The purpose of this research was to investigate the nature of listeners' attitudes toward foreign-accented speech and the manner in which those attitudes are formed. This study measured 165 participants' implicit and explicit attitudes toward US- and foreign-accented audio stimuli. Implicit attitudes were measured with an audio Implicit Association Test. The use of audio stimuli as repeated tokens for their phonological attributes represents an innovation in IAT methodology. Explicit attitudes were elicited through self-report. The explicit task was contextualized as a fictional medical malpractice trial; participants heard the recorded audio testimony of two actors (one US-accented and one Korean-accented) portraying opposing expert witnesses. Four test conditions counterbalanced across participants were created from the recordings. Participants rated the experts on fourteen dependent variables ('traits'): believability, credibility, judgment, knowledge, competence, trustworthiness, likeability, friendliness, expertise, intelligence, warmth, persuasiveness, presentation style, and clarity of presentation. Participants were also asked for their attitudes toward the speakers relative to each other (i.e., Which doctor would you side with in this dispute?). The question of speaker preference was posed as a binary choice, an 11- point slider scale measure, and two confirmation questions asking participants to state how fair they thought an outcome for each party would be. This study's hypothesis that participants' implicit and explicit attitudes toward the same speech would diverge was confirmed. The IAT results indicated an implicit bias [ D =.33, p∠.05] in favor of the US-accented speaker, while the self-report results indicated an explicit bias [ F (2,121)=3.969, p=.021, η 2 =.062] in favor of the foreign-accented speaker in the slider scale and confirmation questions [ F (2,121)=3.708, p=.027, η 2 =.058, and F (2,121)=3.563, p=.031, η 2 =.056]. While the binary choice question showed a trend toward favoring the foreign-accented speaker, the result was not significant. No discernable pattern was found to exist in attitudes toward the speaker by trait. This study's findings argue for the recognition of both implicit and explicit attitude constructs and the integration of implicit attitudes measurement methodologies into future language attitudes research. Additional theoretical implications of these findings for future language attitudes research are also discussed, including implications for selecting an appropriate cognitive processing model.

Since Ukraine's independence, a burgeoning private sector has been increasingly encroaching in cultural spaces that previously were conceived of as "property of the state." This dissertation is an ethnographic account of how objects of cultural heritage are being re-configured within the new post-Soviet economy. Specifically, it focuses on sound archive field recordings of traditional music and how they are being transformed into cultural commodities. Regarding the jurisdiction of culture - who controls cultural heritage and how it is used to represent ethnic and national identity - my research shows how these boundaries are increasingly being negotiated within structures of social, cultural and political power. Thus, culture becomes a contested object between competing ideological systems: cultural heritage as a means to salvage and reconstruct repressed histories and to revive former national traditions, on the one hand, and cultural heritage as a creative, future-oriented force to construct new identities in growing consumer marketplaces.

For years, critics and fans of C. S. Lewis have noted his curious attentiveness to descriptions of food and scenes of eating. Some attempts have been made to interpret Lewis's use of food, but never in a manner comprehensively unifying Lewis's culinary expressions with his own thought and beliefs. My study seeks to fill this void. The introduction demonstrates how Lewis's culinary language aggregates through elements of his life, his literary background, and his Judeo-Christian worldview. Using the grammar of his own culinary language, I examine Lewis's fiction for patterns found within his meals and analyze these patterns for theological allusions, grouping them according to major categories of systematic theology. Chapter two argues that ecclesiastical themes appear whenever Lewis's protagonists eat together. The ritualized meal progression, evangelistic discourse, and biographical menus create a unity that points to parallels between Lewis's body of protagonists and the church. Chapter three focuses on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper and charges that Lewis's meals which are eaten in the presence of the novel's Christ figure or which include bread and wine in the menu reliably align with the Anglo-Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. Chapter four studies how sinful eating affects the spiritual states of Lewis's characters. The chapter first shows how Lewis's culinary language draws from Edenic sources, resonating with a very gastronomic Fall of Humanity, then examines how the progressively sinful eating of certain characters signifies a gradual alienation from the Divine. The fifth, and concluding, chapter argues that Lewis's portrayal of culinary desire and pleasure ultimately points to an eschatological theme. This theme culminates near the end of Lewis's novels either through individual characters expressing superlative delight in their food or through a unified congregation of protagonists eating a celebratory feast during the novel's denouement. I close the study by emphasizing how this approach to Lewis's meals offers a complete spiritual analysis of Lewis's main characters that also consistently supports Lewis's own theology.

