Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-41).

It is no secret that Frédéric Chopin was fond of dance music. Dance genres—including the mazurka, polonaise, and waltz—dominate his oeuvre. According to the Henle Urtext edition, Chopin penned fifty-seven mazurkas during his lifetime, writing in this genre more than any other. It is interesting, then, that the mazurkas seem to be one of Chopin’s most historically misunderstood genres. In their haste to point out the mazurkas’ seeming irregularities of rhythm, harmony, mode, accent pattern, and such, critics both of Chopin’s time and in more recent history often ignore two equally fundamental issues: (1) the relationship between Chopin’s mazurkas and the dance of the same name, and (2) the manner in which that relationship might inform hermeneutic readings of the mazurkas. Surely, the perceived “irregularities” were not employed haphazardly, but rather for specific expressive purposes. This essay aims to construct a model for embodied musical meaning as it pertains to Chopin’s mazurkas by examining the intersection of gesture, narrative, and temporal theories. Drawing on Robert S. Hatten’s (2004) and Alexandra Pierce’s (2007) work on musical gesture, I will relate the steps of the danced mazurka to their abstract musical counterparts in Chopin’s solo piano works and examine the affective connection between the physical steps and the musical gestures. I will then call upon the narrative theories of Michael Klein (2004) and Byron Almén (2008) and the temporal theories put forth by Jonathan D. Kramer (1973, 1996) and Judy Lochhead (1979) to construct a framework in which the musical gestures (and the expressive states they imply) interact to produce emergent meanings. Finally, I will present a gestural/narrative reading of Chopin’s Mazurka in C# minor, op. 50, no. 3, which aims to demonstrate both the utility of my proposed theoretical model and the necessity of going back to the dance to grapple with issues of musical meaning in the mazurkas. / text

It is well-known that the meaning of a word often changes depending on the context in which the word is used. Determining the appropriate interpretation for a word occurrence requires a knowledge of the range of possible meanings for that word, and consideration of those possibilities given available contextual evidence. However, there is still much to be learned about the nature of our lexical knowledge, as well as how we make use of that knowledge in the course of language comprehension. I report on a series of three experiments that explore these issues. I begin with the question of how precise our perceptions of word meaning in context really are. In Experiment 1, I present a Magnitude Estimation study in which I obtain judgments of meaning-in-context similarity over pairs of intransitive verb occur- rences, such as The kid runs / The cat runs, or The cat runs / The lane runs. I find that participants supply a large range of very specific similarity judgments, that judgments are quite consistent across participants, and that these judgments can be at least partially predicted even by simple measures of contextual properties, such as subject noun animacy and human similarity ratings over pairs of subject nouns. However, I also find that while some participants supply a great variety of ratings, many participants supply only a few unique values during the task. This suggests that some individuals are making more fine-grained judgments than others. These differences in response granularity could stem from a variety of sources. However, the offline nature of Experiment 1 does not enable direct examination of the comprehension process, but rather focuses on its end result. In Experiment 2, I present a Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff study that explores the earliest stages of meaning-in-context resolution to better understand the dynamics of the comprehension process itself. In particular, I focus on the timecourse of meaning resolution and the question of whether verbs carry context-independent default interpretations that are activated prior to semantic integration. I find, consistent with what has previously been shown for nouns, that verbs do in fact carry such a default meaning, as can be seen in early false alarms to stimuli such as The dawn broke -- Something shattered. These default meanings appear to reflect the most frequent interpretation of the verb. While these default meanings are likely an emergent effect of repeated exposure to frequent interpretations of a verb, I hypothesize that they additionally support a shallow semantic processing strategy. Recently, a growing body of work has begun to demonstrate that our language comprehension is often less than exhaustive and less than maximally accurate -- people often vary the depth of their processing. In Experiment 3, I explore changes in depth of semantic processing by making an explicit connection to research on human decision making, particularly as regards questions of strategy selection and effort- accuracy tradeoffs. I present a semantic judgment task similar to that used in Experiment 2, but incorporating design principles common in studies on decision making, such as response-contingent financial payoffs and trial-by-trial feedback on response accuracy. I show that participants' preferences for deep and shallow semantic processing strategies are predictably influenced by factors known to affect decision making in other non-linguistic domains. In lower-risk situations, participants are more likely to accept default meanings even when they are not contextually supported, such as responding "True" to stimuli such as The dawn broke -- Something shattered, even without the presence of time pressure. In Experiment 3, I additionally show that participants can adjust not only their processing strategies but also their stimulus acceptance thresholds. Stimuli were normed for truthfulness, i.e. how strongly implied (or entailed) a probe sentence was given its context sentence. Some stimuli in the task posessed an intermediate degree of truthfulness, akin to implicature, as in The log burned -- Something was dangerous (truthfulness 4.55/7). Across 3 conditions, the threshold separating "true" from "false" stimuli was moved such that stimuli such as the example just given would be evaluated differently in different conditions. Participants rapidly learned these threshold placements via feedback, indicating that their perceptions of meaning-in-context, as expressed via the range of possible conclusions that could be drawn from the verb, could vary dynamically in response to situational constraints. This learning was additionally found to occur both faster and more accurately under increased levels of risk. This thesis makes two primary contributions to the literature. First, I present evidence that our knowledge of verb meanings is at least two-layered -- we have access to a very information-rich base of event knowledge, but we also have a more schematic level of representation that is easier to access. Second, I show that these different sources of information enable different semantic processing strategies, and that moreover the choice between these strategies is dependent upon situational characteristics. I additionally argue for the more general relevance of the decision making literature to the study of language processing, and suggest future applications of this approach for work in experimental semantics and pragmatics. / text

