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Living in two worlds : codes and modes of expression at Zulu funerals in KwaZulu-Natal at the turn of the millenium.Nyawose, Theo. January 2000 (has links)
This study focuses on the rituals and rites, customs and beliefs associated with dying, death,
mourning, burial and integration among the Zulu people of KwaZulu-Natal at the turn of the
millenium. These have been examined from the perspectives of
• the traditional or rural view;
• The urban view;
• The view of the youth in the townships. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Durban, 2000.
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A qualitative study of humour theory.Gordon, Robert Lawrence Payet. January 1998 (has links)
This qualitative study of humour theory provides a broad descriptive account of the current status of humour theory within the multidisciplinary context of human and social studies. The nature of qualitative research is examined in terms of its relevance to humour research studies. Qualitative research is found to be a generic term applying to a range of types of data collecting approaches that fall outside the ambit of quantitative paradigms. Quantitative
methods are shown as having limited applicability to humour studies which are primarily reliant on data collecting. Humour is examined in terms of its biological, phylogenetic and historical antecedents. The emergence of schools of humour theory is discerned; and a study is made of changing social perceptions of humour in terms of the 'ruling discourse'. Humour
theory is examined in terms of parameters of contemporary research which entails the processes of defining humour and theorizing about humour in terms of a variety of variables. Critiques are provided of Murdock and Ganim's macro-level descriptive study of humour definitions and theories as well as of Apter's reversal theory of humour. Reflectivity is employed as a qualitative approach to analyse the personal experience of a 'humorous event'. Attention is also given to the relevance of orality, oral tradition and anthropological perspectives to humour research. Finally, recommendations are made for further research. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, 1998.
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Colliding Colors: Race, Reflection, and Literacy in the Kaleidoscopic Space of an English Composition ClassroomWalker, Albertina Louise 18 July 2006 (has links)
No description available.
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How Students Use Multimodal Composition to Write About CommunitySmith, Mandy Beth 29 July 2008 (has links)
No description available.
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Rhetorics and Literacies of Everyday Life of First-Year College StudentsKurtyka, Faith January 2012 (has links)
This project presents results from a year-long teacher-research study of 50 students in two sections of first-year composition. The goal of this project is to create writing pedagogy in touch with first-year students' everyday worlds and to represent students as people who enter the classroom with literacies, knowledge, and resources. Using funds of knowledge methodology, this project shows how to use students' existing literacy practices and rhetorical skills to move them to deeper levels of critical literacy. Employing frame analysis, this research shows how contemporary consumerist ideologies inform students' orientations towards their education and demonstrates how to use these ideologies as a bridge to getting students to both question the meaning of a college degree and take an active role in their education. To show some of the tensions that emerge for students moving between the spaces of student life, this project uses activity theory to compare the everyday practices of lecture-hall classes and composition classes. "Third Space" theory is suggested as a way for students and teachers to leave familiar practices and scripts to question larger assumptions about the creation of knowledge. Activity theory is also used to examine students' experiences in campus communities, where it is argued that students feel they are engaging in more authentic learning experiences, though they retain some of the attitudes they have towards their academic work in these communities. Combining activity theory, pedagogical action research, and principles of student-centered teaching, conclusions argue for a paradigm for "student engagement research," a methodology for teacher-researchers to both study students' everyday lives and incorporate student culture into the teaching of writing.
