M.A. (Afrikaans) / This study explores language usage in the pol it ical arena, as seen in the parliamentary debates of the new South Africa. The parliamentary Afrikaans used between February 1990 and June 1991 has been selected as field of invest igat ion, because this period can be seen as an important transitional phase in the political history of South Africa. This period has definitely had an influence on the lexicon used in parliament. The parliamentary debates, as recorded in the tlansards of 2 February 1990 21 June 1991. have been used as primary sources. These debates contain the most important semantic and terminological changes that occurred in the parliamentary lexicon. This study is based on the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis (the theory of relativity) which states that a close link exists between language and thought, and language and reality. Whorf believes that language can actually shape and influence the human mind. This Induces people to experience reality in different ways. The following concepts are used to illustrate how political language in general, and parliamentary language in particular has been influenced by the process of pol i tical thought in the new South Africa: Afrikaner, volk, nssl, delDokrasie, serest/she/d, selykberegt/s/ng, groep etc. A summary of the parliamentary lexicon gives an indication of the variety of meanings that have evolved from various concepts. This has occurred because political parties uphold their own interpretations of these concepts...

D.Litt. et Phil. / This thesis constitutes an investigation into the complexity of Afrikaans legal language and explores the challenges of plain language in South Africa. It argues that language is a powerful tool, which can either be used for inclusion or exclusion. The requirement for the use of plain language as stipulated in the National Credit Act and the Consumer Protection Act is intended to improve the quality and accessibility of consumer-related documents, with vulnerable consumers in mind. South African businesses, organisations and suppliers are required to make their consumer documents available in plain and understandable language. This requirement has far-reaching implications for both the consumer industry and the language industry. Although the definition of plain language in the National Credit Act 34 of 2005 and the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 is comprehensive and theoretically sound, its practical implementation remains a challenge. Some empirical work has been done on the comprehensibility of institutional and other documents in South Africa, but these studies are mainly limited to health texts and the focus is primarily on English. In light of the language distribution and the fact that less than 10% of South Africans speak English as a home language, coupled with alarming educational attainment rates, it does not automatically follow that consumer documents that are written in plain English will be accessible to all consumers. In the framework of plain language legislation in South Africa, there is now a pressing need to extend plain language research to the other official languages as well, and to find ways to incorporate South Africa’s language distribution into a plain language policy. This study is in Afrikaans, about Afrikaans and for Afrikaans. Morever, in the absence of guidelines for methods or standards of assessing whether a consumer-related document satisfies the requirements for plain and understandable language, plain language practitioners are working in a vacuum, without any indication of the assessment criteria that will be applied to measure compliance.

ICT is a part of our everyday experience where ever we are, at home, at work and also at school. ICT-equipment for millions of kronor is handed out to our pupils every year. It has become a huge part of the Swedish education system and it is up to us teachers to incorporate it in the education. This is done in different kind of levels which the theoretical framework of the SAMR-model describes very well. My interest has been to see how the use of ICT-equipment is incorporated in the education at a school where a 1-to-1 project has been running for half a decade now. I am looking at which level of the SAMR-model the teachers are operating most of the time and if they are content with what they do with the ICT-equipment within their education. What I found was that most teachers are operating at the lower levels of the SAMRmodel but they are quite content with that. Many of the teachers believe that ICT in education is beneficial for learning and almost everyone wants more education within the field of ICT, especially female language teachers.

