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The purpose of this study was to discover to what extent Ben Jonson revealed himself in his plays and to explain how this self-portrayal has been effected.

Playing the Villain argues that the portrayal and punishment of terrorists in the Western media perpetuates colonialist attitudes, due to the visual connections between these modern images and past or fictional representations of iconic, punished villains. A theory of scapegoating related to intervisuality supports this argument, by explaining that as a ritual dependent on and developed by cultural history and mythology, scapegoating requires engagement with recognisable visual motifs that repeat and perpetuate Western, colonialist attitudes. Underlying, repeated narrative patterns ensure that the scapegoating ritual functions in a way that is cathartic and builds national unity following social crisis. This need for catharsis requires that there be a scapegoated villain whose demise may be celebrated, and that the villain is objectified and fetishised through visual representation and spectacle.

The question of the composition and unity of Esther continue to be a matter of debate as Esther studies of the last two decades show. This debate has, however, been conducted primarily perspective. from a historical and critical The latter half of this century, and the last three decades in particular, has seen the emergence of newer approaches to the text of Scripture. These approaches, influenced by the developments in literary theory, have resulted in an emphasis on the text as a literary unity and have encouraged a synchronic reading of biblical texts. I believe the questiop of the composition and unity of Esther can be fruitfully approached using these newer literary approaches. A literary reading of Esther, which demonstrates that it is a narrative unity, is done. The literary reading is synchronic in nature, and demonstrates that chiasticreversal underlies the whole of the Esther narrative. Moreover, careful attention is given to the literary devices of chiasmus and characterisation, which make a significant contribution to the narrative unity of Esther because of the inseparable link, which exists, between these literary elements. This inseparable link derives from the fact that the chiasmus found in Esther is characterised by the reversal of the positions, fortunes, and destinies of the main characters. Furthermore, the role and portrayal of the king is germane to the narrative unity of Esther beca~se intrinsic to the chiastic-reversal pattern in Esther is the role of the king in reversing the positions, fortunes and destinies of the main characters. Consequently his role will receive special attention. In addition, as a character, he can be seen as the glue of the narrative unity of Esther because of the pivotal role he plays in the story's chiastic-reversal pattern. It therefore follows that the way the narrative characterises him must receive attention. In this regard 'traditional' stereotypical descriptions of the king are discussed critically and a fresh perspective· of his character is offered. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 1999. / gm2014 / Practical Theology / unrestricted

Thesis (M. A.) --University of Limpopo, 2014 / The main aim of this study is to analyse in detail different poems from different authors which reveal the way in which death comes to people and also explains how difficult it is, if someone has lost his/her lover. The first chapter reveals the general outline of the study, the problem statement, the aim, its significance and methodology. The most important terms of the study have been explained to be analysed. Chapter 2 explains defines and analysed the selected poems of different authors that reveal the ways in which death comes to living people. Chapter 3 deals with the general summary of this mini-dissertation. The recommendations for further research have been indicated in this chapter. Chapter 4 indicates a list of books which have been used in this mini-dissertation.

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Children learn about their world through books used in the classroom. Research about the portrayal of African Americans in children?s picture books is essential because picture books introduce some children to African American culture, and all children need to see characters like themselves in books. Since previous studies analyzed the characterizations of African Americans in children?s picture books from 1900 through 1995, the significance and purpose of this study were to add to the literature by examining children?s picture books from 1996 through 2005. The research questions were: (a)How are African Americans portrayed in the written texts of African American children?s picture books awarded the Coretta Scott King Award or distinguished as Caldecott Medal honor books or Coretta Scott King honor books from 1996 through 2005? (b)How are African Americans portrayed in the illustrations of African American children?s picture books awarded the Coretta Scott King Award or distinguished as Caldecott Medal honor books or Coretta Scott King honor books from 1996 through 2005? To be included in the sample of books, (a) each book had to be an African American children?s picture book, (b) all characters or the protagonist had to be African American, and (c) each book had to be an award-winning book, which had been awarded the distinguished Coretta Scott King Author or Illustrator Award or noted as Caldecott Medal or Coretta Scott King Award honor books during the years 1996 through 2005. The sample consisted of 28 books. The instrumentation consisted of nine evaluation criteria which were used as categories. The data yielded documentation used to conclude that African Americans were portrayed positively in most of the African American children?s picture books employed in the study that were awarded the Coretta Scott King Award or distinguished as Caldecott Medal or Coretta Scott King honor books from 1996 through 2005.

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Advertising has a powerful role in today’s society, especially since we are constantly surrounded by it. Advertisement does not only encourage people to make decisions about their purchases but has a big impact on the culture (Lin & Yeh, 2009; Lindner, 2004). Hence, it is a big factor of creating norms and ideas of what is feminine and masculine; thus affecting the perception on gender within societies. Unfortunate is however that to be able to cut through the enormous advertising clutter that people are exposed to daily, advertisers tend to use sexual content and portrayals as tactic, leading to an obscure ideal (Dahl, Segupta & Vohs, 2009; Cortese, 2008; Connell & Pearse, 2015; Butler & Almqvist, 2007). This quantitative and qualitative study examines from a Gender and Feminist theory perspective how women are portrayed sexually and stereotypically in advertisements within Mexican fashion magazines. The advertisements found within the seven biggest fashion magazines in Mexico are being studied both through a quantitative content analyse and qualitative text analyse using a semiotic approach. The result of the study shows that the content of advertisements in Mexican magazines frequently portray females in a sexualised and stereotypical way. Within our qualitative result six different stereotypes could be found. Furthermore, our quantitative result shows that the most commonly portrayed female within the advertisements are White. Henceforth, our result shows that a female ideal where the most crucial attributes are: to be sexy, beautiful, obtain an attractive appearance and to be White.

Within a distributed system, autonomous agents may find it necessary to cooperate in order to achieve their objectives. Interaction protocols provide standard frameworks within which to conduct common classes of interaction, but they are only useful when the agents using them have a common interpretation of the constraints imposed by those protocols. In open systems, where there are no system-wide objectives and components are contributed from a variety of sources, this is difficult to ensure. An agent within a sufficiently complex environment will find it necessary to draw inferences from information sources of varying integrity and completeness. Given flawed or incomplete information, it may be necessary for an agent to resort to nonmonotonic reasoning in order to be able to make concrete decisions within limited windows of opportunity. This can be expected to create inconsistencies in the joint beliefs of agents which can only be repaired by dialogue between peers. To verify and repair all possible sources of inconsistency is impractical for any sizable body of inference however—any belief revision must therefore be subject to prioritisation. In this thesis, we introduce a mechanism by which agents can perform opportunistic argumentation during dialogue in order to perform distributed belief revision. An interaction portrayal uses the protocol for a given interaction to identify the logical constraints which must be resolved during the interaction as it unfolds. It then compares and reconciles the expectations of agents prior to the resolution of those constraints by generating and maintaining a system of arguments. The composition and scope of arguments is restricted in order to minimise the information exchange whilst still trying to ensure that all available admissible viewpoints are adequately represented immediately prior to any decision. This serves both to make interaction more robust (by allowing agents to make decisions based on the distributed wisdom of its peer group without being explicitly directed by a protocol) and to reconcile beliefs in a prioritised fashion (by focusing only on those beliefs which directly influence the outcome of an interaction as determined by its protocol).