Risk is a crucial concept in healthcare communication. This is attested to by a large body of research on risk communication in psychology, sociology, and, more recently, discourse analysis. This previous research has primarily focused on how healthcare providers manage risk talk, whereas patients’ risk talk has received little attention. Where it has been researched, it has been presented in an oversimplified way, namely that the patients have been reported to perceive their risk in a simplified, ‘all-or-nothing manner’. Using theme-oriented discourse analysis (Roberts and Sarangi, 2005), this study challenges this simplified perception by examining patients’ risk talk in prenatal screening for Down syndrome. The data for this study comprises 14 video-recorded consultations collected in one prenatal hospital in Hong Kong. The particular focus of the study is on patients who have received a ‘positive’ result from the initial screening for Down syndrome that has put them in a high-risk group by increasing their probability of having a baby with Down syndrome. In these consultations patients are informed about further testing to confirm the diagnosis. To examine the patients’ risk talk, the transcripts of the interactions have been coded along the lines of structural, thematic and interactional maps (Roberts and Sarangi, 2005) to note down risk talk by patients, what is it concerned with and the interactional dynamics of how it is managed. The analysis suggests that patients’ risk talk concerns three types of risks, namely the “risk of occurrence” (that is the probability of having a child with Down Syndrome) the “risk of knowing” (that is dealing with the knowledge about having a child with Down Syndrome) and what has been referred to in this study as the “risk of not knowing” (that is not finding out about the condition due to the uncertainty surrounding the tests). In contrast to the findings in the previous studies, the patients in the data actively initiate risk talk by raising clarification questions and talking about their concerns. The analysis has revealed the differences in how different types of risk talk are constructed by the patients. These differences are discussed in regards to the phases of the consultation in which risk talk occurs and whether risk talk is aimed at eliciting further information or making a decision about pursuing further testing. The analysis has also noted that risk communication is a joint activity involving the patients and the healthcare providers. In addressing patients’ risk talk the healthcare providers in the data take on an indirect approach, thereby avoiding influencing the patients’ decision-making and managing the uncertainty surrounding prenatal screening. The analysis has also pointed out that the patients’ socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds have a crucial impact on how risk talk is constructed by the patients. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

The focus of this research is on gendered discourse in fairy tales with particular reference to identity formation in very young readers. Both the modern culture industry of adult consumption and children’s culture constantly take up and recycle fairy tale themes in visual entertainment, literature and merchandising. Without being overly deterministic it is credible to claim that fairy tales exert an influence on the collective consciousness in many societies. Moreover since fairy tales frequently from the backbone of early reader schemes in both first- and second-language programmes, it is important to study the language used to define the relationship between children and culture. Critical Discourse Analysis serves as the best approach to investigate how gender is constructed through language in my analysis of current renditions of three popular princess fairy tales. This linguistic analysis examines character action and character description through a transitivity analysis, an appraisal of attitudinal lexis and an investigation of stylistic markers. The findings from this research provide evidence of three gendered discourses, identified as ‘The Passive Princess’, ‘Women beware women’ and ‘The Beauty Contest’. An examination of how these discourses operate to align the reader indicates that they are potentially damaging to women, men, girls and boys and gender relations. The main conclusion drawn from this study is that the three prevailing discourses position children and they may enjoy or resist this subject positioning in part or total. This dissertation recommends that Critical Literacy strategies be adopted in school in order to prevent gender privileging when using fairy tales. / published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Educators in the English-medium community colleges in Hong Kong are being challenged to prepare students with diverse language backgrounds to learn through English as a second language. While some researchers advocate the adoption of an ‘English-only policy’ to maximise students’ exposure to their target language, others argue that bilingual learners’ accessibility to both their first language [L1] and second language [L2] as semiotic resources for learning may facilitate their mediation of cognitively-demanding academic tasks, and subsequently their academic discourse development. Adopting a social practice view of learning, this study explores how learners use their bilingual resources to mediate their academic discourse development in a marketing course at the sub-degree level in Hong Kong. A case study was conducted to trace how students use Chinese as their L1 and English as their L2 to make sense of the social practice of marketing in an integrated language and content learning environment. The focus of the study was students’ language use at different stages of a marketing project which required them to work collaboratively to research and analyse the marketing environment of a product, to write up a marketing plan of the product, and to deliver an oral presentation. The main data sources were the spoken and written discourse data collected from a 14-week semester from a project group’s out-of-classroom discussions, written report and oral presentation, which were analysed using Mohan’s (2007) model of social practice analysis – one that considers texts as the instantiation of both the language system and the system of meanings. Interview data on the functions of students’ language choices in the project were also used to triangulate the discourse data. The analysis of the student discourses shows the prominent role of learners’ L1 in mediating their meaning-making, and subsequently their L2 academic discourse development, in the theory-practice dialectic of learning in the marketing project. The findings indicate that the student-participants used both their L1 and L2 to help them perform the project tasks within the larger context of the marketing course. At the project preparation stage, the student-participants were able to use appropriate lexical-grammatical features of their L1 and/or L2 to (i) reconstruct their findings about the marketing practices of the selected company, (ii) reflect on such practices using their disciplinary knowledge, and (iii) scaffold their peers’ second language academic discourse development. Through their constant reflection on their academic practices in both L1 and L2, the student-participants were ultimately able to deploy effective L2 linguistic resources which correspond to the semantic structures of marketing to represent their disciplinary knowledge in both L2 oral and written academic discourses. This study has made contributions to the field of bilingualism and academic discourse socialisation. It helps to generate a deeper understanding of learners’ language use patterns in a marketing project – how bilingual learners use their linguistic resources to make sense of the disciplinary ways of knowing and thinking. The results illustrate the interdependent relationship of content, language and higher level thinking skills in marketing. With a better understanding of the language and cognitive demands of the marketing project, this study helps to draw implications for the pedagogical practices of disciplinary subjects at the sub-degree level and calls for the collaboration of both content and language teachers to derive more effective strategies for fostering students’ academic discourse development by drawing on the linguistic resources of bilingual learners. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education