This thesis explores how activities that young children are engaged in within the preschool environment, can be understood in terms of early language and literacy processes. The overall aim is to construct knowledge about young children’s spontaneous sign processes as well as meaning making and early literacy processes in preschool. A wider aim is to contribute to the theoretical understanding of young children’s multimodal use of language. More specifically, there is an interest to show how preschool educators describe and analyse young children’s literacy and how young children construct language in interaction with other children and technology. The overall theoretical view of is a social constructionist perspective of language and knowledge. Young childrens’ early literacy is seen from Early Childhood Literacy and multimodal views. The results are presented in four studies that together construct knowledge about the overall aim. The first two studies, based on focus groups, give insight into preschool educators’ views, and professional language about young children’s literacy. Young children’s interactions with each other and an interactive board (IWB), were then explored by video recordings in the third and fourth studies. The interactions are discussed in relation to sign- and meaning making, imagination and creativity. The professional language of Swedish preschool educators is eventually discussed as a dialogism of earlier theoretical and leading voices. The use of concepts such as bodily alliterations and pictographic writing are proposed as ways to expand the theoretical approach to young children’s literacy processes in preschool. By observing childrens interactions and view their bodily activities and their use of resources as doing literacy- and language their literacy could be challenged in preschools in its own right, and seen as literacy education.

The field of psychology has traditionally focused on the deleterious effects of adversity to the exclusion of positive effects. However, a literature on positive sequelae of traumatic events has burgeoned over the past decade. The issue of whether individual's reports of positive changes are merely illusory self-enhancing biases or are reflective of objective, quantifiable change is perhaps the most contentious in the posttraumatic growth research at this time. This dissertation begins with a broad overview of the extant research on posttraumatic growth, then presents the evidence supporting each side of the validity debate. As the population studied in this dissertation is adults with traumatic-onset spinal cord injuries, a presentation of research that ties disability to the posttraumatic growth literature follows. Finally, the introductory chapter concludes with an argument for the importance of including a disability perspective in psychological science. Three papers follow, each taking up aspects of this relatively new focus on positive aspects of disability. / Psychology