The use of technology in primary care settings is not a new concept; the benefits of implementing electronic medical records are stated throughout the literature related to gains in productivity, patient safety, and adherence to clinical guidelines. Yet, despite these benefits, the adoption of electronic medical records in primary care settings, in Canada remains low. This thesis research, a descriptive case study, is an in-depth look at the process of electronic medical record implementation for a family practice group in an attempt to understand the process, technology, and the challenges associated with such as transition. This research uses two well-known models as its framework: the Delone and McLean IS Success Model and John Kotter’s Eight Stages of Organizational Change. The use of the two models together is unique; their use together provides a broader look at the aspects of implementation including the environment in which it is being conducted.

This study explores performance elements in Quebec folk culture events in the context of evaluating the resources needed to construct studies in québécois theatre history for Anglophone students. Using the metaphor of history as a map that charts the landscape of the past and needs many layers of information to do so effectively, resources dealing with Quebec theatre history in English and in French are surveyed and underdeveloped areas are marked for future research. To deal with the unusual circumstance of a very low incidence of theatre practice in Quebec from 1606 until late in the 1800's, juxtaposed against the vibrant and international developments in the last 50 years, three instances of Quebec folk culture are investigated for their performance elements. That research is structured in accordance with the guidelines and definitions in Living Folklore (Sims & Stevens, 2005). Performance elements revealed through the study include full body synchronized movements, mask and costume, improvisation, role-playing, choral work and monologues. The relationship of these events to present-day québécois theatre is analyzed.

This thesis examines ideas about old age in four anecdotes and their illustrations from the 1334 illustrated Mamluk volume of al-Hariri's (1054-1122) Maqamat in the context of early (1250-1382) Mamluk society. The Maqamat contains fifty short anecdotes with a common plot format and two main characters. In each anecdote, the narrator al-Harith relates an adventure of the hero Abu Zayd, an elderly beggar who travels throughout the medieval Islamic Middle East. Using his talent as an orator, Abu Zayd draws people together in a public place, performs an eloquent speech, and is rewarded with money and goods. Ideas about the status of old age in Muslim society originate in the Qur 'an and hadith. Attitudes about the elderly are expressed in other selected texts and in painting (frescoes and manuscript illustration). In the 1334 Mamluk volume, Maqamat illustrations either enhance the text or function independently of the text. Images portray old age as a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge and authority in the social roles of literary scholar, judge, religious leader, and teacher.

The subject of this dissertation is the architectural history of big-box stores on Southern Vancouver Island since their arrival in 1992. It examines the architecture and cultural significance of stores located in the Regional District of Nanaimo, the Cowichan Valley Regional District, and the Capital Regional District. This study hypothesizes that big-box stores are, in terms of their architecture, retailing formats, and consumption practices, central locations and vehicles for the reproduction of capitalist social relations. In the postmodern or Late Capitalist era. these relations have emphasized consumption over production, and have exerted a deep influence on everyday life and political economy in urban Canada. This study interprets the architectural and social spaces of New Retail Formats (NRFs) through a Marxist perspective, and uses the inter-disciplinary methods of vernacular architecture studies and architectural-geography. I have evaluated the big-box store in terms of typology, distribution, and social operation. I have also placed them in the context of North American architectural history, especially in relation to shopping centres. I argue that big-box stores produce, consume, and reproduce distinctive forms of social space, which I have named "value space". Value space is the set of social and spatial relationships found within big-box stores that are shaped by both retailers and consumers, and which are focused on low-priced commodities. Value space is a contemporary and clear example of what Karl Marx and Henri Lefebvre each identified as key to capitalism's survival: the reproduction of the relations of production and consumption. In the same way that factory relationships also shape life beyond the factory, the value space of big-box stores is also produced, consumed, and reproduced in other social and professional practices, such as urban planning and municipal politics. The aims of my study were: to document the history of this new architectural type; to explain the place of big-box store development in municipal political economy; and, to examine the role of big-box stores in the reproduction of capitalist urban space on Southern Vancouver Island. In doing so, I argue that big-box stores are engines and symbols of urban development that foster increased consumption, support the socio-economic status quo, and refashion natural and social environments in accordance with the values of capitalism. I believe big-box stores are the architectural subject of greatest contemporary importance on Southern Vancouver Island. Few other buildings types today generate similar feelings - for and against - as do big-box stores. They are at once a building type, a retail format, and a symbol of contemporary urban development. Their importance comes from their size, from the scale of their operations, and from their impacts on municipal politics, urban planning, transportation infrastructure, regional ecosystems, and community life. The retailing and consumption practices they house, facilitate and manage contain the seeds of, or needs for, future consumption. This makes NRFs economic and symbolic centres for the reproduction of the relations of production and consumption.