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The Responses of Fifth Graders to Japanese Pictorial TextsSakoi, Junko January 2015 (has links)
This study explores the responses of twelve fifth graders to Japanese pictorial texts - manga (Japanese comics), anime (Japanese animations), kamishibai (Japanese traditional visual storytelling), and picture books - and their connections to Japanese culture and people. This study took place Cañon Elementary School in Black Canyon City in Arizona. The guiding research questions for this study were: How do children respond to Japanese pictorial texts? and What understandings of Japanese culture are demonstrated in children's inquiries and responses to Japanese pictorial texts? The study drew on reader response theory, New Literacy Studies, and multimodality. Data collection included participant-observation, videotaped/audiotaped classroom discussions and interviews, participants' written and artistic artifacts, ethnographic fieldnotes, and reflection journals. Results revealed that children demonstrated four types of responses including (1) analytical, (2) personal, (3) intertexual, and (4) cultural. These findings illustrate that the children actively employed their popular culture knowledge to make intertextual connections as part of meaning making from the stories. They also showed four types of cultural responses including (1) ethnocentrism, (2) understanding and acceptance, (3) respect and appreciation and valuing, and (4) change. This study makes a unique contribution to reader response as it examines American children's cultural understandings and literary responses to Japanese pictorial texts (manga, anime, kamishibai, and picture books).
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Deconstruction and the concept logos in the Gospel of John and the binary opposition between the oral and the written text, with special reference to primarily oral cultures in South Africa.Hendricks, Gavin Peter. January 2002 (has links)
This thesis examines the Historical Critical method and its opponent Deconstruction in relation
to the Logos tradition from the perspective of Orality-Literacy Studies. The resultant paradigm
seeks to revise the logical procedures underlying the Historical Critical method and
Deconstruction, so as to approximate the media realities that underlie the Logos tradition and its
power for resistance.
The first part of the thesis undertakes a detailed historical critical analysis of the Logos
tradition and the proposed religious influences in the Gospel of John. The Historical Critical
Method of the Logos has focused exclusively on written text, i.e.Words committed to
chirographic space. This analysis is followed by a critical analysis of the Logos-Hymn, which
is followed by an indepth exegetical study ofJohn's Prologue (1: 1-18) in locating the form and
character of the Logos-Hymn. The Logos tradition will serve as bedrock in understanding the
polemic in Chapters five and six and its relationship to John's Prologue (1: 1-18) in the Gospel
of John and that of primarily! oral communities prior the 1994 democratic era in South Africa.
The second part of the study will focus on Derrida' s Deconstruction critique of the
metaphysics of presence against the Logos which presents as a leading case for Logocentrism.
Deconstruction should be seen as a series of recent displacements among philosophy, literary
criticism and Biblical studies. Current reaction to Derrida in philosophy and literary criticism includes enthusiastic acceptance but also hostility and rejection from academic humanists who
perceive him as a threat to their metaphysical assumptions. Reaction from Biblical scholars
could be similarly negative, although most of Derrida's writings should stimulate them to a
healthy rethinking of their positions. Derrida's insistence that meaning is an affair of
language's systems of difference "without positive terms" and his proposition that writing is
prior to speech are two main elements in his attack on the foundations of Western metaphysics
and its 'logocentric' convictions that we can experience meaning in 'presences' removed from
the play of differential systems (Schneidau 1982:5).
Derrida repudiates the classical logos behind this assumption but also the Christian Logos, yet
the Biblical insistence on our understanding of ourselves in relation to a historical past, rather
than in terms of a static cosmic system, breaks with the tendencies of logocentrism and allows
us to align Derrida and the Bible. This radical way of appropriating history, without the
possibility of reifications of various sorts, should lead Biblical scholars further into
kerygmatic reflection. Derrida's deconstruction demonstrates the dubious status of ordinary
language, literal meaning, and common sense thinking and invites us to see the illusory
metaphysics behind the written text, a metaphysics that some Biblical structuralists seem to
accept uncritically. It is these metaphysical analyses of the Word that unravel the binary
opposition between the spoken Logos and that of the written text and its relation to meaning
and representation in the reality of primarily oral cultures.
The third part of the thesis will focus the attention on tradition perceived as transmissional
processes towards a means of communication in primarily oral cultures. In the place of the Historical Critical Method and Deconstruction henneneutics of the Logos tradition, an oral
thesis is developed which will focus on an Anthropology of Liberation. The Logos can be seen
as a liberating force for primarily oral communities against the falsely constructed realities of
the written text in our South African context. The written text has played a major role in the
social engineering of segregation and social boundaries by the Apartheid government in South
Africa.
