Western museums are public institutions, open and accessible to all sectors of the population they serve. Increasingly, they are becoming more accountable to the governments that fund them, and criteria such as visitation figures are being used to assess their viability. In order to ensure their survival in the current climate of economic rationalism, museums need to maintain their audiences and attract an even broader demographic. To do this, they need to ensure that visitors feel comfortable, welcome and secure inside their spaces. They also need to give visitors clear entry points for engaging with and valuing the objects and knowledge on display in exhibitions. This thesis maps a grammar of three-dimensional space with a strong focus on the interpersonal metafunction. Building on the social semiotic tools developed by Halliday (1978, 1985a), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992) and Matthiessen (1995), it identifies two interpersonal resources for organising space: Binding and Bonding. Binding is the main focus of the thesis. It theorises the way people�s emotions can be affected by the organisation of three-dimensional space. Essentially, it explores the affectual disposition that exists between a person and the space that person occupies by focussing on how a space can be organised to make an occupant feel secure or insecure. Binding is complemented by Bonding. Bonding is concerned with the way the occupants of a space are positioned interpersonally to create solidarity. In cultural institutions like museums and galleries, Bonding is concerned with making visitors feel welcome and as though they belong, not just to the building and the physical environment, but to a community of like-minded people. Such feelings of belonging are also crucial to the long-term survival of the museum. Finally, in order to present a metafunctionally diversified grammar of space, the thesis moves beyond interpersonal meanings. It concludes by exploring the ways textual and ideational meanings can be organised in three-dimensional space.

This study explores the meanings that people attributed to their involvement in a participatory on-farm practice change project. Three techniques of discourse analysis were used. The first two identify the diversity among narratives of the participants and explores the origin of these differences. The third technique examined differences and tensions within and across the narratives to identify the discourses that were operating. Participation was found to be mediated through discourse as agents created and reproduced some discourses through their many social acts. For example, some participants recalled incidences of feeling excluded when they presented an alternative understanding of the project. As a result, these people tended to reduced their involvement rather than explore the differences. The project's discourses therefore routinised the participatory experience and tended to lock the narrative in time despite over two decades of rapid social change. Thi s meant the project discourse mediated a favoured type of participation, one that met a symbolic character rather than the particular farming practices it promoted. The discourses reveal different patterns of sense making among participants involved in the same event. Uneven participation is comprehended from the multiple patterns as a consequence of the participants' discursive practices. Articulating differences in discursive design will assist to create conditions useful for an authentic communication among participants engaged in change programs.

This study explores the meaning of occupation, defined as a “conceptual entity… [which] includes all the things that people do in their everyday life” (Sundkvist & Zingmark, 2003, p. 40). Using a phenomenological hermeneutic method informed by the writings of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), this study provides an understanding of the meaning of occupation interpreted from the perspective of 12 New Zealand adults who experienced a disruption to their occupations. The review of the literature suggests that early writers from the time of the Bible identified that occupation is not ‘wide open’, there are many factors that shape how and when a person engages in an occupation, which in turn shapes the meaning of occupation. Within the occupational therapy literature, discussion of the meaning of occupation is overshadowed by describing and defending practice. In occupational science scholars and researchers have focused largely on understanding occupation from a conceptual perspective rather than the ontological meaning of occupation. The exploration of the meaning of occupation is being advanced by only a few. In this study participants told their stories about their occupations. Data were analysed by indentifying key themes and engaging in a hermeneutic thinking process of going back to the work of Heidegger and Gadamer. Writing and re-writing was the method used to bring new understandings to the data. The findings of this thesis suggest that the meaning of occupation is complex, and tends to remain hidden. Analysis focuses on the call, Being-with, and possibilities. The call to occupation seems to be in response to what it is we care about or what concerns us. Being-with others while engaging in an occupation creates a bond and mood; the meaning of occupation changes depending on who the occupation is done with or without. The meaning of occupation is also revealed in the possibilities that are opened up or closed down. Occupation shows both ourselves and others what it is we are capable of in the journey of who it is we are becoming. Each of these facets of meaning work in unison and can be likened to three cogs in a wheel, each interconnected with the others. The thesis concludes by recognising that not all voices have been heard and argues for uncovering more about the meaning of occupation from the perspective of lived experience. A challenge is made to consider the meaning of occupation not as something that is individually derived but as something that is connected to the broader context of the world and others in the world.

<p>The aim of this study was to investigate if there is a connection between language and social identity in the perception of word meaning among second language learners in the same way as for native speakers, and if the sociolinguistic variable age is significant. This was done with an investigation of two generations of Swedish learners' perception of the meaning of the words 'respect', 'integrity' and 'communication'. The investigation showed that age is important to a certain extent regarding interpreting words and their meaning, but that it is not as important if the speaker has English as their mother tongue or as their second language.</p>

