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This applied research project responds to a critical problem in health and development: how to effectively translate our research evidence to the communities with and for whom we work in order to stimulate successful, sustainable health promotion activities and social change. The tangible product of this research is a handbook for health and outreach workers from immigrant communities from the Horn of Africa living in Toronto. The handbook is a resource which will be used as a starting point for the generation of community-based health initiatives, in this case, HIV/AIDS prevention programs. The research applies a conceptual approach which emphasizes participatory action research theory and methodology, and equitable, transcontextual research partnerships. It uses a model which merges both scientific evidence and experiential (ethnographic) evidence of risk and vulnerability to create new understandings on which to base the development of health programs. Stories, grounded in ethnographic evidence, are at the heart of the research strategy. The handbook is an example of experimental ethnographic writing: dialogue is used to communicate research evidence, health, and skills information; and a number of personal narrative:s have been constructed as resources to help health workers generate dialogue on issues of risk and vulnerability, and begin a process of reflection and action. In a larger context, the lessons learned as this work is implemented and evaluated in the community will contribute to the knowledge of intervention science. The research also serves as an example of ethical anthropology and raises for discussion ethnography's future project at the tum of the century. With attention to how anthropologists represent their work, 'moral ethnography' can serve a larger human project, helping us better understand what it is to be human and stimulating moral conversations about how we want to live. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Cette thèse décrit la conception d'un système de dialogue Homme- Machine pour la recherche d'informations capable d'interagir avec l'utilisateur en langue naturelle en utilisant des stratégies coopératives. Pour étudier les processus dialogiques impliqués dans la recherche d'informations, une méthodologie ascendante a été adoptée. Une série d'expérimentations a permis le recueil de corpus de dialogues humains présentant de telles recherches dans le cadre du système de documentation médicale CISMeF. L'analyse des dialogues recueillis a montré que leur structure correspond bien aux structures sémantiques de l'approche " questionsréponses ". Fondé sur un modèle existant nommé GoDIS, notre système y intègre de nombreux ajouts permettant d'améliorer la cohérence du dialogue et de proposer des exemples, des choix, des assistances. Une implémentation de ce modèle est réalisée et des pistes d'évaluation sont proposées.

In the latter half of the 20th century interreligious dialogue has become a necessary and important feature in human co-existence. This study discusses the dialogue of religious experience. The essentials in this dialogue are mutual understandings of prayer and contemplation as practiced in differing religious and cultural contexts. The dissertation consists of four parts. The first is a survey of missiological theology on interreligious dialogue, contemplation and inculturation in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. The second part considers initiatives taken in dialogue in the Benedictine Order from early 1960-ties to mid 1990-ties. Attention is given to "East-West Spiritual Exchange" which has taken place regularly between European participants in "Dialogue Interreligieux Monastique" and Zen Buddhists in Japan. The third section focuses on Japan. Three Japanese Catholic theologians are discussed. In efforts to establish theological and pastoral communication with Zen tradition, moving towards an integration of details emerging from Zen practice to Catholic spirituality, the Japanese theologians theologize in a fashion similar to the Benedictines. The final section analyses initiatives in dialogue of religious experience discussed in the thesis. Key concepts draw attention to distinctive characteristics of specific expressions in dialogue, partly in monastic contexts, partly in Japanese contexts. Because the particular form of dialogue presented is an ongoing process which has only recently commenced, no final results in developments can yet be identified. Suffice it to state that initiatives described are new inputs in Catholic missiological study. Both Benedictine and Japanese theologians have in many ways paved the way for official Catholic theology on interreligious dialogue.

