Literary texts offer rich opportunities for language learning. However, can second language (L2) learners fully understand L2 literary texts? According to Bernhardt (2001):"the act of reading in a second language is extremely tricky -- is even trickier with literary texts that are inherently ambiguous, full of metaphor and intertextual relations to texts to which the readers have no access" (p.198). In other words, L2 readers are often poorly equipped grammatically, linguistically and culturally to cope with literary texts in which it might be difficult to recognize figurative language, to comprehend metaphors, to identify underlying cultural assumptions and above all to think critically while navigating those complexities. Therefore, during the reading process, L2 readers encounter gaps in the text which necessarily compel them to use whatever background knowledge they possess in order to create meaning. The purpose of this research is to see exactly how post-secondary L2 readers use their existing background knowledge to understand literary texts and what they do when confronted with text passages for which they lack such knowledge.

As a lingua franca across the globe, English plays a vital role in international communications. Due to rapid economic, political, and educational globalization, the English language has become a powerful means of communication. Therefore, English education is vital to the development of many countries around the world. Since 1932, the need for a lingua franca in Saudi Arabia developed as the country progressed politically, economically, and educationally. Now, English is important to Saudis’ economic, educational, and career development and success. Vocabulary is a major step in learning any language. By deepening students’ lexical knowledge, they will be able to use English accurately to express themselves. However, teaching words in isolation and through memorization is not highly effective; English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners need to interact with the language and its usage in a more profound way. This can be done by integrating corpora and stylistics analysis in an EFL curriculum. The importance of stylistics analysis to literary texts in the EFL classroom lies in the way that EFL learners will be exposed to authentic language. At the same time they will get insight into how English is structured; and by accessing corpora, which provide a wide range of data for the analysis of stylistics, students will be able to compare the lexical and grammatical patterns in authentic texts. Also, it is important to introduce students to the different levels of English (i.e. semantic, lexis, morphology); this will enlarge EFL learners’ knowledge of English vocabulary and various grammatical patterns. This project offers an innovative perspective on how to teach English for EFL university-level students by using corpora in a lexicalized stylistics approach, which will enable EFL learners to acquire vocabulary by reading literary texts. This provides a rich environment of lexical items and a variety of grammatical patterns. This approach offers EFL learners analytical tools that will improve their linguistic skills as they interact with and analyze authentic examples of English and gain insight about its historical, social and cultural background.

"In From Eden to Dystopia: An Ecocritical Examination of Emergent Mythologies" "in Early Los Angeles Literary Texts, ecocriticism and critical regionalism were utilized" "alongside other American Studies practices to analyze nineteenth- and early-twentieth-" "century depictions of nature in Los Angeles. Specifically, these tools were applied to" "travel guides and narratives of the 1870s and 1880s, the turn-of-the-century magazine" "The Land of Sunshine, Upton Sinclair’s Oil! (1926) and Raymond Chandler’s The Big" "Sleep (1939), and other non-fiction publications of the 1920s and ’30s to track an" "evolving narrative of Los Angeles as a paradise and later as a place perched on the edge" "of ecological ruin. Key themes included nature as aesthetic or health-related amenity vs." "exploitable resource, along with both subtle and overt class- and race-based" "environmental exclusions. The chief aim of this thesis was to elucidate how Los Angeles" "went from a “new Eden for the Saxon home-seeker” to the place where its river was" "paved with cement and virtually forgotten for decades. This thesis concluded that with" "the Los Angeles River’s recent revitalization efforts, there could be future gains made for" "other aspects of the city’s environment, with the hope that uncovering past idea-shaping" "narratives of nature in Los Angeles may help illuminate how current ideas of Los" "Angeles as a place without nature came to be and how that city-versus-nature dichotomy" "can be both damaging and false."

