The study was conducted to create an understanding of a particular group of people from urban India who had no knowledge of reading and writing. I have defined the term contemporary orality as a culture that retains almost all the psychodynamics of primary orality but yet interacts with literacy. In the extensive literature of comparative media theory, little ethnographic work had been done about contemporary oral cultures and their knowledge-systems. This introductory term is being used as a substitute for two commonly used labels--illiterates and residually oral. The ethnographic questionnaire was designed in such a way as to find that contemporary oral subjects have a specific way of constituting knowledge which is different from the way literates conceptualize about knowledge. Writing has to be personally interiorized to affect thinking processes. This research was undertaken in two parts. The first set of interviews were conducted in summer of 1990 and a more extensive version followed during the summer of 1991. A total of 87 oral people were interviewed. The results indicate that contemporary oral subjects conceptualize many aspects of knowledge (for example, work, space, time, nature, religion, law, government, etc.) differently from literates. The research subjects retain many of the basic psychodynamics of primary orality, as discussed in the writings of Walter Ong, except for the emphasis on memory. While memory had been crucial for primary oral cultures, its importance is vastly reduced in contemporary orality. The sociodynamics of contemporary orality, i.e., its close interaction with literates and literacy, effects the way oral subjects retain information. They depend on literates for recalling events, times, dates and amounts. Thus, this dissertation establishes the distinction between primary and secondary orality by introducing the cultural label of contemporary orality and by defining its particular psychodynamics and sociodynamics.

There is an inherent tension between self and society in human life. Such a tension is also embodied in the way people talk. The dissertation is a demonstration of how Chinese deal with that tension via Chinese collectivist and self-interest talk in solving social problems. A case study is presented from the perspective of the CMM theory. Several important theoretical issues are also discussed, as to how can we achieve the validity of a text analysis, and what should be the basic unit of analysis in communication studies, and in what ways are Grice's (1975) conversational maxims inadequate in accounting for human communication. The dissertation answers those questions on the basis of a study of a Chinese mediation case.

In principle, mediators claim to empower disputants--but do they in practice? My approach to this question is based upon three interdependent assumptions: (1) mediation is a process of communication, (2) forms of life (identities, relationships, cultural patterns) are reflexively reproduced in communication, (3) empowerment is the appropriate elaboration or transformation of disputant forms of life. I apply this perspective to three cases by using Pearce and Cronen's theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning. The first major finding of this study is that the mediators enacted their neutrality by allowing disputants to elaborate whatever autobiographical and relationship narratives were already in progress. This enactment of neutrality was empowering in the one case where disputants began with a positive connotation of their relationship; it was not empowering in the two cases where the disputants had negative interpretations. The second finding is that the mediators constructed disputants as two kinds of person: expressive individuals who talked in terms of moral-laden narratives, and utilitarian individuals who talked in terms of concrete proposals. In two of the cases, the mediators attempted to facilitate negotiation by separating the disputants' dysfunctional narratives from their proposals. In both of these cases, the strategy was disempowering because it did not aid in the transformation of the dysfunctional narratives. In the third case, the disputants were empowered: their narratives were positive and productive, and the mediators did not attempt to bracket them and separate them from the negotiation. The third finding of this study is that mediators constructed "success" less in terms of their ability to work constructively with disputant definitions of episode, relationship, and autobiography, and more in terms of the disputants' ability to reach an agreement. This definition of success makes the disputants responsible for their own empowerment, while mediator responsibility is limited to the proper enactment of the mediation episode. The results of this study carry implications for research. Since the final test of mediation values is their successful enactment in face-to-face interaction, we need more critical studies of the patterns of discourse in actual cases. There are also implications for mediation practice: mediators can take more responsibility for the empowerment of disputants by learning constructive ways of working with disputant forms of life.

