This thesis is a critical exploration of Serbian film during the 1990s and its potential to provide a critique of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. In this dissertation I focus upon how selected films provide insight into the ideological discourse of the 1990s within the Serbian socio-political and cultural context. I discuss a range of Serbian films produced during the 1990s, and I analyse in detail several films, in particular Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Lepa sela, lepo gore, Srdjan Dragojevic, 1995) and Wounds (Rane, Srdjan Dragojevic, 1998), in which I focus on the depiction of nationalist and religious elements in the films. I analyse cinematic representations of the nationalist-religious ideology, its characteristics, impacts and promotion. On the basis of this analysis I consider the extent to which these cinematic representations are subversive. My dissertation has seven chapters. In chapter 1, which is an introduction to the thesis, I state my research questions and methodology. In chapter 2 I discuss the research context and I consider literature relevant to my research. Since I am basing my research upon different fields, I divide this chapter into three parts: the first one is devoted to the field of film and religion in which I position this study; the second part is on the literature that I used for the exploration of the socio-political context of the 1990s; and the last part is devoted to literature written on Balkan, Yugoslav and Serbian cinema. In chapter 3 I provide an analysis of the Serbian socio-cultural and political context of the 1990s. Chapter 3 is divided into eight parts, in which I primarily focus on the creation, characteristics and impacts of the nationalist-religious ideology. This discussion includes an analysis of the interaction between the Church and the state in the promotion of this ideological discourse. This chapter is important for the further analysis of Serbian film, its contextualization, and understanding the main issues which films communicated. In chapter 4 I analyse Serbian films produced during the 1990s. In the first part of this chapter, and for the purpose of contextualization of Serbian film, I first briefly discuss the cinematic tradition of former Yugoslavia: the Black Wave movement. I move on to discuss the cinematic context of the 1990s and the films produced over this period of time. I particularly focus on several films which dealt with the political-ideological context of the 1990s. I discuss the most significant films which dealt with the war, violence, ideology and the collapse of Serbian society under the Milosevic regime. The aim of this chapter is to provide a cinematic context for the analysed films and a clearer understanding of Serbian film of the 1990s as politically engaged cinema. Chapter 5 is devoted to the film Pretty Village, Pretty Flame while in chapter 6 I analyse the film Wounds. I analyse these two films separately because of their unique depictions of the nationalist-religious ideology. Both chapters are structured the same way and are divided into two major parts. In the first part of each chapter I consider the film's plot, its genre and its production, as well as discussing the film's critical reception. In the second part of each chapter I analyse the film narrative and images. At the end of each chapter I discuss the results of my analysis. Chapter 7 is the last chapter of my thesis and is devoted to the conclusion. In this final chapter I discuss the findings based on the cinematic and contextual analysis in the previous chapters. As part of my final remarks, I outline the contributions this study has made and future research that can be developed on the basis of this thesis.

Marxism, which claims to be superior to capitalism, reached China with a promise to eliminate inequity. The reality however has been problematic in that inequality persists. In terms of education, many school-age children are deprived of access. Even those who manage to attend school receive sub-quality education and less opportunity for higher education and higher paid jobs. The focus of this thesis is specifically inequity in educational provision in rural China, by locating policy thinking in discourses from 1949, with three distinct periods identified: the eras of Mao, Deng and post-Deng to the present. This study is inspired by Freire’s humanistic vision. Althusser’s concept of “ideological state apparatus” informs the framework of the existence of complex ideological relations and a dominant ideology. The main theoretical tool employed in this study of Chinese Marxism is through a Foucauldian lens of discourse as knowledge/power nexus. By focusing on the dominant discourses constructed by the Chinese leadership, it is possible to outline the changing nature of discursive practices which inform and legitimate educational priorities. The arguments used to justify policy priorities are both the outcome of power and a contribution to the knowledge/power of the leadership. The analysis examines the interpretation and position of Chinese Marxism in relation to the global context and the local historical and socio-political themes of Chinese society. Abbreviated as a global-local dialectic, this dynamic relationship between external and internal factors distinctively shapes political choices and priorities. This dialectic provides a more complex framework to analyse why it is that deprived Chinese communities — at least in educational terms — have been the least likely to benefit from the country’s increasing wealth. This study reveals that i) Mao’s dominant discourse of proletarianism has turned education into a means of creating a proletarian culture and outlook, leaving other forms of educational inequity irrelevant to its main concern; ii) under Deng’s economism, as related to China’s modernisation, rural educational inequity is acknowledged but mainly in a rhetorical way and often, in practice, to the detriment of this provision; and iii) the post-Deng era is dominated by the attempt to secure social cohesion because of increasing political instability. The official solution involves a focus on “harmony” by linking Marxist and Confucian ideas into a distinct ideological framework, which stresses values of justice and harmony, leading to a greater emphasis on addressing issues such as rural-urban educational inequity. Ideo-political adaptability in shaping policies has sustained the position of the ruling party. Educational policy as a tool, however, continues to be sub-ordinated to the national dominant discourse.

