Magister Artium - MA / The study explores the negotiation of identities through linguistic innovations such as codeswitching, code-mixing and differing language choices in different domains of home and school in Belhar. The focus is to examine how languages are used to negotiate class, age, generational, socio-economic, etc differences in selected schools and homes in the community of Belhar. The specific study objectives include the following: 1. To find out the linguistic options and identities (including hybrid identities), that are available to the Belhar community. 2. To explore how Afrikaans and English (and other languages) are used as linguistic resources in the community of Belhar. The Belvue Primary school was used as a vehicle to gain access to the families in Belhar which were used as case studies. The data was collected by observing learners in the classroom, interviewing educators, interviewing parents and observing linguistic practices in the homes/families of selected learners. Using poststructuralist coupled with the social constructionist approach the study is a clear departure from studies and paradigms current in vogue in South Africa, which have linked language and ethnic identity in unambiguous ways. These paradigms also see ethnic identity as fixed and communities as homogenous and language as having a one-to-one correlation with identity. However, these studies do not consider that identities are constructed and negotiated during interaction with others. In this regard it was found that individuals in the community of Belhar constantly construct and negotiate identity using language as central to the identity behaviour. Thus ultimately their language and identity cannot be described as pro-English or pro- Afrikaans.

Departing from the ongoing regionalization processes in Europe and other parts of the world, this thesis aims to study the premises and conditions of regional citizenship in contemporary state restructuring. As globalization is viewed to challenge the sovereignty and capacity of nation states, subnational regions have gained authority and interest as key actors to compete on globalized markets of capital in order to ensure future development. This alteration in the balance between the regional and the national raises questions on how aspects of citizenship become negotiated in relation to regions as emphasized political communities. The study therefore develops and applies a productive analysis of regional citizenship based on citizenship theory and poststructuralist discourse theory. The attempts to reform the administrative region of Värmland, Sweden, between the years 2007 and 2011 functions as a case study in the dissertation.  In relation to this process a variety of materials has been collected in order to shed light on articulatory practices related to the reform: media material, public documents and assessment reports, observations of public dialog meetings and focus groups. Through a discourse analysis of the material the study focuses on the discursive production of regional communities and regional citizens in relation to regional reform. Three different but related articulations of the region emerge in the analysis: the region as a cultural landscape, as a welfare system and as a growth machine.   The study shows how the understanding of the region as a growth machine holds a hegemonic position in relation to the other articulations. The growth machine is based on a neoliberal notion of development, where competiveness and commodification function as premises to the intrinsic understanding of regional citizens – as well as welfare and culture - as capital that can, and should, be used to facilitate economic growth. / Runt om i världen byggs större och starkare regioner. Regioner betraktas som i delar en arvtagare till uppgifter som nationalstaterna inte längre anses kunna hantera i en globaliserad värld. Därför har regionerna fått större grad av självständighet från de nationella staterna, frisläppta för att på bästa sätt hitta sätt att locka till sig olika former av globalt rörligt kapital. Kapital som anses utgöra grunden för att kunna bygga ett gott samhälle.   I den här avhandlingen studeras samtida regionalisering ur ett medborgarskapsperspektiv. Vad innebär det för relationen mellan människor och gemenskap att regionen intar en framskjuten position i samhällsbyggandet? Vilka band knyts mellan regionen och regionmedborgaren i en tid som kännetecknas av globalisering och konkurrens? Hur fördelas rättigheter och skyldigheter mellan regionen och medborgarna, och vad innebär det att vara en god regionmedborgare? Genom en svensk fallstudie analyseras hur regionen och regionala medborgare görs meningsfulla i anslutning till att regionens framtid förhandlas. Materialet består av pressmaterial, utredningsmaterial, observerade offentliga möten samt fokusgrupper med regionmedborgare. Studien visar hur myten om regionen som en tillväxtmaskin intar en dominerande ställning och hur globala marknadslogiker fungerar som villkor för det regionala medborgarskapet.