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受惠於醫學技術的進步，國人壽命得以逐年延長，然而生活型態及外在環境的改變，導致國人雖然活得長，卻未必活得健康。於是，結合健康管理概念之保險商品便應運而生，讓保險業不僅發揮原先事後補償的功能，更可藉由多樣化的健康回饋方式鼓勵被保險人養成良好運動習慣或生活習慣，以達到提升國人健康之效益。整體而言，對於保戶、保險業以及整體社會皆有所助益，爰主管機關實有推動之必要，然健康管理保險業務於我國尚處於起步階段。基於此，本研究旨在探討主管機關如何制定一完善之監理措施，以推動此類商品之發展。 本研究藉由蒐集文獻及比較國內外健康管理保險商品之發展概況，並分析我國健康管理保險商品所面臨之議題與挑戰，再進一步針對我國現行法規運作已經或可能引發之問題加以檢討。此外，本研究認為主管機關基於推動健康管理保險商品發展之目的，應提供獎勵措施予業務績效符合一定條件之保險業，同時放寬健康管理保險商品審查規範，以加速商品開發銷售程序。 因此，本研究針對上述應檢討強化之處，提具《保險法第177條之1第2項所定本人書面同意方式、業務範圍及其他應遵行事項管理辦法》第4條修正建議、《保險業辦理健康管理保險業務應注意事項》建議草案，以及《人身保險商品審查應注意事項》第220點之3建議條文，以供主管機關作為日後法規鬆綁之參考，希冀藉由健全之健康管理保險商品制度，能促進我國健康管理保險業務之蓬勃發展，以創造保戶、保險業以及整體社會多贏之局面。

The work analyzes trends in medicines used in specialized medical centers from ATC (Anatomical-Therapeutic-Chemical Classification System) L01 in Czech Republic from perspective of the State Institute of Drug Control (SUKL) and of Czech Health Insurance Companies (Vseobecna zdravotni pojistovna Ceske republiky as the biggest one, and rest joined in Svaz zdravotnich pojišťoven Ceske republiky). SUKL perspective considers medicines delivered to healthcare facilities and the other side providing information regarding payments for L01 medicines between years 2012-2015. Conclusions presented show slightly decreasing trend in terms of number of packages delivered (935 ths. in 2012 and 931 ths. in 2015). On the other hand, value of medicines has increased from 5 067 mil. CZK in 2012 to 6 568 mil. CZK in 2015. The increase in value and decrease in volume in the same time (while prices remain stable or decreasing) indicates trend in increasing size of packaging or entry of new strength (with more active ingredient and therefore more expensive) e.g. entry of Herceptin 600 mg in 2014. This paper further identifies the most expensive medicines in ATC L01 group and starts a discussion about possible reasons of discrepancies between different sources of data which are for the most expensive medicines in hundreds of mil. CZK in value and ths. of packages in terms of volume (e.g. Avastin in 2014: difference 104 mil. CZK and 5 598 packages).

The practice of promoting food to children via advergames is a highly topical issue which attracts much concern due to the low nutritional value of the promoted foods. This thesis examines the effects of customised food advergames on children’s affective, cognitive and conative responses. It also investigates the role persuasion knowledge and prior brand usage have in children’s interaction with advergames. In particular, whether children’s persuasion knowledge acts as a barrier to those responses. This research is situated within the domains of marketing communications, consumer behaviour and consumer socialisation. It adopts an affect transfer theory, the Dual Mediation Hypothesis (DMH), to explain the transfer of affect from an advergame to children’s responses. Three versions of the same advergame were designed for the purpose of this thesis with different levels of customisation (i.e. control, low and high experimental conditions). An experiment among younger (5-7 year olds) and older (11¬12 year olds) children reveals that customisation in advergames has a detrimental effect on children’s affective, cognitive and conative responses. It was the control condition, without customisation options, that rendered a positive impact on brand attitudes and preferences relative to the other two experimental conditions. Persuasion knowledge does not influence children’s affective, cognitive or conative responses. This implies that children’s understanding of the persuasive intent of an advergame does not act as a barrier against its effects. Age had a significant role on children’s attitudes towards the advergame, but not on their other responses to it. Finally, prior brand usage has a positive impact on children’s responses apart from on advergame attitudes. This thesis has implications to policy and practice. It is evident that children from two distinct age and cognitive developmental groups cannot protect themselves from advergames’ effects. Therefore, regulators should broaden the scope of concern to older and younger children alike.

