In his essay, Don’t Mourn for Us, Jim Sinclair describes autism as a “way of being.” He maintains there is “no normal child hidden behind the autism” and that “it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence.” In an attempt to appreciate the depth of Sinclair’s statements, this thesis approaches autism as a “way of being” through the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. By applying Lacan’s conceptual framework to first-person writing and scientific research, I lay an interdisciplinary foundation for the case I make. Although this project requires significant conceptual scaffolding across different epistemological systems, I consider how Lacanian theory possesses a unique capacity to conceive of autism as a way of being and to open new ways of approaching the source material. Implicitly, Sinclair asks that we consider the question of what it means “to be” – autistic, neurotypical, or otherwise. I approach this from the premise that an individual exists as a thinking being, or a “subject.” Because psychoanalysis is concerned with the constitutive role of the unconscious in structuring consciousness, this thesis invests substantial space in consideration of how the Lacanian subject is oriented around a fundamental lack. To this end, I return frequently to Lacan’s concept of objet a, understood as a representative of the subject’s lack in the perceptual realm that is itself lacking. Further, Lacan’s unique interpretation of Freud consists in placing language as the ultimate mediating structure of subjectivity; it both generates lack and establishes a system for mitigating it. One’s way of being is always a way of being in language.1 Given the predominant roles of language and social communication impairments in the DSM-V diagnostic criteria for autism, a main goal of this project is to consider how an autistic way of being entails a unique structuration of lack.2 Autism and psychoanalysis share a history that extends back to the origins of the diagnosis. I explore this history with a focus on how different psychoanalytic theories conceptualize the autistic subject and to what extent they honor or undermine Sinclair’s position. Contemporary Lacanian thinkers of autism do both. Unique to Lacan’s structural approach, the concept of the Other is inclusive of a radical alterity, yet also the system of language, the body, and certain aspects of the maternal and paternal functions. The subject is unthinkable apart from the Other. I suggest an autistic way of being is discernible in the autistic subject’s relation to each aspect of the Other. I find support for this claim in recent sensorimotor research. Referred to loosely as the movement perspective, this research suggests that differences in how autistic individuals move and perceive others is a “unifying characteristic” of autism.3 Importantly, the movement perspective is proactively inclusive of first-person knowledge. Read through Lacan’s conceptual framework, movement differences address the underlying mechanism of the autistic subject’s relation to the Other, and thus its way of being. Most fundamentally, this thesis is a work of theory that attempts to articulate something universal about being a subject, without simultaneously eliding what is unique about being an autistic subject

This thesis contributes to the field of Game Studies by presenting the hypothesis that the player(s) and soundscape(s) in the first-person shooter (FPS) game, and the relationships between them, may be construed as an acoustic ecology. It explores the idea that the single-player FPS game acoustic ecology has the basic components of player and soundscape and that the relationships between these two lead to the creation and perception of a variety of spaces within the game world constituting a significant contributing factor to player immersion in that world. Additionally, in a multiplayer FPS game, these individual acoustic ecologies form part of a larger acoustic ecology which may be explained through autopoietic principles. There has been little written on digital game sound (much less on FPS game sound) and so the research contained within this thesis is an important contribution to the Game Studies field. Furthermore, the elaboration of the hypothesis provides insight into the role of sound in the perception of a variety of spaces in the FPS game, and player immersion in those spaces, and this has significance not only for Game Studies but also for other disciplines such as virtual environment design and the study of real-world acoustic ecologies. A text-based methodology is employed in which literature from a range of disciplines is researched for concepts relevant to the hypothesis but, where necessary, new concepts will be devised. The aim of the methodology is to construct a conceptual framework which is used to explicate the hypothesis and which may, with future refinement, be used for the study of sound in digital game genres other than FPS.

Studier kring spel har under de senaste tio år fått stort genomslag i den akademiska världen. Datorspels påverkan på människans kognitiva förmågor har visat sig vara signifikant, även om övriga effekter av datorspel ännu diskuteras av forskare. Studier kring spel har gjorts, främst inom Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) genren, men även några First Person Shooter- spel (FPS) även om fokus då varit professionella spelare. Undersökningens fokus var att studera hur samarbete uppstår i spel då icke professionella datorspelare spelar spel, men även studera vilken roll samarbete har i publika spel. Olika datainsamlingsmetoder användes för att stärka eventuella resultat. Resultaten indikerade att flera faktorer i spel kunde ha inverkan på spelares förmåga att samarbeta trots att den viktigaste faktorn vid skapande av samarbete handlar om att göra varje enskild spelare till en viktig komponent för att laget som helhet ska uppnå ett givet mål, något som olika spel gör i olika grad.

This study examines differences between male and female as well as UK and US authors in newspaper text, specifically column writing. Many studies have shown that women have a tendency to show greater involvement in text by using personal and subjective reference. The present study applied corpus linguistic methods to 145 columns retrieved from two broadsheet newspapers, The Guardian and The New York Times. The usage of first person singular and plural pronouns was examined to determine whether there are gender-based or cultural differences in the way the authors show involvement in the texts. The data show no significant differences between male and female or UK and US authors. The uneven gender distribution of the sampling, conventions of journalism and column writing as well as women’s adaptation to the communication style of public sphere may be some of the reasons for the non-significant differences between the studied dimensions.

This study explores whether the third-person effect caused by the published article in the Ptt Gossiping bulletin board. And the follow-up support to restrict the inappropriate content in the Ptt Gossiping bulletin board. Source of this study is use recommended system detected written by Expect language. It would detect popular articles and published articles. Pick a representative to do the test article.and place in the survey questionnaire online. The result shows: All of the four article have third person effect. Affect the follow¡Ðup support restrict the behavior of inappropriate content.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 210-211). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Divinity School, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 210-211). Also available on the Internet.

No description available.

Spoken and written data were analysed to examine the use of first person pronouns (1PP) in Japanese by non-native speakers (NNS), and then compared to 1PP use by native speakers (NS). For English NS who are used to obligatory subjects in their L1, Japanese 1PP poses challenges since Japanese 1PP are used rarely by NS and often brought about by pragmatic motivations. The results indicated that NNS initially overuse 1PP but their frequency of use becomes closer to that of NS over time. When looking at the postpositional particles used, similarities existed between NNS and NS in the written data. However, NNS in the spoken data more closely resembled the written NS data than the spoken data when marking the subject or topic. It was also found that NNS most often used 1PP for emphasis in the written data and for referential reasons in the spoken. / Japanese Language and Linguistics