The philosopher Martin Heidegger describes humour as a response to human 'thrownness' in the world. This thesis argues that there is a form of humour which can be usefully described as postmodern humour and that postmodern humour reflects the experience of being 'thrown' into postmodernity. Postmodern humour responds to and references the fears, fixations, frameworks and technologies which underpin our postmodern existence. It is further contended that South Park is an example of postmodern humour in the way that it exhibits a carnivalesque postmodern narrative impulse which attacks the meta-narrative style explanations of contemporary events, trends and fashions offered in the popular media. South Park's carnivalesque humour is a complex critique on a society in which television is a primary instrument of communication, a centre-piece to many people's lives, and a barometer of contemporary culture, while at the same time drawing attention to the fact that the medium being satirised is also used to perform the critique. A large portion of this thesis is devoted to examining and interrogating the discursive properties of humour as compared to seriousness, an endeavour which also establishes some interesting links to postmodern philosophical discourse. This can be succinctly summarized by the following: 1. Humour is a form of discourse which simultaneously refers to two frames of reference, or associative contexts. Therefore humour is a bissociative form of discourse. 2. Seriousness is a form of discourse which relies on a singular associative context. 3. The legally and socially instituted rules which govern everyday life use serious discourse as a matter of practical necessity. 4. Ambiguity, transgression and deviancy are problematic to serious discourse (and therefore the official culture in which it circulates), but conventions of humorous discourse. 5. Humorous discourse then, challenges the singularity and totality of the official discourses which govern everyday life. Subsequently, humour has been subjected to a variety of controls, most notably the 'policing the body' documented in the writings of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault. 6. Humour can therefore be understood to function in a manner similar to Jean-Fran ois Lyotard's concept of little-narrative's, which destabilize the totality of official meta-narratives. Furthermore, this thesis proposes strong links between the oppositional practices of the medieval carnival, as outlined by Mikhail Bakhtin, and the produced-for-mass-consumption humour of South Park. However, it also demonstrates that although South Park embodies the oppositional spirit of the carnival, it lacks its fundamentally social nature, and therefore lacks its politically resistant potency. More specifically it is argued that the development and prevalence of technologies such as television, video/DVD, and the internet, allows us to access humour at any time we wish. However, this temporal freedom is contrasted by the spatial constraints inherent in these communication/media technologies. Rather than officially sanctioned times and places for carnivalesque social gatherings, today, individuals have the 'liberty' of free (private) access to carnivalesque media texts, which simultaneously help to restrict the freedom of social contact that the carnival used to afford. Further to this, it is argued that the fact that South Park, with its explicit derision of authority, is allowed to circulate through mainstream media at all, implies asymmetric conservative action on the part of officialdom. In this sense it is argued that postmodern humour such as South Park is allowed to circulate because the act of watching/consuming the programme also acts as a deterrent to actual radical activity.

This thesis describes the development of a model of the relationships between the designer and their visual outcome that is intended to assist the designers understanding and management of the viewer experience. To date the focus of design discourse has been towards theories of interpretation that offer methods to decode messages, one of the more significant being semiotics. The application of semiotic theory to the field of design has enabled a greater understanding of how meaning is produced in visual communication, it does not account for how the designer affects the type of engagement the viewer has with the material which is a significant aspect of the communication process. The aim of this research is to develop a model of the design/visual outcome relationship that will assist designer’s management of viewer experience. To develop this model, the author examined literary theory as it is a discourse that has analysed its own creative process extensively. While there are many useful parallels that can be drawn between design and literary discourses, it is the notion of distance that is the most useful for this research. Through modifying the textual devices used by an author to create these varying distances, a model that identifies four types of visual narrators was developed – Idiosyncratic, Implicit, Imperative and Esoteric. This research demonstrates the effectiveness of the design concept of distance as a method of analysis for design and proposes how the designers might adopt distance method for considering the viewer experience during the design process, as opposed to leaving it to semioticians to critique post-publication / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) (Design)