Although Hong Kong ranked 15th globally in the United Nations Gender–related Development Index 2013 (UNDP, 2014), a discrepancy was identified between female images portrayed in print media and the actual gender equality progresses achieved (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2009). Media portrayals of female, particularly body beauty advertisements, disseminate female stereotypes and unequal gender ideologies. According to Wolf (1992, p.12), evaluating females with reference to a “culturally imposed physical standard” is the “last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact”. The research investigated the current female identities textually and visually constructed in beauty culture magazine advertisements from an issue of the popular local female magazine, the (More) Oriental Sunday. It also explored how local consumers are approached with the female portrayals visually. It differs from the existing studies on local female portrayals in the media in terms of its approach and focus. As opposed to adopting content analysis, survey or focus group discussion, the research is based on a systematic linguistic analysis of beauty culture advertisements. It adopted a Dialectical-Relational Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2009) and utilized Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), Visual Social Semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) as well as Goffman‘s gender display categories (1987). The findings show that discourses of objectification and self-objectification were concurrently represented in the female identities constructed textually and visually. The study implies that, in general, beauty culture magazine advertisements perpetuate the ideologies of beauty myth, emphasized femininity and patriarchy to enforce the social dominance of male and maximize profit simultaneously. / published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

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In the 2012 Families First Agenda, the Government of British Columbia outlined the provision of ‘evidence-based’ parenting information as part of its official commitment to support vulnerable families. This thesis investigates and analyzes the particular views and assumptions about parenting responsibility and child development in a selection of web-based parenting resources endorsed by the BC government. Study findings show that parenting education materials promote a universalized account of childrearing that privileges expert-driven knowledge, largely drawn from Euro-Western frameworks. The examined materials are also found to present a view of parents as responsible for monitoring and mitigating personal and environmental stressors. Discussion of these features considers the ways in which parenting education materials marginalize the knowledge and practices of diverse families, and conceal oppressive structures that perpetuate social and economic inequalities. Implications drawn from the findings contribute to a discussion of more inclusive and collaborative approaches to parenting support and education. / Graduate

This thesis explores some ways in which language can be employed as a tool for crosscurricular learning in Key Stage 3 (KS3) education. An examination of how linguistic interaction is employed by pupils as a means of facilitating their attainment of curriculaspecific learning objectives provides a case study for exemplifying how language can be used effectively across disciplines in secondary education. Within the context of exploring pupils' interaction in the subject of Technology, this thesis explores some gender differences in interaction and the potential effects that such differences can have upon gender-differentiated attainment levels in KS3 Technology. The data obtained for the thesis comprises transcripts of small group pupil-pupil discussion taken from KS3 Technology lessons. The conversations of the groups were recorded, transcribed and then analysed using a revised version of Francis and Hunston's (1992) system of discourse analysis. Gender differences in the types of discourse strategies employed by the participants were identified and evaluated in terms of how effectively they function to facilitate the successful attainment of specific learning objectives. The conclusions drawn from the findings of the research are that the discourse collectively produced by the girls in the study tends to be more effective in facilitating the attainment of learning objectives than that which is produced by the boys. This may, in part, provide one possible explanation as to why the girls in the study achieve higher attainment levels in KS3 Technology than the boys.

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