Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

La polyarthrite rhumatoïde (PR) est une maladie auto-immune inflammatoire. La PR touche les articulations jusqu'à les détruire. Elle est caractérisée par la présence d’anticorps anti protéines citrullinées (ACPA) mais l’auto-antigène n’est toujours pas connu. Dans cette maladie, l’implicationde l’immunité adaptative ne fait donc aucun doute mais le rôle de l’immunité innée reste encore flou. Le système du complément joue un rôle important dans l’immunité innée tout comme les récepteurs de type Toll (TLR) qui sont des récepteurs de celle-ci. C1q, par la reconnaissance des ses ligands, active une des voies du complément, la voie classique. Chez les patients atteints de PR, le complément est activé et un dépôt de C1q est retrouvé dans l’articulation. Le TLR9 reconnaît des ADN dérivés de bactéries ou de virus mais une expression à la surface des cellules pourrait conduire à la reconnaissance d’autres motifs comme les signaux de danger (DAMP). D’ailleurs, nous avons montré récemment qu’il existait un TLR9 exprimé à la surface des polynucléaires neutrophiles (PNN). Enfin, il a été mis en évidence récemment un nouveau mécanisme bactéricide effectué par les PNN : la formation de NET (neutrophil extracellular traps). Mais en dehors de leur rôle bactéricide, les NET ont été montrés comme pathogènes dans certaines maladies comme le lupus. Dans ce travail de thèse, je me suis intéressé à l’implication de ces acteurs, NET, C1q et TLR9 dans la PR. Nous avons montré que C1q est indispensable au développement de l’arthrite dans un modèle animal. Deplus, l’expression des récepteurs au C1q par les PNN et les monocytes est corrélée à l’activité de la maladie et à l’inflammation. Nous avons montré que les NET représentent une cible pour les ACPA (ce qui en fait des auto-antigènes potentiels dans la PR) et que ces NET sont immunogènes. L’immunogénicité des NET est modulée par C1q. Enfin, il semblerait que le TLR9 ait moinsd’importance dans l’arthrite. Par ce travail, nous avons montré l’importance du rôle joué parl’immunité innée dans la PR et ses modèles. / This thesis discusses the expression of pain in the discourse on “problematic” pregnancies (miscarriages, fœtal death, sudden infant death syndrome, in utero problems, disability, infertility, adoption, etc.). Our analysis is based on a collection of statements gathered from some 450 children’s gravestones, mainly from the 20th and 21st centuries in France, and a number of French publications from 1990 to 2013. These include the remembrance book of the ceremonies held in the Père Lachaise crematorium in Paris throughout 2010, the record books of three parents’ associations, some 20 works written by grieving parents, and extracts from discussion forums (on the Internet) on infertility and mourning a child. The study of this highly sensi-tive collection, which concerns mainly death and mourning a child, revealed numerous discursive strate-gies when analysed from several different perspectives: lexical, syntactic, stylistic and textual. By means of reported speech, metadiscourse taken from popular linguistics, language stereotypes, metaphors, pseudo-nymity, pre-formed discourse structures, truncations, and neology, the uttering agents studied manage to convey their suffering in a context replete with the doxa of acceptance, to give new meaning to words that could be wounding, to endure absence and to postpone the moment of separation. These elements under-line the active and creative role of the utterers, considered here as produsers, i.e. as being at once users and producers of linguistic forms. The results invalidate the stereotypical belief that the pain linked with the death of a child is indescribable, unutterable, and supports the hypothesis of the analgesic virtues of discourse.

