PhD (English) / Department of English / This study sought to analyse the discourse strategies in the editorials of the Daily Graphic newspaper as texts constructed in an African English as a Second Language (ESL) setting and the editorials of the New York Times of America as texts constructed in an Anglo-American English environment. The objective of the study was to discover the differences and the similarities that exist between the discourse strategies of the editorials of the Daily Graphic newspaper and the editorials of the New York Times. This objective is achieved by analysing five features of text. First, the rhetorical structure of the two editorials were analysed to find out the rhetorical strategies used in composing the editorials. Second, the micro-genre variation between the two editorials was examined. In addition, the thematic development of the two editorials was carried out. Also, the study investigated the rhetorical appeals preferred by the editorials from the two different socio-cultural settings. Finally, as newspaper editorials, the use of attribution was studied to find out how the editorials disclose the sources of their information to make it clear to their readers where they get their information from. The findings of the study revealed some differences and some similarities in the discourse strategies employed by the two editorials. The Daily Graphic as a newspaper published in an ESL setting in Africa exhibited the unique use of some discourse features that reflect the socio-cultural setting different from that of the New York Times as a newspaper published in the socio-cultural environment of Anglo-American English. / NRF

This thesis focuses on a transformational but disregarded period in New Zealand’s twentieth century history, the era from the arrival of the Marines in 1942 to the arrival of Rock Around the Clock in 1956. It examines one of the chief agents in this metamorphosis: the impact of American culture. During this era the crucial conduits of that culture were movies, music and comics. The aims of my thesis are threefold: to explore how New Zealanders responded to this cultural trinity, determine the key features of their reactions and assess their significance. The perceived modernity and alterity of Hollywood movies, musical genres such as swing, and the content and presentation of American comics and ‘pulps’, became the sources of heated debate during the midcentury. Many New Zealanders admired what they perceived as the exuberance, variety and style of such American media. They also applauded the willingness of the cultural triptych to appropriate visual, textual and musical forms and styles without respect for the traditional classifications of cultural merit. Such perceived standards were based on the privileged judgements of cultural arbiters drawn from members of New Zealand’s educational and civic elites. Key figures within these elites insisted that American culture was ‘low’, inferior and commodified, threatening the dominance of a sacrosanct, traditional ‘high’culture. Many of them also maintained that these American cultural imports endangered both the traditionally British nature of our cultural heritage, and New Zealand’s distinctively ‘British’ identity. Many of these complaints enfolded deeper objections to American movies, music and literary forms exemplified by comics and pulps. Significant intellectual and civic figures portrayed these cultural modes as pernicious and malignant, because they were allegedly the product of malignant African-American, Jewish and capitalist sources, which threatened to poison the cultural and social values of New Zealanders, especially the young. In order to justify such attitudes, these influential cultural guardians portrayed the general public as an essentially immature, susceptible, unthinking and puritanical mass. Accordingly, this public, supposedly ignorant of the dangers posed by American culture, required the intervention and protection of members of this elite. Responses to these potent expressions of American culture provide focal points which both illuminate and reflect wider social, political and ideological controversies within midcentury New Zealand. Not only were these reactions part of a process of comprehension and negotiation of new aesthetic styles and media modes. They also represent an arena of public and intellectual contention whose significance has been neglected or under-valued. New Zealanders’ attitudes towards the new cinematic, literary and musical elements of American culture occurred within a rich and revealing socio-political and ideological context. When we comment on that culture we reveal significant features of our own national and cultural selves.