Cette thèse décrit la conception d’un système de dialogue Homme- Machine pour la recherche d’informations capable d’interagir avec l’utilisateur en langue naturelle en utilisant des stratégies coopératives. Pour étudier les processus dialogiques impliqués dans la recherche d’informations, une méthodologie ascendante a été adoptée. Une série d’expérimentations a permis le recueil de corpus de dialogues humains présentant de telles recherches dans le cadre du système de documentation médicale CISMeF. L’analyse des dialogues recueillis a montré que leur structure correspond bien aux structures sémantiques de l’approche « questionsréponses ». Fondé sur un modèle existant nommé GoDIS, notre système y intègre de nombreux ajouts permettant d’améliorer la cohérence du dialogue et de proposer des exemples, des choix, des assistances. Une implémentation de ce modèle est réalisée et des pistes d’évaluation sont proposées. / This thesis describes the design of a computer-human dialog system for information search. This system is able to interact with the user in natural language using cooperative strategies. To study the dialog processes involved during information search, a bottom-up approach was adopted. Experiments have been set up to obtain human dialogs related to such searches in the context of the health information system CISMeF. It turns out that the structure arising from the analysis of the dialogs matches a semantic approach called “issue-based dialog”. Starting from the model GoDIS, our artificial agent model adds several enhancements that allow to propose examples, assistance and choices. The model is implemented and some elements of evaluation are discussed.

Published Article / Discourse on translation studies is situated in this article outside linguistics, in musical studies. Contextualising and problematising issues when music from African choir culture is translated for non-Africans (Westerners) to perform, the main problem - translation as negotiation - is explored together with notions of hybridity, the 'Third Space', boundaries, identity, authenticity and cultural compatibility within performance contexts. Cultural studies bring to linguistics a wider perspective of translation; how translation studies relate to other disciplines and expressive forms, like music. The researchers argue that translation of African choir music for performance by non-Africans can only be achieved in cultural dialogue.

This thesis examines the extent to which ‘Talk or Dialogue’ contributes to children’s cognitive and psychological development when it is experienced through technological devices. The work analyzes some of the sociocultural theories of children’s speech, cognitive learning, psychological functions, sociocultural learning context, dialogic teaching and learning approaches in the classroom, social interaction and the use of social tools. The theory of speech is built on the Vygotskian notion of language as the prime cultural and psychological tool for children’s learning development in a sociocultural environment. Lev S. Vygotsky emphasised that the development of cognitive processes in children includes thinking, reasoning and understanding of a conceptualised social interaction. These processes are core to children’s intellectual learning. Vygotsky and the neo-Vygotskians emphasised the use of Speech, Talk or Dialogue and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) concept in children’s learning development. In the UK, it was evident that the Talk teaching and learning approach (Mercer & Littleton, 2007) contributed effectively to children’s learning achievements. This approach reinforces Talk or Dialogue collaboratively in the classroom with the ZPD concept. The significance of the Talk teaching approach has encouraged this study to examine further children’s speech and the use of technological devices. Hence, a theoretical discourse methodology on children’s Talk or Dialogue was examined for the research outcomes. The aim is to devise a new teaching and learning approach that contributes to the Malaysian children’s intellectual development inside and outside the classroom through the use of Talk or Dialogue. As a result, a Dialogic framework is articulated based on four existing educational theories of children’s speech and learning. This framework is vital to contribute directly to the Malaysia Education Department Blueprint 2013-2025 in promoting children’s intellectual development. For that reason, two approaches are proposed which emphasise children’s psychological functions of perception, attention, sensory motor-operations and memory through the use of Talk and technological devices. These approaches accentuate the ZPD concept between the teachers and children for learning and activity games. This is the study’s contribution to new knowledge.

