Surprisingly enough, while it is generally acknowledged that emotion plays a vital part in the negotiation of every day life, there has been until recently a scarcity of communications scholarship directly concerned with its study. To date, those examining this variable have largely relied for the theoretical and methodological support on models imported from psychology. While their studies have arguably had a positive impact on our understanding of some aspects of emotion, this dissertation contends that an over-dependence on psychological theories and methods has resulted in a blinkered approach to its study. In general, the focus of research and scholarship has been on either display and recognition of facial expression, physiological response to environmental stimuli, subjective verbal labeling, and behavioral manifestation. On closer inspection, a positivist discourse which considers emotion in methodologically individualistic and empirically behavioral terms has informed much of this work. Building on behaviorism, intentionalist analytical philosophy, and phenomenology, emotion research in Communication Studies has tended to neglect the social. More sophisticated approaches to grasping this latter variable, found in Sociology and Anthropology, consequently have had little impact, leading communications scholars to consistently define emotion in terms of individual motivations, drives, desires, wants, and dispositions rather than as a process located in a social world. / In light of this, this dissertation strove not only to assemble a history and provide a critique of emotion study in psychology, but to relate it to advances being made in Sociology and Anthropology, especially those pertaining to communication and postmodernity. Alongside this, it endeavored to: (1) furnish a theory and methodology for explaining those relationships; (2) illuminate a way in which emotion can be reconceived as a formative and independent social variable integral to the reproduction of postmodernity; and (3) analyze the practices and discourses that have contributed to the historically changing, oftentimes, inconsistent and disputed, study of emotion. After the principle issues were introduced in the opening Chapter, the second Chapter outlined the relationships between emotion, the everyday, media, and postmodernity, with the everyday representing a key theoretical construct necessary for understanding our time. This Chapter closed with an exploration of so-called postmodern emotion. Using several theoretical frameworks, Chapter 3 tracked historical, discursive, and disciplinary interests in emotion and Chapter 4 relations between theories of emotions through pre-modern (5thC B.C.-1890), modern (1890-1960), and postmodern (1960-) periods. Next, Chapter 5 charted the etymologies of the primary emotion terms, while Chapter 6 explored approaches to the study of emotion in Communication Studies, or Communicology. After an initial analysis of 'bibliometric' data, the three primary traditional approaches were then systematically identified and examined. A fourth postmodern approach, the constructionist, was presented and assessed in the last Chapter. There it was argued that, from this perspective, communication constitutes reality and not merely provides a conduit for preformed intentional and emotional states. There, the concept of social emotion was advanced, the idea of emotion as socio-culture performance developed, and a rules based theoretical f

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Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation examines two films directed by Quentin Tarantino, whom I have situated as a postmodern film director, within the theoretical context of the philosophies of two postmodern philosophers: Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard. I argue that the major institutions of society, such as the family and religion, are viewed as grand narratives, in Lyotard’s sense of the term, which Tarantino repeatedly subverts. Overlapping with this intersection of Lyotard’s philosophy in Tarantino’s films is the Baudrillardian loss of the real, which manifests as hyperreality in many scenes. I suggest that Tarantino makes a conscious effort to create such hyperreality with the creation of playful signifiers in his films. I examine selected scenes to find Baudrillard’s “successive phases of the image” (Baudrillard 2010:6) that lead to the creation of a simulacrum. The compelling intersections between the creation of Baudrillardian simulacra and the subversion of Lyotard’s grand narratives are explored within selected scenes which are deconstructed by means of film narratology, semiotic analysis and narrative analysis. The combination of the various methods of media research in this thesis enables what Jane Stokes calls “a more textured understanding” (2008:27) of the films under discussion. A close reading from a semiotic point of view facilitates a deconstruction of some obscure elements, such as the embedded meaning in lyrics and dialogue or the messages implicit in the mise en scène. / English Studies / M. A.

This dissertation examines two films directed by Quentin Tarantino, whom I have situated as a postmodern film director, within the theoretical context of the philosophies of two postmodern philosophers: Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard. I argue that the major institutions of society, such as the family and religion, are viewed as grand narratives, in Lyotard’s sense of the term, which Tarantino repeatedly subverts. Overlapping with this intersection of Lyotard’s philosophy in Tarantino’s films is the Baudrillardian loss of the real, which manifests as hyperreality in many scenes. I suggest that Tarantino makes a conscious effort to create such hyperreality with the creation of playful signifiers in his films. I examine selected scenes to find Baudrillard’s “successive phases of the image” (Baudrillard 2010:6) that lead to the creation of a simulacrum. The compelling intersections between the creation of Baudrillardian simulacra and the subversion of Lyotard’s grand narratives are explored within selected scenes which are deconstructed by means of film narratology, semiotic analysis and narrative analysis. The combination of the various methods of media research in this thesis enables what Jane Stokes calls “a more textured understanding” (2008:27) of the films under discussion. A close reading from a semiotic point of view facilitates a deconstruction of some obscure elements, such as the embedded meaning in lyrics and dialogue or the messages implicit in the mise en scène. / English Studies / M. A.

Community development and in particular participatory development is about people. This means that the person who studies or practices participatory development or any other of the participatory pratices should have a particular way of thinking about people. The main aim motivating this study was to investigate the paradigm/s about people on which participatory practices are based. This included a literature research on five participatory practices namely participatory development; participatory communication; participatory learning; participatory research; and participatory management. A guideline for paradigm analysis was developed by using Schriver's (1995) and Capra's (1996) descriptions of a paradigm as well as ideas of hermeneutics. From the paradigm analysis on the participatory practices two themes emerged: A shift from modernism to post modernism in the thinking processes and participatory practices. From the participatory practices the same concepts repeatedly emerged indicating a similar paradigm for all the participatory practices. Three post modern theories were therefore applied to enhance the description of the different concepts. The end result of this study is the development of an evolving paradigm for participatory practices in order to give enhanced meaning to concepts in the participatory vocabulary. Finally a critical reflection was done on the post modern research process. / Text in Afrikaans / Social Work / D.Phil. (Social Work)

Community development and in particular participatory development is about people. This means that the person who studies or practices participatory development or any other of the participatory pratices should have a particular way of thinking about people. The main aim motivating this study was to investigate the paradigm/s about people on which participatory practices are based. This included a literature research on five participatory practices namely participatory development; participatory communication; participatory learning; participatory research; and participatory management. A guideline for paradigm analysis was developed by using Schriver's (1995) and Capra's (1996) descriptions of a paradigm as well as ideas of hermeneutics. From the paradigm analysis on the participatory practices two themes emerged: A shift from modernism to post modernism in the thinking processes and participatory practices. From the participatory practices the same concepts repeatedly emerged indicating a similar paradigm for all the participatory practices. Three post modern theories were therefore applied to enhance the description of the different concepts. The end result of this study is the development of an evolving paradigm for participatory practices in order to give enhanced meaning to concepts in the participatory vocabulary. Finally a critical reflection was done on the post modern research process. / Text in Afrikaans / Social Work / D.Phil. (Social Work)