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The thesis deals with the communist propaganda in Czechoslovakia during the early fifties. The opening part describes the historical context, media system, and establishing of regime's censorship and information monopoly. In the interpretative part, the thesis analyses the ideological stereotypes and mainsprings of propaganda. The thesis applies the method of qualitative media content analysis of daily press and other media types. The communistic ideology is viewed as a systematic and comprehensive "gesamtkunstwerk" influencing the society. The conclusion of the thesis is the interpretation of the ideological mainsprings and theircontext. The thesis shows parallels between principles of construction of the ideological text and mythical stories.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Corruption as a concept is viewed differently by various disciplines, but there seems to be consensus that it relates to the misuse of public office for private gain. Studies in the social sciences, mainly political science, economics, sociology and law, have provided valuable insights into the subject, for example, its causes, manifestations and consequences. In a country such as Nigeria, corruption is said to have cost the country up to $20 trillion between 1960 and 2005, and it could cost up to 37% of its GDP by 2030 if the situation is not urgently addressed. The paradox, however, is that although all successive leaders of the country have consistently articulated their anti-corruption posture in national speeches, they get accused by their successors of not being tough on corruption both in word and in deed. Regrettably, there have been relatively few close textual analyses of presidential speeches carried out within analytical frameworks in linguistics that have the potential of revealing how presidents can simultaneously talk tough and soft on corruption, a contradiction that could well explain the putative anti-corruption posture of the country’s leaders and the ever deepening corruption in the land. It is against this backdrop that this study draws on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in order to examine language choices related to the theme of corruption in speeches made by Nigerian presidents from 1957 to 2015. The objectives of the study are to (1) provide an overview of how the discourse on corruption has evolved in Nigerian presidential speeches from 1957-2015; (2) determine specific facets of the construal of corruption from the dominant choices made from the system of transitivity (process, participants, circumstance) in speeches by different presidents and at different time points in their tenure in office; (3) analyse how the interpersonal metafunction of language is enacted in the speeches by the presidents through the system of appraisal for a strategy of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation; (4) interrogate from a critical discourse analysis standpoint the interest, ideological, partisan or other bases for the choices made in the speeches from the systems associated with the experiential and interpersonal metafunctions of language; and (5) to evaluate the different presidents in terms of how the above analyses position them in relation to combating corruption.

In the past ten years, the number of English cram schools has tripled in Taiwan and more than 70% of fifth and sixth graders claim they attended cram schools before receiving formal English education in primary schools. In response to pressures of both globalisation and localisation, the government introduced a school policy of learning a Taiwanese minority language, in addition to Mandarin, in 2005. The majority of parents, however, are not keen to encourage their children to learn a Taiwanese second language compared to the ‘trend’ of learning English (as a foreign language). This study explores family language policies using a multiple-case-study strategy with twelve families whose children attend a language school in Taichung, Taiwan, with two additional cases from different geolinguistic areas. The main focus is on how parents form their ideologies about language and language learning. The data were gathered using semi-structured interviews. The macro- and micro-factors which underpin the parents’ language ideologies are the central focus of analysis. Amongst these families the process of ideology formation involves more than three languages, English, Mandarin, Minnan and Hakfa (which, in this study, is the only representative of other minority languages spoken in Taiwan). The three Chinese languages appear as ‘mother tongue’ in various combinations amongst the parents in the study. The findings indicate that the influence of macro- and micro-factors on parents’ language ideologies is complex and interactive, rather than linear. Significant macro-factors identified include the local, national and global sociolinguistic environments, government policies and economic factors, notably the labour market. Macro-factors, as well as micro-factors, do not influence parents’ ideologies in isolation from each other. Similar, shared macro-contexts are responded to in diverse ways by the parents in the study, with familial mother tongue, educational experiences and different perceptions of the social roles of language all playing a part. Parents’ language ideologies are, therefore, clearly not structurally determined, but neither do the parents act as ‘free agents’ in their ideological choices which, in turn, have an impact on family language management and language practices. The complexity and fluidity of the Taiwanese language situation and the rapid social, political and economic changes that are taking place in the community make this study particularly valuable in enhancing our understanding of how personal language ideologies evolve.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University, 2004. / Adviser: Kenneth E. Lewis. Includes bibliographical references.

