This thesis investigates how the news media constructs reality through newspaper representation of the role of a hero in society and a hero's loyalty to the nation. The research is based on a case study of New Zealand newspapers and how they framed Russell Coutts' role in the America's Cup 2003. Russell Coutts was the leading figure of "Team New Zealand"in 1995 and in 2000 when his team won and defended the America's Cup. He was praised by New Zealand newspapers as a hero during the time he led "Team New Zealand"from one victory to another. But, after the victory in 2000, Russell Coutts signed a contract with the rival team "Alinghi"and the framing of his heroic role in the New Zealand press changed. He became a defector from his team and he was framed as a traitor to his own country. Using discourse studies and semiotics as the main theoretical and methodological background, this thesis analyzes how the process of news framing is influenced by the rules of journalistic practice and by the wider social environment. The thesis explores how news values blend with mythological narrative in journalists' daily routine of producing news stories that both construct reality and reaffirm society's dominant values. The study reveals that the re-presentation of the nation in the news media is a simplified construction of an ideal and transcendental identity. Consequently, the role of the hero is framed as a representation of that ideal, and the hero is framed as a loyal leader - someone who should lead, not challenge, society's rules. The thesis discusses the news media's power to define identity by questioning a prominent individual's loyalty to the nation. The research illustrates that even a hero whose position is firmly established within the particular society can be radically re-defined if that hero is not following the expectations of the press and the rules of the society

This study explores whether and how skilled Chinese immigrants can contribute to New Zealand's knowledge society and economy with their knowledge and skills. As New Zealand is moving towards a knowledge society and economy, the attraction of skilled migrants is one of the critical strategies in maintaining its competitive advantages. However, the results of the socioeconomic integration of new skilled migrants always lead to debates on the real role of skilled migrants in New Zealand's society and economy. This study uses multiple research strategies combining analyses of historical and statistical materials, and a case study with fourteen interviews conducted with new Chinese immigrants, who came from Mainland China after 1990 and are living and working in Christchurch, to explore the relationships between these 'descendents of the dragon' and New Zealand's knowledge society and economy. Through these strategies, the study shows the role of knowledge in the emergence of New Zealand's knowledge society and economy, the value placed on knowledge and skills in New Zealand immigration policies and the change in the Chinese community with the growing demand for skilled migrants. It argues that tacit knowledge is not separated from but interactive with explicit knowledge through cultural values, social networks and structures, and interpersonal relationships. Therefore, in the process surrounding the entry of new skilled Chinese immigrants into New Zealand society, the knowledge economy is not exclusively economic but socially and culturally conditioned; and the knowledge society is not universal but diversified and interdependent.

The intention of this thesis is to draw attention to a much neglected part of women's suffrage history - that is, a comparative analysis of the suffrage movements in New Zealand and the United States. Historians have dismissed any suggestion of similarities between the two groups because' of the obvious differences in size and the time taken to gain the vote. However, this study reveals parallels between the two movements in terms of membership, leadership, ideologies and opposition. This is particularly highlighted in the comparison with Wyoming. These similarities, together with New Zealand women's new found 'prestige' after having won the vote, led to close relations between women of the two countries, as revealed in personal correspondence. By the late l890s United States suffragists had changed direction in both their tactics and arguments for suffrage and this, together with distance and a lack of time and money, meant that New Zealand suffragists aid was confined to emotional support rather than practical assistance. This study was, to a certain degree, limited by the lack of availability of United States primary sources. However, the Kate Sheppard Collection contains a wealth of correspondence between the New Zealand and United States suffragists and provides ample information to support the thesis. Prior to the examination of the interaction of the suffrage movements in New Zealand and the United States, we will first of all begin by considering the broader context of women's role in society. This is will be followed with a study of -the historiography of women's suffrage in Wyoming and New Zealand. We will then proceed to a comparative analysis of the leaders and supporters of the two movements. In New Zealand the women's suffrage and women's temperance organizations were inseparably linked, hence the comparative natured analysis dictates that points for comparison should be made in relation to the temperance origins of suffrage in the United States and New Zealand and to leaders with temperance links.