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En la presente tesis se han investigado las Procesiones de Semana Santa en cada uno de los pueblos de la Región de Murcia, destacando las formas particulares de celebrarlas en cada lugar, reflejando todo ello a través de las tradiciones, la religiosidad popular, el patrimonio escultórico, y el simbolismo de determinados actos, como son "El Caracol" realizado por los Armaos de Jumilla, o "La Caracola" realizada por los Armaos de Cieza. La parte histórica se ha proyectado a través de Textos Literarios de la Pasión, así como del desarrollo de Cofradías y Hermandades, conformándose de esta forma una visión cultural de la Rememoración de la Pasión , Muerte y Resurrección de Cristo en la Región de Mucia en general y en cada pueblo en particular. La implicación en los actos de Semana Santa que cada pueblo potencia y la presencia cultural que en cada lugar alcanza, revela el compromiso asumido por las gentes, la fe, la devoción y la profunda religiosidad popular que los impulsa.La tesis ha sido estructurada en dos partes; la primera recoge la Semana Santa pueblo a pueblo en la Región de Murcia, y la segunda una visión general de la misma pero a través de los Textos Literarios de la Pasión, incluyendo cuantos hemos hallado. Por tanto, el tema ha sido estudiado desde los comienzos de las manifestaciones pasionarias y cofradieras, que se produjo hacia el comienzo del siglo XV. Los textos han sido presentados agrupándolos por materias y formando con cada una de ellas capítulo propio, entre los que figuran: Publicaciones pasionarias en prensa, Autos de Pasión, Cuentos, Pregones, Vía Crucis, etc. Se da por terminado el trabajo con las correspondientes conclusiones, así como bibliografía consultada. / In this thesis, the author has investigated the different Easter processions that take place in each one of the towns/villages in the Murcia region, pointing out how each of them specifically celebrates this holy festivity. All this has been done within the framework provided by cultural traditions, popular religious beliefs, sculptural heritage and the symbolism of specific events such as "El Caracol," performed by the Armaos in Jumilla (Murcia), or "La Caracola," performed by the Armaos in Cieza (Murcia). The more historic analysis has been conducted by means of an in-depth study of literary texts regarding the passion of Christ. Another source used in this thesis has been the study of the development of religious brotherhoods, thus presenting a cultural overview of how the passion of Christ, his death and resurrection are acted out globally in the region and individually in each town. The implications of the different Easter celebrations that each town promotes/enhances, and the cultural relevance that they have within the region, shows how truly devoted, faithful and committed to these traditions the inhabitants of each town are. This thesis has been structured in two main parts: the first one describes the different Easter celebrations that take place in each town in the Murcia region; the second part provides a general/global approach to the Easter celebrations, but this time using all available literary texts dealing with the passion of Christ as the main source, i.e. from the first literary manifestations in the 15th century to the most recent ones. These texts have been classified according to their specific typology, devoting one chapter to each. This includes Easter journalistic publications, passion plays, short stories, religious proclamations, texts featuring the way of the cross narrative, etc. The thesis ends with the corresponding conclusions as well as the list of references used.

Orientador: José Leonardo do Nascimento / Banca: Omar Khouri / Banca: Lóris Graldi Rampazzo / Resumo: Esta pesquisa consiste na análise do aspecto literário na produção artística do artesão e artista irlandês do início do século XX, Harry Clarke, e a sua habilidade em lidar com suportes diferenciados ao interpretar plasticamente obras literárias; inicialmente com a pintura em vitrais e, depois, com a ilustração de livros, sem abandonar o trabalho com os vitrais. Partindo do pressuposto de que o artista não é apenas um artesão especializado, mas comprometido com os novos desafios que a sociedade contemporânea apresenta, este texto objetiva apreciar alguns conteúdos que permitam o diálogo próximo entre pintura e poesia, ilustração e diferentes gêneros de obras literárias clássicas, reforçando a idéia de que as artes plásticas e as artes gráficas, interagindo com o texto literário, é um exercício para a leitura do mundo de maneira significativa e ao mesmo tempo lúdica. / Abstract: This research involves the analysis of the literary's aspects of artistic production of the Irish artist and craftsman of the early twentieth century, Harry Clarke, and his ability to deal with different media to interpret plastically literary works; initially with the stained glass and then with the illustration of books, without abandoning the first work. Based on the principle that the artist is not only an expert craftsman, as well as commited to the new challenges that contemporary society presents, this text aims to assess some contents that permit a close dialogue between painting and poetry, illustration and different genres of literary classics, reinforcing the idea that the fine arts and graphic arts, interacting with the literary text is an exercise in order to read the world in a meaningful way and at the same time in a playful way. / Mestre

