This study is an attempt to consider the role of translation competence of medical experts who are self-translating medical research abstracts from English into Kurdish. To do so, it investigates a corpus of research abstracts terminologically, syntactically and textually in order to identify and establish the translation competence of the medical experts. The study adopts the descriptive approach to translation for the purpose of its investigation within the frame of which it employs Toury’s methodology in order to analyse 65 originally written abstracts and 65 translated Kurdish abstracts. The aim of the study is to identify the translation competence of medical experts who perform English-Kurdish specialised medical translation. It also aims to identify any potential recurrent translational behaviour that occurs in Kurdish specialised medical translation. Moreover, the study aims to provide an insight into the status of Kurdish specialised language through examining the translated abstracts. The results of the data analysis reveal that medical experts have successfully demonstrated the translation of their research abstracts as far as terminology and conceptual knowledge are concerned. However, their translations show recurrent cases of linguistic and textual markedness which can be attributed to a lack of linguistic and textual competence. The results also revealed that Kurdish specialised medical language is not under-developed as the study hypothesised but it has a rich stock of specialised terminology as well as naturalised terms that the medical experts have largely used in their self-translated abstracts. Based on the outcomes of the study, it is concluded that medical experts require linguistic and textual competence as much as subject competence. In addition, consistent and appropriate proofreading can have a profound impact on specialised medical translation in reducing the incidence of syntactic and textual calques as well as common typographical errors before publication.

‘Story’ lifts and carries ‘Voice’ with which we can express what we sense. This thesis is an Autoethnographic reflection that charts theoretical and methodological reasons for ‘harnessing’ my (Gameli Tordzro) Aŋlɔ-Eʋe story, storying and storytelling practices in the making of the film ‘Music Across Borders’, the ‘Ha Orchestra Music Project’ and the ‘Broken World, Broken Word’ devised theatre project. It also covers how this is also established in my participating in and contributing to the development, and production of ‘Vessels 2015’ and ‘Last Dream (On Earth) theatre productions as artistic research. The productions focus on story, expressing the lived experience, and how the value, knowledge, opinion, belief, and culture, within such expression represent ‘voice’. ‘Story’ is how we package and present the lived experience. Thus, ‘story’ and ‘voice’ are linked. I assume a subjective stance and a position within the research as an Aŋlɔ-Eʋe multi-genre storyteller and present my understanding of methods and processes of music-making, film-making and theatre-making in a Ghanaian and an Afro-Scot (and New Scot) diaspora context. I re-activate the idea of decolonization - reclaiming, carrying and lifting ‘voice’ - through storytelling on screen, on stage and in music. It is accepted for ethnographers to be positioned within their text; Patricia Leavy, (Leavy, 2015), and David Inglis with Christopher Thorpe, (Inglis and Thorpe, 2012) describe ways in which people perceive and act upon their social world in the constant process of achieving their sense of reality as social actors. Barrett (Barrett and Bolt, 2007) also draw on materialist Martin Heidegger’s notion of “handleability” to argue that artistic research demonstrates how knowledge is derived from doing and from the senses. I explore Aŋlɔ-Eʋe ways of sense making through story. This artistic inquiry takes the form of the practical making, producing and reflecting on music, film and theatre drawing on Aŋlɔ-Eʋe storytelling traditions. It is an artistic Autoethnographic research, it is generative of material arts, social interaction and transformation on the levels of the individual, the community and cultural capital. This thesis is to be read in conjunction with and as a follow-up to the portfolio of productions attached as the main part of the research.

This thesis explores constructions of class, race, ethnicity and tolerance in a 'monocultural' private school; whose white, middle-class make-up, was a reflection of its affluent London setting. The study focuses, in particular, on how the school community made sense of the discourse of Fundamental British Values being promoted within UK schools. In this research, the notion of 'British Values' is utilised as the basis for an analysis of the values that were seen as significant within the school and exploration of who and what became valued vis-à-vis the school's (and the wider community's) normative behaviours. The ethnographic nature of the case study allowed for various avenues for collecting qualitative data. Interviews, with staff, pupils and other members of the community, observations, events at the school and Mawerley; all provided me with great insights of the workings of the school and the locality. The case study developed a number of key findings. Fairness and meritocracy which are considered to be core British values, and also placed at the heart of St Aber's ethos, can form the basis for justifying exclusions. The school and the area formed a bubble which became a space for privileged white and middle-class practices to become habitual, acquiring moralistic nuances. Questions of British Values led to discussions around race, class, gender, and national belonging, transcending the confined boundaries of the school. The thesis argues that practices of exclusion and inclusion did not only revolve around Britain, and her values, but extended to the school and the locality's practices. In this sense, I take these two contexts to form a total locale which shapes notions and ideologies and generates concealed boundaries within the all-encompassing nature of a middle-class white bubble.