Quality of care is conceptualised by professionals and in policy documents as: compliance with ‘best practice’ guidelines; improving satisfaction rates; fiscal efficiency; and ethical care. ‘Quality’ in palliative and supportive district nursing care has been conceptualised in all these ways. However, the empirical research in this area draws mostly on professionals’ and carers’ views with little research addressing patients’ views. With political rhetoric pushing for a ‘patient led’ NHS, research into how patients conceptualise quality in this area is necessary to both critique this rhetoric and/or facilitate its aims. Therefore, this research investigates patients’ and carers’ views on the quality of palliative and supportive district nursing care.Participants were recruited to an exploratory qualitative study resulting in a convenience sample of twenty six patients (all of district nursing caseloads) and thirteen carers. All participants were over eighteen, able to consent, lived in their own homes, were under the care of district nurses, and had palliative care needs. Eighteen participants had a cancer diagnosis, six had a non-malignant diagnosis, one had co-morbidities, and one participant did not disclosed their diagnosis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with all participants, five participants were interviewed twice. Post-structuralist theories were used with discourse analysis techniques for the final analysis.The findings identify three of the most influential discourses in relation to the morality and quality of care: Firstly, ‘busyness’, and how its performance by district nurses masks patients’ and carers’ ability to critique care, instead producing a pseudo-quality which fixes patients and carers subjectivities. Secondly, ‘power/knowledge’ and the ways in which it prevents patients and carers accessing care which they need, and altering care to suit their needs. Thirdly, ‘the home’ and how it (re)forms district nursing care and district nursing care (re)forms the home; meaning that actions by district nurses must also consider the impact on the home as well as the patients and carers. In conclusion quality care may be produced by: ceasing to measure quality; involving patients and carers with commissioning and directing palliative and supportive care; supporting groups other than district nurses such as patients, carers and third parties to produce and distribute knowledge about district nursing care; increasing patients’ and carers’ ability to communicate with one another about their care.Further research may investigate: how patients and carers with palliative and supportive care needs may be involved in commissioning; the most appropriate wording and means to distribute knowledge about palliative and supportive district nursing care; ethnographic work to explore how district nursing and the home interact; more detailed theorisation of how the material and the discursive can be accounted for within post-structuralism.

Den här studien syftar till att analysera hur genus görs i sagor som blir lästa i förskolan. I min studie analyserar jag folksagor och konstsagor från 1800-talet samt moderna sagor. Metoden jag använder är kvalitativ litteraturanalys med ett poststrukturalistiskt perspektiv på genus. Resultatet visar att de äldre sagorna förstärker de traditionella könsrollerna medan de nyare sagorna försöker utmana dem. Det manliga är norm i sagor och kvinnan ses på som det andra könet. Forskning visar att litteratur påverkar barnens identitetsskapande och hur barnen uppfattar omvärlden. Min analys kan användas för att uppmärksamma förskollärare på vikten av att vara normkritisk i valet av sagor. För att kunna uppnå läroplanens mål om jämlikhet och lika rättigheter oavsett könstillhörighet, måste förskollärare vara medvetna om vilka normer sagorna de läses speglar. / This study aims to analyze representations of gender in fairy tales read in preschool. I have analyzed folk tales and literary fairy tales from the 19th century and contemporary tales. The method I have used is qualitative literature analysis with a poststructuralist perspective on gender. The results show that older fairy tales maintain the traditional gender roles more than newer fairy tales. The male is norm and women are considered the other sex. My analysis can be used to draw the attention of preschool teachers to the importance of norm criticism in storytelling. Research shows that literature affects how children perceive the world and children's identity formation. In order to achieve the curriculum's goals of gender equality and equal conditions regardless of gender, preschool teachers need to be aware of the norms the fairy tales they read to children contain.