Complaining happens in all cultures, and offers a unique insight into the values, taboos, and communicative practices of a given society. The ways in which complaining is viewed and performed vary drastically not only cross-culturally, but across smaller communal groups and between individuals, too. This dissertation approaches complaining from a multilateral perspective to investigate how individuals in three different language groups – monolingual French speakers, monolingual English speakers, and native English speakers enrolled in upper-division university French courses – perceive and produce complaints as well as the influential role played by social context. In the perception study, the researcher explores how individuals within the examined language groups identify the presence of complaints and perceive their naturalness when presented with contextualized scenarios involving native speakers. In the production study, the researcher examines both the frequency with which individuals complain and the strategies they employ to perform a complaint in various social situations. Additionally, within the production study the researcher examines the frequency with which participants opt out from complaining and their provided rationale for doing so. This dissertation not only identifies a variety of universal linguistic and sociocultural features of complaints, it also uncovers several aspects distinctive to the individual language groups. At the core of this dissertation is the argument that to best understand complaint behavior, researchers should acknowledge the essential influence of social context on both the perception and production of complaints. Above all, future research must consider the complex and dynamic interplay that exists between cross-cultural complaint behaviors and social norms of politeness.

The geopolitical significance of Pakistan in the Global War on Terror has led to multiple instances of the US acting in an extra-territorial manner. Repeated territorial intrusion by the US strains US-Pakistan relations because extra-territoriality is viewed as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. This study analyzes Pakistani-English political cartoons to examine the ways the US extra-territoriality is represented. Approximately 2940 political cartoons are collected from four Pakistani-English newspapers: Dawn, The Express Tribune, The Nation, and The News. Wallerstein’s world-system theory provides the theoretical backdrop to demonstrate the explicit (military) and implicit (economic, cultural, and political/diplomatic) means a hegemonic-core power can act extra-territorially towards a state in the periphery. A combination of content analysis and social semiotic analysis methodologies is used. Content analysis reveals a total of 323 US-related political cartoons that are classified into themes of economic, cultural, military, and political/diplomatic depictions in political cartoons. A visual social semiotic analysis deconstructs the visual rhetoric of extra-territoriality as expressed in the various themed political cartoons. The outcome of these two methodologies provides a holistic illustration of the ways US extra-territoriality in a sovereign but periphery state like Pakistan is viewed.

Plasmodium falciparum, one of the parasites that cause clinical malaria, is a continuous public health concern, especially in Asia and Africa. Unfortunately, the parasite has developed resistance to many drugs created to treat and prevent the disease. Artemisinin and its derivatives are the new gold standard for treatment of malaria, yet treatment failures in clinical studies are starting to be reported. Clearly, artemisinin resistance needs to be characterized and dealt with accordingly. In support of the Gates Foundation Artemisinin Consortium, we conducted a blinded study to elucidate the phenotypic response of artemisinin derivatives of parasites derived from patient blood samples from Cambodia and Thailand. Blood samples containing Plasmodium falciparum were cultured and then assayed using SYBR green as an indicator to obtain drug IC50s. The data suggested that many isolates are not demonstrating resistance to artemisinin. However, a select few are showing some resistant characteristics in the form of elevated IC 50s, especially to some of the drugs already identified in previous studies as drugs having resistant characteristics. Compared to studies conducted within the past ten years, no significant changes in parasite susceptibility to the artemisinin drugs have been observed. Additional analysis of clinical outcomes, therapeutic drug levels, and molecular markers needs to be completed before it can be assumed that artemisinin resistance has emerged.

Thesis (LL.M.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

<p>Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka vilka former av kränkande handlingar som finns bland eleverna i årskurs åtta på en friskola i Örebro. Metoden har varit observationsstudier på skolan samt intervjuer med elever och skolpersonal. I studien ingick omkring 80 elever där könsfördelningen varit 70 % flickor och 30 % pojkar. De kränkningar som observerats har varit av fysisk, verbal, emotionell och sexuell form. Särskilt de verbala kränkningarna har varit framträdande. Det har även påträffats könsskillnader i fråga om vilken typ av kränkningsform som har använts. Flickorna var mer framträdande i de sammanhang där negativa kommentarer och emotionella kränkningar fanns. Pojkarna var oftare inblandade i incidenter med fysiska kränkningar. En slutsats är att kränkningar förekommer på den undersökta skolan men att de flesta inte tycker att de tär något större problem. Eleverna trivs i sin skola och litar på att lärarna tar tag i situationen om mobbning skulle uppstå.</p> / <p>The purpose with this study was to investigate school bullying among students at a highschool in Örebro. The study used observational research and interviews to examine different aspects of bullying. The participants were about 80 students in the eight grade, 70 of them were girls. The result has been validated by triangulation. Of the observations offensive acts in forms of physical, verbal, emotional and sexual has been noted. Especially the verbal dimension was reported frequently. There were gender differences, with girls experiencing negative comments and some emotional bullying. The boys experienced more physical bullying. The conclusion is that bullying and offensive acts exist at the investigated school but the general student does not seem to be troubled by this. The students are happy with their situation and they trust their teachers will handle the problems with bullying.</p>

This paper surveys a range of constructions in which prosody affects discourse function and discourse structure.We discuss English tag questions, negative polar questions, and what we call “focus” questions. We postulate that these question types are complex speech acts and outline an analysis in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) to account for the interactions between prosody and discourse.

