Magister Artium - MA / In these novels suspense plays an important role, but elements that are usually found in literary works are also prominent in these narratives, for instance the fleshing out of characters' psyche and working with philosophical or current issues. In rhetorical terms these novels can be said to be suspense novels that make use of literary devices and themes. Novels by Deon Meyer fit into this category. In the Netherlands translations of his works are to be found among 'literaire thrillers' in bookshops. Therefore one of Meyer's novels was chosen for analysis. In this study the ways in which suspense is created in a narrative text is investigated. Proteus, a literary thriller, was chosen for its handling of characters and events in the transition in South Africa from an apartheid state to a democratic dispensation. This poses an intricate challenge for the writer. The reseach problem posed is this: How is literary suspense created in a narrative text? The creation of suspense in a narrative text has to do with literary communication. For this reason Roman Jakobson's well-known model for literary communication is at the basis of this research. Rene Appel's criteria for the creation of suspense in narrative texts, as it is explained in his work Spanning in verhalen: Over het schrijven van spannende boeken (2007), is also part of this study at its theoretical base. Various relevant sources have been included in this regard. In this formalistic study various elements pertaining to suspense in the narrative are part of the research in terms of isolating the ways in which suspense is produced in a narrative text in general and specifically in the case of Proteus. Also in this regard the novel's literarity is discussed. / South Africa

<p>The dissertation Reading Texts or ”Reality” investigate teachers use of interpretive communities in teaching literature in secondary school. It discusses how different learning outcomes generates from three interpretory frames for reading. Teachers can be looked upon as critics when they show unexperienced readers why and how they read an interprete literary texts. In their teaching,they don´t relate only to their students but also to thier own conception of subject matter and to a broader discourse in society that deals with questions of why and how we read literature. Following voices of the discourse are included in the study: eight teachers, curriculum texts, a journal for the profession and a journal för scholors.</p><p>Teachers combine several aims in their teaching of literature. They use literature to discuss life, gender and problems related to young people, text as faction. But, they also try to teach their students about narrathology and how to understand and interpretate fictional texts, text as fiction and a world of signs. The curriculum, however, means that literature is read only to gain knowledge about the world,oneself and other people. A contradiction is that one of the criterias for assement includes knowledge of texts and methodology from the academic subject. One of the other voices in the discourse, a journal for scholors, talk about the literary texts but very seldom about teaching the texts. Another voice, a journal for teachers in Swedish, follows the curriculum closely and discusses reading literature as a way to get knowledge of the world.</p><p>Research in subject matter didactics can investigate teaching, relate different aims to different outcomes and show possibilities for teaching literature and reading comprehension. If we choose only one interpretive community, we get one kind of reading comprehension.If we combine two in a complex teaching strategy, we extend learning and reading comprehension of our students.</p>

The dissertation Reading Texts or ”Reality” investigate teachers use of interpretive communities in teaching literature in secondary school. It discusses how different learning outcomes generates from three interpretory frames for reading. Teachers can be looked upon as critics when they show unexperienced readers why and how they read an interprete literary texts. In their teaching,they don´t relate only to their students but also to thier own conception of subject matter and to a broader discourse in society that deals with questions of why and how we read literature. Following voices of the discourse are included in the study: eight teachers, curriculum texts, a journal for the profession and a journal för scholors. Teachers combine several aims in their teaching of literature. They use literature to discuss life, gender and problems related to young people, text as faction. But, they also try to teach their students about narrathology and how to understand and interpretate fictional texts, text as fiction and a world of signs. The curriculum, however, means that literature is read only to gain knowledge about the world,oneself and other people. A contradiction is that one of the criterias for assement includes knowledge of texts and methodology from the academic subject. One of the other voices in the discourse, a journal for scholors, talk about the literary texts but very seldom about teaching the texts. Another voice, a journal for teachers in Swedish, follows the curriculum closely and discusses reading literature as a way to get knowledge of the world. Research in subject matter didactics can investigate teaching, relate different aims to different outcomes and show possibilities for teaching literature and reading comprehension. If we choose only one interpretive community, we get one kind of reading comprehension.If we combine two in a complex teaching strategy, we extend learning and reading comprehension of our students.