This case study encompasses the issues of cultural difference, moral orders, and the public and private accounts of the conflicted patterns of interaction that occur when differing, often incommensurable, ways of being human and living a life of dignity and honor are not rendered comparable. Instead, these ways of being in the world promote and privilege a type of "us and them" $\...$ "we're right and you're wrong" diatribe that (re)creates and increases the socio-cultural tensions on the island of St. Croix. The focus of this research was on the narratives about the patterns of interactions between "Locals" (Black/Crucian men and women) and "Expatriates" (White men and women); "Relief workers" (White/"Off-Islander" men) and "Islanders" (both "Locals" and "Expatriates"); and, most importantly, between "Local" (Black/Crucian) men and women and how these practices are associated with tourism and the racial/social/political tensions on the island. Narrative data obtained through field interviews with people who live on or are presently working on St. Croix were analyzed by interpreting the data in light of Pearce and Cronen's (1980) CMM conversational model of analysis. CMM helped me to look at the narratives about communication practices in which people (re)create, manage, and transform social reality and to interpret how these discursive practices (re)create problematic ways of living. CMM also provided a way of describing how some people where "stuck" in their conflict or were able to reframe their situation to break free from the conflict. This way of interpreting narrative data illuminated the dual and sometimes triple cultural patterns and associated lifestyles, social class, and relationships that the Black Crucian men and women have to make sense of in the living of their lives. Without CMM analysis of the data, the distinctions between the "us and them" relationships would not have been identified nor would the gender related issues of black Crucian men and women have been associated with tourism practices. Key findings are categorized into the following topic areas: (1) use of physical space, (2) "us and them" situations and the acculturation process of Black Male and Female Crucians, (3) tourism as a catalyst for change, and (4) the changes brought about by the devastation of Hurricane Hugo.

This thesis holds that the application of the archaeological method, developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, to the field of anthropology reveals a hitherto hidden primitive episteme. Such a project represents a rejection of a search for a fundamental Truth, available through the traditional figures of rationality, either vertically in history or horizontally across cultures. The form of reason posited by this project does not have a constant and universal occurrence but is given in the discontinuous figures of the episteme. The quest for a single manifestation of the conditions of validity in reason is replaced by a study of the conditions of possibility of the truths, discourses and institutions of a primitive peoples. The conditions of possibility for the emergence of the elements of primitive knowledge and practices are available through the application of the explanatory unities of the archaeological method. These unities replace the traditional explanatory role of the subject, with all of its psychological baggage, which has a central role in modern theories of rationality. The subject-knowledge link that dominates traditional anthropological analyses is replaced by a powerknowledge link that postulates the two axes of discursive and non-discursive concerns. The discursive axis is concerned with the objects, concepts, statements and discursive formations of primitive knowledge while the non-discursive axis is concerned with the systems of power that propagate and sustain those discourses. These two axes constitute the nature of the archaeology employed in this study. This thesis is sustained by both negative and positive evidence. The negative evidence takes the form of an antisubjectivist thrust where the subject-dependent explanatory unities of the tradition are replaced by the positivistic elements of archaeology. The positive evidence primarily takes the form of a detailed analysis of the presence of the guiding codes of the episteme amongst the Trobriand Islanders that give rise to their primitive knowledge and practices. In this area, I make extensive use of Malinowski's ethnographic observations for their breath of detail and application without employing his subject-dependent psychobiological conclusions. Further, I am proposing a transformative position such that orality becomes a feature of the episteme rather than its condition of possibility. The guiding codes of the Trobriand episteme take the form of enclosed oppositional figures that are everywhere related to space. The Trobriand episteme provides the conditions for the emergence of primitive discourses and orders the experiences of the Trobrianders. The guiding figures of the episteme are based in a form of complementary opposition, causation as vitality and a dogma of topological space that give rise to primitive knowledge which is a form of divination. A significant part of this dissertation is taken up with an examination of the detail and limitation of these figures where ideas from Levy-Bruhl, Hallpike, and others are employed to produce the most appropriate configuration for my project. A particular form of language as the manipulation of real signs, rather than ideational signs, has its possibility in this configuration which has consequences for the type of knowledge produced. The form of knowledge appropriate to the presence of such a model of language is magic. Writing has no possibility for emerging in this episteme and, therefore, there are significant consequences for the type of knowledge that can be maintained and propagated in a context which must utilise static tradition to the detriment of reflection. An archaeological analysis of the Trobriand Islanders, focusing on discourses on sex and marriage, the nature of tabooed sexual acts, economic relations arising out of marriage and the role of the polygamous chief, the nature of love-magic and magic in general, reveals a shared possibility for all of these discursive realms in the figures of the episteme. These discourses are regulated by the presence of a fundamental opposition between a brother and his sister. This opposition forms the motif for primitive problematizations and constitutes a vulnerable boundary which is the appropriate focus of taboos relating to sex and food, amongst others. This primitive episteme characterises the unity of the experiences of the Trobrianders. This experience is discontinuous with our own and does not involve a role for the individual ego. This project represents a worthwhile contribution to an understanding of human experience and knowledge in general which does not seek to reduce the natural diversity of man to just the monotonous experience of modern man. In conclusion, I tentatively speculate about the appropriateness of the Trobriand figures for primitive experience in general.