This thesis discusses the politics of conscientious objection in Turkey within a framework of citizenship. In this study citizenship is identified with being political and conceived as a process comprised of acts and practices. According to this conception, while practices reproduce the discourse of citizenship in a given context, acts are the deeds that challenge this discourse. Conscription, within this framework, is defined as a citizenship practice which re/produces the militaristic, nationalistic and gendered content of the Turkish citizenship. Conscientious objection is approached as an act of citizenship that contests and challenges the established citizenship regime in the country. This challenge and contestation is presented through the interviews with the conscientious objectors and activists as well as a review of the already published material by and on them. Conscientious objection challenges the citizenship regime in Turkey on three inter-related grounds: 1. It challenges and exposes the militaristic content of the discourse of citizenship in Turkey. 2. It challenges the political content of &lsquo / Turkishness&rsquo / &ndash / that is the nationalistic content of Turkish citizenship- with particular reference to Kurdish issue / and 3. It challenges the prevailing gender roles and the values of hegemonic masculinity in Turkey.

Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka vilka former av kränkande handlingar som finns bland eleverna i årskurs åtta på en friskola i Örebro. Metoden har varit observationsstudier på skolan samt intervjuer med elever och skolpersonal. I studien ingick omkring 80 elever där könsfördelningen varit 70 % flickor och 30 % pojkar. De kränkningar som observerats har varit av fysisk, verbal, emotionell och sexuell form. Särskilt de verbala kränkningarna har varit framträdande. Det har även påträffats könsskillnader i fråga om vilken typ av kränkningsform som har använts. Flickorna var mer framträdande i de sammanhang där negativa kommentarer och emotionella kränkningar fanns. Pojkarna var oftare inblandade i incidenter med fysiska kränkningar. En slutsats är att kränkningar förekommer på den undersökta skolan men att de flesta inte tycker att de tär något större problem. Eleverna trivs i sin skola och litar på att lärarna tar tag i situationen om mobbning skulle uppstå. / The purpose with this study was to investigate school bullying among students at a highschool in Örebro. The study used observational research and interviews to examine different aspects of bullying. The participants were about 80 students in the eight grade, 70 of them were girls. The result has been validated by triangulation. Of the observations offensive acts in forms of physical, verbal, emotional and sexual has been noted. Especially the verbal dimension was reported frequently. There were gender differences, with girls experiencing negative comments and some emotional bullying. The boys experienced more physical bullying. The conclusion is that bullying and offensive acts exist at the investigated school but the general student does not seem to be troubled by this. The students are happy with their situation and they trust their teachers will handle the problems with bullying.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the complaint speech act set used by Turkish EFL learners speaking to a commiserating and contradicting teacher. For this purpose, four kinds of data sources were used: twenty native English speakers&amp / #8217 / role-plays, twenty five Turkish native speakers&amp / #8217 / role-plays, forty students&amp / #8217 / role-plays and two native speakers&amp / #8217 / judgments on the students&amp / #8217 / production. The subjects were given two different situations. Their role-plays were audio taped and transcribed. The subjects&amp / #8217 / complaint speech act sets were analyzed, using a coding scheme from a previous study in the literature. The baseline and the interlanguage data were compared using SPSS to see to what extent they were similar and different, and to see whether or not the Turkish EFL learners made positive and negative transfer, and whether there were any features unique to the interlanguage of the learners. The findings of the study revealed that Turkish EFL learners produced a complaint speech act set when speaking to a commiserating and contradicting teacher. The components of the complaint speech act set realized by the learners were &amp / #8216 / complaint&amp / #8217 / , &amp / #8216 / justification&amp / #8217 / , &amp / #8216 / candidate solution: request&amp / #8217 / , &amp / #8216 / candidate solution: demand&amp / #8217 / , and &amp / #8216 / explanation of purpose&amp / #8217 / . When speaking to the commiserating teacher, the students made positive transfer in using the components &amp / #8216 / explanation of purpose&amp / #8217 / , &amp / #8216 / complaint&amp / #8217 / , &amp / #8216 / justification&amp / #8217 / , and &amp / #8216 / request&amp / #8217 / . They made negative transfer in using &amp / #8216 / demand&amp / #8217 / . The students speaking to the contradicting teacher made positive transfer in their use of the components &amp / #8216 / explanation of purpose&amp / #8217 / , &amp / #8216 / complaint&amp / #8217 / and &amp / #8216 / justification&amp / #8217 / . The component &amp / #8216 / demand&amp / #8217 / was subject to negative transfer.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Witten/Herdecke, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 13-33).