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / It is widely acknowledged that there are problems with the way in which heterosexual relationships are negotiated. A critical focus on heterosexuality has been particularly stimulated by feminist discourse on gender power relations and the global imperative to challenge HIV infection. In the South African context there has been a growing emphasis on researching and educating about (hetero)sexuality, particularly in the wake of the continued increase in HIV prevalence rates which are highest among young, black South Africans. A handful of South African studies point to the widespread nature of coercive sexuality characterised by male dominance and female submission and a lack of negotiation in respect of safe sex and sexual pleasure. This study addresses the realm of the negotiation of heterosexuality among black South African students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), Cape Town. In the study, negotiation refers to two interrelated aspects: the negotiation of heterosexual subjectivity; and the negotiation of heterosexual sexuality (heterosex). The study is underpinned by a feminist poststructuralist conceptual framework and discourse analytic methodology which draws on qualitative methodologies, feminist approaches to research and discourse analysis. Three different methods were utilised to gather data: focus groups, a free-association questionnaire and written autobiographical essays. Participants of the study included psychology second and third year students at the UWC who were predominantly young (mean age of 23.3 years), black, of Christianity-related religious affiliation and non-English first language speakers. A discourse analysis together with an ethnographic analysis was carried out on the data which yielded a wide range of discursive themes on gender and heterosex. In looking at the negotiation of heterosexual subjectivities, there are vast differences in the experiences of'becoming' women and men: notably, puberty and menstruation are central in the construction of femininity and female sexuality, which are interwoven with each other in the construction of women as vulnerable, passive and restrained; on the other hand, boy's/men's subjectivities are centred about sexual agency and activity, competition and physical and mental 'hardness'. Nonetheless these rigidly divergent experiences of gendered heterosexualisation are also punctuated by resistance, ambivalence and contradiction, particularly in women's accounts. It is suggested that the difficulties involved in 'achieving' femininity for women may be implicated in their continued investment in these subjectivities in their contemporary contexts. In talk on negotiating heterosex, two central clusters of discourse emerge: discourses of difference, in which inevitable, essential (either biological or cultural) and incommensurable differences are assumed, Jr rationalised and reproduced by participants; discourses of power, resistance and change which draw on alternative discourses such as the feminist critique of male power, and also speak of and call for change. Central within all of these discourses is the virtual invisibility of a positive language to speak of women's sexuality and desires, which has as its underside a lack of alternative discourses on masculinity and male sexuality, in particular the absence of a positive discourse on men's vulnerability, non-sexual intimate desires, lack of sexual desire and resisting of power. The thesis suggests, on the basis of poststructuralist theories of change, that given the presence of challenging and contradictory discourses, subversive subjectivities and silences, there is potential for change. It is argued that educational and political interventions need to acknowledge and work with these spaces for change within the broader framework of challenging the underlying hierarchical binarism of sexual difference, upon which the problematic and unequal negotiation of heterosex is founded.