This thesis explores different expressions of regionalism(s) and regionalization processes in a Swedish and a westernized context. The case studies in the study conducted are represented by two different kinds of regions, Värmland and The Eight Million City. Värmland is a rather typical administrative and political bordered region at the subnational level in the Midwest of Sweden. The Eight Million City in turn exemplifies an imaginary cross border region, stretching from Oslo in the north, to Gothenburg, Malmö and Copenhagen in the south, connected in a network by a larger infrastructure corridor. It is also an example of how new planning practices stretching over already institutionalized national as well as local and regional borders, can be seen as challenging earlier planning and policy structures connected to the state. It is possible to see how different kinds of strategies related to strategic spatial planning practices are used to enhance the competitiveness of each region. In both cases this produce and reproduce different perceptions about what represents and constitute a competitive region. The empirical material analyzed in the study has been generated by interviews, participant observations, and document analysis based on discourse theory and discourse analysis. Different imaginaries are institutionalized in each region by different means and practices. In Värmland new perceptions about regional citizenship, regional identity and the idea of what constitutes a modern region are being institutionalized into the regional context by building a brand for the region. In The Eight Million City the project idea is based on an enlarged labor market connecting the larger cities in the region together in a network. As well as in Värmland, the knowledge produced in the project contributes to institutionalize different perceptions of citizenship and what makes up a competitive and attractive region. / Den här avhandlingen tar sin utgångspunkt i olika uttryck av samtida regionaliseringsprocesser och regionalism(er). Studien belyser två olika regionaliseringskontexter i form av Värmland och Åttamiljonerstaden. Två i grund och botten mycket olika regioner. Värmland utgör en subnationell administrativ region och därigenom ett exempel och ett uttryck för en decentralisering av statliga uppgifter rörande regional utveckling och tillväxt till den regionala nivån. Åttamiljonerstaden är en imaginär gränsöverskridande region som sträcker sig från Oslo i norr, över Göteborg och Malmö till Köpehamn i söder, där målet är att skapa en sammanhängande och funktionell arbetsmarknadsregion. Trots de båda regionernas olikheter, så kan de båda studerade regionerna ses som ett uttryck för en alltmer normativ policyagenda som grundas på begrepp som globalisering, internationalisering och en konkurrensutsatt marknad. Detta har lett fram till olika former av rumslig strategisk planering som ska stärka respektive regions konkurrenskraft med olika medel. I sin tur leder detta till att olika diskursiva kunskapsrationaliteter om vad som utgör den ”attraktiva regionen” i form av nya styrningsformer, regional organisering och den gode regionmedborgaren implementeras och institutionaliseras i respektive regional kontext.

Scuba diving has been around for years and has its origins in history many centuries ago. It has been widely explored and researched as a subject of scientific, medical, and recreational interest. More recently, with the development of sport psychology, it has become the focus of a few social scientists. This research is intended on making a contribution not only to such research in the field of sport psychology and scuba diving, but also that of discursive psychology. This study was executed from a discursive position, using ideas and methods from discursive analysis and applying them to the concept of diving safety. An attempt was made to view discourse as talk, and as such analyze talk as that what is being said. While most research on diving safety focus on how panic and fear are inner entities that drive behaviour leading to accidents, injury and death, this research wanted to look at those inner states as ways of talk and how they are interactionally constructed in talk. The context within which the diving course took place can be divided into three contexts, namely the classroom, the pool and the open water environment. Research was conducted within in the classroom and pool environment, and data consisted of voice recordings of natural conversations in the training context. This research wants to offer alternative explanations in psychology and sport, through explicating what subjects are saying, relating their talk to their situations and actions, and showing how specific situations incite certain types of talk. In conclusion, this was not only a study using naturalistic conversations, but also a study of conversations. / Dissertation (MA (Counselling Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Psychology / unrestricted

No description available.

This work draws on the discipline of Discursive Psychology for a theory of language, shown to be all but absent in the organizational knowledge management literature, and a methodology for the study of discourse. Organizational knowledge sharing is selected as the topic of primary research for its accessibility to analysis, and because it is considered to be an underpinning action to new knowledge creation. The research approaches discourse as action-orientated and locally situated, as constructed and constructive, with function and consequence for speakers. Indicative research questions are concerned with the discursively accomplished phenomena of trust, risk, identity and context, how these are accomplished in rhetorical interaction and with what effect on organizationally situated knowledge sharing. Recordings of organizations’ everyday knowledge sharing meetings, as well as an online discussion forum, are analysed focusing on these four themes. Findings show them to be accomplished as speakers’ live concerns in knowledge sharing talk. It is claimed that trust, risk and identity, as contexts displayed and oriented to by speakers themselves, are tacitly and collaboratively accomplished actions, shown to be co-relational and influential to knowledge sharing scope and directions. A further claim is that the analysis of discourse for what contexts in general speakers invoke displays speakers’ orienting to trust, risk and identity. Limitations of the present study are discussed, along with speculated implications for knowledge management and future directions for research. This work aims to contribute to the field of knowledge management in three ways. First, in extending the directions that some scholars and practitioners are already indicating through focusing the interest of study on organizational discourse. Secondly, the study seeks to understand how tacit knowing, as a phenomenon invoked by speakers themselves, is accomplished and how it influences the scope and directions of knowledge sharing actions, and with what effect. Finally, it is claimed that the research provides some support for those theorists in the knowledge management field who promote the knowing how-knowing that formulation, and those who are critical of conventional knowledge management’s heavy reliance on technology to deliver its objectives.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Canberra, 2007.

