The cruise sector, despite being a niche in the tourism industry, stands out as one of the fastest-growing segments. The ‘cruisescape’ refers to the physical environment and atmosphere on a cruise ship, including elements such as interior design, services and interactions, all of which impact the sensory experience of cruise tourists. Theming plays a significant role in shaping and enhancing the tourist experience within this cruisescape. It has become a central aspect of tourism and consumption, significantly influencing experiences and choices in these domains. This study investigated the impact of theming on cruise ship experiences through deductive reasoning, employing a qualitative approach.The research involved conducting eleven semi-structured interviews with cruise ship tourists. Following a thematic analysis, the study aimed at uncovering patterns and themes within the collected data. Four distinct themes were found within the context of themed experiences on cruise ships: (1) Ever-changing Environment, (2) Perception of Authenticity, (3) Interaction and (4) Multisensory Stimulation. From these four identified themes, three fundamental contributors emerged that significantly influence the cruise ship experience- the themed cruisescape, guests themselves and onboard crew members. The findings offer valuable insights into how the cruisescape, guests, and onboard crew members contribute to shaping the experiences of cruise tourists. Despite the commonalities found in the study’s outcomes, it is crucial to acknowledge the limitation of not generalizing the results to the entire population. Therefore, further investigations will contribute to a better understanding of themed cruisescapes and tourist experiences, allowing for a judgment about whether the results obtained from the research can be generalized or considered valid for a specific set of circumstances.

Early written Shona narratives like Solomon Mutswairo's Feso [Thorn; name of main character, 1982] evince fantasy since they emanated from folktales, a genre that abounds in this element. Contrary to this, Charles Mungoshi attempts to portray life faithfully in Makunun'unu Maodzamwoyo [Brooding breeds despair, 1977], Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva [How time passes, 1975] and Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? [Is silence not a form of speech? 1983]. This study attempts to show how this realism manifests itself in the components that constitute each of the works: setting, plot, characterisation, theme and style. Mungoshi's characters, for instance, are not one-sided supernatural beings who perform fabulous acts. Instead, they have strengths and limitations like people in everyday life. Their actions and speech are consistent with their social backgrounds. By injecting realism into the Shona narrative, Mungoshi has contributed towards its development. Due to this realism, the works deserve the label "novels" as opposed to "romances". / African Languages / M.A. (African languages)

Stories, themes, concepts and references are organized structurally and purposefully in most books. A person reading a book needs to understand themes and concepts within the context. Schank’s Dynamic Memory theory suggested that building on existing memory structures is essential to cognition and learning. Pirolli and Card emphasized the need to provide people with an independent and improved ability to access and understand information in their information seeking activities. Through a review of users’ reading behaviours and of existing e-Book user interfaces, we found that current e-Book browsers provide minimal support for comprehending the content of large and complex books. Readers of an e-Book need user interfaces that present and relate the organizational and narrative structures, and moreover, reveal the thematic structures. This thesis addresses the problem of providing readers with effective scaffolding of multiple structures of an e-Book in the user interface to support reading for comprehension. Recognising a story or topic as the basic unit in a book, we developed novel story segmentation techniques for discovering narrative segments, and adapted story linking techniques for linking narrative threads in semi-structured linear texts of an e-Book. We then designed an e-Book user interface to present the complex structures of the e-Book, as well as to assist the reader to discover these structures. We designed and developed evaluation methodologies to investigate reading and comprehension in e-Books, in order to assess the effectiveness of this user interface. We designed semi-directed reading tasks using a Story-Theme Map, and a set of corresponding measurements for the answers. We conducted user evaluations with book readers. Participants were asked to read stories, to browse and link related stories, and to identify major themes of stories in an e-Book. This thesis reports the experimental design and results in detail. The results confirmed that the e-Book interface helped readers perform reading tasks more effectively. The most important and interesting finding is that the interface proved to be more helpful to novice readers who had little background knowledge of the book. In addition, each component that supported the user interface was evaluated separately in a laboratory setting and, these results too are reported in the thesis.

Aaron Copland was born of Russian-Jewish parents on November 14, 1900. Harris Kaplan, his father, had acquired the American equivalent of his name when an immigration official at the British port of entry wrote it on his papers, and from then on the family name was "Copland." Sarah Mittenthal and Harris Copland met at a family social gathering in New York and were married in 1885. They lived in the upper stories of his department store in Brooklyn which remained the family home until 1924 and was where Aaron, the youngest of five, was born.

