This dissertation seeks to address the multiple ways face or one’s public self-image is attacked, supported and maintained in Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca, My Children! My Africa! and Valley Song, and through this discussion demonstrate how the notion of face can make a contribution to the study and understanding of Athol Fugard’s work. In the pursuit of their goals/objectives, interactants perform speech acts which may threaten the face of other participants. The choice of strategies available to participants in the performance of these face-threatening acts (FTAs) includes going on record, off record (indirectly) or avoiding the FTA altogether (saying nothing). Each text offers a fresh perspective from which face can be analysed: rebelliousness against conformism (The Road to Mecca); the perspective of the cross-racial, cross-cultural relationships (My Children! My Africa!); and the context of a closely-knit family relationship (Valley Song). / English Studies / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

Dans une société où nous souhaitons désormais donner du sens à notre travail, remplir une mission, les organisations à but non lucratif (OBNL) constituent de plus en plus un milieu professionnel attrayant. Cet intérêt s’est également répandu au sein de la communauté scientifique qui cherche à comprendre la particularité de ce contexte organisationnel. Certain.e.s chercheur.e.s remarquent que les conflits sont mal perçus dans ce type d’organisations qui prône la collaboration, tandis que d’autres soulignent l’omniprésence de conflits dans toutes organisations. Les concepts de face et de figuration sont souvent utilisés pour analyser le conflit organisationnel. Cependant, peu de recherches, voire aucune, adoptent ce cadre théorique pour étudier le conflit dans des OBNL. La face et la figuration étant co-construites durant l’interaction, ce mémoire s’intéresse ainsi particulièrement à ce contexte analytique « méso ». Au sein de celui-ci, il est d’ailleurs primordial de prendre en compte la dimension interculturelle qui est intrinsèque à tout milieu organisationnel, notamment à Montréal. À partir d’une étude qualitative réalisée au sein d’une organisation à but non lucratif montréalaise, ce mémoire cherche à comprendre, au moyen d’observations de réunions d’équipe et d’entrevues, la manière dont les membres d’une OBNL gèrent leur face et leur figuration lors d’interactions interculturelles. Grâce à une analyse des actes de langage, les résultats de cette recherche révèlent que les tensions sont effectivement perçues comme inappropriées, mais que les participant.e.s utilisent des stratégies de figuration pour les diminuer ou les cacher et orienter leur figuration vers des objectifs transcendants. / In a society where many workers seek to engage in meaningful, mission-centered work, non-profit organizations (NPOs) are an increasingly attractive workplace. NPOs’ focus on employee engagement, participation and collaborative practices has sometimes meant that scholars have neglected the unique challenges of managing conflicts in this organizational context. Some researchers state that conflict is viewed as inappropriate for NPOs, whereas others argue that conflict is ubiquitous in all types of organizations. Although, the concepts of face and facework are often used to examine organizational and intercultural conflicts, few if any empirical studies have analyzed conflict in NPOs using this theoretical framework. As face and facework are co-constructed in and through interaction, this thesis focuses specifically on this “meso” analytic level, while also taking into account the intercultural dimensions of interactions. Based on observations of team meetings and interviews with team members of a culturally-diverse NPO in Montreal, this thesis aims to understand how members of the organization managed their face and facework during intercultural interactions. Relying on an analysis of speech acts, the results revealed that tensions are indeed viewed as inappropriate, but that participants used facework strategies that avoided or minimized them and oriented their facework to transcendent objectives.

This thesis analyzes the kinds of verbal and nonverbal signals elites manifest to show leadership qualities. Launching from Max Weber’s conceptual framework of charisma as a power term and Harold Lasswell’s study of propaganda, this study takes a multidisciplinary approach to studying political leadership with elements of communication methodology and an ontological basis in evolutionary psychology. The study’s goal is to offer a framework for defining and evaluating the diverse signal patterns employed by political elites in three real-life situations. These are the Malta Summit, the 1992 Virginia Presidential Debate, and the 2012 South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary. The cases were chosen because they display a diverse set of signal variations during different types of interactions. The three case studies are evaluated by measuring frequency and patterns of occurrence of the five different interaction constructs (indicator of interest, indicator of disinterest, demonstration of high value, demonstration of low value, and compliance testing) to explain different interaction patterns. A simple frequency distribution of the different signals during a given interaction is used to display the empirical findings and to compare patterns across the case studies. This study reveals that the presence of DLV (demonstration of low value) signals weaken an elite’s position in relation to other elites and the public while the presence of DHV (demonstration of high value) signals strengthen an elite’s position. It is largely the presence, absence, and frequency of these two signals that determines who conveys leadership qualities effectively regardless of leadership style. Studying the signaling patterns of political elites would allow scholars to understand better the kinds of signal patterns and signal frequencies that are used in different types of leadership styles and norm ranges for signals including for political elites belonging to different cultures and subcultures