This project presents the cultural significance of establishing and maintaining business relationships with Chinese counterparts. It includes sample training modules to provide intercultural training for all firms engaged in business with China.

In the final decade of the nineteenth-century, when New Zealand women began riding the bicycle, they excited intense public debate about contemporary middle-class ideals of femininity. The research question posed is: "why did women's cycling provoke such a strong outcry?" Three nineteenth-century cycling magazines, the New Zealand Wheelman, the New Zealand Cyclist, and the New Zealand Cyclists' Touring Club Gazette, were examined, along with numerous New Zealand and British contemporary sources on women's sport and recreation, etiquette, femininity, and gender roles. The context of the late-nineteenth century signifies a high point in the modernisation of Western capitalist societies, which is characterised in part by significant and widespread change in the roles of middle-class women. The bicycle was a product of modern ideas, designs, and technology, and eventually came to symbolise freedom in diverse ways. The dual-purpose nature of the bicycle (i.e., as a mode of transport and as a recreational tool) enabled women to become more physically and geographically mobile, as well as to pursue new directions in leisure. It afforded, moreover, increasing opportunities to meet and socialise with a wider range of male acquaintances, free from the restrictions of etiquette and the requirements of chaperonage. As a symbol of the 'New Woman', the bicycle graphically represented a threat to the proprieties governing the behaviour and movements of respectable middle-class women in public. The debates which arose in response to women's cycling focused on their conduct, their appearance, and the effects of cycling on their physical and moral well-being. Ultimately, these debates highlighted competing definitions of nineteenth-century middle-class femininity. Cycling presented two dilemmas for respectable women: how could they cycle and retain their respectability? and, should a respectable woman risk damaging herself, physically and morally, for such a capricious activity as cycling? Cyclists aspired to reconcile the ignominy of their conspicuousness on the bicycle with the social imperative to maintain an impression of middleclass respectability in public. The conceptual framework of Erving Goffman's dramaturgical perspective is used to interpret the nature of heterosocial interactions between cyclists and their audiences. Nineteenth-century feminine propriety involved a set of performances, with both performers (cyclists) and audiences (onlookers) possessing shared understandings of how signals (impressions) ought to be given and received. Women on bicycles endeavoured to manage the impressions they gave off by carefully attending to their appearances and their behaviour, so that the audience would be persuaded to view them as respectable, despite the perception that riding a bicycle in public was risqué. In this way, women on bicycles attempted to redefine middle-class femininity. Women on bicycles became a highly visible, everyday symbol of the realities of modem life that challenged traditional gender roles and nineteenth-century formality. Cycling for New Zealand women in the 1890s thus played a key part in the transformation of nineteenth-century gender roles.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This study aims to explore politeness shown by lecturers during tuition and student support conversations with the objective of promoting polite interactions between IsiZulu mother tongue and non-mother tongue speakers in higher education in South Africa. In particular, the study investigates the way in which politeness in email communication influences learning outcomes within an ODL environment, using quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, a questionnaire as well as interviews to collect data from a cross-section of students from an Open Distance Learning (ODL) institution. All the results drawn from the data sources, namely the questionnaires and interviews, were enumerated according to the data collection tools used. Version 12 of SPSS and Nvivo were used to analyse the quantitative data. The analysis is also based on the politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson (1978) as well as a conceptual framework that links all the variables. Based on the results, the research hypotheses are accepted, thus indicating that politeness in email communication influences learning outcomes within an ODL environment. In particular, the results show that, overall, lecturers who employ politeness contribute positively to student compliance. Accordingly, the study recommends that ODL should recognise both the role of language in communication as well as the power and influence of politeness in communication. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil.

Cette thèse propose une analyse de la « cour royale » égyptienne sous la XXVIème dynastie saïte (664-525 av. J.-C.) à partir des sources majoritairement textuelles (privées et royales) et historiques. Le volume de synthèse se développe autour de trois axes principaux traitant la « cour » dans son acception sociale, telle qu’on l’entend dans la sociologie historique. La première partie est ainsi consacrée à l’étude de la cour comme la Maison du souverain afin d’éclairer l’ensemble des activités qui caractérisent la « vie de cour » et son organisation domestique et qui rendent l’espace curial « privé » ou « officiel ». La deuxième partie examine la cour dans son agencement social et en tant qu’outil de représentation et de communication : ce sont alors le protocole du palais royal et son rôle-clef dans le maintien de l’équilibre social entre les souverains saïtes et leurs sujets (système des faveurs–ḥswt) qui sont analysés. La troisième partie se concentre sur les acteurs sociaux de la Résidence du roi (les courtisans et l’entourage royal) et tente de démontrer les différentes catégories auxquelles appartiennent ces élites et de déceler les modalités de leurs accès au palais et au rang de « courtisan modèle » dans la hiérarchie de la cour. Enfin, l’enquête diachronique suivie tout au long de la synthèse permet de mieux connaître l’impact des emprunts archaïsants dans le système palatin saïte, et par conséquent, d’évaluer la continuité et/ou le changement de ce système par rapport aux modèles traditionnels de la cour pharaonique. Le volume du corpus regroupe un ensemble de données prosopographiques appartenant à plus de 130 officiers royaux. Un troisième volume est consacré à la bibliographie générale, aux annexes et index. / This thesis offers an analysis of the Egyptian "royal court" under the XXVIth Saite Dynasty (664-525 BC) based on textual (private and official records) and historical sources. The synthesis develops around three main axes and deals with the "Court" in its social meaning as defined by the historical sociology. The first part, then, concentrates on the study of the court as the House of the sovereign and attempts to identify the activities which characterize the "court life", its domestic organization and which make the curial space "private" or "official". The second part examines the court as a symbol of social order and the outil of representation and communication of the monarchic authority: the protocol of the Royal palace and its key role to maintain the social balance between the Saite kings and their subjects (system of the favours ḥswt) are analyzed here. The third part focuses on the social actors of the Residence (courtiers and royal entourage) and tends to demonstrate the various categories of these elites and to reveal the modalities of their accesses to the palace and to the position of "model courtier" within the hierarchical order of the court. Finally, the diachronic study followed throughout the synthesis allows to better comprehend the impact of the Archaism on the Saite palace institution and consequently to estimate the continuity and/or the changes of this system compared to the traditional models of the Pharaonic court. The corpus includes a group of prosopographical data belonging to more than 130 royal high officials. The third volume is composed of three sections general bibliography, appendices and indexes.