In this dissertation, I study the way couples improvise relationships together. I define improvisation as a kind of performance that leads to an interpretive practice where people develop the meanings of their relationships as they perform. Participating in a performance ethnography, my romantic partner, myself, and three other couples reflect on the way we perform together on stage. Adapting the popular improv performance format “Armando” and utilizing post-performance focus groups, I observe how the couples strive to make meaning together and negotiate a joint-perspective about how they played. Ultimately, I argue that attending to the way a couple improvises their relationship off stage can provide key insights into the communication patterns that allow them to share vulnerable experiences and grow close. In the end, I discuss ways that improv techniques and philosophies have informed and guided my own romantic relationship.

In this dissertation, I study the way couples improvise relationships together. I define improvisation as a kind of performance that leads to an interpretive practice where people develop the meanings of their relationships as they perform. Participating in a performance ethnography, my romantic partner, myself, and three other couples reflect on the way we perform together on stage. Adapting the popular improv performance format “Armando” and utilizing post-performance focus groups, I observe how the couples strive to make meaning together and negotiate a joint-perspective about how they played. Ultimately, I argue that attending to the way a couple improvises their relationship off stage can provide key insights into the communication patterns that allow them to share vulnerable experiences and grow close. In the end, I discuss ways that improv techniques and philosophies have informed and guided my own romantic relationship.

In this dissertation, I study the way couples improvise relationships together. I define improvisation as a kind of performance that leads to an interpretive practice where people develop the meanings of their relationships as they perform. Participating in a performance ethnography, my romantic partner, myself, and three other couples reflect on the way we perform together on stage. Adapting the popular improv performance format “Armando” and utilizing post-performance focus groups, I observe how the couples strive to make meaning together and negotiate a joint-perspective about how they played. Ultimately, I argue that attending to the way a couple improvises their relationship off stage can provide key insights into the communication patterns that allow them to share vulnerable experiences and grow close. In the end, I discuss ways that improv techniques and philosophies have informed and guided my own romantic relationship.

The popular cable show South Park has steadily entertained audiences since its debut in 1997. Much of the show's humor and entertainment value comes from its satirical treatment of public figures, institutions, and timely trends. One of the institutions often lampooned on the show is that of television news broadcasting. This thesis project seeks to shed light on entertainment media portrayals of television news journalists and television news journalism as a whole by examining the issues covered, how those issues are framed, and how the journalist is used as a figure on the border of entertainment and information in one show. A content analysis was performed on all news broadcasts contained within all 181 episodes of South Park through its twelfth season. Results indicate that Semetko and Valkenburg's (2000) five generic frames penetrate well into the entertainment realm; a broadcast's "relationship to reality" is framed significantly differently when Conflict and Speculation frames are employed; news broadcasters are not portrayed as exemplars of the media's "liberal bias;" and that South Park has used significantly more reality-based storylines in recent years than in its early years. / Master of Arts

With a significant number of African American single-parent families responsible for raising a generation of male children, the focus of this qualitative case study was on exploring the African American single mother-son dyad to identify metacommunicative signals delivered from mothers to sons. This study was grounded in a theoretical framework combining attachment theory and social learning theory. The research questions focused on identifying metacommunication messages passed from mothers to sons and how metacommunication patterns influence the youth's social identity. Four single mothers with adolescent sons and 4 unrelated adult sons of single mothers participated in semistructured interviews. Data were collected and analyzed using content analysis and coding supported with NVivo software. Key findings revealed that the metacommunication was a dominant form of communication in the African-American family construct, and affected the parenting styles. From the mother's retrospective reports, African-American mother's adapted an authoritarian or helicopter parenting styles to control and protect their sons from racism, becoming victims of crime and violence, being arrested, or incarcerated. The key finding from the sons' retrospective reports was that negative metacommunication from single mothers to sons was associated with insecure attachment, avoidance, and risky behaviors. The implications for social change are that positive metacommunication can strengthen the African American single mother-son dyad. This information may lead to intervention strategies for targeting negative metacommunication patterns from African American single mothers to sons and teaching new communication rules that foster a secure relationship.