Web Usage Mining (WUM) can be used to determine whether the information architecture of a web site is structured correctly. Existing WUM tools however, do not indicate which web usage mining algorithms are used or provide effective graphical visualisations of the results obtained. WUM techniques can be used to determine typical navigation patterns of the users of organisational web sites. An organisational web site can be described as a site which has a high level of content. The Computer Science & Information Systems (CS&IS) web site at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) is an example of such a web site. The process of combining WUM and information visualisation techniques in order to discover useful information about web usage patterns is called visual web mining. The goal of this research is to discuss the development of a WUM model and a prototype, called WebPatterns, which allows the user to effectively visualise web usage patterns of an organisational web site. This will facilitate determining whether the information architecture of the CS&IS web site is structured correctly. The WUM algorithms used in WebPatterns are association rule mining and sequence analysis. The purpose of association rule mining is to discover relationships between different web pages within a web site. Sequence analysis is used to determine the longest time ordered paths that satisfy a user specified minimum frequency. A radial tree layout is used in WebPatterns to visualise the static structure of the organisational web site. The structure of the web site is laid out radially, with the home page in the middle and other pages positioned in circles at various levels around it. Colour and other visual cues are used to show the results of the WUM algorithms. User testing was used to determine the effectiveness and usefulness of WebPatterns for visualising web usage patterns. The results of the user testing clearly show that the participants were highly satisfied with the visual design and information provided by WebPatterns. All the participants also indicated that they would like to use WebPatterns in the future. Analysis of the web usage patterns presented by WebPatterns was used to determine that the information architecture of the CS&IS web site can be restructured to better facilitate information retrieval. Changes to the CS&IS web site web were suggested, included placing embedded hyperlinks on the home page to the frequently accessed sections of the web site.

In the majority of the schools in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, teaching and learning takes place in the second language, English, of both teachers and learners. The purpose of this research was to elicit the perceptions of teachers in multilingual mathematics classes about language issues that they encounter and to ascertain whether they could experientially learn the theory of dialogic teaching through an intervention in order to introduce dialogue in practice in their classes. The effect of the intervention on teacher practices was qualitatively observed and the effect of the teacher practices on learner reasoning competence, numeracy competence and English language competence was quantitatively tested by using validated pre- and post-tests. The study follows a mixed method concurrent triangulation design with both quantitative and qualitative results. Two cohorts of students/teachers studying for qualifications at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University centres throughout the Eastern Cape expressed their opinions about language challenges and solutions through questionnaires, reflective writing and poetry. A cohort of BEd Honours (Mathematics and Science) students experienced a semester long intervention on the theory and practice of dialogic teaching, particularly exploratory talk, and were tasked to introduce the practice into their multilingual mathematics classes in the form of reported action research. The next phase of the study focussed on the practices of three teachers and their grade seven multilingual mathematics learners who were observed and tested over a period of nine months. The following year the observations and testing were repeated with one teacher and his grade seven learners to ascertain whether the intervention would result in similar findings. iv The results enhance the validity of the Vygotskian claim concerning the relationship between language use, social interaction and reasoning development. In classes where there was evidence of dialogic practices the learners collaborated in groups using code-switching and their main language. Their reasoning, numeracy and English skills test scores improved statistically significantly. Teachers were able to give voice to their deep-felt emotions through poetry. They felt that the devaluing of isiXhosa had resulted in the loss of learners’ main language literacy competencies and consequent loss of cultural capital; however they considered it necessary to develop English competence in the learners, even if it was at the expense of developing mathematical competence. The introduction of exploratory talk in their home languages served the dual purpose of promoting the value of isiXhosa in an academic environment as well as enhancing mathematical reasoning. It appears that when teachers focus on developing language as a tool for reasoning, significant improvements in learners’ problem solving competences occur. When the language used is the main language of both teachers and learners both mathematical understanding and cultural identity are enhanced. The study concludes with a suggestion for a model for future interventions to train teachers to introduce dialogic practices in multilingual mathematics classes.