This study examined how communicative practices create a cultural "voice": who has it, how is it affirmed or disconfirmed and reified or not. Towards this end, notions of personhood as communicated within a "Cultural Center" were explored. Ethnography of communication (Carbaugh, Hymes, Philipsen) formed the basic theoretical and methodological foundation for this study. Data were collected at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Springfield, Massachusetts through participant-observation. This study is based on two cultural scenes, monthly board meetings and the 1994 Annual Dinner. The central questions addressed in this study were: how is personhood symbolized and lived at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center? What are the culture-specific meanings given to these symbols? What is the relationship between communication and personhood? The main analytic framework consisted of these terms: key symbols, person reference, norms, voice, communication event and cultural code. The principal findings from this study were that Puerto Ricans speak with the valued symbol, "community." The symbol "community" orients their world view such that talk makes sense within a symbol system that privileges voices of the community over individual voices. Communicative enactments of this perspective are many and varied. For example, person referring devices are used to locate persons in relation to others in the community by designating particular roles that people play. In addition, the way that some conversations are constructed highlight the cultural importance of community as when individual persons weave their personal threads of talk into a social fabric of collaboratively produced utterances. Persons are valorized by their participation in these cultural sequences of talk by using the significant symbols of "community" in the "proper" ways. This demonstrates how valorized members speak from the voice of the communal, rather than through an autonomous, individual voice.

This dissertation is an ethnographic exploration, and a cultural discourse analysis of the relationship between communication and culture. The study of cultural discourses as they are active in situated speech communities allows for the description and interpretation of the way members of a particular speech community come to make meaningful their symbolic worlds. The perspective adopted suggests that cultural identity and its enactment is locatable through rhetorical dimensions of communication (such as symbolic clusters and public forums for talk) and at the local level of particular speech communities (such as situated communicative acts) where participants, through communication, create and constitute what it means for them to be, act, and feel like a person. This study presents the symbols, forms and meanings of one particular cultural discourse and how this system constitutes culture in this scene. Specifically, the dissertation is organized to review the public discourse of the havurah movement; how one particular havurah (“our havurah”) constitutes a sense of what it means to be a member of this group; the appropriate ways for acting in that particular scene; the cultural premises of belief and value that are deeply meaningful throughout this havurah's communicative enactments; and the rules communicated throughout symbolic rituals. This study of cultural communication contributes to a growing body of literature that emphasizes the local, emic narrative that is active in a particular speech community and analyzes it through a systematic etic theory of cultural discourse.

