Bibliography: leaves.

This thesis contributes to the established literature on farm women within the context of family farming. It recognises that not enough is yet known about the discourses and agency which influence their lives. Consequently, this study has sought to establish what dominant discourses shape the lives of farm women, their responses to these discourses and how their discursive positioning influences their agency. This study employed a qualitative case study approach involving interviews with a diverse mixture of independent farm women, along with women farming in marital relationships. This thesis engages these narratives to showcase the colourful, complex life-experiences of farm women. In addition, and where present, women�s partners were interviewed to provide male farmers� perspectives about women in family farming. This research has found that women�s lives are shaped by positioning and contextualising discourses, with which they comply to ensure that the family farm survives. Their subservient discursive positioning limits the agency they can express, although they are able to mobilise indirect agency through supporting their partner; an implicit form of agency which has previously been unrecognised or understated. Cumulatively, this thesis highlights the need to recognise the diversity of farm women, and how they are able to exercise agency from their constrained subject positions within the family farming context. Furthermore it emphasises that agency is a dynamic, and far more varied concept than previously understood.

Chapter 1 considers culture as a product of communication. The central problem is to understand how an array of influencing factors such as food supply, technology and physical and intellectual environment are represented, stored and shared as 'food culture'. It considers mechanisms by which culture might be transmitted from one location to another including the relevance of historical literature and Louis Hartz's notion of Australia as a 'cultural fragment' cast off from the Old World. Chapter 2 shows that the Australian literature represents a discourse in which information about various aspects of feeding was gathered from local and overseas sources and circulated for instruction, entertainment and use. The discourse and the means of conducting it were products of their age. Public participation was evident in the correspondence columns of weekly newspapers and in 'contributory' cookery books. The discourse drew on various themes that were prominent in other Western discourses and reflected social and moral values of the times. It evidenced beliefs that the manner of a society's feeding demonstrates the extent of its' civilisation and that refinement of food and feeding contributes to the improvement of society. It also reflected nationalist sentiment and demonstrated some attempts to develop a distinctive Australian cuisine. Chapter 3 supports these claims with detailed analysis of recipes published in a sample of journals and cookery books. Chapter 4 describes five instances which illustrate in more depth the influence of print media in culture development. The first two show deliberate use of print media to reform cookery practice. The third shows the role of print in cookery education, suggesting an alternative mechanism by which cookery in Australia retained its British character. The fourth tests the idea that the transmission of food and science cultural influences from the Old World to the New followed broadly similar paths and questions the origins of the domestic science movement. The fifth examines commercial influences exerted through print media and notes that food production, processing and distribution enterprise was to become increasingly influential as Australia (and other countries) turned to industrial feeding. The thesis concludes with some reflections on the processes of culture formation and the role of mass communications. It suggests that food culture is both an expression of conceptions of character and identity and a formative influence on them, that the engine of cultural change has been industrial progress and, finally, that the communication system which supports and enriches food culture may also tend to undermine it.

This thesis examines how Taiwan's three English language newspapers covered the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed between the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China (China). By gaining an understanding of the discourse structure of how these newspapers reported ECFA will demonstrate the role they play in either trying to create a nationalistic Taiwanese or pan-Chinese identity to their English speaking audience. This identity construction is important because it will add legitimacy to whichever direction Taiwan eventually sets its social and political course towards. Examining how the Taipei Times, The China Post and The Taiwan New use discourse in their headlines, articles and editorials when reporting and interpreting ECFA, the thesis has found that they all use similar strategies to present their respective position. These strategies can be broken down into the omission of only reporting either the pros or cons of the agreement, the exclusion of the public voice, and the dominant voice of the elite who either support or oppose ECFA. The Taipei Times and The Taiwan News appear to both structure their dominant discourses around overlapping themes that ECFA is a highly controversial agreement that will quickly lead an irreversible loss of sovereignty in Taiwan. In contrast, The China Post establishes a dominant discourse around ECFA’s economic benefits, while ignoring the negative aspects of the agreement.