This thesis surveys patterns of production and use of greeting cards in Australia and analyses a corpus of greeting cards, examining the organisation of semiosis by greeting cards.As a commodity consumed for the express purpose of being given away, individuals using greeting cards enact themselves through a commodified technology of the self simultaneous with a performance that enacts relations with others.Particular focus is given to the 'fun-and- love' card, within the industry category of non-occasion greeting cards. This type of card is situated within a complex of performances which are constitutive of a contemporary nexus of commodification, public-private spheres, gender, interpersonal relations and discources of intimacy.As this is an inquiry into a commodity that is a texted cultural artefact, it is informed by both cultural and textual theories. The organisation of the thesis into two parts reflects its twin concerns: the first is akin to a study of the greeting card as a commodity that is given away, paying attention to practices of production, consumption and use within personal relationships. In symmetry with that exploration, Part Two is contiguous with the 'linguistic turn' that has taken many disciplines in productive directions over the duration of the twentieth century.In doing both these kinds of 'discourse analysis' articulated to an empirico-ethnographic study of a cultural artefact that embodies emotion, the thesis seeks to contribute to dialogues that are concerned with moving forward with respect to theorising relations among sociocultural practices and language and discourse. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / This thesis is a contrastive genre study which explores newspaper commentaries on terrorism in Chinese and Australian newspapers. The study examines the textual patterning of the Australian and Chinese commentaries, interpersonal and intertextual features of the texts as well as considers possible contextual factors which might contribute to the formation of the newspaper commentaries in the two different languages and cultures. For the framework of its analysis, the study draws on systemic functional linguistics, English for Specific Purposes and new rhetoric genre studies, critical discourse analysis, and discussions of the role of the mass media in the two different cultures. The study reveals that Chinese writers often use explanatory rather than argumentative expositions in their newspaper commentaries. They seem to distance themselves from outside sources and seldom indicate endorsement of these sources. Australian writers, on the other hand, predominantly use argumentative expositions to argue their points of view. They integrate and manipulate outside sources in various ways to establish and provide support for the views they express. It is argued that these textual and intertextual practices are closely related to contextual factors, especially the roles of the media and opinion discourse in contemporary China and Australia. The study, by providing both a textual and contextual view of the genre under investigation in the two languages and cultures, aims to establish a framework for contrastive rhetoric research which moves beyond the text into the context of production and interpretation of the texts as a way of exploring reasons for the linguistic and rhetorical choices made in the two sets of texts.

Pronouns play a key role in the construction of ‘self’ and ‘other’. They are not merely a way of expressing person, number and gender as is suggested by traditional grammarians nor do they only do referential and deictic work. Rather, they must be thought of in the context of interaction and in terms of the ‘identity work’ that they accomplish. In this thesis, it is argued that pronouns are used to construct favourable images of themselves, and ‘others’.¶ The context of this study is the Australian political media interview. In this study, the pronouns ‘I’ ‘you’ ‘we’ and ‘they’ are examined individually, then, as they occur in sequence. This investigation reveals that pronouns are used to construct politicians’ multiple ‘selves’ and ‘others’ and that as they occur in sequence, the changing ‘selves’ of politicians and different ‘others’ are created. The construction of these multiple ‘selves’ and ‘others’ is a version of reality that politicians construct discursively and is not an objective representation of facts.¶ This analysis of pronouns in political interviews also reveals striking and hitherto unresearched uses of pronouns, which can be used to show affiliation or create distance between people where it would not traditionally be expected. Politicians actively exploit the flexibility of pronominal reference to construct the different identities of themselves and ‘other’ and use them to create different alignments to, and boundaries between, their multiple ‘selves’ and ‘others’. Thus, pronouns are pivotal in the construction of reality – a reality that is created and understood in the discourse of the moment.