In the early 1980s Foreskin's Lament swept the country as a major artistic and commercial success. In this play dramatist Greg McGee challenges the traditional New Zealand male role and associated behaviour. Foreskin ends the play searching for a new male identity: "[c]an't play the game or any more wear the one-dimensional mask .... Whaddarya?"¹ Has the massive economic and social change occuring in New Zealand since the early 1980s been responsible for answering Foreskin's question and redefining the male role? Similarly, has feminism resulted in women achieving real freedom from the constraints of traditional expectations? Or, rather, has the uncertainty caused by the constant change and financial insecurity influenced New Zealanders to reactivate or reinforce gender roles from earlier times? It is possible to answer the above questions through a close study of contemporary New Zealand theatre: theatre is influenced and produced by the social and cultural context in which it exists. Within the social context, gender is inextricably linked with sex and violence. As the meeting between society and theatre occurs during the performance of play texts, the performance situation is the dominant concern of this thesis. ¹Greg McGee. Foreskin's Lament. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1985. 96.

Little is known about factors that influence dialect perception and the cues listeners rely on in telling apart two accents. This thesis will shed light on how accurate New Zealanders and Australians are at identifying each other's accents and what vowels they tune in to when doing the task. The differences between New Zealand and Australian English mainly hail from the differing production of the short front vowels, some of which have reached the status of being stereotyped in the two countries. With the help of speech synthesis, an experiment was designed to test the perception of vowels produced in a typically New Zealand and a typically Australian fashion. Forty New Zealanders and sixty Australians took part in the study. Participants were asked to rate words on a scale from 1 (definitely NZ) to 6 (definitely Australian). The words contained one of eight different vowels. Frequency and stereotypicality effects as well as nasality were also investigated. The results demonstrate that dialect identification is a complex process that requires taking into account many different interacting factors of speech perception, social and regional variation of vowels and issues of clear speech versus conversational speech. Although overall performing quite accurately on the task, New Zealanders and Australians seem to perceive each other's speech inherently differently. I argue that this is due to different default configurations of their vowel spaces. Furthermore, a perceptual asymmetry between New Zealanders and Australians concerning the type of vowel has been observed. Reinforcing exemplar models of speech perception, it has also been shown that frequency of a word influences a listener's accuracy in identifying an accent. Moreover, nasality seems to function as an intensifier of stereotypes.

Contributing to the broader debate on the nature and identity of the European Union (EU), this thesis is a study of the EU from the outside looking in: an examination of how this novel process of integration among the nations of Europe is viewed by its partners around the world, in particular in New Zealand through its television news media. While there are many studies which examine how the EU is understood and represented within its borders, there is an absence of parallel studies which consider the image of the EU from an external perspective. Recognising that the television news media plays a particularly important role in influencing the knowledge and perceptions of people on foreign matters, the thesis presents an analysis of the entire EU television news coverage in New Zealand's two prime-time television news bulletins throughout 2004. The primary research question that the thesis investigates is, how is the EU framed in the television news media of New Zealand, an external 'Other' of the EU? The study was multi-methodological in nature and analysed each of the relevant news items using content analysis, as well as undertaking deeper analysis of the metaphorical categorisations and the visual images of the EU, to detect the entire range of EU representations and the overall image of the EU these created for New Zealand television news audiences. These findings were then compared against corresponding research from Australia, South Korea and Thailand, as well as to the perceptions of New Zealand's leading newsmakers, in order to account for the most important trends in EU image formation in New Zealand. In particular it was found that the EU was often entirely absent from the New Zealand television news space, and when it was visible, was often presented in a way which ignored the extensive domestic relevance of the Union for New Zealand and its immediate region.

Alternative music was a cultural practice, which became a significant feature of New Zealand's local and national history over the last two decades of the twentieth century. Features of technology, economics and music culture influenced the creation and course of local independent music scenes, along with factors such as cultural remoteness. This thesis isolates and collates key factors and time periods of international music industry history, and refracts the information through alternative music in general, providing a coherent definition of the term. The history and definitions of New Zealand's alternative music history are then assessed for the period 1981-2001, with especial reference to the Flying Nun label and 'Dunedin Sound'.

