This dissertation offers a new exploration of the relationship between geographic awareness and literary realism in Alice Munro’s depictions of female identity-formation. It demonstrates how Munro, the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, uses the discourse of place and positionality not just as a Canadian regionalist writer, but also as a writer implicitly concerned with the paradigms of intersectionality as advanced in Susan Stanford Friedman’s 1998 book Mappings and in the recent work of feminist geographers. These theories shed light on Munro’s efforts to represent her female protagonists’ individual and communal identities authentically. Following an introduction in which I explain how Munro’s cautious statements about feminism relate to these recent geopolitical theories, my chapters examine groupings of Munro’s stories through concepts associated with locational feminism. Chapter 2 compares Munro to one of her major influences, the American regionalist writer Willa Cather, through the concept of geopolitical space. Chapter 3 applies this concept more closely to Munro’s portrayals of female maturation in Lives of Girls and Women and The Moons of Jupiter, focusing on a thematic tension between belonging and alienation. Munro sees women’s dilemmas of identity as deeply connected to their sense of place and their definitions of their home places and positions. Chapter 4 examines how issues of place and space, especially regarding what Munro calls “home ground,” affect the construction of relational identity in the title story of Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and in several stories from the collection Runaway. Chapter 5 demonstrates how Munro employs the tropes of women’s mobility and travel -- usually seen as tools of empowerment -- to depict their unsettled lives, characterized by instability, insecurity and imbalance. Because these experiences have to do with multiple nodes of difference, Munro’s depictions of mobility as a mixed reality overlap with recent theories of transnational feminism. Chapter 6 deals with the question of narrative agency vis-à-vis locational identity and positionality in her collection, Who Do You Think You Are? In sum, the dissertation argues that Munro’s realistic focus on women’s lives and experiences, and her emphasis on strategic place-awareness rather than the goal of equality, does carry an inspiring message to her readers about the nature of empowerment in today’s world.

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Individual events within courtroom discourse, such as lawyer-witness interactions have been studied extensively, particularly within a framework of powerful vs. powerless language (Adelsward, 1987; Archer, 2006; Bogoch, 2000; Eades, 2010; Fuller, 1993; Gnisci & Bakeman, 2007; Hobbs, 2007; Keating, 2009; Penman, 1990; Philips, 1984; Roberts, 1990). However, this thesis will show that courtroom discourse is sufficiently unique to warrant a distinct framework. It will also explore the explanatory power of a Courtroom Discourse Verbal Performance framework influenced by Verbal Art as Performance (Bauman, 1977). In particular this work will create a framework (Courtroom Discourse Verbal Performance) that explains the sociolinguistic situation of the entire courtroom trial instead of simply one small part (i.e. questioning a witness, entering a plea, etc.). This framework allows for the inclusion of the whole courtroom discourse event into a single unifying idea of courtroom discourse as performance. The peculiar sociolinguistic interactions of various people within courtroom discourse are explained as restrictions on the interactions of roles within the performance. Courtroom discourse data gathered from the Provo Fourth District Court is presented and analyzed as supporting evidence.

This dissertation explores the interplay of grammar and context in the interpretation of modal words like ought, necessary, and need. The empirical foci of the discussion are patterns in the use of strong and weak necessity modals in conversation, and the interpretation of syntactically and semantically versatile modals like need in the various grammatical configurations they appear in across languages. It is argued that a sensitivity to collective commitments in a conversation is necessary for understanding certain aspects of modal strength, in particular the traditional distinction between strong and weak necessity modals (exhibited by must and ought to in English). It is proposed that strong necessity modals can only reference priorities that are presupposed to be collectively committed to, whereas weak necessity modals are evaluated with respect to a mixed bag of priorities, crucially including ones that are presupposed not to be collectively committed to. A domain restriction approach to weak necessity is adopted, following a demonstration that it is superior to a number of probabilistic alternatives. Modal verbs and adjectives that take both infinitival and nominal complements are shown to pattern alike across languages in requiring a teleological, or goal-oriented interpretation when their complements are not infinitives (but rather noun phrases or certain Complementizer Phrases). This limitation is lifted with infinitival complements, showing that transitive configurations of certain intensional verbs are not semantically equivalent to the infinitival configurations of the same verbs. A result of this research is a fine grained analysis of the differences between closely related necessity modals and attitude verbs.