Dialogue, as the central constitutive element of drama, to a large extent also contributes to delineating characters and to affirming their identity. This dissertation is an attempt to investigate how dialogue creates identity in the drama Se se jeleng rre by J.M. Ntsime. To achieve the purpose of this study, the characters of the three protagonists in this drama are analysed and interpreted. Both cultural and personal identities are analysed as manifestations of identity. The value of this study is that it makes readers aware of and emphasises the importance of utterances both at a literary and at an ordinary conversational level. Though the semiotic approach is used in this investigation, the dissertation first takes a cursory look at the theories of the origins of African theatre and the comparison between the two traditions, i.e. African and Western theatre and performance. The role of dialogue is traced back to its origin in performance, showing how it creates identity both on stage and in the drama text. This research shows that the two traditions are not drastically different since in both traditions performers exchange lines of words or songs; in other words, they engage in verbal dialogue. The costumes and masks that performers put on reveal some of their traits. In chapter three instruments for the analysis of dramatic discourse are developed. Since dramatic text is governed by dialogue, it was appropriate to use the theory of pragmatics because pragmatics is the study of language in use and is concerned with the context in which the sentences are uttered. Therefore, Searle's (1969) speech act theories, Grice's conversational maxims, Elam's (2000) deixis theory and the politeness principle have been applied to analyse the speech behaviour of characters. These theories have helped to answer the last three questions of the study. The markers of cultural identity which are used to analyse and interpret this drama are chieftainship, lobola, sterility in marriage, naming and witchcraft. They are analysed and used to interpret this drama. In the analysis and interpretation chapter, chapter 4, it has been found that to study language is to treat language as action. As a result, the speech behaviour of Selebi, Senwametsi and Mmapitsa has been analysed, including their deictic orientation. In conclusion, this research has proven that character identity can be created through verbal interaction, that is, through dialogue, since it could be used to illuminate both the cultural and personal identities of the three protagonists in the drama. Most of the time Selebi has been found to be orientated towards himself. This reveals him as, amongst others, selfish and conscious of his authority as a chief. Senwametsi has been found to be orientated towards her husband, Selebi, which reveals her as a wife of the chief who is bothered by the way her husband treats her. On the other hand, Mrnapitsa has been found to be orientated towards her interlocutors most of the time, which reveals her as a person who likes to order others for the benefit of what she wants. This research also implies further discourse analysis to see whether other relevant pragmatic principles can be used to study character and identity. / Thesis (M.A. (African Languages))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The engagement of stakeholders in a dialogue on the decommissioning of nuclear facilities and the retrieval and treatment of nuclear waste in the UK has proved challenging. The action orientated research presented here has used a mixed methodological approach to examine participants’ perceptions regarding the nature of dialogue being carried out by the NDA National Stakeholder Group (NSG), with the emancipatory aim of raising participant awareness regarding their role and the nature of the dialogue used. Exploration of the emergent theme of fairness has enabled the researcher to provide a contribution to stakeholder theory. This research adds to the theory of the deliberative institution (Reed, 2008), providing evidence for why the effective influence of stakeholders on decision making, communication about this influence, and the institutionalization of stakeholder participation is as important as the engagement itself. The work also provides an important epistemological contribution regarding the role of dialogue within the concept of social sustainability.

Spontaneous speech is replete with disfluencies: pauses, hesitations, restarts, and less than ideal deliveries of information. Disfluency is a topic of interdisciplinary research with insights from psycholinguistics, phonetics and speech technology. Researchers have tried to determine: When does disfluency occur?, Can disfluency be reliably predicted to occur?, and ultimately, Why does disfluency occur? The focus of my thesis will be to address the question of why disfluency occurs by reporting the results of analyses of disfluency frequency and the relationship between disfluency and eye gaze in a collaborative dialogue. Psycholinguistic studies of disfluency and collaborative dialogue differ on their answers to why disfluency occurs and its role in dialogue. One hypothesis, which I will refer to as Strategic Modelling, suggests that disfluencies are designed by the speaker. According to the alternative view, which I will call the Cognitive Burden View, disfluency is the result of an overburdened language production system. Throughout this thesis, I will contrast these two theories for an ultimate answer to why disfluency occurs. Each hypothesis attaches a functional role to a structural definition of disfluency and therefore in order to determine why disfluency occurs, I will contrast the structural and functional characteristics of disfluency. I will attempt to do this by analysing the dialogue behaviour in terms of speech goals and eye gaze behaviour a speaker is engaged in when they make certain types of disfluencies. A multi-modal Map Task paradigm was used in this thesis, in which speakers were asked to describe the route on a cartoon map to a distant confederate listener who provided either visual or verbal feedback. Speakers were eye-tracked during the dialogue and a record was kept of when the speaker attended to the listener’s visual feedback. Experiment 1 tested the visual feedback paradigm to establish its validity as a baseline condition. Speakers were found to make more disfluencies when they could interact with the visual feedback, suggesting disfluency is more common in interactive circumstances. Experiment 2 added verbal feedback to the experimental paradigm to test whether listeners react differently to the two modalities of feedback. Speakers made more disfluencies when the feedback was more complicated. Structural disfluency types were also observed to fulfil different functions. Finally, Experiment 3 manipulated the motivation of the speaker and found that Motivated speakers gazed more often and were more disfluent per opportunity than Control speakers suggesting that highly motivated subjects are more willing to engage in difficult tasks.