The media play a major role in every part of American society by distributing content that has value to individuals, and a National Football League (NFL) sports fan club is no different. This study examines how members of a Kansas City Chiefs' fan club use media to stay connected to their team and socialize with fellow members. Social identification theory explains that when an individual comes together with one or more individuals with like-minded interests, they form social bonds. Their shared interests allow them to disseminate Chiefs' information through content gathered from media usage. To understand how the Chiefs' fans use media, the author conducted research at a Kansas City Chiefs' sports club at a local bar in a large Southeastern city in the United States. The researcher used observation, participation, and interviews to collect information on the media usage of fan club members. The results find that the majority of members logged on to KCStar.com and KCChiefs.com when they wanted to read about the team from sources that lived in the Kansas City Region. When the members wanted to follow the games live, one person listened to play-by-play on their cellular phone, while others followed Internet updates on sports Web sites, or watched the games on television with the other fan club members.

This thesis investigates the two major conflicting modes of interpretation applied to Mo Yan’s literary texts diachronically and synchronically in order to reveal both the aesthetic imperative and the liberating force of the British and North American literary centers in receiving literature from the periphery. After an introduction to the centers’ disparate responses to the paradigmatic shift of the local Chinese literary trend in the 1980s, the thesis continues with a theoretical discussion on reader-response theory and the uneven power relations between the literary center and the periphery. Jauss’s concept of horizon of expectation and Fish’s interpretive community are adopted to stress openness in interpretation while Casanova’s conceptualization of the world republic of letters provides the framework to study the competition among interpretive communities for the legitimacy of their respective interpretation. The study of the press reception of Mo Yan focuses on the ongoing shift of horizon of expectation from the dominating political and representational mode of interpretation to one that stresses the literary and fictional nature of literature. The study shows that the imperative in the reception of Mo Yan is the extension of the Western cultural hegemony sustained by an Orientalist dichotomy. The academic promotion in the public sphere, however, shows critics’ effort to subvert such domination by suggesting an alternative mode that brings the Chinese literary context to bear on the interpretation. In addition to this, Mo Yan’s strategic negotiation with the dominating mode of reception is analysed in my close reading of POW!. At the end of the thesis, I call for general readers to raise the awareness of the hegemonic tendency of any prevailing mode of interpretation. By asserting a certain distance, readers enable the openness in interpretation and hence possible communication among different communities.

This thesis examines the image of the journalist that is based on a particular text corpus - on articles collected in newspaper clipping archive of Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the period of "the first Czechoslovak republic." The method of this paper is inspired by Stanley Fish's concept of interpretive communities - in this case the interpretive community consists of the authors of the articles mentioned above. As they design the image of their own profession, it becomes a tool for understanding journalist's identity - it defines what is appropriate and what is not. The self-portrait of journalist does not only include a paragon of virtue that is to be followed but also a set of attributes, which journalists find typical for themselves: interestingly the main attributes do not seem to change much over time and in different newspapers. Therefore, the thesis focuses on common and shared traits of this self-portrait, illustrated by particular examples from the articles. The most important traits are for instance the consciousness of journalist's power and need for responsibility, but also journalist's attitude to truth, independence, time and society. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Depictions of college professors in American films are common, and while a number of studies have investigated various aspects of college life in motion pictures, few have focused exclusively on the cinematic professoriate. In addition to being an indelible part of history, cinematic depictions of college professors are part of the national discourse on the role and function of the faculty and university. An investigation of how college professors have been represented in American films, and how these representations are read and created by real-life college professors and filmmakers may provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between popular culture images and academia. This project consists of three sections. The first focuses on the trajectories of negative representations of college professors in popular American films from 1970-2016. The second examines interview responses of film professors to on-screen depictions of college faculty. The third presents a case study of professorial depictions by a group of filmmakers who created a feature length film about a college professor. As various public stakeholders are increasingly questioning the role of the college professor and the institution of higher education, this project seeks to examine the influence of popular professor images and cultural influences on the conceptions of two interpretive communities – one that embodies the professoriate and one that creates images surrounding it. Moreover, this project considers these depictions within film marketplace and popular culture contexts.

