Diss. Göteborg : Göteborgs universitet, 2009.

This ethnographic study explored everyday lived experiences of a group of Latina women in school and in the community in an Adult Basic Education (ABE) setting. I examined the functions of discourse in ABE in literacy events (Heath, 1983). In this way, I gained insights into literacy practices through ethnography of communication (Heath, 1983; Hymes, 1972, 1977; Philips, 1993; Saville-Troike, 2003). Narratives provided insights about what was communicated in everyday interactions.In a "teaching to the test" ideological environment, the Latina participants in this study shared knowledge and experiences and created a unique sociocultural (Vygotsky, 1978) context for learning. Over time, a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) developed through mutual engagement, joint effort, and shared repertoire which included in and out of school literacies. Salient was the collaborative effort among a local community center, community college, and school district which strived to meet the needs of Latina/o students and their families. These multiple communities of practice provided a support network integral to sustaining a community of learners.The backdrop of this study, an American-Mexican Southwest border region, was the cultural context in which American education and Latinas' Sonora Mexican world views met. This hybrid space or borderlands Anzaldua (1987) described as a place where two cultures merged to form a third culture. In practice, this hybrid space was explored in discursive practices which provided an alternative space, a third space (Moje, Cicechanowski, Kramer, Ellis, Carrillo, & Collazo, 2004) in which identities were negotiated. Participants negotiated to find balance, a synergy between change and maintenance, which was ongoing as they struggled to maintain a traditional world view while accommodating new ideas.Integral to ongoing identity construction were the relationships with language, learning, and conversation. A story emerged from daily acts and events that reflected negotiated individual and social identities in the practice of literacy, teaching, and learning. This study demonstrates the insights ethnographic investigations can bring to understanding the functions of discourse in the construction of identity and socialization into learning.

Human trafficking is one of today’s largest shadow economies and even though efforts of all kind have been accomplished throughout the years the number of trafficked persons continue to increase. The United Nations together with the European Union as well as the Association of South East Asian Nations cover three areas with different political and social cultures. All three have developed several documents on how to combat the phenomenon but do they understand and respond to the issue in a comprehensive manner? The intention of this study is to investigate whether the UN, EU and ASEAN approach trafficking in human beings in the same manner. By using the method critical discourse analysis, documents such as protocols and strategies from the three organizations have been object of the analysis. With six dimensions divided into two discourses; understanding and response to human trafficking – the analysis resulted in the understanding that the three organizations approach the issue similarly, but that EU and ASEAN put different aspects of the phenomenon in focus.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-90).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-90). Also available in print.

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The speech category approach of mainstream narratology does not give an adequate account of the form or the function of presentations by narrators to readers of fictional characters' minds. It: privileges the apparently mimetic categories of direct thought and free indirect thought over the diegetic category of thought report; views characters' minds as consisting only of a private, passive flow of consciousness, because of its overestimation of inner speech; and neglects the thought report of characters' states of mind. I suggest a radical reconceptualization, using the parallel discourses of Russian psycholinguistics and the philosophy of mind to fill the gaps left by narratology. For example, Vygotsky, Luria, Volosinov and Bakhtin show that inner speech is social in origin, dialogic in nature, and directs and regulates our day-to-day behaviour. Also, the philosophy of mind emphasises the importance of dispositions to behave in certain ways. A functional, teleological approach to fictional presentations of the whole mind, both states of mind and inner speech, analyses the purposive nature of characters' thought: their motives, intentions and resulting behaviour and action. It also shows how readers read plots as the interaction of characters' 'embedded narratives': their perceptual and conceptual viewpoints, ideological worldviews, and plans for the future. The embedded narrative approach is a theoretical framework which: considers the whole of a particular fictional mind, thereby avoiding the fragmentation of previous approaches; views characters' minds, not just in terms of passive, private inner speech presented in direct or free indirect thought, but in terms of the narrator's positive linking role in presenting characters' social, engaged mental functioning, particularly in the mode of thought report; and highlights the role of the reader in constructing the plot by means of a series of provisional conjectures and hypotheses about characters' embedded narratives.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

No description available.

No description available.