Linguistics / M.A. (Sociolinguistics)
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| 174 |
The relevance of the speech act theory to Buzani KubawoScheckle, Linda Ann 10 1900 (has links)
Austin's Speech Act Theory is a valuable tool for the
analysis of a literary text. In interaction, the intentionand
purpose-success of linguistic communication can be gauged
by establishing whether participants have met felicity
conditions and have respected maxims. When the Co-operative
Principle is ignored, special effects are achieved and
receivers can only make sense of utterances through
implicature and inferences based on background knowledge and
mutual contextual beliefs.
In the drama, Buzani kubawo, characters interact on four
levels of time in space and place. They reveal themselves
and convey theme through their speech and actions. Conflict
is entrenched by lines of force drawn between opposing
characters and between sub-worlds contrasted. Cohesion,
determined by plot structure, and form, expressed on the
endophoric and exophoric levels, give meaning to the drama.
The micro-analysis of the wedding scene illustrates how
communication can misfire should the playwright allow it! / African Languages / M.A. (African languages)
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| 175 |
Raw phones: the domestication of mobile phones amongst young adults in Hooggenoeg, GrahamstownSchoon, Alette Jeanne January 2011 (has links)
This dissertation examines the meanings that young adults give to their mobile phones in the township of Hooggenoeg in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. The research was predominantly conducted through individual interviews with nine young adults as well as two small gender-based focus groups. Participant observation as well as a close reading of the popular mobile website Outoilet also contributed to the study. Drawing on Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley’s (1992) work into the meanings attributed to the mobile phone through the domestication processes of appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion, the study argues for the heterogeneous roles defined for mobile phones as they are integrated into different cultural contexts. The term ‘raw phones’ in the thesis title refers to a particular cultural understanding of respectability in mainly working-class ‘coloured’¹ communities in South Africa, as described by Salo (2007) and Ross (2010), in which race, class and gender converge in the construction of the respectable person’s opposite – a lascivious, almost certainly female, dependent, black and primitive ‘raw’ Other. The study argues that in Hooggenoeg, the mobile phone becomes part of semantic processes that define both respectability and ‘rawness’ , thus helping to reproduce social relations in this community along lines of race, class and gender. A major focus of the study is the instant messaging application MXit, and how it assists in the social production of space, by helping to constitute both private and dispersed network spaces of virtual communication, in a setting where social life is otherwise very public, and social networks outside of cyberspace are densely contiguous and localised. In contrast, gossip mobile website Outoilet seems to intensify this contiguous experience of space. My findings contest generalised claims, predominantly from the developed world, which assert that the mobile phone promotes mobility and an individualised society, and show that in particular contexts it may in fact promote immobility and create a collective sociability.
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| 176 |
A sociolinguistic investigation of gender stereotypes in AIDS discourseVan de Wouwer, Pascale Martine 30 November 2003 (has links)
This research investigates how the speech community living in Maputo city uses language in relation to HIV/AIDS and studies related stigmas which impede women's access to HIV/AIDS counselling services. My hypothesis is that frequent use of gender stereotypes in AIDS discourse aims at stigmatising women as AIDS propagators, while minimizing male sexual transgressions in the AIDS crisis. Interpretation of primary data collected via focus group discussions and interviews is done with five different approaches that study respectively: social meanings and representations of AIDS embedded in context, the stigmatising process correlating gender stereotypes and discrimination against women, stereotypical speech attitudes and speech mechanism as well as the functions and effects of stereotyping. My conclusion is that deeply rooted gender barriers are to be removed in order to combat the social plague of AIDS and that ethnography of communication offers interesting models for development projects that can initiate behavioural changes through speech. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Sociolinguistics)
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| 177 |
The relevance of the speech act theory to Buzani KubawoScheckle, Linda Ann 10 1900 (has links)
Austin's Speech Act Theory is a valuable tool for the
analysis of a literary text. In interaction, the intentionand
purpose-success of linguistic communication can be gauged
by establishing whether participants have met felicity
conditions and have respected maxims. When the Co-operative
Principle is ignored, special effects are achieved and
receivers can only make sense of utterances through
implicature and inferences based on background knowledge and
mutual contextual beliefs.
In the drama, Buzani kubawo, characters interact on four
levels of time in space and place. They reveal themselves
and convey theme through their speech and actions. Conflict
is entrenched by lines of force drawn between opposing
characters and between sub-worlds contrasted. Cohesion,
determined by plot structure, and form, expressed on the
endophoric and exophoric levels, give meaning to the drama.
The micro-analysis of the wedding scene illustrates how
communication can misfire should the playwright allow it! / African Languages / M.A. (African languages)
|
| 178 |
Informing practice and sabotaging membership growth: an ideological rhetorical analysis of discursive materials from Kiwanis InternationalStokes, Tonja LaFaye 08 1900 (has links)
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study utilizes an ideological rhetorical analysis, applying Marxist and
Feminist lenses, to artifacts from Kiwanis International, a prominent global service organization. These artifacts are: "The Permanent Objects of Kiwanis," guiding principles that were codified in 1924; "The Man Who Was God": a brief story about transforming from Kiwanis member to "Kiwanian," published in 1935 and 1985, respectively; and the 2012 "Join the Club" Membership Brochure.
The rhetoric of discursive materials is one of the most salient representations of group ideology. In turn, ideology, particularly when it reflects and perpetuates social hegemony, has a normalizing effect on itself. Ideology shapes identity; identity shapes strategies to set process norms that create social cohesion. Norms of social cohesion become culture; culture reinforces ideology. When these components mirror social hegemony and replicate hegemonic power, they create institutions, like service organizations; these institutions then legitimate and normalize positions of social privilege. Ultimately, ideology and social hegemony reveal themselves through organizational and member practices and organizationally-produced discursive material.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the historical, socio-political, and socio-cultural roots of Kiwanis International in order to draw logical conclusions about the organization's ideology for the purposes of understanding how that ideology contributes to, justifies, and perpetuates an unconscious, neo-colonial view of philanthropy. Kiwanis International, on an organizational (macro) level and at the club/member (micro) level, is structured around positions of racial, ethnic, socio-economic, linguistic, gender, and religious privilege, and so mimics the hegemonic power centers and dominant ideologies of society at large. In turn, the products and practices of the organization reflect these positions of privilege and inhibits the organization's ability to attract traditionally excluded, disenfranchised, or under-represented groups.
Understanding that it is a contentious and futile to simply point where power relations exist and assert themselves, this study emphasizes where "othering" occurs in hopes of mitigating relations of domination and oppression between Kiwanis members and perspective members, and of moving forward the interests of those who have not traditionally been counted among Kiwanis' members but whose presence could save the organization.
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| 179 |
Drama as an instructional tool to develop cultural competency among learners in multicultural secondary schools in South AfricaMoore, Glynnis Leigh 03 1900 (has links)
Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Comparative Education)
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| 180 |
Drama as an instructional tool to develop cultural competency among learners in multicultural secondary schools in South AfricaMoore, Glynnis Leigh 03 1900 (has links)
Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Comparative Education)
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