Politeness Phenomena and Mild Conflict in Japanese Casual Conversation

This thesis is positioned at the intersection of two fields of research: language and gender and language development, to address the lack of linguistically informed investigation into the emergence of gendered subjectivity. Rather than treat the domain of language and gender research as a site of resolve, the research problematises the area to create a site of contestation by drawing attention to the limitations of research based on a single theoretical framework which proposes unified gender identity as gender difference. Gender will be read not as singular identity but multiple, as a Foucauldian 'nexus of subjectivities'. The study is an investigation into the construction of gendered subjectivity through a critical discourse analysis of a family playing games. The initial contention is that gender is a process which may be performed in multiple ways which are linked to the subject positions taken up in competing discourses. Focusing on children playing games, the study examines how gendered relationships are constructed in discursive practices to propose that it is possible to identify the performance of multiple femininities/masculinites through an analysis of patterns of interaction where the negotiation of power relationships is made visible in language and action. The study is a reflexive ethnographic case study based on data collected of two siblings, a boy and a girl, and their parents playing games at home. Conducted from within a framework which strategically combines poststructuralist readings with linguistic analysis, the research is an example of the viability of 'postlinguistic' approach to discourse analysis. The thesis argues that the study of a culture as it is lived in a family reveals the emergence of gendered subjectivity in the constitutive relationship which exits language, subjectivity and discourse. It is suggested that the development of a child's multiple gendered identities towards normative gender patterns may be traced in the discursive practices which s/he mobilises as a result of the subject positions in which s/he is positioned during the research period / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (MA.(Afrikaans))-University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

<p>The starting point of this thesis is the debate surrounding the two referenda’s in France and the Netherlands in May and June 2005, regarding the proposal of a European constitution. The aim of this study is to analyse how democratic legitimacy and the role of the citizens portrays within the democratic discourse of the European Union. The empirical material is based upon both speeches from the European Commission and news articles from the French newspaper Libération and the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Discourse analysis is used as a theoretical frame of reference combined with models of democracy. The results of the study is that democracy is still defined by it’s traditional values but have also shifted into being a concept combined with effectivity. This has effects on the citizens and their role in the EU has been stripped down to only legitimize the decisions, the people should simply ”say yes to yes”.</p>

<p>The purpose of this essay is to examine sfi (Swedish for immigrants), which is an ingrational-political tool with objective of teaching immigrants to read and write in Swedish. With the use of critical discourse analysis we examine the discursive practices within sfi. We also examine our methodological and theoretical approaches, and our application of them. Our research questions are as follows:</p><p>• How are the discursive usage of “person centered” and “society centered” expressions being used?</p><p>• How well does our methodological and theoretical resources work?</p><p>In our theoretical viewpoint we use “post colonial theory”, which is a perspective concerned with global power relations seen from a historical perspective. Colonialism, in this view, still continues to determine the course of the world and cultural identity formation even after it has formally ended. According to our second theoretical viewpoint, “Governmentality”, the focus of analysis concerns differing forms of control. The shift from the state to the individual is of special interest.</p><p>The results of the analysis show that the integrational-political discourse order within sfi seems to be fragile. We also find that “person centered” expressions are more frequent than “society centered” ones.</p><p>The results also show that our theoretical and methodological resources are bound with certain difficulties. Firstly, critical discourse analysis has been found to be inadequate with regard to our empirical material. It was first when we applied Ulrich Becks theory regarding individualization that the discursive practice became comprehensible in a larger context. Secondly, our results showed that governmentality was problematic in the context in which it was used.</p>

This thesis focuses on the negotiation of power and identity between Swiss students and instructors in the Swiss classroom. Although Schriftdeutsch1 is the official language of secondary schools in Switzerland, speakers often practice code-switching, which serves many conversational functions (Auer 1998). This paper examines how Germans-peaking Swiss use code-switching strategies to negotiate power and identity in the classroom. My data is drawn from interactions in the classroom and a short interview. Using a constructivist methodology based on conversation analysis (Antaki & Widdicombe 1998; Meinhof & Galasinski 2005; Pavlenko & Blackledge 2004), I analyse classroom discussion in terms of the discourse functions of code-switching and how Swiss German is used to negotiate power and identity in interaction. This thesis reveals an unmarked classroom situation and shows that codeswitching fulfills important functions in classroom discourse. / Applied Linguistics