Este trabalho aborda a comunicação administrativa como tema e problema de comunicação organizacional, com objetivo de mostrar e esclarecer o seu obscurecimento como objeto de pensamento e propor um novo enfoque, buscando contribuir para o debate acadêmico dessa vertente da comunicação integrada. Do ponto de vista dos procedimentos lógicos que nortearam o processo investigativo, o trabalho se inclui no arco de influência da fenomenologia. Elaborou-se um quadro de referência sobre comunicação organizacional e sobre cultura organizacional buscando situar e problematizar a comunicação administrativa, analisar e interpretar os seus conteúdos significativos em termos das convergências, ambigüidades, disparidades, contradições e complementaridades que expõem, escondem ou suscitam. Foram identificadas as linhas que perpassam o centro do corpus documental composto de manuais e compêndios de comunicação administrativa por meio do mapeamento dos seguintes eixos explanatórios: objeto de pensamento, conceito, enfoques, ênfases de conteúdos, proposições práticas. Com o balizamento do conhecimento já produzido sobre o tema, propõe-se uma abordagem alicerçada em seis categorias do pensamento antropológico: regra, pessoa, identidade, diversidades, saberes, crenças. / The present thesis focuses on administrative communication as an organizational communication theme and investigation problem, aiming to show and clarify the lack of study and research about it and to propose a new approach which will contribute to the academic debate on this integrated communications area. As far as the methodological procedures are concerned, this work is influenced by the phenomenology. An organizational communication and organizational culture board was elaborated, to put emphasis on the administrative communication, taking it in terms to analyze and to interpret its relevant contents referring to convergences, ambiguities, disparities, contradictions and complementarities which emerge from the authors´ speeches. The corpus, composed of books and handbooks, was deeply analyzed, pursuing the knowledge presented on six explanatory axles: object of thinking, concept, approaches, content emphasis and practical proposals. Within the marking guidelines already produced concerning to the theme, this thesis proposes an approach based on six anthropological thinking categories: rules, person, identity, diversity, knowledge, beliefs.

Este trabalho aborda a comunicação administrativa como tema e problema de comunicação organizacional, com objetivo de mostrar e esclarecer o seu obscurecimento como objeto de pensamento e propor um novo enfoque, buscando contribuir para o debate acadêmico dessa vertente da comunicação integrada. Do ponto de vista dos procedimentos lógicos que nortearam o processo investigativo, o trabalho se inclui no arco de influência da fenomenologia. Elaborou-se um quadro de referência sobre comunicação organizacional e sobre cultura organizacional buscando situar e problematizar a comunicação administrativa, analisar e interpretar os seus conteúdos significativos em termos das convergências, ambigüidades, disparidades, contradições e complementaridades que expõem, escondem ou suscitam. Foram identificadas as linhas que perpassam o centro do corpus documental composto de manuais e compêndios de comunicação administrativa por meio do mapeamento dos seguintes eixos explanatórios: objeto de pensamento, conceito, enfoques, ênfases de conteúdos, proposições práticas. Com o balizamento do conhecimento já produzido sobre o tema, propõe-se uma abordagem alicerçada em seis categorias do pensamento antropológico: regra, pessoa, identidade, diversidades, saberes, crenças. / The present thesis focuses on administrative communication as an organizational communication theme and investigation problem, aiming to show and clarify the lack of study and research about it and to propose a new approach which will contribute to the academic debate on this integrated communications area. As far as the methodological procedures are concerned, this work is influenced by the phenomenology. An organizational communication and organizational culture board was elaborated, to put emphasis on the administrative communication, taking it in terms to analyze and to interpret its relevant contents referring to convergences, ambiguities, disparities, contradictions and complementarities which emerge from the authors´ speeches. The corpus, composed of books and handbooks, was deeply analyzed, pursuing the knowledge presented on six explanatory axles: object of thinking, concept, approaches, content emphasis and practical proposals. Within the marking guidelines already produced concerning to the theme, this thesis proposes an approach based on six anthropological thinking categories: rules, person, identity, diversity, knowledge, beliefs.