Gender inequalities are still widely pervasive and deeply institutionalised, particularly in Africa, where the burden of disease is highly gendered. The public health sector has been slow in responding to and addressing gender as a determinant of health. The purpose of this inquiry was to gain a deeper insight into the different ways in which gender was represented in the public health curriculum in sub-Saharan Africa. A qualitative inquiry was undertaken on gender in the curriculum in nine autonomous schools of public health in sub-Saharan Africa. Official curriculum documents were analysed and in-depth interviews were held with fourteen staff members of two schools that served as case studies. A content analysis of the data was carried out, followed by discourse analysis. A poststructuralist theoretical framework was used as the ‘lens’ for interpreting the findings. Most of the official curricula were ‘layered’, with gender not appearing on the surface. Gender was represented mainly as an implicit discourse and appeared explicitly in only one core course and a few elective modules. The overwhelmingly dominant discourse in the official curricula was the ‘woman’ discourse, with a strong emphasis on the reproductive and maternal roles of women, while discourses on men, sexuality and power relations seemed to be marginalised. Gender discourses that emerged from the in-depth interviews with participants were lodged in biological, social and academic discourses on gender. The dominant discourses revolved around sexual difference and role differences based on sex. Participants drew on societal discourses (family, culture and religion), academic discourses and their lived experiences to explain their understandings of gender. Their narratives on the teaching of gender showed that gender was not taught or received a low priority and that it was insufficiently addressed in the public health curriculum. Barriers to teaching gender were: lack of knowledge, resources and commitment; resistance; and competing priorities. From this study it emerged that curriculum and the production of gender knowledge are sites of struggle that result in multiple understandings of gender that are manifest in dominant and marginalised discourses. Prevailing institutional power relations mirror dominant societal and political discourses that have a fundamental effect on curriculum decisions and resource allocations. This interplay between dominant discourses and power relations, underpinned by a strong biomedical paradigm, could explain the positioning of gender as an implicit representation in the curriculum, with a more explicit focus on gender in the elective modules than in the compulsory or core courses. Being implicitly represented, gender does not compete with other priorities for additional resources. It is recommended that the public health curriculum be reconceptualised by: accommodating multiple understandings of gender; questioning constructed dominant gender discourses; considering broader, varied and complex social, cultural, economic, historical and political contexts in which gender is constructed and experienced; and moving from curriculum technicalities to understanding the curriculum as a process and not a product. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH) / Unrestricted

This dissertation maps a proto-poststructuralist tradition and fuses a subsequent methodology with/in a practice derived from performance studies to uncover a spatially informed corporeal notion of subjectivity. Combining the cultural and historically radical motility of the street skateboard and precursory surfboard with an ambulatory interpretation of radical political philosophy and subjectivity this work explores, through the lens of a drifting practitioner, a quotidian routine in The Commute, and a distinctly urban practice, in The Skateboard Dérive. Functioning as case situations these performance events are used to elaborate, produce, and apply a drifting approach to critical spatial inquiry through the recognition of four elemental notions: drifting, situating, becoming, and fragmenting.

This poststructuralist research into managerial subjectivity follows ten senior managers’ experience, during significant organizational restructuring in the National Health Service. Located in the North of England the managers were interviewed three times during an eighteen-month period. An autoethnographic component is integral to the study; this recognises the researcher was a practising manager undergoing the same organizational change, whilst researching the field. Judith Butler’s theories provide the principle theoretical framework for the study. Whilst the managers narrated a fantasy of having a ‘true’ and coherent self, the research illustrated how fragile, fleeting and temporary each managerial self is and how passionately attached to their managerial subjectivity (despite how painful) they were. Emotion is presented as inextricably tied up with gender performativity and managerial subjectivity; despite best efforts the emotional ‘dirt’ of organizations cannot be ordered away; there is a constant seepage and spillage of emotion – as illustrated in the vignettes and profiled in the Butlerian deconstruction. During organizational change there was a fear of a social (organizational) death and even the most senior of managers were profoundly vulnerable. This fear and vulnerability heightened in contact with others perceived as more powerful (in critical conversations and interviews). Failure to receive the desired recognition and the risk of being organizationally unintelligible compounded this vulnerability and triggered recurrent, unpredictable patterns of loss, ek-stasis and unravelling of the managerial self. This acute vulnerability during restructuring anticipates and therefore (re) enacts a Machiavellian discourse, one that excuses unethical behaviour and relations as a ‘necessary evil’.

