Health communication has become a popular way for health promotion. Public service advertisements of disease prevention construct the understanding of disease and actions toward caution and healing. However, the health messages provided by mass media are not neutral and value-free information; instead, they imply with domestic cultural values, moral regulation, and social order by framing people who affect a disease as lack of self-control, self-surveillance, and negligent behavior. A series of cervical cancer preventing advertisements long-term sponsored by P&G is selected for studying samples. The aims of this research are to discover the power, ideology and dominant discourse about women's health in advertisements. Semiotic theory is adopt as analyzing methodology in exploring mainstream discourse about women's health and body regulation in Taiwan, through voice-over, story, and images in advertising. This research finds that information for preventing cervical cancer appeared through media is full of patriarchy ideology. The perception of "healthy" women body is shaped to fit social expectations in female characters, as well-controlled, fragile and protection needed, as well as capability for giving birth of a child. The advertising represents social construction of illness, and defines women's health problems as individual and private responsibility. The importance of national health policy and the force of social control are absent and ignore. Thus, to disclose how patriarchy, dominant ideologies which undermines women's health are implemented in health communication is the main purpose of this paper.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2008. Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 269-283). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR46001

2007. Titre de soutenance: Médiation et modernité, approche communicationnelle de l'institution judiciaire--Texte remanié de : Thèse de doctorat : Sciences de l'information et de la communication : Toulon : , 2007. / Bibliogr. p. 265 - 291.

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Though Aristotle is famous for defining three persuasive appeals in his treatise On Rhetoric, I argue that a fourth appeal exists in the pages of The Poetics. In addition to character (ethos), logic (logos), and emotion (pathos), the fourth appeal is to narrative (mythos), or the substantive body of values contained within the socio-cultural elements of a given culture. Using the works of Joseph Campbell, Kenneth Burke, and Roland Barthes as touchstones, the goal of this dissertation is to offer a systematic analysis of this appeal. Because human beings at once function with attention to the whole of lived experience, the myth appeal touches on social norms (the assumed reality), ideology (the lived and presumed reality), and hyperreality (where symbols become a reality unto themselves). The substance of the myth appeal is narrative, or undercurrents of stories used in the place of argument. Here, I offer four examples to display these tensions; the first is an "action-figure" toy line to illustrate how an existing mythology from comics conveys ideological values; the second is a post 09/11 comic book series which used hyperreality to critique social norms; the third is Alan Sokal's academic hoax , which showed a cultural tension across all three areas; and finally, a survey of U.S. Supreme Court decisions on privacy to discuss the emerging mythology of abortion. I conclude with a systematic approach to myth, and a brief discussion of additional persuasive appeals.

This dissertation is an extended study of how representations of violence inhabit operatic works, on a literary as well as musical level. Employing recent critical and theoretical developments in philosophy, psychoanalysis, linguistics and feminist theory, this study probes into issues surrounding gender/alterity and subject formation, as well as the aesthetics of violence within fin-de-siecle culture. The main goals of the dissertation are (1) to analyze from a philosophical and psychoanalytical point of view the notion of the feminine and its persistent conjunction with death, eroticism and music; (2) to explore various theoretical interpretations of violence within aesthetic production and the potential such violence holds for a negativity that is not only destructive but may also be considered affirmative; and (3) to offer a new interpretive approach to reading violence in opera, one that is modeled after the poststructuralist theories of the "semiotic" as developed by Julia Kristeva. The first section of the dissertation establishes the theoretical groundwork, exploring the writings of Nietzsche, Derrida, Lacan, Bronfen and Kristeva (chapters 1 and 2). An examination of expressionist poetics of negation (chapter 3) leads into the second section which comprises three case studies. Each of the operas under consideration engage issues concerning violence, representation and the feminine, and reveal three very different paths toward semiotic destabilization and negativity. "Morder, Hoffnung der Frauen, or, Overcoming the m/Other" (chapter 4) explores semiotic pulsions as "structural disjunction" both within Kokoschka's radical text and Hindemith's score, and critiques the appropriation of woman in the name of creative innovation. "The Voice of Lulu" (chapter 5) analyzes semiotic eruptions through the materiality and excessive sonority of voice, and explores its subversive effects both on subjectivity and characterization. The fmal case study, "Musical Eroticism

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This study is an attempt to construct a theoretical and descriptive framework for the analysis of lexicogrammatical, semantic and semiotic cohesion, called the Extended Systemic Cohesive Model. This model is an extension of the Halliday-Hasan model (1976) whose descriptive range is limited to lexicogrammatical cohesion. The classical hypothesis that cohesion is realized through the lexicogrammatical system is proved to be inadequate. An alternative thesis is proposed and justified: that cohesion is captured at lexicogrammatical, semantic and semiotic levels. As a result, a linguistic framework is constructed which explicitly accounts for the properties that make a text hang together at these three particular levels, and its applicability is tested against given empirical data. The discussion is focused on how and why the above three types of cohesion contribute to the unity of a text plus a critical review of previous relevant work.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate trope usage in videogames, including the emergence of undiscovered ‘videogame’ tropes, and to create a new model for videogame categorisation using these tropes. This model serves to complement genre as a means of distilling videogame contents. The investigative work formed two parts, initially considering how videogames use existing rhetorical tropes such as metaphor as expressive and communicative devices and secondly to analyse videogames as a source of shared literary tropes. Each shared literary trope was validated as a common form of expression (referred to simply as 'common form'), where its presence was proven in a substantial sample of videogames. Common forms were gathered through a wide-ranging investigation of ten mainstream genres one at a time and in isolation to arrive at a pool of genre-specific common forms. The most closely related forms combined, with the help of relationship modelling techniques. A set of common forms capable of representing the contents of any videogame was reached. The result is a powerful hierarchical content model allowing a game to be described in terms of its common form usage profile. Common forms can effectively describe games which span several genres and differentiates between games which appear similar on the surface e.g. within the same genre hence aiding effective classification. Common Forms were proven to exist on a number of different hierarchies ranging from those specific to a particular game, to a game type (genre) and even to those which are universal and hence can be observed within any modern videogame. Finally, it was possible to see the very core or 'heart' of the functioning videogame, the never-ending competition between player resources such as energy, ammunition or shields, the 'player status' and the threats, challenges or obstacles the game's systems throw at the player, the 'game status'. The model does have considerable potential for application in educational settings such as college and university game development or appraisal classes and further development and testing would provide an effective tool for industry use.

The aim of this study was to define a semiotics of poetry, to apply that semiotics to analyze seven poems by L.D. Raditladi and to determine how cultural elements are transformed in Raditladi's poems. The study comprises four chapters. The central problems, aims, central theoretical statement and method were outlined and motivated in the first chapter. The second chapter defined a theory of semiotics based on M. Riffaterre's views about the kinds of indirection in poetry and Y. Lotman's view of symbols. Chapter three analysed the indirection and the use of cultural symbols in seven poems from Raditladi's collection Sefalana sa menate (1984). The different variants of the central ideas of phrases (matrices) were traced in the poems. By using symbols and indirection, the poems do not so much express the ideas and emotions of the speaker and the hidden meanings behind the signs, but rather take the reader on fascinating journeys of meaning generation. The analysis of Raditladi's use of symbols revealed the cultural meaning of each poem. Raditladi's seven poems support the idea that symbols, images and indirection provide vital semiotic clues to a poem's significance. It was also shown that the speaker adopts different stances towards traditional Batswana cultural material, like irony, exaggeration, nostalgia and celebration. / Thesis (M.A. (African Languages))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.