Christianity has seen phenomenal growth in sub-Saharan Africa and African churches in the West have also grown rapidly in the last few decades. The majority of members in these churches in the West are migrants and their children. In Britain, these migrant churches represent a vibrant form of Christianity with regard to their visibility and prominence. Considering the challenges these migrants’ churches face in their efforts to evangelise the host community, most migrant members use the churches as the platform for their own expression of personhood, faith and mission. Internal strategies are designed and implemented by the churches to assist members to integrate into the wider society. These strategies otherwise referred to as micro-integration strategies concentrate on preparing the members for living in the communities they reside in. It is argued that these internal strategies determine the level of contextualisation of beliefs and praxis in the host communities, thus creating a new identity that is a combination of Ghanaian and British values. The study has explored how the internal integration strategies and the contextualisation of the Ghanaian migrants’ faith determine the extent to which the churches assume a transnational status in their outlook and the expression of their faith.

The objective of this thesis is to study the phenomenon of postwar migration both theoretically and empirically with a view to establishing relationships between social relations and migration. Migration is studied here within a conceptual framework of mode of production, relations of production, hegemony, and cash nexus. The historical aspects of migration are acknowledged throughout. The thesis then studies the theories of migration that are available and traces their developments. In this process, the thesis discovers ideology in many migration theories and literature. It selects three specific problematics of the postwar migration, named as 'zonal imbalance', 'mother country' migration, heavy representation of people who form lower SEGs. By examining these three closely, the thesis reveals many erroneous conception and notions about the postwar migration. In this process, the thesis rejects 'individualistic' and 'voluntary' actions in postwar migration. For the empirical part, Bangalee migration from Bangladesh to Britain has been chosen for its typicality and other reasons. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods have been used. Two control groups, one in Britain, (migrants) and another in Bangladesh (non-migrants, who had had the opportunity to migrate at some point in time, but did not) have been studied in as much depth as possible. The findings of the experience of the respondents are offered in relation to the historical evidence, particularly the relations of production in Bangladesh, and migration history of Bangladesh. Despite the basis of a small universe used in this research, international and historical persepectives have always been borne in mind. The objective remained the study of the totality of migration. Having taken the views of those who did not migrate (non-migrants) at a time when 'everyone was going', this research can claim to be a unique way of exploring a sociological phenomenon by negative investigation. The concluding part is in two chapters. In the first, the thesis has attempted to develop four new categories of migration to end the debate who can or cannot be called a migrant. It then exposes the myths of migration. Having established that socio-cultural transition migration, which is one of the four categories developed in this chapter, is the major concern of most migration studies, the thesis argues that a subtle process of 'branding' exists in the matters of encouraging migration to a country, whether the country is situated in the 'First World' or in the NICs. In fact, since '90s, the trends in the global population movements have changed so rapidly and radically that all older theories fail to explain the new phenomenon. The thesis argues that in order to understand 'migration', one has to study the changes that have occured in the social relations, emanating from changes in their relations of production. Finally, the thesis asserts that the phenomenon of human migration can possibly be explained within the conceptual framework chosen. It concludes that social relations play a major role in migration and offers a definition towards developing a sociological theory of migration.