It is suggested that Orality-Literacy research is an appropriately inclusive metaphor in
understanding the Logos as a collective memory for primarily oral cultures shared by hearer
and speaker alike. Orality-literacy helps us to understand the literary dynamics between
speech and writing and to dialogue with the history of the 'Other' or those from the
'otherside, 'the marginalized and the dispossesed. Finally this thesis suggest that the discourse
of the 'Other' is able to produce meaning and representation in the construction of knowledge,
and is a discourse that is shared by hearer and speaker alike. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.
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Beyond traditional literature : towards oral theory as aural linguistics.Alant, Jacob Willem. January 1996 (has links)
Oral Theory, which is the discipline that studies the oral tradition, has been characterized as
a literary anthropology, centered on essentially two notions: tradition on the one hand,
literature on the other. Though emphasis has moved from an initial preoccupation with oral textual
form (as advocated by Parry and Lord) to concerns with the oral text as social
practice, the anthropological / literary orientation has generally remained intact. But through
its designation of a traditional 'other' Oral Theory is, at best, a sub-field of anthropology; the
literature it purports to study is not literature, but anthropological data. This undermines the
existence of the field as discipline. In this study it is suggested that the essence of orality
as subject matter of Oral Theory - should be seen not in the origins of its creativity (deemed
'traditional'), nor in its aesthetic process / product itself ('literature'), but in its use of
language deriving from a different 'auditory' conception of language (as contrasted with the
largely 'visualist' conception of language at least partly associated with writing). In other
words, the study of orality should not be about specific oral 'genres', but about verbalization
in general. In terms of its auditory conception, language is primarily defined as existing in
sound, a definition which places it in a continuum with other symbolical / meaningful sounds,
normally conceptualized as 'music'. Linguistics, being fundamentally scriptist (visualist) in
orientation, fails to account for the auditory conception of language. To remedy this, Oral
Theory needs to set itself up as an 'aural linguistics' - implying close interdisciplinary
collaboration with the field of musicology - through which the linguistic sign of orality could
be studied in all its particularity and complexity of meaning. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1996.
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Improving adult mother-tongue literacy learning through the application of the insights of Marcel Jousse.Frow, Frances Jill Eileen. January 1998 (has links)
Adult Mother-Tongue Literacy learning is a universal problem as readily available statistics indicate. In this study, I explore various aspects of adult Mother-Tongue Literacy learning, including: • a profile of a Learner typical of those who attend the Pinetown Welfare Society Adult Literacy Programme; • some indication of the success of literacy programmes around the world; • the kinds of problems experienced by Learners in the Kwadabeka Literacy Project attached to the Pinetown Welfare Society; • some relevant theoretical concepts which underpin adult learning, and particularly the learning of literacy in adults; • the perceptions of Marcel Jousse on the effect of non-literate and semi-literate milieux on the capacities of Learners; • suggestions as to how an improved understanding of the capacities of Learners can influence the choice, design and presentation of Literacy teaching and learning materials; • examples of those aspects of current programmes which answer the needs identified by Marcel Jousse. In the conclusion, I suggest: • how the theories of Marcel Jousse can be further explored and applied in the area of Mother-Tongue Literacy learning, and to a definition of literacy; • how the needs identified by Marcel Jousse can be further accommodated; • what kinds of materials need to be introduced to make Mother-Tongue Literacy less problematic and more accessible to its Learners; • how an evaluation of the Pinetown Welfare Literacy Programme might assist in improving Mother-Tongue Literacy learning. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, 1998.
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Madlala-(Bhengu) izithakazelo at Ebabanango, Enkandla, Ephathane, Emtshezi and Emfundweni in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.Madlala, Nelisiwe Maureen. January 2000 (has links)
Abstract not available. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Durban, 2000.
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