本篇論文主要在探討漢語親子假裝遊戲 (pretend play) 中的後設溝通(metacommunication)，研究問題如下：1. 不同年齡的幼兒使用哪些後設溝通策略(metacommunicative strategies) 來架構其假裝遊戲？2. 在幼兒所使用的策略中有哪些語言表徵 (linguistic features)？3. 不同年齡的幼童使用後設溝通策略時是否會有發展上的差異？研究結果發現不同年齡的幼兒後設溝通策略的運用的確呈現發展上的差異，年齡較大的孩童在運用後設溝通策略架構假裝遊戲的技巧比年齡較小的孩童來的熟練與複雜，而這些策略運用上的不同則可能是因為語言及認知發展上的差異導致而成 ◦ / This thesis aims to investigate how children with different age initiate, maintain, and terminate pretend play through metacommunication. There are three research questions proposed: first, what metacommunicative strategies are used to organize children’s pretend play? Second, what are the linguistic features of these metacommunicative statements? Finally, does children’s use of metacommunication display a developmental trend? Participants included in the present study are two Mandarin-speaking children. Both are female. One aged two years and nine months old and the other is four years and five months old. Analytic framework adopted in this thesis is mainly derived from Giffin’s model. Giffin (1990) advanced a framework comprising seven metacommunicative strategies: enactment, ulterior conversation, underscoring, storytelling, prompting, implicit pretend structuring, and overt proposals to pretend. Results indicate that there are six metacommunicative strategies adopted by children during pretend play: enactment, ulterior conversation, underscoring, prompting, implicit pretend structuring, and overt proposals to pretend. Both children show a strong bias in favor of within-frame metacommunication during pretend play. In addition, there are linguistic features observed in these metacommunicative strategies. These linguistic features display children’s discrepancies in language development before and after three years old. Besides, how children with different age organize their pretend play through metacommunication is quite different. It has been observed that a four-year-old adopts ulterior conversation and overt proposals to pretend to initiate pretend play. On the other hand, a two-year-old child uses ulterior conversation and implicit pretend structuring as her play initiation strategies. As for play maintaining, older children develop various sub-plots or recapitulate the action format in order to sustain their play. Unlike older children, younger children’s ability to maintain pretend play is limited. However, it is observed that children as young as two years old are able to re-introduce the play theme into the dialogue after play partner’s interruption or digression. Furthermore, a four-year-old gives some concluding statements to end her pretend play while a two-year-old does not. As a result, the overall organization of older children’s pretend play is more complete than younger children’s. Our findings reveal the developmental trend of children’s use of metacommunication in pretend play and this developmental trend is closely related to children’s language and cognitive development.

<p>If you happen to be an American and have trouble sleeping, do not attempt to fall asleep watching the nightly news because it is anything but boring. At a glance, the American economy seems to be in shambles. The United States has an all-time high deficit, the housing market has crashed or is in the process of doing so, capital markets are becoming increasingly volatile and credit institutions in and outside the US are reporting heavy losses. The American presidential elections will take place this November, and there is no question that the economy will be one of the main issues.</p><p>How has the unstable economic atmosphere affected the financial behavior of households in the United States and where have they received the financial information and advice from? Have the changes that they have made in their personal savings/investments and asset portfolios changed in any way and if so, are these changes based on rational decisions or mere hunches?</p><p>This paper intends to answer these questions through a qualitative approach by interviewing eight tailor picked households in the United States. We take a constructionist ontological position assuming that social entities have a reality that is constructed by the perception of social actors. Furthermore, we have taken the epistemological Interpretevist stance assuming that we study the world by looking at its social actors.</p><p>We have utilized a number of theories to aid us through our deductive approach where we collect theory, then collect data, analyze the findings, confirm or reject existing theory, then revisit the existing theory with the new data. The main theories include the Efficient Market Hypothesis, Behavioral Finance, Metacommunication and Dissemination of Information and Animal Spirits including all their subsidiary theories.</p><p>The interview process involved utilizing an unstructured format and once interviews were collected, they were compiled into summarized form through an emotionalist approach. Conclusions were then drawn by finding common denominators between the interviewees’ sentiments. We found the signs of Keynes’ Animal Spirits, overreaction to information, and amplification of information through private sources. Furthermore, we have been able to find that advice had changed over the past year although we were unable to conclude how it had changed. Finally, a number of findings including people’s risk averse behavior towards volatile stock markets gave us an overall picture of the Efficient Market Hypothesis being less true in this situation than Behavioral Finance.</p>