This study examines orthographic variation in synchronous computer-mediated French discourse. All nontraditional variations of selected frequently occuring items are quantified in order to provide an etic (i.e., from an external perspective) analysis. The primary variable of interest is age since this study focuses on providing a comparison of chat participants in their twenties versus those in their fifties. The widespread claim is that younger people communicate using more informal and/or nontraditional forms than older people; however, the results of the present study suggest that this is not always the case. The main finding of the present study is that the twentysomethings and the fiftysomethings produce the nontraditional orthography in a similar fashion in 52.2% of the terms, and in a non-similar fashion in 47.8% of the terms. Following the presentation and discussion of the results, directions for future research are provided.

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By applying discourse analysis, this study first provides an analysis of the distribution of oiδa as well as other lexical choices from the same semantic domain as oiδa in 1 John. After that, the patterns of oiδa are compared with the patterns of the non-perfect tense forms of the choices from the same semantic domain to determine a correspondence. By comparing the results, this study demonstrates that oiδa, in opposition, is chosen in places in the discourse that are relatively more prominent than places in which the non-perfect tense forms of the other lexical items from the same semantic domain were chosen. It then demonstrates the plausibility that oioa is a marked form. Thus, this study shows that oiδa is a viable perfect through a study of the motivated choices of o'toa as opposed to other verbs in the same semantic domain in the discourse of 1 John. / Thesis / Master of Arts in Religion (MAR)

This thesis explores the role of values in risk assessment for breast cancer. Why? First, breast cancer poses a serious health threat to women, yet currently has no known cause. This means the discussion of risk becomes central to this disease. Second, K.S. Shrader-Frechette has shown that values enter in at each stage of risk assessment. These stages are the choice of topics, methods, and evaluation. By using Shrader-Frechette's framework for analysis of such areas of breast cancer as mammography, prophylactic mastectomy, tamoxifen and the role of estrogen, research routes, and prevention, it can be shown that certain values dominate the risk assessment. These values are the technological imperative, individual causation of disease, and reductionism. This thesis argues that the dominance of these values has led to a narrow and biased view of breast cancer risk. This view leaves women with fewer legitimate choices for the management of breast cancer risk and in many ways excluded altogether from its risk discourse. As breast cancer advocacy groups have gained in strength, attention has been drawn to the fact that there are competing values which can be used in risk assessment for this disease. These competing values are a low-tech/high-preventative, holistic, care-oriented approach to disease. These values can provide a viable alternative assessment of risk in breast cancer. Furthermore, this alternative risk picture is more desirable than the current one, because it helps to redirect and widen the focus on risk in breast cancer and gives women a central role in its risk discourse. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Isaiah 40-55 deals with various important themes related to Israel's salvation. However, in spite of the great number of works on these chapters, there are still many unsolved debates. This is because chs. 40-55 are written in excellent poetic language, which, although terse, is full of imagery, parallelism, personification, and rhetorical questions. These poetic and rhetorical devices were very effective for communicating to the original audience but often prevent readers in modem times from understanding the meaning of the text. In particular, when these devices are approached from purely historical-critical perspectives, continued misunderstanding and increased debate is often the result. Taking these concerns into consideration, this project has employed a linguistic approach which deals with mental frames and cognitive metaphors which are based on the cognitive world of the ancient people. In interacting with God, who is the main speaker, the three closely related metaphors, "Jacob-Israel," "Servant," and "Zion," play a very important role in the rhetorical development of chs. 40-55. This project has tried to integrate these metaphors within the frame "the relationship between God and his people." While this frame is fundamental in the Bible, there are also various sub-frames such as king/subject, parents/children, husband/wife, judge/litigant, master/servant, shepherd/sheep, and potter/pottery. Within chs. 40-55, by employing these various subframes with three main metaphors, "Jacob-Israel," "Servant," and "Zion," the prophet tries to communicate and persuade the addressees, the exiles, to accept God's message. While the three metaphors are the main figures in the text, each of them has different connotations. In addition, they are closely related to the addressees themselves (the exiles); thus, the prophet seeks to make them identify the three figures with themselves. By observing, criticizing, and comforting these three figures, the prophet responds to the potential complaints of the exiles and persuades them to return to God. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)