<p>From Labov's (1963) finding that the centralization of the /ay/ and /aw/ diphthongs in Martha's Vineyard was emblematic of resistance to local economic and social change, to Mendoza-Denton's (2008) finding that variation in the realization of the /I/ vowel corresponds to gang affiliation among Latina girls in a Northern California high school, identity has been at the center of sociolinguistic analysis and theory for nearly a half century. Despite the centrality of this construct, sociolinguists have rarely stopped to ask about the epistemological, theoretical, and even political implications of identity. This dissertation offers a sustained, interdisciplinary critique of identity, both in linguistics and more generally in contemporary social theory. Through engagements with cultural anthropology, feminist theory, cultural studies, and linguistics, this critique calls attention to identity's epistemological baggage (e.g. collusion with neo-liberalism and Englightenment-era humanism) and theoretical tendencies (e.g. overestimation of agency) and suggests a turn to poststructuralist theory of subject formation. The dissertation is organized around three sections: historiography, theory, and empiricism, as follows.</p><p> The study begins with historiography, tracing the relationship between language and social analysis in a limited archive that includes the work of 19th and 20th Century language scholars, including William Dwight Whitney, Leonard Bloomfield, and Noam Chomsky. Focusing specifically on the relationship between Labov's variationist sociolinguistics and Chomsky's generative program, the historiography analyzes the conditions that led sociolinguistics to a form of social theory scaffolded around identity. </p><p>Poststructuralist theory of subject formation is introduced, with an emphasis on the work of Judith Butler (1990, 1997, 2004) and Michel Foucault (1975, 1976, 1981). A set of terms that animate this framework are introduced, including interpellation, subjectivization, discourse, subjectivity, subject position, subject type, power, and identity.</p><p>Two empirical studies of adolescent language are introduced and the findings are considered in light of the constellation of terms introduced in the prior section. The first is a case study focusing on the speech of one adolescent Mexican American female, "María," whose language use underwent reorganization over a three-year period coinciding with a change in community and school. Segmental and suprasegmental variables were analyzed from data collected from two time periods, T1 and T2. In order to account for modifications in "María's" vocalic production, two vowel variables were selected for acoustic analysis: pre-nasal and non-pre-nasal allophones of /æ/. These variables were selected because of their saliency in both Latino varieties of English (Thomas, Carter, & Coggshall 2006; Fought 2003; Thomas 2001). Midpoint measurements were taken for F1, F2, and F3 for a minimum of 25 tokens of each variable from T1 and T2 using PRAAT phonetics software (Boersma & Weenink 2009). Maria's production of prosodic rhythm was also analyzed using the Pairwise Variability Index (Lowe & Grabe 1995). Changes in F1 and F2 for both vocalic variables were statistically significant--both allophones of /æ/ were lowered and backed from T1 to T2. Conversely, no statistically significant difference was found in prosodic rhythm. These findings are analyzed in the context of the poststructuralist framework already set forth.</p><p>The second study is an intensive ethnographic investigation of a `majority minority' middle school in North Carolina that took place over a five-month period. Detailed ethnographic fieldnotes and unscripted interviews with 50 African American, white, and Latino speakers in social groups identified during observation constitute the data for this study. The analysis focuses on the subjectivizing effects of the institution, particularly the institutional discourses of `choice' and `value,' on the cultural and linguistic practices of its students. Using discourse analytic methods, the analysis shows that talk by students across all major social divisions (grade level, popularity status, gender, and ethnicity) is inflected by institutional discourses. </p><p>A complementary analysis considers the subjectivizing function of language ideology in the middle school context. Analysis of interview and ethnographic field data show three distinct discursive formations about language: `proper talk,' `ghetto talk,' and Spanish.</p> / Dissertation

The aim of the essay is to problematize the main characters' conception of identity in André Aciman's novel Call Me by Your Name. Due to Elio's inability to see himself and Oliver as continuously constructing and shifting bodies, the essay claims that the end of their relationship as they knew it during their summer in Italy was inevitable. By employing a critical discourse analysis and deconstructive approach, the way the characters position themselves during and after that summer is examined and critiqued. It is found that what contributes to the end of their relationship is their struggle with the multitude of aspects of their identities that are considered to be flaws or insufficiencies. Therefore, certain interests and aspects of their lives are kept a secret. In consequence, this secrecy hinders a full understanding of the other and reveals their idealization as wishful thinking, rather than reality.