Ce mémoire fait état de ma démarche de compositeur à l'intérieur d'un cadre plus large qui inclue une démarche de direction. Croyant que ces disciplines vont de pair, j'ai consacré ma maîtrise à composer du matériel pour orchestre et pour chœur, deux ensembles qui exigent la présence d'un chef. Je pouvais ainsi approfondir ma connaissance de ces « instruments » à l'intérieur du cadre rigoureux offert par la Faculté de Musique de l'Université de Montréal. Parallèlement, mes activités de chef ont aussi eu une influence sur ma compréhension de ces ensembles et donc sur mon écriture. Ce travail récapitule donc le matériel que j'ai écrit pour ces ensembles, prenant soin de souligner à la fois où mon expérience d'écriture grandie, et où mon expérience de chef impacte mes choix de composition. / This work is about the composition part of a larger ambition that also includes conducting. Believing that those two disciplines are closely related, I took most of my time as a master's student composing for orchestra and for choir, two ensembles that require a conductor. This way I could deepen my understanding of those "instruments" with the help of rigorous teachers at Université de Montréal's music faculty. At the same time, my conducting activities also had an influence on my understanding of those ensembles therefore on my composition. This work goes through the material I wrote for those ensembles, pinpointing where I felt my experience as a composer was growing, and where my experience as a conductor influenced my composition choices.

(in English): The objective of the thesis is to give a definition of passive perspective and to describe how passive perspective can be expressed in modern French. Follows an analysis of French passive constructions in different types of texts from various communicative fields. As the thesis reveals, the expression of passive perspective in modern French is not limited to periphrastic passive. Passive perspective can be expressed also by reflexive passive, secondary passive constructions se faire, se laisser and se voir and by nominal passive. The analysis showed that these means of expression of passive perspective can be found in both journalistic and specialized texts.

Ce travail porte sur les relations entre les propositions du texte et les macro-propositions telles qu’elles ont été définies par van Dijk et Kintsch. L’étude a été conduite sur un corpus de textes issus d’une émission radiophonique interactive. Une première partie du travail a été consacrée à la recherche d’un lien entre l’organisation informationnelle des propositions et l’organisation séquentielle du texte. Les liens décrits par Fries et Martin à propos de textes écrits n’ont pas été retrouvés dans les textes oraux du corpus. Dans une seconde partie nous avons étudié la formation de macro-propositions par généralisation. Une analyse des lexicalisations des macro-propositions a montré que la généralisation se faisait sur une base conceptuelle et non lexicale et que les macro-règles décrites par van Dijk et Kintsch ne rendaient pas compte de la formation de la totalité des macro-propositions générées lors de la compréhension. / This study examines the relations between textual propositions and macro-propositions as defined by van Dijk and Kintsch. The corpus used consisted of texts taken from a BBC phone in programme. In the first part of the study a link was sought between the structure of the text and the information structure of the messages. The patterns identified by Fries and Martin in written texts however could not be found in the oral texts of the corpus. The second part of the research focused on macro-propositions deriving from generalisation. An analysis of the lexicalisation of the concepts of these macro-propositions showed that generalisation was made on a conceptual basis as opposed to a lexical one and that the generalisation macro-rule defined by van Dijk and Kintsch fails to account for all the macro-propositions generated during comprehension.

The thesis entitled "Pragmatic and stylistic analysis of the horoscopes in periodicals" deals with the horoscopes from linguistic point of view; the greatest attention is paied to the pragmatic and stylistic aspects. The goal of the thesis is to identify the typical features of horoscopes on the basis of pragmatic and stylistic analysis. The research material comprises of 1752 astrological predictions taken from sixteen different periodicals. The author and the recipient of horoscope are characterized in each chapter and selected attributes of the target group are studied in each chapter as well - age, gender, social roles and status. It is dealt with the intention of horoscopes; its impact on recipient and strategies used by authors of horoscopes are analyzed too. The thesis presents the way vocabulary and other language tools are used in horoscopes to communicate intention of their authors. The analysis also deals with themes of horoscopes.

The aim of the thesis is to describe methods which may be applied to develop a child's voice and its musicality within the first grade of a primary school. The thesis should be used as an inspirational teaching aid for teachers. The thesis is divided into two parts. The theoretical part is based on scholarly literature and deals with voice hygiene, proper technique of singing (breathing, posture, non-overstraining of voice). Peripherally it also mentions voice disorders and proper voice preparation for singing. I would like to transfer (apply) the knowledge gained in the theoretical part into an elaborately developed theme plan in the practical part. The conclusion of the theoretical part deals with the development of child's rhythmic creativity. The practical part includes a theme plan compiled for the peroid fo a school year. I tis arranged according to particular months and embraces the description of various activities, which are used to fill each music lesson whithin the period of a school year.

This essay examines anticipation and real outcome structured as two oppositions in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. These opposites will be analyzed through Austen’s use of literary devices such as “free indirect speech” and irony. Pride and Prejudice is written in third-person, but the focus is often limited to Elizabeth’s perspective, creating what is termed free indirect speech, a narrative technique that Austen is considered to be one of the first novelists to use. While the omniscient narrator seems all-knowing and gives the illusion of being objective, she is deliberately selective in her choice of what aspects of the story that she wants to emphasize, which makes her subjective. That the narrator is both objective/omniscient and subjective/limited brings out an opposition between the anticipated and real outcome. Austen also uses irony as a literary device, which too can be interpreted as a kind of opposition used to bring out anticipated and real outcome.