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Liljestrand, Johan (2002): Klassrummet som diskussionsarena. (The classroom as an arena for discussions)</p><p>The aim of the dissertation is to study whole class discussions in the Swedish upper secondary school, concerning issues subjected to controversy in the public debate. The empirical study is related to a wider question: the possibilities for the school to educate democratic citizens. </p><p>By using discourse analysis,14 videotaped lessons from social- and religious studies where analysed, with the ambition to investigate recurrent patterns of participation and meaning making. Five teachers and six classes participated in the study.</p><p>The analysis shows that the teachers have two concurrent goals: to focus on the students’ contributions on issues in the public debate, and introduce the students to different questions in the public debate. A consequence of these goals is that the role of the teacher often becomes complex. By acting on the basis of having responsibility for the students’ development of knowledge, and sometimes also calling attention to certain values, the teacher attempts to guide the students as not yet ready for the public debate. Features from other kinds of teacher-centred education are thereby present in the discussions. However, students can also act as more autonomous participants in relation to the teacher. When they are not answering the teacher’s questions in an expected way, and in particular, in situations in which they are interacting with each other, the students may discuss the public issues without being teacher-guided to the same extent as in other situations. </p><p>The last chapter concludes that the authority of the teacher is partly given by the official steering-documents. It is still possible to ask if the guiding role of the teacher itself could be subjected to discussion. This suggestion is made from the point that teacher authority is considered as more or less limited for developing a critical attitude among the students. One may also ask if the students’ could be offered possibilities to choose the topic for discussion themselves. This latter point is made against the background that classroom-discussion presupposes student’s viewpoints in order to be accomplished. </p><p>Key words: discussion, democracy, public issues, education, participation, meaning making.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D. (Practical Theology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Thesis (M.A. (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

This study investigates the use of authentic subtitled similar task videos (ASSTVs) and their relationship to second language negotiation of meaning and language production among non-native speakers of English in an online task-based language learning (TBLL) environment. Over the course of two weeks, twenty intermediate nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English from the English Language Institute at Texas A&M University engaged in four communicative tasks in pairs using an online TBLL environment designed specifically for this study, and a chat tool in WebCT Vista, a course management system provided by the university. ASSTVs were videotaped and integrated into the online TBLL environment. Participants were divided into two groups, each of which consisted of five dyads, to test the effects of ASSTVs. Five dyads were provided with the ASSTVs and the remaining five dyads were not provided with them before the task completion process. The first section of this study examines the effects of ASSTVs on negotiation of meaning, and the second section examines the effects on language production. The amount of negotiation of meaning was calculated through the negotiation of meaning sequences model developed by Gass and Varonis and revised for online communication by Smith. Language production was investigated in terms of fluency and complexity with regard to lexical and syntactic complexity. A detailed analysis of the data from the chat-scripts showed that NNSs engage in more negotiation of meaning and produce more fluent and lexically diverse language when provided with the ASSTVs than NNSs who were not provided with them. Based on these findings, this study concludes that using ASSTVs in an online TBLL environment is a viable and effective tool for promoting negotiation of meaning and language production in terms of fluency and lexical complexity.

In this work the concept of 'context' is considered in five main points. First, context is seen as always necessary for an adequate explication of the concepts of meaning and understanding. Context always plays a role and is not merely brought into consideration when handling a special class of statements or terms, or when there is doubt and clarification is necessary. Second, context cannot be completely reduced to some system of representation. The reason for this is the presence of humans, which is always an important component of a context. Humans experience situations in ways that are not always reducible to symbolic representation. Third, contexts are in principle open. In normal cases they cannot be determined or described in advance. A context is not to be equated with a set of information. Fourth, we understand the parameters of a context pragmatically, which is why we are not led into doubt or even to meaning skepticism by the open nature of a context. This pragmatic knowledge belongs to the category of an ability. Fifth, contexts are, in principle, accessible. This denies the idea that some contexts are incommensurable. There are a number of pragmatic ways of accessing unfamiliar contexts. Some of these are here examined in light of the so-called 'culture wars' in the U.S.A. / Der Kontextbegriff wird so betrachtet, dass es in fünf Hauptpunkte untergliedert wird. Erstens: der Kontextbegriff ist für eine Explikation der Begriff die Bedeutung und des Verstehens immer notwendig. Der Kontext spielt immer eine Rolle und ist nicht nur für Fälle gut, in denen eine besondere Klasse von Wörtern behandelt wird, oder in denen Zweifel bestehen und eine Klarstellung benötigt wird. Zweitens: der Kontextbegriff lässt sich nicht vollständig auf eine Art von Repräsentation reduzieren. Grund dafür ist das Vorhandensein von Menschen, was immer ein wichtiger Bestandteil des Kontextes ist. Drittens: Kontexte sind grundsätzlich offen. Sie können nicht im Normalfall in vorbestimmter Art und Weise eingegrenzt oder beschrieben werden. Viertens: wir verstehen die Parameter eines Kontextes nach pragmatischer Art und Weise, daher führt uns die offene Natur eines Kontextes nicht zur epistemischen Zweifeln oder sogar Bedeutungsskeptizismus. Dieses pragmatische Wissen gehört in eine völlig andere Kategorie; die eine Fähigkeit ist. Fünftens: Kontexte sind prinzipiell zugänglich. Dies lehnt eine These der Inkommensurabilität zwischen Kontexte ab. Es gibt verschiedene pragmatishce Wege, um Zugang zu fremden Kontexte zu erreichen. Die sogenannte 'culure wars' in den U.S.A. werden hier als Beispiel bennant.

<p>The study aimed to examine how motherhood is constructed by married working mothers and the impact thereof on their working lives. This qualitative study explored the individual experiences of 7 working married mothers with preschool aged children who reside in the Western Cape, South Africa. Individual semi-structured interviews were&nbsp / onducted and analysed using thematic analysis. The study was situated within a social constructionist theoretical framework which holds that it is through our interactions with others that we create, maintain and verify our ideas and perceptions of the world. The literature revealed that despite the advances made by women in society, the notion that women are still the primary nurturers and care-givers is still in existence. This view is largely dictated by the social and cultural expectations in society and further perpetuated by images portrayed in the media. The results of this study revealed that the social and cultural context of the participants holds a view of motherhood that is gendered, comprises ideals of a caring, nurturing and ever-giving mother and links motherhood to womanhood and the female identity.</p>