This thesis explores gay style within urban spaces in downtown Austin, Texas. Employing style as a rhetorical and communicative approach and method, I investigate and analyze how gay style markers are read off the built material environment of urban spaces. Through an application and analysis of a rhetoric of style, I demonstrate how particular downtown Austin districts and neighborhoods can be read as de facto gay districts through a reading of the gay style marker flamboyance. The focus of the thesis is an analysis of the systematic and rhetorical signification of gay style markers, which function to define and constitute particular urban spaces as “gay” districts or neighborhoods. Through of an examination of flamboyance in downtown Austin’s Warehouse District and surrounding districts, I demonstrate gay style is indeed present in a “non-gay” urban space. Ultimately, I argue that gay sexual style markers are capable of being read off the built environment of urban spaces; furthermore, it is these same gay style markers that come to define and constitute gay urban spaces, districts, and neighborhoods. / text

In this study, the researchers investigate the relationship between thinking style preference, emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness in an institution of higher education. The measuring instruments used were the Neethling Brain Preference Profile (NBPP) and the Mayer, Salovey and Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), as well as the Kouzes and Posner Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI). The sample comprised 138 managers within a higher education institution. The researchers found some evidence to support the relationship between thinking style, emotional intelligence (EI) and leadership effectiveness. The researchers concluded that facets of brain dominance and emotional intelligence may be potentially useful predictors of transformational leadership behaviours.

This thesis provides a reassessment of Barry's travels and early career up to late 1834. There is no modern analysis of Barry, and no biography has appeared since 1867. A reassessment is necessary as, although Barry was one of the most important early 19th century architects, his contribution to architecture has - especially in the 1930s-1960s - been ignored, either because his reputation has been belittled or because the scope of his work has been too daunting to master. This thesis shows the architectural foundation of Barry's career and analyses his early commissions in order to provide a basis for a more objective reassessment of him. To make a reassessment this thesis examines what has been written about Barry and utilises data which has hitherto been ignored or unknown. It makes extensive use of travel diaries and drawings by Barry and Wolfe - his associate -, Wolfe's MS. written for A. Barry's 1867 biography, Barry's letters and drawings owned by his descendants, albums of drawings by his office staff and visits to the buildings he designed together with those he and Wolfe examined. The thesis concludes that Barry achieved a broad and sophisticated knowledge of architecture through his travels; he possessed flexible architectural principles that freed him from aesthetic dogmatism; Wolfe played an important and under-estimated role particularly in Barry's early career; Barry always retained a love for Greek architecture; he was an able designer in Gothic; he could not be crudely termed a plagiarist or historical copyist; his re-introduction of Italianate was of great significance to English architecture and he was an artist architect who, as an eclectic able to design with virtuosity in many architectural modes, was not confined by one architectural style. The thesis makes a chronological analysis of the evolution of Barry's architectural principles and his executed and unexecuted schemes up to late 1834. It provides a clearer understanding of the periods when Barry first employed various architectural styles and places his finished architectural creations in the context of their evolutionary background.

Style conventions are specialized ways of performing a given activity (e.g., dressing, eating, etc.) that have minimal practical significance, but play a crucial role in signaling ones membership or status within a particular social community. The primary goal of this study was to examine whether preschool-aged children would adhere to a novel style convention simply given information that the style was shared by others. A secondary goal was to investigate whether the way that the information about the style convention was framed would affect their adhering to that convention. Forty-eight five-year-olds and 48 three-year-olds were shown a novel apparatus and given a basket of yellow and orange balls. The simple game consisted of putting the balls into the apparatus, which made the apparatus light up. In a fully between-subjects design, half of the participants participated in the focal “convention” condition, in which they were then told that using one colour of balls was the norm. Half of the children in the convention condition received this information in inclusionary terms (ie. everybody uses orange), and half in exclusionary terms (ie. nobody uses yellow). Children’s performance in these focal conditions was compared with that of children who participated in control conditions in which the experimenter’s ball choice was explained by statement of her preferences (i.e. I like to use only orange/I don’t like to use yellow). The main finding was that when playing the game themselves, 3-year-olds were significantly more likely to systematically select target-coloured balls in the convention than in the preference control condition, whereas 5-year-olds did not show systematic performance in either. There was also a significant condition x frame interaction, whereby children were more likely to systematically select target balls in the preference exclusion frame than in the preference inclusion frame. These results show that explicit information about a shared style is sufficient to promote adherence to style conventions in 3-year-old children, though, perhaps not 5-year-olds. These findings are discussed with respect to the mechanisms that guide children’s acquisition of conventional forms across domains. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-14 10:48:10.178

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The Japanese language is known for its various styles of speech, conditioned by factors such as social status, formality, and gender. When a speaker switches between the speech styles within the same talk targeted at the same recipient, such a phenomenon is called speech style shifting (hereafter SS). This study explores the frequency and the functions of SS through examining two types of conversations (Japanese native/native and native/non-native conversations) quantitatively and qualitatively in order to gain further understanding of the phenomenon. The results shows that all natives employed SS, and they produce SS approximately twice as frequently when the talk is targeted to non-natives than to natives. They also show that certain functions of SS are employed as foreigner talk (Ellis 2008) aimed at assisting non-natives. The study reveals the complexity of SS and underscores the necessity of closely observing various types of discourse to advance understanding of SS. / Japanese Language and Linguistics