My objective is to deepen and thicken public and private policy debate about the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledgebased economy. To do so I first demonstrate the inadequacies of the Standard Model of economics, the last ideology standing after the Market-Marx Wars. Second, I develop a methodology (Trans-Disciplinary Induction) to acquire knowledge about knowledge. In the process of surveying the event horizons of seventeen sub-disciplines of thought, I redefine ideology as the search for commensurable sets or systems of ideas shared across knowledge domains and practices. Third, I create a definitional avalanche about knowledge as a noun, verb, form and content in etymology, psychology, epistemology & pedagogy, law and economics. In the process I demonstrate that personal & tacit and codified & tooled knowledge are the staple commodities of the global knowledge-based economy. Fourth, I establish the origins and nature of the Nation-State, the shifting sands of sovereignty on which it stands and the complimentary roles it plays as curator, facilitator, patron, architect and engineer of the national knowledge-base. Fifth, I examine the competitiveness of nations with respect to a production function in which all inputs, outputs and coefficients are defined in terms of knowledge. In the process, I demonstrated that competitiveness, as Darwinian win/lose against rivals, is inadequate because it does not account for the mutualism of symbionts and environmental change, i.e., coevolution and coconstruction. Accordingly, I propose fitness as a more appropriate criterion for the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge-based economy. Finally, I consider the comparative advantage of nations given their initial and differing national knowledge endowments.

My objective is to deepen and thicken public and private policy debate about the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledgebased economy. To do so I first demonstrate the inadequacies of the Standard Model of economics, the last ideology standing after the Market-Marx Wars. Second, I develop a methodology (Trans-Disciplinary Induction) to acquire knowledge about knowledge. In the process of surveying the event horizons of seventeen sub-disciplines of thought, I redefine ideology as the search for commensurable sets or systems of ideas shared across knowledge domains and practices. Third, I create a definitional avalanche about knowledge as a noun, verb, form and content in etymology, psychology, epistemology & pedagogy, law and economics. In the process I demonstrate that personal & tacit and codified & tooled knowledge are the staple commodities of the global knowledge-based economy. Fourth, I establish the origins and nature of the Nation-State, the shifting sands of sovereignty on which it stands and the complimentary roles it plays as curator, facilitator, patron, architect and engineer of the national knowledge-base. Fifth, I examine the competitiveness of nations with respect to a production function in which all inputs, outputs and coefficients are defined in terms of knowledge. In the process, I demonstrated that competitiveness, as Darwinian win/lose against rivals, is inadequate because it does not account for the mutualism of symbionts and environmental change, i.e., coevolution and coconstruction. Accordingly, I propose fitness as a more appropriate criterion for the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge-based economy. Finally, I consider the comparative advantage of nations given their initial and differing national knowledge endowments.

In 1980s, following the urbanization and industrialization, the rate of dual-earner and nuclear family increased in Taiwan. The changing family form also influenced the time-distribution between parents in housework and child-caring. Men started to participate in these kinds of work. The image of ¡§New father¡¨ or ¡§New mother¡¨ also appeared in mass media. However, the images of parenthood provided by advertisements are not neutral and value-free. Thus, the aims of this study are to discover the power relationship and sex ideology through using semiotics to analyze the parenthood¡¦s images on advertisements in Taiwan. 15 processed milk advertisements are chosen as the samples for this study. The major findings revealed that the images of parenthood in processed milk advertisements are full of patriarchy ideology. Although there are some new parent¡¦s images appeared in the advertisements, the images of parenthood are in some measure full of patriarchy ideology. Mother is still children¡¦s major caretaker in the advertisements. The distribution of child care is different. Mother has to do repetitive, scheduled and important housework like preparing lunch. In comparison, father only has to do easy caring work like playing with children. Because of the different work distribution, mother is imprisoned in the private sphere. In addition, mother is idealized and marginalized in the advertisements. Mother can be good mother easily with the help of processed milk. However, the product, processed milk, is more important than mother in the advertising. Mother can only be completed with the help of processed milk. Mother is simplified as buyer and user of the product.