Bank leaders spend an average of $727 to acquire a new customer and $287 to retain current customers. Grounded in customer relationship management and adaptation level theories, the purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between service quality and customers' intention to switch banking service. An online survey was administered to 203 Jamaican banking customers. The target population was selected to identify if the Jamaican banks' customer service adhered to the customer satisfaction principles developed by Parasuraman. The independent variables were the 10 dimensions of service quality. Competence, courtesy, credibility, and access were removed because of multicollinearity issues. The dependent variable was the customers' intention. The results indicated a statistically significant relationship, F(6, 196) = 15.074, p < .001, between service quality and customer intent to switch banking services. The six predictors: tangibles (r = -.303, p < .005), reliability (r = -.253, p < .008), responsiveness (r = .35, p < .001), safety (r = -.433, p < .001), communication (r = -.184, p < .028), and empathy (r = -.357, p < .001), accounted the largest variance for (β = -.316) of the customers' intention of the Jamaican banking service. The implications for positive social change include the potential for bank leaders to develop customer-focused banking policy, increase customer satisfaction, and decrease costs related to losing customers, thus increasing profitability.

In this report, I discuss the re-contextualization of a working-class Jamaican speaker’s discourse in the media and the new meanings his speech acquires in the process. The series of re-contextualizations starts out with an interview on Jamaican television, which is in turn remixed into an electronic dance song and accompanying music video. The song entextualizes individual stretches of the speaker’s original dis­course into readily identifiable quotes that turn into Jamaican slang items. In the process, linguistic disorderliness is foregrounded in the utterances in question while their propositional content is virtually erased. In a further instance of re-contextualization, the speaker encounters his by now entextualized utterances in an interview on Jamaican breakfast television and struggles to re-establish his originally intended framing of it. His success in the specific interaction is very limited, but viewers’ comments reveal that the interview does effect a change in the meta-linguistic discourse surrounding the incident. I analyze the data as a case in point of ‘speaky spoky,’ a Jamaican label for un­successful attempts to emulate foreign prestige accents, resulting in linguistic dis­orderliness. By considering aspects of performance, entextualization and the keying of different frames, I demonstrate the interactional work that goes into the construc­tion of speaky spoky as a label, as well as the ideological work that label is put to in turn and its political effects. Based on these observations, I argue that speaky spoky is best understood as a multivalent construct resource for sustaining and influencing lan­guage ideologies. Its interactional versatility renders its relationship to authenticity in the Jamaican speech community complicated and potentially ambiguous. / text

In this dissertation, I trace academics' attitudes to writing and its instruction through the six-decade history of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, in Jamaica. I establish that while the institution's general writing courses facilitate students' initiation into the academy, these courses reflect assumptions about writing and learning that need to be reassessed to yield versatile writers and disassociate the courses and writing from the alarmist rhetoric that often emerges in the media and in academe. In Jamaica, critics of university students' writing often promote what Mike Rose calls the "myth of transience" and perpetuate the "the rhetoric of transparent disciplinarity." According to the myth of transience, if writing is taught correctly at pre-university levels, students will not need writing instruction in the academy. The concept that I call "the rhetoric of transparent disciplinarity" is defined in the work of David Russell, who examines the view that writing is a single, mechanical, generalizable skill that is learned once and for all. Advocates of this view consider writing as a transparent recording of reality or completed thought that can be taught separate from disciplinary knowledge. Based on my analysis of archival materials and data gathered from questionnaires and interviews with past and current writing specialists, this view has been evident at the UWI, Mona, since the institution's earliest years. Academics there have perpetuated a certain tacit assumption that writing is a natural process. By recalling the country's history of education, I demonstrate how this assumption parallels colonial administrators' determination that Jamaican Creole speakers should naturally learn English to advance in society. I argue that if the university wants to widen participation while maintaining excellence, then academics should foster knowledge production (rather than only reproduction) by acknowledging the extent to which disciplines are rhetorically constructed through writing. If writing specialists and other content faculty draw on rhetoric's attention to audience, situation, and purpose, they can foster learning by helping students see how writing contributes to knowledge-making inside the academy and beyond. This study contributes to international discussions about how students learn to write and use writing in higher education.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2005. / Thesis advisor: Evelyn Phillips. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Art in International Studies." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-103). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--State University of New York College at Brockport, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-157). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--State University of New York College at Brockport, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-157).