This dissertation is about the tension and continuum between localism and nationalism in contemporary Thai Buddhist art and architecture. It deals with two contemporary Buddhist temples as works of art and architecture set into particular spatial relations. In this dissertation I compare two contemporary neo-traditionalist Buddhist temples, Wat Rong Khun and Wat Pa’O Ram Yen, situated near the city of Chiang Rai in northern Thailand. Neo-traditionalism has been identified as an important and relatively standard artistic style in Thailand since the 1970’s. However, the social anxiety experienced during the 1970’s social uprisings, then following the 1997 Asian financial debacle and more recently during and after the early 21st century yellow and red shirts rallies in Bangkok and Chiang Mai led to a profound reevaluation and reassessment of Thai national identity formation. Many Buddhist, social, ecological and political movements have since either obviously or subtly destabilized the perceived Thai national image. These movements often include, even promote, discourses on localism where Thai nationalism is experienced, questioned and adapted by and for the local community. Yet the art historical discourses on neo-traditionalism still follow a conventional national identity formation and visual propaganda. In this dissertation I analyze how two northern temples promote different national vocabularies, from a centralized and more accepted nationalism, to one where concepts based on localism, such as local knowledge, have the potential to destabilize and reevaluate, national identity, without negating it. Charlermchai Kostipipat is the mastermind behind Wat Rong Khun’s design and construction. Though this temple seems to differ from other temples in Thailand, I will show how the main emphasis of this neo-traditional monument is to promote and support a more conventional and institutionalized version of national identity. I will show how the visitor’s aesthetic experience emphasizes aspects of Buddhism also promoted by the centralized Thai national identity formation. Most importantly, there is a strong artistic emphasis on the Traiphum Phra Ruang, an important religious text in Thailand. Wat Pa’O is also the artistic project of another northern Thai artist, this time Somluk Pantiboon, a ceramicist established in the village of Pa’O. The temple of Pa’O is a neo-traditional work because of its use of traditional media, artistic details and monastic conventions. Yet I will show how this artistic architectural project has the potential to destabilize the more conventional understanding of ‘neo-traditionalism.’ For example it promotes different elements of the Thai discourses on localism, including an engaged form of Buddhism focusing on social interactions and an acknowledgement of one’s relation to others at the immediate local level. It also promotes a connectedness with nature, allowing the participant to experience and realize dependent origination by observing and experimenting with nature. This dissertation shows the complexity of Thai national identity negotiated in two case studies of northern Buddhist art and architecture in a post-1997 financial debacle and current political situation. I hope to have demonstrated that this complexity needs to be taken into account in the artistic discourses on Thai neo-traditionalism.

Ce mémoire s'intéresse à l'inscription du son dans la mise en scène Inferno de Romeo Castellucci. Il s'agit de cerner en quoi la dimension sonore de cette œuvre s'émancipe de l'utilisation traditionnelle du son au théâtre et comment son intégration aux actions scéniques en vient à créer un nouveau type de dramaturgie. Ne visant plus l'illustration d'un récit, cette œuvre met de l'avant la matérialité des divers médiums constituant l'action. Nous verrons comment le son dans cette mise en scène s’autonomise. Il ne se veut plus mimétique; il ne vise pas à nous faire entendre quelque chose d’absent. Comme il s'apprécie pour ses qualités propres, le son parvient à « interagir » avec les autres éléments scéniques d’une manière inédite. La dynamique des présences visibles et audibles devient ainsi le foyer de tensions dramaturgiques. Ceci nous conduira à nous interroger sur la question de l'écoute et de ses processus pour tenter de voir comment la perception sonore influence la réception intégrale de ce spectacle. Les notions d'acousmatisme, de flou causal et de déréalisation de la perception temporelle nous permettront d'envisager l'apparition d'une dramatisation de l'écoute. / This study examines the inscription of sound in Romeo Castellucci’s mise en scène of Inferno. It aims to define how the sound environment of this work goes beyond the traditional use of sound in theatre, and how its integration to the stage action creates a new type of dramaturgy. No more intended as the representation of a narrative, this work emphasizes and reinforces the materiality of any medium constituting the action. We will analyze how the sound in this performance becomes an element on its own. Sound is not mimetic anymore: it does not aim to be the echo of something absent. The sound being able to affirm and render its own expressive qualities, it can “interact” with other scenic elements in an innovative manner. The interactions of both visible and audible components give rise to dramaturgical tensions, conducting us to investigate the question of listening and its modalities in a theatrical context. We will then try to understand how audition redefines the reception of the performance.

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