published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

The process of research is fraught with rote terminology that, when used blindly, can bend our methodological actions away from our theoretical intentions. This investigation is aimed at developing two methods for bringing meaning and interpretability to research when we work with confounds. I argue, with the first method, that granting confounds substantive influence in a network of related variables (rather than viewing confounds as nuisance variables) enhances the conceptual dimension with which phenomena can be explained. I evaluated models differing in how confounds were specified using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Generally, minor alterations to model specifications, such as direction of causal pathways, did not change model parameter estimates; however, the conceptual meaning of how the confounds interacted with other variables in the model changed drastically. Another frequent misconceptualization of confounds, detailed by the second method, occurs when confounds are used as proxy variables to control for variance that is not directly measureable, and no explicit attempt is made to ensure that the proxy variable adequately represents the underlying, intended construct. For this second demonstration, I used SHARE data to estimate models varying in the degree to which proxy variables represent intended variables. Results showed that parameter estimates can differ substantially across different levels of proxy variable representation. When imperfect proxy variables are used, an insufficient amount of variance is removed from the observed spurious relationship between design variables. The findings from this methodological demonstration underscore the importance of precisely imbuing confounds with conceptual meaning and selecting proxy variables that accurately represent the underlying construct for which control is intended.

Consider the following Hegelian idea: It is important that we be at home in the social world, and it is deeply problematic if we are not. In this dissertation, I employ concepts of contemporary vintage to specify the meaning of the Hegelian notions of the social world, being at home in the social world, and being alienated from it. I also explicate the value of being at home in one's world and the conditions under which being at home in this manner is possible. This dissertation proceeds in six chapters. In the first chapter, I describe the social world as comprising social institutions and social roles. I argue that being at home in the social world entails identifying with one's roles and institutions. In the second chapter, I argue that an agent realizes the values of meaning and self-determination through pursuing her social roles. Thus, the value of being at home in the social world is that when the world is a home and one perceives it to be such, one can realize the values of meaning and self-determination through participating in its institutions. Moreover, I argue that when one identifies with one's role one thereby has a further weighty reason to conform to the duties that constitute the role--namely, by so doing one achieves the goods of meaning and self-determination. In chapters three through five, I consider whether it is possible to identify with and experience roles characterized by authority structures as homes. Chapters three and four specify the notion of an authority structure. In chapter five, I enumerate the conditions under which an agent can be at home in an authority-claiming institution. In short, I argue that the key conditions are that the institution's authority is justified and that the agent identifies with the institution and her role within it. Finally, in chapter six I develop an implication of chapter four's discussion of authority for the debate in analytic jurisprudence between the proponents of exclusive and inclusive legal positivism. In short, this discussion supports inclusive legal positivism and weighs against exclusive legal positivism.

The topic of this essay is core value issues, how they are mediated in school and how they are practiced. I am investigating a problem concerning the existential worth of the core values-content for children, or in other words, the difficulty of reconciling the theory of the core values and their practice. This problem is portrayed by two stories. The aim of this work is to investigate how to combine the core values theory with its practice, in other words, make it meaningful. In my essay, I turn to recent research in the field to provide a background to my issue, and hereby further point to my problem. To further deepen the understanding of the problem, I use the professor and educator Eugene Matusov´s theory of dialogic pedagogy. Matusov, much inspired by Bahktin, asserts that all human communication is inherently dialogic. Based on this thesis I have tried to understand my problem and examine what possible solutions Matusov can contribute with. What I have found is that core values practice, here illustrated by my stories and current research, is problematic because it very much is program-based. This tends to lead to correcting children's behavior through actions and prevention against bullying and abusive actions. This becomes the core values practice. Instead I argue based Matusov´s theory, that the core values practice ​​should rather have a broad democracy and community focus where norms, societal discourses and structures are examined in a joint effort. I also argue that meaning making and learning can, and aught to, be promoted through dialogic pedagogy.

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