The principal purpose of this essay is to research how the development of needlework education interacts and interconnects with consumption patterns. Iceland has been used as a case for this study but any country would be applicable. The point of departure is the assumption that when a society develops more and more into being a consumer society, the needlework education also will change – in drastic forms. And that tracing a development towards consumerism can be traced in the curricula regarding this specific subject. People’s changing attitude towards spending, wasting, and an extravagant living is an important feature which explains the shift between non-consumer societies to a consumer society. Society’s outlook on these features is best reflected by that policy the institutions society uses to form its citizens’ desirable (consumer) behavior. In understanding the development from a non-consumerist society to a consumer society the study on the Icelandic syllabi for needlework and textile education plays a prominent part. A presentation on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the period of time in question has also been used in order to see the general increase of the standard of living and rise of consumerism in Iceland. Also numbers on trade and unemployment have been enclosed in order to give a more telling picture of the development and the results. The spatial imprint of the development of the Icelandic educational system and the development of syllabi for the textile handicraft subject show that an established consumer society firstly can be found in Iceland somewhere between 1960 and 1977, thus slightly ensuing the most immediate period after the World War II. A society that educates its young ones to darn, mend, and knit with the explicit motive to help deprived homes and states that this is a necessary virtue for future housewives cannot rightly be called a consumer society. It is also worth mentioning that the subject was after this breakthrough also available for boys. Furthermore, this seems to coincide with the so called “haftatímanum”, the restriction era, which lasted from 1930 to 1960. During this time the Icelandic government controlled the market having an especially harsh policy on the import of consumer goods, with product rationing as a result. Both of these two matters - the syllabi for the textile handicraft subject and the haftatímanum - had an anaesthetized impact on the development of the Icelandic consumer society.

La presente es una investigación y aplicación metodológica que tiene como objetivo general el estudio del discurso publicitario peruano contemporáneo asociado a relaciones sociales de la sociedad de consumo. El tema se encargará de mostrar, exponer y estudiar las diferencias discursivas y narrativas entre los nuevos modos de producción publicitaria (propios del hiperconsumismo) y los modos “tradicionales” publicitarios (propios de la sociedad de consumo) mediante el estudio semiótico de las campañas de Inca Kola (motor y motivo) & BCP (decisiones de la vida) en el Perú del año 2011 como representantes de tales discursos. La investigación considera el estudio de las relaciones discontinuas del consumo como principal factor que determina la significación de la publicidad. Partiendo de esta primera noción y adoptando la tesis de una figura ternaria de la sociedad de consumo (la fase 1 (1880-1945), la fase 2 (1950-1985) y la fase 3 (1985 - ¿?)), es que se relacionará por tanto a la fase 1 y 2 con la llamada “publicidad tradicional” y la fase 3 con la “publicidad no tradicional” o hiperpublicidad. Estos tres tipos de discurso no se eliminan, sino que conviven y funcionan en la comunicación contemporánea adecuándose a los códigos sociales logrando modular su sentido. La investigación sustenta, partiendo de esta discontinuidad o cambio en las prácticas de consumo, que se han suscitado modificaciones en la comunicación publicitaria actual ocasionando que la narrativa y discurso de la publicidad tradicional produzca lecturas y sentidos contrarios o tangenciales respecto a dicha comunicación publicitaria. / This is a research and methodological application that has as a general objective the study of contemporary Peruvian advertising discourse associated with social relations of the consumer society. The theme will be responsible for showing, exposing and studying the discursive and narrative differences between the new modes of advertising production (typical of hyper-consumerism) and the "traditional" advertising modes (typical of the consumer society) through the semiotic study of advertising campaigns Inca Kola (motor and motive) & BCP (life decisions) in Peru in 2011 as representatives of such speeches. The investigation considers the study of the discontinuous relations of consumption as the main factor that determines the significance of advertising. Starting from this first notion and adopting the thesis of a ternary figure of the consumer society, namely phase 1 (1880-1945), phase 2 (1950-1985) and phase 3 (1985 -?). Is which will therefore relate to phase 1 and 2 with the so-called "traditional advertising" and phase 3 with "non-traditional advertising" or hyper-advertising. These three types of discourse are not eliminated, but they coexist and function in contemporary communication, adapting to the codes and social foundations and modulating their meaning. The research is based on this discontinuity or change in consumer practices that have led to changes in the current advertising communication causing the narrative and discourse of traditional advertising to produce readings and contrary or tangential views regarding such advertising communication. / Tesis

In my earlier work, ‘First steps towards a rhetorical hermeneutics of literary interpretation’ (2006), I argued that academic reading takes the form of an argument between readers. Four serious weaknesses in that account are its elision of the distinction between reading and discourse on reading, its inattention to non-academic reading, its exclusive focus on ‘interpretation’ as if this constituted the whole of reading or of discourse on reading, and its failure to theorise the object of literary reading, ie. the work of literature. The current work aims to address all of these problems, together with those created by certain other approaches to literary reading, with the overall objective of clearing the ground for more empirical studies. It exemplifies its points with examples drawn primarily from non-academic public discourse on literature (newspapers, magazines, and the internet), though also from other sources (such as reading groups and undergraduate literature seminars). It takes a particular (though not an exclusive) interest in two specific instances of non-academic reception: the widespread reception of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses as an attack on Islam, and the minority reception of Peter Jackson’s film trilogy The Lord of the Rings as a narrative of homosexual desire. The first chapter of this dissertation critically surveys the fields of reception study and discourse analysis, and in particular the crossover between them. It finds more productive engagement with the textuality of response in media reception study than in literary reception study. It argues that the application of discourse analysis to reception data serves to problematise, rather than to facilitate, reception study, but it also emphasises the problematic nature of discourse analysis itself. Each of the three subsequent chapters considers a different complex of problems. The first is the literary work, and its relation to its producers and its consumers: Chapter 2 takes the form of a discourse upon the notions of ‘speech act’ and ‘authorial intention’ in relation to literature, carries out an analysis of early public responses to The Satanic Verses, and puts in a word for non-readers by way of a conclusion. The second is the private experience of reading, and its paradoxical status as an object of public representation: Chapter 3 analyses representations of private responses to The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, and concludes with the argument that, though these representations cannot be identical with private responses, they are cannot be extricated from them, either. The third is the impossibility of distinguishing rhetoric from cognition in the telling of stories about reading: Chapter 4 argues that, though anecdotal or autobiographical accounts of reading cannot be taken at face value, they can be taken both as attempts to persuade and as attempts to understand; it concludes with an analysis of a magazine article that tells a number of stories about reading The Satanic Verses – amongst other things. Each of these chapters focuses on non-academic reading as represented in written text, but broadens this focus through consideration of examples drawn from spoken discourse on reading (including in the liminal academic space of the undergraduate classroom). The last chapter mulls over the relationship between reading and discourse of reading, and hesitates over whether to wrap or tear this dissertation’s arguments up.