This thesis explores ways in which some New Zealanders draw on and negotiate both belly dancing and local cultural norms to construct multiple local and global identities. Drawing upon discourse analysis, post-structuralist and post-colonial theory, it argues that belly dancing outside its cultures of origin has become globalised, with its own synthetic culture arising from complex networks of activities, objects and texts focused around the act of belly dancing. This is demonstrated through analysis of New Zealand newspaper accounts, interviews, focus group discussion, the Oasis Dance Camp belly dance event in Tongariro and the work of fusion belly dance troupe Kiwi Iwi in Christchurch. Bringing New Zealand into the field of belly dance study can offer deeper insights into the processes of globalisation and hybridity, and offers possibilities for examination of the variety of ways in which belly dance is practiced around the world. The thesis fills a gap in the literature about ‘Western’ understandings and uses of the dance, which has thus far heavily emphasised the United States and notions of performing as an ‘exotic Other’. It also shifts away from a sole focus on representation to analyse participants’ experiences of belly dance as dance, rather than only as performative play. The talk of the belly dancers involved in this research demonstrates the complex and contradictory ways in which they articulate ideas about New Zealand identities and cultural conventions. Some of their reflections on belly dancing appear to reflect consciousness of and dis-ease around issues of indigeneity and multiculturalism in wider New Zealand society. Participants in this study also talk about how they explore and perform ideas about femininity, which includes both acceptance and rejection of belly dancing as innately feminine. Looking at New Zealand identities through belly dance, and vice-versa, highlights developing, nuanced and multiple articulations of self and other in a globalised world.

This thesis reports on findings from a year-long sociolinguistic ethnography at an all girls’ high school in New Zealand which is referred to as Selwyn Girls’ High (SGH). The study combines the qualitative methods of ethnography with the quantitative methods of acoustic phonetic analysis and experimental design. At the school, there were a number of different groups (e.g. The PCs, The Pasifika Group, The BBs), each forming a community of practice where the different members actively constructed their unique social personae within the context of the group. There was a dichotomy between the groups based on whether they ate lunch in the common room (CR) or not (NCR) and this division reflected the individual speakers’ stance on whether they viewed themselves as “normal” or different from other girls at the school. In-depth acoustic analysis was conducted on tokens of the word like from the girls’ speech. This is a word with a number of different pragmatic functions, such as quotative like (I was LIKE “yeah okay”), discourse particle like (It was LIKE so boring), and lexical verb like (I LIKE your socks). The results provide evidence of acoustically gradient variation in the girls’ realisations of the word like that is both grammatically and socially conditioned. For example, quotative like was more likely to have a shorter /l/ to vowel duration ratio and be less diphthongal than either discourse particle like or grammatical like and there was a significant difference in /k/ realisation depending on a combination of the token’s pragmatic function and whether the speaker ate lunch in the CR or not. Additionally, three speech perception experiments were conducted in order to examine the girls’ sensitivity to the relationship between phonetic variants, lemma-based information, and social factors. The results indicate that perceivers were able to distinguish between auditory tokens of the different functions of like in a manner that was consistent with trends observed in production. Perceivers were also able to extract social information about the speaker depending on phonetic cues in the stimuli. Taken together, the results provide evidence that lemmas with a shared wordform can have different phonetic realisations, that individuals can manipulate these realisations in the construction of their social personae, and that individuals can use lemma-based phonetic trends from production to identify a word. These results have implications for how phonetic, lemma, and social information are stored in the mind and, together, they are used to inform a unified model of speech production, perception and identity construction.

This thesis examines whether the introduction of citizenship education in New Zealand would increase the levels of active citizenship of young migrant New Zealanders, using voter turnout as a measure. This research draws attention to an overlooked part of New Zealand political science research by studying young migrant New Zealanders. The theories and topics covered in this research include the notion of citizenship, education, political participation, social capital and multiculturalism. Both surveys and interviews are used to gauge young New Zealanders’ political attitudes and opinions, and their levels of political knowledge, interest, sophistication and socialisation are examined. The findings of this research suggest that citizenship education would not only be beneficial to young migrant New Zealanders but that citizenship education would benefit all young New Zealanders. It is argued that an increase in all young New Zealanders’ levels of political knowledge and interest are likely to have a positive effect on voter turnout levels. It is also argued that the current education curriculum does not explicitly encourage such learning. Using these findings in conjunction with theory, it is recommended that citizenship education is implemented into the New Zealand secondary school curriculum to ensure that New Zealand’s democracy is in good health for the current and future generations.