Akademisk avhandling--Historisk-filologiska sektionen--Helsingfors, 1989.

Thesis (M.S. in Computer Science)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2009. / Thesis Advisor(s): Martell, Craig H. "September 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on November 9, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 232-243).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1982. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-139).

Thesis (M.Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-76) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Psychology, December 1999. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 254-268). Also available via the Internet.

Coherence and incoherence in conversation refer to the relationship between adjacent parts of the conversation (e.g., between one statement and the next, or between one topic and the next). A clear, relevant connection is called coherent; the absence of an obvious connection is incoherent. Coherence and incoherence are therefore central to any analysis of discourse, but, despite many existing theories of coherence and incoherence, there is little empirical knowledge of these phenomena. This dissertation continues the study of coherence began in my master's thesis. In it I propose three axioms to describe the structure of coherence throughout conversations: I. Both coherence and incoherence are necessary for conversation to occur. II. Conversations optimize coherence both globally and locally. III. Coherence is optimized at several different, hierarchical levels of conversation. Because there is already evidence that coherence is maximized at a global level (Black, 1986/1988), I chose to test whether coherence is optimized at a local level. Specifically, local optimization of sequential coherence relations would consist of a series of alternations between coherence and incoherence. I also sought to test this hypothesis at several different levels of conversation (statement, topic, and macrotopic). In order to test the hypothesis, it was necessary to develop a method for segmenting conversations into statements, topics, and macrotopics and a method for measuring the degree of coherence between these segments. Using the guidelines developed, two judges were able to segment conversations at all three levels with high reliability. Similarly, other sets of raters used a magnitude estimation procedure to scale the degree of coherence between units at each of these levels and again achieved high reliability. It was also necessary to develop a time-series analytic technique for verifying the predicted series of alternations in short sequences of data, because existing methods are not applicable to small Ns. The new statistic is based on the geometric properties of a particular data set: it compares the obtained sum of the interior angles facing toward the mean of the data series with the sum of the interior angles facing the mean of all other permutations of these data points. Three getting-acquainted conversations were obtained; these yielded 325 statements (the spoken equivalent of a sentence). After segmentation, coherence scaling, and application of the optimization statistic, there was moderate support for the hypothesis of local optimization. Three quarters of the topics contained sequences of propositions with a sum of interior angles that was smaller than the sum of half of the alternative permutations. At the macrotopic level, however, the hypothesis was not supported. The contributions of this dissertation are (1) an explicit, parsimonious, discourse-based theory of coherence; (2) objective methods for measuring and studying coherence; and (3) a new time-series statistic; and (4) encouraging but not yet convincing evidence for the theory. / Graduate

I propose that education should not be a separately studied phenomenon, removed in analyses from other knowledge-construction contexts. To enhance this proposition I gather my data on experiential claims to knowledge from a range of contexts. I consider the main proponents of traditional research in education and attempt to show how traditional models of experience in the acquisition of knowledge are based upon a partial adoption of the participants' categories themselves. Then, an alternative model of experience is introduced -a discursive model based upon all the concerns of participants, not now seeing them as 'truths' but as positions. We do not now talk of knowledge being acquired, but rather as being constructed. The form and function of the invocation, of the legitimation and of the countering of experiential claims are examined using a discourse/conversation analytic approach, greatly influenced by the work of Harvey Sacks, which was developed in the 1960s and 1970s (although I give less attention to the specifics of talk organization than he does). Garfinkel's ethnomethodology was the main precursory influence on this kind of discourse/conversation analysis. Also, philosophical views on language, developed by the later Wittgenstein, were influential to it. Knowledge and experience are viewed not as possessions of individuals or groups of individuals, but as constituted locally in talk, through cultural resources which we, as humans, have at our disposal. Such constructions are context-sensitive and reflexively context-constitutive. Accountabilities are addressed by the participants to the production of unitary or multiple versions of knowledge; to the production of consensual or conflicting versions of knowledge (see Chapter 3). In this thesis, language is regarded not as a reflector of reality or psychological processes, not as a medium or tool, but as a topic in itself, itself constituted in the realities it constructs. Viewed from this perspective, experience has many dimensions, all warranting the validity of the knowledge claim and the experience; dimensions of participation in, interpretation of, category entitlement to, construction of, knowledge, on the part of the experiencer and subsequent tellers; as well as the dimension of passivity of the experiencer in the face of objective 'reality'. Viewed from the perspective of the traditional model of experience, formerly explicated, the co-existence of some of these dimensions of experience often becomes untenable.