This thesis examines a queer fan community for the television show Once Upon a Time (OUAT) that utilizes the social networking site Tumblr as their primary base of fan activity. The Swan Queen fan community is comprised of individuals that collectively support and celebrate a non-canon romantic relationship between two of the female lead characters of the show rather than the canonic, heterocentric relationships that occur between the two women and their respective male love interests. I answer two research questions in this study: First, how are members of the Swan Queen fan community developing counter narratives of love by engaging in meaning-making processes and interpretations of OUAT? And secondly, how do they talk about the purpose and importance of their narratives for themselves or the Swan Queen fan community? In order to answer my research questions, I consider how the Swan Queen fandom developed and how they convey their meaning-making strategies online. To do this, I have analyzed the Tumblr blog of one Swan Queen fan and have used their blog as a nexus between other Swan Queen fans that use the website for their fan activities. Swan Queen fans argue that the show runners of OUAT use subtextual codes within canonical storylines in an effort to queerbait the show’s queer audience members. Moreover, the show runners refute the notion that they are queerbating queer fans at all by arguing that the fans’ perceptions are baseless and that any perceived queering of the characters Emma Swan and Regina Mills is purely “unintentional.” This response has only served to alienate the show’s queer fan base further as it led to increased complaints that the show runners were gaslighting the entire queer fandom. Additionally, Swan Queen fans maintain that the show’s introduction of canonical storylines featuring romantic relationships between Regina and Robin Hood and Emma and Captain Hook are heterosexist and dangerous. The storylines between Emma and Captain Hook, queer fans argue, often promote rape culture, thus perpetuating violence against both queer and non-queer audiences through storylines grounded in fairytale concepts of “True Love” and “Happily Ever After”. As such, Swan Queen fans push back against and reject this violence through their own interpretations and counter narratives of “True Love”. In accordance with previous research, I have found that historically marginalized groups such as the queer community continue to experience widespread and often aggressive attacks by queerphobic individuals and hate groups that are intent on preserving traditionally heterocentric institutions in our society, including (but not limited to) mainstream media broadcasting. Furthermore, fandom has become institutionalized in the same manner and typically operates within hegemonic, heterocentric standards. Conversely, queer fandoms such as the Swan Queen fandom operate outside of these standards, and fans respond to antagonistic efforts to silence them or cast them in an inaccurate manner by creating close-knit social communities to combat these actions and provide a space wherein individuals are able to counter dominant narratives that serve to further marginalize them. This study elucidates how this effort may occur and questions the effect this membership has on those who participate within a queer fandom. It is imperative that such research takes place, as there are very few accounts of how queer fans navigate the complex intersection between fandom and queerness.

In the wake of the guilty verdict of George Floyd’s murderer, police officer Derek Chauvin, there is hope for change in the pattern of police brutality against black people in the United States. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas was published three years prior to George Floyd’s death, in 2017, and is a realistic fictional novel in the young adult genre that has gained attention for its relevant contribution in the debate of racism and police violence, as the fictional victim Khalil Harris, an unarmed black teenager, does not receive the same justice as George Floyd. In this essay, reader response to The Hate U Give is analysed in order to examine how it affects the opinions and worldview of the reader during and after the read. A close reading and analysis of pivotal scenes was carried out using affective stylistics, in order to interpret what the text does to the reader word-by-word, and subsequently the reader’s creation of meaning was examined and discussed. The reader’s response was then analysed with Stanley Fish’s theoretical framework of interpretive communities, groups with shared social norms and worldviews, which dictate how individuals create meaning in the first place. The analysis suggests that readers of The Hate U Give, while starting out in different, albeit to a certain extent similar, interpretive communities, will gradually align themselves with the interpretive community of Black Lives Matter through shared ideas and opinions and the increased understanding they develop when they read the novel.

This licentiate-thesis, Stories About a red Cottage, is an attempt to combine cultural theory with a didactic method applied to Swedish as a field of study. With the two notions intertextuality and the foreign as a starting point, I discuss the importance of how an idyllic view of Sweden affects students studying Swedish as a foreign language as part of their studies in Scandinavistics. The students are familiar with the German culture and well aware of the legends and the myths about Sweden which are distributed via German media. At the same time they are shaping new images of Sweden in the didactic interaction with the teachers. The study indicates that the encounter with a foreign culture requires preparation to question even what seems to be self-evident. Hence, the study proposes an intertextual approach when using texts for studies in foreign languages. The result also demonstrates that even if it is important that we critically analyze the stories we hear and our interpretations of them, it is as important that we demand the right to get lost in dreams, because this is where we find a part of the secret of the esthetical experience.