Rapping has long been used by people who are from the margin of society as a way to give a voice (Campbell, 2005; Ibrahim, 1999). As a member of the marginalized group and as the first and only Asian who claimed a seven-time victory on Freestyle Friday on Black Entertainment Television (BET), Jin Au-Yeung has received a noticeable amount of attention. At the same time, he has faced a lot of unfavourable experience as an Asian rapper in American society. This study employs Fairclough’s (1989) model of CDA approach to find out how Jin constructs his identity and establishes his ideology through his lyrics, and how his construction of identity and establishment of ideology reflect the social practice in American society. Fifteen songs written by Jin were chosen for the analysis according to the three interrelated stages in CDA: description, interpretation and explanation. Results show that Jin constructs his personal identities as a professional rapper and as a Chinese American and establishes his ideology of having one human nation despite the difference in races through his rap lyrics. These are achieved through the co-occurrence of “I” and “to be”, and promoted through the use of rhyming and code-switching. It was also interpreted that Jin’s personal identities and ideology are shaped through the social ideology on Asian Americans, which is probably reflected through the social practice in American society. / published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

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Embedded systems exists everywhere around us and the number of applications seems to be ever growing. They are found in electrical devices from coee machines to aircrafts. The common denominator is that they are designed for the specic purpose of the application. Some of them are used in safety critical systems where it is crucial that they operate correct and as intended in order to avoid accidents that can harm humans or properties. Meanwhile, general purpose Commercial O The Shelf (COTS) devices that can be found in the retail store, such as smartphones and tablets, has become a natural part of everyday life in the society. New applications are developed every day that improves everyday living, but numerous are also coupled to specic devices in order to control its functionality. Interaction between embedded systems and the exible devices do however not come without issues. Security, safety and ethical aspects are some of the issues that should be considered. In this thesis, a case study was performed to investigate the feasibility of using mobile COTS products in interaction with safety critical systems with respect to functional safety. Six user scenarios were identied for investigation, which could be of interest for industrial applications; The operator presented live machine data, The operator controlling the machine remotely, The service technician using mobile device in maintenance, service technician reading machine logs from the oce, the production manager analyzing machine productivity logs from the oce and the software manager uploading software. Restrictions in the functional safety standard, IEC 61508, and the characteristics of COTS devices, leads to the conclusion that real time interaction with safety systems is not allowed if the certication is to be preserved. Extracting information used to analyze the system where data is only sent from the machine would be allowed. All scenarios where the machine sends data to the user, and the data is only used as information, are hence allowed if isolation properties are guaranteed. A prototype system was designed and parts of it were implemented to show how sending and logging information can be performed using the company developed communication platform Data Engine.

This study examines the racial discourses of six and seven year old Puerto Rican children participating in small group literature circles over one academic year. The main research question is "How do Puerto Rican young children in a multiage classroom construct race through dialogue within the figured worlds of literature circles?"This study is based on teacher research qualitative research design, using methods and techniques from ethnography and case study research. This study describes the dialogue of 20 Puerto Rican children, during 4 literature circles. These were chosen as case studies to examine in depth student's racial ideological explorations. Data gathering methods included field notes from participant observation, audiotapes, videotapes, and transcripts.A detailed description and analysis of children's responses to literature, this study documents how young Puerto Rican children's ambiguity and inconsistent usages and meanings of racial terminologies to signify their worlds. Through emerging ideological discourses such as colorblindness and esentializing discourses, young children explore discomfort instead of neutral, inclusive and unifying racial constructions, along with racial harmony that celebrates goodwill and benevolence. Literature circles as figured worlds informed by Rosenblatt's reader-response theory and Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner and Cain (2003) social practice theory of identity, are proposed to be a space were racial identities form and reform, facilitating variable forms of racial talk.The findings of this research illustrate the importance of teacher research as one form of qualitative research to illustrate the complexity of children's racial talk aimed toward educational racial understandings and change. The importance of racial discourses in young children's racial explorations to signify their worlds.

The language used in critical readings of Hamlet is rife with implicitly teleological terms: according to many critics, and the ghost of King Hamlet, the story of his father's murder and Claudius' succession requires Hamlet to do something. I ask, why should Hamlet kill his uncle, revenge his father, correct his mother, become king, marry Ophelia, and produce heirs to rule when he is gone? While Hamlet's inaction is often described as delay or paralysis, I suggest that the Danish prince resists teleology through his studied ambivalence towards dynasty: land-owning, child-bearing, wars and marriage. Building on recent theoretical and historical work by scholars like Lee Edelman, Will Fisher, Margreta de Grazia and Madhavi Menon, I suggest that Hamlet, through the interventions of its main character, thwarts the assumption that the relationship between a nobleman and his land is natural, that the desire for possession and rule is inherent. Combining de Grazia's invaluable historicism with Fisher's discussion of prostheses, Ir ead the Renaissance nobleman as a prosthetic creature, physically and politically embodied by his marriage, his children, his land. In delaying the revenge he has been called upon to carry out, in hesitating to take up the crown, Hamlet defers the prostheses of nobility, and opens up a space from which to question the dynastic project.

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This qualitative study of an adult literacy program, Literacy for Liberation, operated by a non-governmental organization and serving a marginalized demographic in Haiti, considered the impact of a literacy program designed to enhance technical and critical literacy skills while promoting communal and individual change. Data, collected in five open-ended interviews and two observations, focused on the contextual, logistical, and beneficial aspects of the program. Results were analyzed using markers from Freire’s framework of critical pedagogy: humanization, situated literacy, dialogue and consciousness-raising, and transformation. Findings revealed limited economic, social, and communal benefits, and that replication of the program may be possible if certain steps are followed. Overall conclusions demonstrated that expanding literacy programs in this setting can facilitate social and economic progress for previously illiterate adults and future generations, particularly where structural inequality is evident. Final recommendations included comparison studies of other programs and longitudinal research of descending generations.

In my thesis I engage selected texts of Jacques Derrida, David Wills, and Jean-Luc Nancy in order to draw on specific motifs that are relevant for a thinking of sight and blindness. The motifs on which I elaborate are immediacy, prosthesis, and extension respectively. In consecutive chapters, based on close readings of these selected texts and the development of these motifs in them, my study elaborates on the relevance of the work of these three thinkers for a thinking of sight and blindness that does not conform to the hierarchical dualisms of Western metaphysics. Following this, I engage three texts by selected theorists from the large and growing field of disability studies—Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Lennard Davis, David T. Mitchell, and Susan L. Snyder—in order to make the case that disability studies has not yet challenged its own metaphysical assumptions.

Linguistic Landscape refers to linguistic objects that mark the public space (Gorter, 2006). The focal point of this research project is to examine how the informational and symbolic messages conveyed through the Linguistic Landscape (LL) portray the personality, language attitudes, and culture of a rural town; Carman, Manitoba. Since people play an active role in designing the LL, this research project was designed to accurately describe a rural Manitoba town through analysis of the language and symbols found in the landscape as representative of it as a community. By implementing an ethnographic approach utilizing critical language study (CLS) (Fairclough, 2001) and a communication framework (Hymes, 1972) this paper argues that the language used in the public space cannot be ignored or taken for granted. The language that is used on signs in public spaces is evidence of this. It manifests itself in power of the language used for communication, capitalism, values and lifestyles, and inclusion and exclusion of the population.

No description available.