This is a thesis in marketing concerned with entrepreneurship in established firms and the discursive practices that take place within a perspective of strategic entrepreneurship. The study of discursive practices in this context assumes a concern with how different aspects of entrepreneurship are produced and consumed by people in text and talk. Strategic entrepreneurship can be seen as an organisational form of entrepreneurship. The latest contribution within strategic entrepreneurship tends to focus on opportunities and advantages in organisations as two processes that need to be considered and managed jointly. In this thesis, I have studied the discursive practices of how scholars position strategic entrepreneurship through an enhanced literature review and by means of a close analysis of assumptions made within strategic entrepreneurship, but also by studying two firms and their discursive practices of constructing opportunity and advantage positions. The results have then been analysed with reference to discourse theory and previous research within entrepreneurship based on European traditions that builds on the linguistic turn. By conducting an empirical study of two firms, I have studied discourses in use, and how they are produced by people. In so doing, two main findings emerge in the discussion of the empirical results: 1) Opportunity and advantage positions emerge in social interaction and are co-constructed. 2) Opportunity and advantage positions are constructed by the use of multiple discourses, on different levels of discourse and for different functions. The main purpose of the thesis is to enhance the understanding of entrepreneurship in established firms and the activities labelled as strategic entrepreneurship. In addressing the purpose, seven theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to research emerge in areas of strategic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship and the enterprising self.

This qualitative study explored the communicative strategies used by employees for discussing diversity and diversity initiatives in the workplace. The study also examined employees' definitions of diversity and the effectiveness of diversity efforts within the organization. Self-directed focus groups of employees within an organization were used to collect data. Four groups were composed of employees based on designated diversity characteristics: White male, Black female, White female, and workers over 50. This study served to bridge the gap between diversity and organizational communication literature. Thematic interpretive analysis was guided by theories of the discursive construction of prejudice and co-cultural communication. Identified strategies were cross-checked with key informants in the organization to verify validity. Finally, the study discussed implications of findings for practice and for future research. / Department of Communication Studies

This thesis is about learning at a residential outdoor education centre [pseudonym:- Wild Country Hall]. It poses and answers three questions: • How useful might discursive positioning be as a perspective on learning? • What are the discourses at Wild Country Hall and how are they different to schooling discourses? • How might neo-Liberal discursive practices, including performativity and current schooling orthodoxies have affected the pedagogic practices at this centre? The review of literature provides an overview of the key literature on outdoor, adventure and experiential learning, considering these through the lenses of learning as acquisition, participation and transformation, before discussing the literature on the discursive positioning of identity. Literature on the discursive practices of outdoor centres is then considered in relation to literature on neo-Liberalism and performativity in schools. The methodology is ethnographic. Participant observations were conducted over a period of five years whilst children were participating in both the organised adventure activities and the residential life of the centre. Searches of the centre’s documentary archives, and follow up interviews with 22 children (aged eight to 11) and three adults were used to add richness to the observational data, and especially to better understand reported participant gains. Analysis was undertaken by coding themes in the data using QSR NVivo N6. The findings suggest that acquisitional and participatory perspectives on learning are not totally adequate for explaining the reported changes in outlook and behaviour of the children who took part in the research. These benefits may be more usefully conceptualised as discursively re-positioned identity. It is suggested that the perspective on learning as discursive positioning may be usefully employed by those studying residential outdoor education in the future. The findings show a number of over-arching discourses that dominate the life of Wild Country Hall. These include place - including the appreciation, care of and respect for nature, the sense of awe and wonder, understanding and protecting the environment – risk, challenge and adventure; and consequent confidence and resilience building by children through facing and over-coming their fears. Whilst some of these fears are linked to the adventure activities of the centre (such as fears of heights, water), other fears are associated with the residential nature of the centre; encountering and coping with homesickness, living with new people, encountering strange customs and unfamiliar social practices. So important were these unfamiliar discourses to the participating children that they may be looked upon as ‘rites of passage’. The findings suggest that encountering unfamiliar discourses may explain the efficacy of learning at Wild Country Hall. Some of the pedagogic practices at Wild Country Hall were found to valorise what may be described as ‘classroom discourses’, and these have tended to formalise learning at the centre. It is suggested, therefore, that this outdoor centre has been influenced by performativity and classroom orthodoxy, themselves shaped by neo-Liberal agenda. These influences may be narrowing the range of discourses available and limiting the centre’s continuing ability to provide unfamiliar discourses, possibly to the detriment of children’s learning. The conclusion makes a number of recommendations for policy practice and research. Recommendations for policy and practice focus on the narrowing tendencies observed at this centre, suggesting shifts in policy to retain the distinctiveness of outdoor education centres. Recommendations for research suggest that follow-up studies would be useful to test the findings in other outdoor centres and other areas of learning, whilst more methodological work could be done on memory and data research sites where contemporaneous notation and digital recording may be difficult or impossible.