The gap between hope and happening refers to the experiences of four academic women who work at Milton University (MU), the pseudonym for a regional Australian university. This thesis is concerned with the ways in which discourses circulating within MU shape the performances and discursive positionings of the four women - Alice, Madonna, Veronica and Tamaly (all pseudonyms) - and how, in turn, these women negotiate these discourses. Data are drawn from the women’s narratives, university policy documents and selected institutional texts. A feminist poststructuralist lens interrogates both policies, reflecting different approaches towards gender equity at MU, and discursive practices, constructing the ‘good academic’ at MU. Instead of acts of resistance, what is revealed in this workplace is the continuing covert strategies of marginalization that reproduce women’s positioning on the margins of mainstream academia, indicating the presence of a kind of ‘phallocentnc smog’ emerging from a dominant masculine culture. This thesis finds a gap between the transformative potential of the four women at the micro-social (subjectivity) level and the lack of transformation at the macro-social (workplace) level. This suggests that the women’s abilities to resist and transform phallocentric discourses at the personal/private level are not sustainable at the public level because of the enduring power of normative institutional discourses or the ‘phallocentric smog’. This thesis signals the need for ongoing interrogation of the gap between the hope that feminists have (theory) and the happening for women (practice) in the quest for sustainable equity.

Contrary to common folk and expert theory, the human self is not unitary. There is no Cartesian theatre or homunculus functioning as a metaphorical overlord. Rather, it is an abstractum gleaned from a person�s experiences-a centre of narrative gravity (Dennett 1991). Experiences are a person�s cognisance of her ventures in life from a particular unique perspective. In perspectivising her experiences, the person imputes a certain structure, order, and significance to them. Events are seen as unfolding in a certain inherently and internally coherent way characterised by causality, temporality, or intentionality, etc. In other words, a person�s self emerges out of her innumerable narrativisations of experience, as well as the different protagonist roles she plays in them. Her behaviours in different situations can be understood as different life-narratives being foregrounded, when she is faced with different stimuli different experiences/events present. In real life, self-reflective discourse frequently alludes to a divided, partitive self, and the experiences/behaviours that it can engage in. In academic study, this concept of the divided and narrative-constructivist self is well-represented in disciplines ranging from philosophy (e.g., Dennett 1991, 2005), developmental psychology (e.g., Markus & Nurius 1986; Bruner 1990, 2001; Stern 1994), cognitive psychology (e.g., Hermans & Kempen 1993; Hermans 2002), neuropsychology (e.g. Damasio 1999), psychiatry (e.g., Feinberg 2001), to linguistics (e.g., McNeil 1996; Ochs & Capps 1996; Nair 2003). Depending on the particular theory, however, emphasis is often placed either on its divided or its narrative-constructivist nature. This thesis argues, however, that the two are coexistent and interdependent, and both are essential to the self�s ontology. Its objectives are therefore: (i) to propose a partitioned-narrative model of the self which unifies the two perspectives by positing that the partitioned-representational (Dinsmore 1991) nature of narratives entails the partitioned structure of the self; and (ii) to propose that the partitioned-narrative ontology of the self is what enables and motivates much of our self-reflective discourse and the grammatical resources for constructing that discourse. Partitioning guarantees that a part of the self, i.e., one of its narratives, can be selectively attended to, foregrounded, objectified, and hence talked about. Narrativity provides the contextual guidance and constraints for meaning-construction in such discourse. This claim is substantiated with three application cases: the use of anaphoric reflexives (I found myself smiling); various usages of proper names, including eponyms (the Shakespeare of architecture), eponymic denominal adjectives (a Herculean effort), etc.; and partitive-self constructions which explicitly profile partitioned and selectively focal narratives (That�s his hormones talking). When analysed using the proposed model, these apparently disparate behaviours turn out to share a common basis: the partitioned-narrative self.