If you happen to be an American and have trouble sleeping, do not attempt to fall asleep watching the nightly news because it is anything but boring. At a glance, the American economy seems to be in shambles. The United States has an all-time high deficit, the housing market has crashed or is in the process of doing so, capital markets are becoming increasingly volatile and credit institutions in and outside the US are reporting heavy losses. The American presidential elections will take place this November, and there is no question that the economy will be one of the main issues. How has the unstable economic atmosphere affected the financial behavior of households in the United States and where have they received the financial information and advice from? Have the changes that they have made in their personal savings/investments and asset portfolios changed in any way and if so, are these changes based on rational decisions or mere hunches? This paper intends to answer these questions through a qualitative approach by interviewing eight tailor picked households in the United States. We take a constructionist ontological position assuming that social entities have a reality that is constructed by the perception of social actors. Furthermore, we have taken the epistemological Interpretevist stance assuming that we study the world by looking at its social actors. We have utilized a number of theories to aid us through our deductive approach where we collect theory, then collect data, analyze the findings, confirm or reject existing theory, then revisit the existing theory with the new data. The main theories include the Efficient Market Hypothesis, Behavioral Finance, Metacommunication and Dissemination of Information and Animal Spirits including all their subsidiary theories. The interview process involved utilizing an unstructured format and once interviews were collected, they were compiled into summarized form through an emotionalist approach. Conclusions were then drawn by finding common denominators between the interviewees’ sentiments. We found the signs of Keynes’ Animal Spirits, overreaction to information, and amplification of information through private sources. Furthermore, we have been able to find that advice had changed over the past year although we were unable to conclude how it had changed. Finally, a number of findings including people’s risk averse behavior towards volatile stock markets gave us an overall picture of the Efficient Market Hypothesis being less true in this situation than Behavioral Finance.

La thèse porte sur le cinéma d’amateur et, plus particulièrement, sur la pratique des home movies en France, à savoir la réalisation et la réception en famille de films d’amateur. En étudiant la période qui s’étend de 1960 à aujourd’hui, nous nous sommes intéressés à la manière dont la pratique a évolué à la fois sur le plan technique et technologique, grâce à l’introduction de trois formats (le Super 8, le VHS et le numérique), et sur le plan social et culturel, à travers la prise en compte de différents types de modèles familiaux (de la famille nucléaire aux familles recomposées en passant par les familles adoptantes). À partir de ces observations, nous avons élaboré une esthétique des home movies entendue comme esthétique du lien. Cette étude croise deux approches : d’une part, la sémio-pragmatique avec la notion d’espace de communication élaborée par Roger Odin et, d’autre part, l’interactionnisme inspiré des travaux d’Erving Goffman. Ainsi, nous avons construit deux espaces de communication afin de systématiser les interactions, les discours, les relations énonciatives et les affects qui se développent respectivement durant le filmage et le visionnage. Nous avons également introduit deux modes principaux censés structurer les processus de production de sens qui seraient à l’œuvre dans les deux étapes de la pratique et nous les avons appelés respectivement mode ludique (le filmage serait donc mené comme un jeu) et mode taxonomique (le visionnage s’apparenterait à une opération de classement). Pour cela, nous nous sommes également appuyés sur des entretiens avec les membres de six familles françaises ayant réalisé ou réalisant encore des home movies. Nous avons formulé l’hypothèse que la pratique des home movies permettrait aux individus impliqués dans la production et/ou dans la réception de ces films de prendre conscience des dynamiques familiales et de leur rôle au sein du groupe. Nous avons nommé méta-famille le potentiel autoréflexif de la pratique des home movies. / My research concerns the evolution in France of home movie filming from the 1960s (Super 8 films) to the present (digital films) and the changes that have affected the family unit during this period. It brings together a theoretical dimension, the symbolic implications of the practice, and an empirical one, the findings emerging from an exploratory case study of six French families shooting home movies. Based on the psychological, social and cultural study of these families, the multidisciplinary approach of this piece, combined with a qualitative methodology (in the form of several in-depth interviews with the members of those families), is meant to explore how family images and conversations help individuals to think about themselves and their roles within their groups. I conceived my field survey as a form of role-play in which the subjects were supposed to show me their home movies and talk about them: I interviewed family members separately (for instance, the parents together and then their children) about the same home movies in order to find out how people give several interpretations of the same representation of a family event. I will argue that the making of home movies contributes to a family’s sense of self-awareness by introducing a concept that I have named the meta-family. Thanks to the interactions in shooting home movies and the different types of verbalisation, the family is allowed to think about itself. The meta-family is not the real family, shooting or watching images, but represents the conscious and unconscious workings of the family members produced with, and through, the images. The evolution of the technical age and technologies in the practice of home movies has followed, recorded and sometimes predicted those conscious and unconscious changes within the family unit.

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