While there has been a significant focus on how hospitality was commodified, commercialised and standardised in the literature, less attention is given to the extent of which local traditions and hospitality change and adapt to the demand of tourists. Through an empirically grounded investigation, this thesis at micro-level gives an insight to how local hospitality and traditions in Mekong Delta (Vietnam) transform in homestay practice under the pressure of tourism development. Normally, the local traditions and hospitality are offered by the host and experienced by the guests. However by focusing on contact zone, the settings and decoration of homestays, this thesis shows this mechanism in Mekong Delta is not one way but a dynamic process. The guests do not only passively receive but also have influences on what the hosts can offer. In fact, the homestay providers have capitalised on what tourists want to see. As consequence, local traditions and hospitality are changing and subject to re-invention to adapt to legal requirements, tourists demands, and social context. Ironically, tourists are using homestay believing they are experiencing true Vietnamese culture, while actually the local Vietnamese people are changing their traditional home styles and behaviour to accommodate the tourists.

This is a study of discourses and practices of literacies in education in Brazil. More specifically, it investigates the home literacy practices of twelve adolescents from lower and upper-social classes in three different schools in São Paulo, Brazil. The study aims to address the general question of how these adolescents engage in literacy practices in the new digital era. Developing this question the study addresses questions of how teachers conceptualise these adolescents’ outside school literacy practices and whether these inform classroom work. The study draws on a sociocultural approach to literacy as social practice, which has informed research in literacy studies in the last decades. In addition, because literacy practices are directly linked with the teaching of standard Portuguese as a first language in Brazil, sociolinguistic approaches and theories are also drawn upon. Data analysis of the discourses of language and literacy in Brazil suggests a context of education which hinders more than promotes lower-social class adolescents’ acquisition of the dominant literacies valued in the school and the work domains. By engaging in a discussion of these adolescents’ home literacy practices, languages and home backgrounds this study hopes to dispute and counterbalance the discourse of discrimination and deficit which is still a reality in Brazil.

This research is concerned with how African-Caribbean pupils develop and maintain identities as academically successful students. It examines the oral accounts of approaches which African-Caribbean pupils, parents, teachers and community activists employ to build resilience and viable 'ways of being' high achievers. The research employs an interpretive methodology. The literature review section provides an historical context for writing on race and education, and patterns of inequality in education. Participants’ oral accounts were produced in semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The data chapters explore students’ understandings and definitions of ‘educational success’, ways of being high achievers and draws on Critical Race Theory to accentuate black homes and communities as places and spaces of cultural asset and wealth. This thesis builds on existing research on African-Caribbean resilience, by exploring resilience as a dynamic process. It moves beyond the underachievement thesis and the cultural deficit model to exploring pupils’ own accounts of their school experiences and considers the inter-subjective development of identity, resilience and ‘success’ within school systems that have tended to produced consistently successful outcomes for some black pupils. It provides a basis for considering, and developing, ways of promoting success among African Caribbean and other disadvantaged pupils.

Historians have recently taken a renewed interest in the role of the Roman Catholic community within the confessionally divided English post-Reformation state, but the nature of the surviving sources has meant that most work has been directed towards the study of the gentry and the communities around their households. For the Herefordshire area, however, there is evidence in the form of local listings and material, focussing particularly on the Whitsun Riots of 1605, which make it possible to investigate popular Catholicism in some detail. This thesis seeks to establish, for the period from c.1580 to the eve of the Civil War, the identities and roles of Catholics within their local communities in Herefordshire. It looks at the social profile of Catholics, leadership roles taken by non-gentry Catholics, the relationship of plebeian Catholics to Catholic gentry and the varied types of Catholic community in the county. It considers the influence of the ecclesiastical courts, of Jesuits and seminary priests, and of the Welsh legacy in parishes along the Monmouthshire border. The thesis also explores both the ways that religious divisions played out in local society and the evidence for Catholic ritual practice and what this reveals about mission in the area.

Hip hop is part of a global economy of music, images and signs. In Tanzania, since political and economic liberalisation in the 1990s, local musical forms which appropriate the practice of rapping have become popular. Rapping has become a widespread practice which has produced musical stars as well as unrecorded ‘underground’ rappers. This study explores the aesthetic, performative and ideological commonalities and differences between these two forms of rapping. Situated at the intersection of debates about masculinity, youth and globalisation, this study will contribute to ongoing debates about new forms of identity and sociality created by rappers. It explores both appropriation from the transnational circulation of styles and signs as well as local orders of meaning rappers use to fashion themselves. While recognising the difficult social and economic conditions under which young people in Dar es Salaam live, I view rapping as productive and highlight the creativity, inventiveness and ingenuity of rappers.