This thesis examines how the reification of the concept of ' self - esteem ' has been achieved discursively. It investigates how the concept of self - esteem has been developed over time and how it operates as an explanatory construct across a rage of areas and disciplines. The analyses in this thesis examine texts coming from psychiatry, self - help publications and public policy. These disciplines have taken up, utilized and, consequently re - constructed the concept of self - esteem according to their own specific needs and their particular discursive organizations. The thesis adopts the assumption that abstract psychological constructs are linguistically achieved and thus can be most effectively studied through focusing on the ' workings of language ', rather than on ' discovering ' some inner phenomena. Informed by Wittgenstein, critical psychology, and critical linguistics, the analyses undertake grammatical investigations into the concept of self - esteem. These investigations, based on the analysis of patterns in the lexico - grammar, examine ' meanings ' accumulated in the concept of self - esteem. These examinations extend to the level of social, cultural, and political contexts which have influenced our understandings of the concept of self - esteem. The investigations of ' meanings ' embedded in the notion of self - esteem make possible an exploration of the values, assumptions and connotations carried by this concept. The analyses demonstrate that self - esteem has been constructed over time as an increasingly more tangible, internalized and cognitive phenomenon. This intensified reification produced a ' self - esteem ' that is not only a consistent and measurable ' feature ' of the human psyche, but is an agentive force shaping human lives. Moreover, these constructions of self - esteem promote particular ethical principles and ultraconservative values. Paradoxically, while discourses of self - esteem have become a part of neo - liberal philosophies emphasizing personal liberty and freedom of choice, they serve to limit the choices of many social groups. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Medical School, 2005.

This research paper examines the implications of a feminist appropriation of the fetish and the use of the theory of abjection, as a disruption of phallocentric binary labelling and its notion of idealised femininity. The paper is divided into two sections. The first section includes an analysis of Emily Apter's articles 'Fetishism and Visual Seduction in Mary Kelly's Interim' and an analysis of Janine Antoni's installation 'Gnaw' which form a contextualisation of the issues on which my own visual research is based. These issues revolve around the creation of multiple subject positions for women as both artist and spectator, the recuperation of the seductive image without creating the same power relations apparent in the male gaze and the deployment of an abstract visual femininity to scopically seduce the viewer. In section two, part one, Praveen Adams' article 'The art of analysis: Mary Kelly's Interim and the discourse of the analyst is examined. In this article Adams uses Lacan's theory of discourse to hypothesise that the space of production in Interim is an analogue to the space of production in pyschoanalysis. Part two consists of an examination of the application of the same structural analysis to Antoni's 'Gnaw' and my own 'Compulsive Beauty,' and explores the possibility of a new contextual analysis of feminist art / Master of Arts (Hons)

The research study described in this report was conducted in 2007 at a Kindergarten to Year 12 College, situated in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia. Using case study methods, this research aimed to examine the scaffolding techniques used by two Reading Recovery teachers as they supported the language and literacy learning of two Indigenous Reading Recovery students. And further, to examine the impact of this scaffolding on each student’s language and literacy learning. / Multiple data sets were collected and examined with results discussed throughout this study. Transcripts and direct quotes were used to support the reporting of emergent themes and patterns with the convergence of the data used to support the internal validity of this small scale study. / This paper takes the position that generalisations, assumptions and stereotypical negative images of Indigenous students as disengaged and noncompliant students can be curtailed when teachers acknowledge that Indigenous students are active language learners with rich cultural and linguistic ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll & Greenberg, 1990). These funds can support students’ new learning of literate discourse which is defined and used throughout this study as: the language used in schools to read, write and talk about texts used for educational purposes. Significantly, difficulties Indigenous students experience with literate discourse have been identified as contributing to the educational underachievement of this group of Australian students (Gray, 2007; Rose, Gray & Cowey, 1998, 1999). / The findings from this small scale study indicate that within the context of Reading Recovery teaching, teacher-student interaction and contingent teacher scaffolding, centred on text reading and writing experiences can support Indigenous students to code-switch between home languages and dialects, Standard Australian English and literate discourse.