Cette thèse de doctorat, qui fait partie du projet des « Plus anciens documents linguistiques de la France », s’inscrit à la fois dans le domaine de la linguistique et dans celui de la philologie. L’étude lexicologique qu’elle propose est basée sur des documents d’archives du XIIIe siècle et s’accompagne de la transcription de deux corpus de chartes inédites. L’analyse détaillée de cinquante mots liés au champ lexical de l’agriculture, présentée sous forme de dossiers lexicologiques, constitue le noyau du travail. Les apports nouveaux que les dossiers permettent d’obtenir en matière de sens et de formes nouveaux, de réseau sémantique et d’étymologies corrigées sont présentés à la suite des dossiers. La méthode d’analyse intensive qu’ils adoptent fournit un complément indispensable à la lexicographie existante et sa méthode extensive. L’étude comporte en outre une réflexion sur le rôle des chartes vernaculaires dans l’élaboration et le changement linguistiques, à travers notamment le lexique. / This doctoral thesis studying the words related to agriculture in medieval charters is situated in the fields of historical linguistics and philology. It is part of the research project “The most ancient linguistic documents of France” and provides a transcription of two corpuses of charters as well as a lexicological study of 50 words related to agriculture. Each word is treated separately in an article including the word’s etymology, the different writings appearing in the charters, a semantic description, a short context of each occurrence, the information from the most important Old French dictionaries as well as a critique of the latter. The articles, forming the main part of the thesis, are followed by a chapter that sums up their results concerning new words or meanings, etymology, hyperonyms and (co)hyponyms. The words are thus studied in an intensive manner forming a complement to the extensive description provided by the dictionaries. The study also includes a reflection on the role the charters play in language elaboration through their vocabulary.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:22:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-12-02Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:06:50Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 takeuchi_tm_me_ia.pdf: 10619974 bytes, checksum: 140e20cef8b06f6d2a72d65f75ce6082 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) / Esta pesquisa consiste na análise do aspecto literário na produção artística do artesão e artista irlandês do início do século XX, Harry Clarke, e a sua habilidade em lidar com suportes diferenciados ao interpretar plasticamente obras literárias; inicialmente com a pintura em vitrais e, depois, com a ilustração de livros, sem abandonar o trabalho com os vitrais. Partindo do pressuposto de que o artista não é apenas um artesão especializado, mas comprometido com os novos desafios que a sociedade contemporânea apresenta, este texto objetiva apreciar alguns conteúdos que permitam o diálogo próximo entre pintura e poesia, ilustração e diferentes gêneros de obras literárias clássicas, reforçando a idéia de que as artes plásticas e as artes gráficas, interagindo com o texto literário, é um exercício para a leitura do mundo de maneira significativa e ao mesmo tempo lúdica. / This research involves the analysis of the literary’s aspects of artistic production of the Irish artist and craftsman of the early twentieth century, Harry Clarke, and his ability to deal with different media to interpret plastically literary works; initially with the stained glass and then with the illustration of books, without abandoning the first work. Based on the principle that the artist is not only an expert craftsman, as well as commited to the new challenges that contemporary society presents, this text aims to assess some contents that permit a close dialogue between painting and poetry, illustration and different genres of literary classics, reinforcing the idea that the fine arts and graphic arts, interacting with the literary text is an exercise in order to read the world in a meaningful way and at the same time in a playful way.

The traditional literature teaching methods for Chinese English majors are formalism and biographical criticism. These criticisms use an objective approach focused on details about the author, historical context and literary mechanics to analyze literature. These methods neglect the fact that literature comprehension involves readers’ active participation. Cultural criticism, as a critical approach, considers influences that readers bring to their engagement with a given literary text. This approach is supposed to fit the classroom settings for cross-cultural literature teaching and learning. This study was conducted to examine the effect of utilizing cultural criticism to teach British literature among Chinese undergraduate English majors. The effect of employing cultural criticism was reflected in two aspects: students’ cultural understandings of literary texts and their literature comprehension. In this study, students’ awareness of cultural influences in literary texts from cultural perspectives was evaluated as their cultural understandings; literature comprehension was assessed from students’ understanding in context, themes, and textual meaning of literary texts. In this study a pedagogy of cultural criticism was developed and implemented in the teaching of a British literature course. Students received instruction through cultural criticism lens for two hours per week over a period of 14 weeks. The instruments included two essay tests concerning the cultural analysis of literary works, and three literature comprehension tests. A quasi-experimental design and a repeated measure mixed-design were used to compare the performance for students in two experimental groups (cultural criticism approach) and one control group (formalist and biographical approach). Various statistical models were applied to data analysis. The experimental results showed that the cultural criticism approach resulted in better cultural understandings of literary texts and better literature comprehension than the traditional formalist and biographical approach. Another finding is the different performance in cultural understandings of literary texts between the two experimental groups, as the instructor had different proficiency levels in using the cultural criticism approach. This study has provided evidence that cultural criticism could be a valuable approach to help Chinese undergraduate English majors bridge cultural gaps in their understandings of literature and facilitate literature comprehension.