Thesis submitted 1967; degree awarded 1968. Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University, 1968. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This thesis is a study of the development of documentary films in Jamaica from 1938 - 1966, what has been accomplished, and how it has been achieved, as well as a critical analysis of the present situation and recommendations for improvements. The study should be of value to the country as it is the first that has been attempted in this particular field, and one of the few to be attempted by a Jamaican in the many areas of the country's development. [excerpt from Introduction]

<p> This study analyses the significance of a number of selected supply variables, economic and physical, in explaining changes in supply among Jamaican sugar cane farmers over time. The study is considered an empirical application of much of the findings in the theory of agricultural supply.</p> <p> The study is set within the overall theory of agricultural supply with a detailed discussion of the particular social and economic conditions of the study areas. As such, broad conclusions may be drawn from this study to be applied to other cases with similar characteristics.</p> <p> Extensive use is made of a questionnaire to arrive at the particular characteristics of the farmers and their decisions regarding sugar cane supply. The study is, however, not exhaustive in scope nor are its conclusions incontrovertible.</p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Jamaica is a beautiful island in the Caribbean well known all over the world for its Reggae music and its message of One love. But it is neither the songs about love nor the striking beauty of the island that awoken our interest. It was the widespread homophobia that can be found both in the Reggae lyrics, as they often promotes violence against homosexuals, the law against buggary and in almost every other corner of the society. We wanted to know if this homophobia also could be found in the press. Therefore the aim of this study is to find how LGBT-persons are being described in the Jamaican press. Do the press reflect or oppose the homophobia in the society? Our theoretical framework is about socialization, identity and the building of a nation, of which in all media is a part. It is also about how alienation is created by the media. Our material contains of all articles from the four main newspapers in Jamaica, The Daily Observer, The Gleaner, The Chat and The Star, that in someway touches LGBT-persons during a two week period, between November 10 and November 23, 2008. We use all of these 27 articles to make a quantitative analysis and four of them are handpicked for a qualitative analysis. As a complement to the articles we use qualitative interviews with the editor in chief of The Daily Observer Vernon Davidson, and the Senior lecturer of Media and Communication at University of West Indies, Canute James. We find that the homophobia in the society is in some ways reflected by the Jamaican press. LGBT-persons, especially homosexual men, are described as different, abnormal and as standing outside the Jamaican society. This strengthens the alienation. The great reggae and dancehall stars are often more defended than criticized for their homophobic lyrics in the press. What we also find is that there is an ongoing debate about the homophobic hatred as being a part of an old society that it is time for Jamaica to grow out of. In other words the proud Jamaican nation of which the homophobia is a part should change according to some, whilst others do not want their nation to adapt itself to other countries views.

<p>Jamaica is a beautiful island in the Caribbean well known all over the world for its Reggae music and its message of One love. But it is neither the songs about love nor the striking beauty of the island that awoken our interest. It was the widespread homophobia that can be found both in the Reggae lyrics, as they often promotes violence against homosexuals, the law against buggary and in almost every other corner of the society. We wanted to know if this homophobia also could be found in the press. Therefore the aim of this study is to find how LGBT-persons are being described in the Jamaican press. Do the press reflect or oppose the homophobia in the society?</p><p><p><p>Our theoretical framework is about socialization, identity and the building of a nation, of which in all media is a part. It is also about how alienation is created by the media. Our material contains of all articles from the four main newspapers in Jamaica, The Daily Observer, The Gleaner, The Chat and The Star, that in someway touches LGBT-persons during a two week period, between November 10 and November 23, 2008. We use all of these 27 articles to make a quantitative analysis and four of them are handpicked for a qualitative analysis. As a complement to the articles we use qualitative interviews with the editor in chief of The Daily Observer Vernon Davidson, and the Senior lecturer of Media and Communication at University of West Indies, Canute James.</p><p>We find that the homophobia in the society is in some ways reflected by the Jamaican press. LGBT-persons, especially homosexual men, are described as different, abnormal and as standing outside the Jamaican society. This strengthens the alienation. The great reggae and dancehall stars are often more defended than criticized for their homophobic lyrics in the press. What we also find is that there is an ongoing debate about the homophobic hatred as being a part of an old society that it is time for Jamaica to grow out of. In other words the proud Jamaican nation of which the homophobia is a part should change according to some, whilst others do not want their nation to adapt itself to other countries views.</p></p></p>