The aim of this study was to explore cultural representations conveyed in the media discourse using a content-analysis software called ALCESTE. Our exploration focused on a sample of written media discourse in the Quebecois linguistic context, the Michaud affair, comparing and contrasting two different perspectives. We retrieved from the Internet all the articles published between December 2000 and January 2001 related to the case under study from two English Canadian newspapers, the National Post and The Gazette . The two corpora were submitted to ALCESTE software. / Using the factorial correspondence analysis of ALCESTE, we identified four different lexical worlds in the corpora of over fifty thousand words. Those lexical worlds correspond to the different positions of the utterers vis-a-vis the issue under study. / Specific vocabulary from the lexical worlds were found to convey cultural representations. Our study has permitted to uncover differences and similarities in the analysis of the Michaud affair reported in the National Post , an English newspaper in Toronto, Ontario, and in The Gazette , an English newspaper edited in Montreal, Quebec.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-196). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This paper explores the discourses of emigration in a South African daily newspaper from 1988 to 2001, and discusses the implications of these discourses on the way in which emigration is constructed within South African society In this paper, Potter and Wetherell 's (1987) approach to discourse analysis is utilized. It makes use of interpretative repertoires, to explore the functions and consequences of the discourses. The discursive framework thereby reveals the different subject positions related to nationalism, race and class. It is argued that economics and notions of culture and social class, do more than provide a useful medium through which the phenomenon of emigration can be understood. They also support the affirmations of certain groups of people above others, by claiming that emigration is unpatriotic and disloyal. This paper concludes by identifying the negative connotations of media discourses in the construction of emigration and acknowledges that many alternate constructions are silenced in this matter.

This dissertation explores how representations of women in the media function as heterodesignations in response to the current socio-economic cultural complex of globalization. In its merger with reality, the media has become the dominant discourse and the means through which prevailing modes of self-understanding are made available in postmodern society, of which the simulacrum is a key feature. Representations of women in the media in general, and in television advertisements in particular, are not, in any way, subversive of hegemonic discourse and, despite the prevalent ambiguity of these images, construct women in conformity with traditional gender stereotypes. Through practices of deconstruction, such as feminist counter-cinema, of which the film Female Perversions is an example, feminism has an important role to play in liberating women from the oppressive effects of these representations, even if these efforts are not, in themselves, free from ambiguity. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Title in English and Afrikaans / Communication Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Communication Science)

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This thesis examines how and why Thai advertising 'Westernises'. Drawing on a literature from the theoretical fields of globalisation, consumer culture and advertising, it interrogates the 'Westernisation' process across the three communicative moments of advertising: production, text and consumption. The research project argues first that Thailand's society, culture and media have historically evolved in relation to both the processes of 'W esternisation' and 'Thainisation', and ·second that class, mapped onto an 'urban' and 'rural' divide, is a key factor in shaping the articulations of 'Western' and 'Thai' cultures in contemporary Thai society. The thesis suggests that advertising represents and manages social change by looking 'back to the future'. As 'apostles of bourgeois modernity', the adverts 'look forward', mythifying modem life as 'future-oriented' and 'developed'. But at the same time, ads 'look backward', offering a 'nostalgic' presentation of what is lost in modem society -- the 'undeveloped' rural which is kept intact rather than modernised. Created by practitioners who identify themselves as 'Thai cosmopolitans', they and their urban audiences use 'Westernisation' to distinguish themselves from the rural peasantry: they set up a symbolic frontier between 'Us' and 'Them'. In contrast, in response to ads, rural people sceptically observe social change and the more 'Western' modem life which they wish to have; however, this is also a rationalisation of what they cannot (yet) have. The thesis concludes that in the 'journey to modem Thailand', although 'Western modernisation' is (re)defmed as 'social development' radiating outward from the metropolitan centre, culturally it is marked by an ambivalent relation to Thai traditional values and to the rural. The latter continue to constitute a necessary counter-pointing narrative of 'W esternisation' within advertising and the self-identity of the Thai middle classes.

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This thesis examines the work of David Bowie and its main theme is identity construction. Bowie was the first male pop star to project a succession of personae and his vocal styles, stage performances, lyrical method and videos are analysed in the light of his redefinitions of himself for public consumption. Bowie's guiding aesthetic was that of collage and his indebtedness to a variety of extra-musical sources, most significantly from literature and the theatre, is discussed. The theses eschews traditional narrative approaches which have been used to discuss individuals within pop, and deals with its subject matter thematically. The thesis describes the context in which Bowie's work is set and discusses the commercial constraints on his art, the relationship between the work and pop ideology, and the struggle between his public and private selves. The interaction between iconography and fandom is shown as playing a crucial role in determining his importance, and this analysis draws on my findings from correspondence with Bowie fans. Bowie's protean art has demanded a multi-disciplinary analytical approach and the thesis discusses the usefulness of musicology, semiotics, subcultural theory and Postmodernist thinking. The thesis suggests a way of explaining individuals in pop through a theoretical equilibrium between text and context.