Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Linguistics & Psychology, Department of Linguistics, 2006. / Bibliography: p. 742-762. / Systemic functional linguistics as a framework for description -- An overview of the grammar of Thai -- Textual clause grammar: the system of THEME -- Interpersonal clause grammar: the system of MOOD -- Experiential grammar at clause rank: the system of TRANSITIVITY -- Thai narrative register: context, semantics and lexicogrammatical profiles -- Conclusions. / This research is a text-based study of the grammar of standard Thai, based on systemic functional linguistics. It is the first attempt to explore Thai in systemic functional terms, that is with the account of the grammar of Thai being interpreted as resource for making meaning that is part of language as a higher-order semiotic system. This account utilizes a corpus-based methodology and explores extensive evidence from natural narrative texts, specifically fourteen Thai folk tales. This systemic functional interpretation of Thai is also supported by an investigation of other text types (See Chapter 2). The research has both intermediate and long term implications. The description itself will be a resource for the Thai community and it will also contribute to the growing area of linguistic typology based on systemic descriptions. The long term implication of the research is that the description will be used as a model for text-based research into minority languages in Thailand. -- There are two introductory chapters to the study. The first chapter discusses some general issues concerned with systemic functional theory and data used in the development of the description of the grammar of Thai. The second chapter is a preview chapter which provides an overview of the grammar of Thai in terms of three strands of meaning: textual, interpersonal, and the experiential mode of ideational meanings. The systemic functional interpretation is based on an exploration of a number of texts with a wide generic spread (e.g. news reports, topographic texts, encyclopedia, and television interview). -- Chapter 3 to Chapter 7 constitute the main body of the thesis. Chapter 3 deals with the textual metafunction: it explores the THEME system as the enabling resource for the clause grammar for presenting interpersonal and experiential meanings as a flow of information in context. Chapter 4 is concerned with the interpersonal metafunction. It is focused on exploring the MOOD system, that is, the resource of clause grammar for enacting social roles and relationships in an exchange. Chapter 5 is concerned with the experiential mode of the ideational metafunction: it investigates the TRANSITIVITY system, which is the resource of the clause grammar for construing our experience of the world around and inside us. As this thesis is based mainly on narrative discourse, Chapter 6 profiles Thai narratives in terms of context, semantics, and lexicogrammar. Firstly, at the context stratum, the chapter describes the generic structure potential of Thai folk tales. Secondly, the chapter describes the realization of this generic structure by semantic properties. Finally, the chapter is concerned with quantitatively exploring the narratives on the basis of clause-rank systems, at the stratum of lexicogrammar, across the metafunctional spectrum midway up the cline of instantiation. In the final chapter, the study concludes by summarizing the preceding chapters, pointing out research implications and limitations, and suggesting some areas for further studies. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xxxv, 762 ill. +

This thesis describes how and what Wattana-dharm Thai [Thai culture] has influenced Thai PR practice through the eyes of Thai PR managers and practitioners. It also provides some background information about the evolution of Thai PR practice to link to the current Thai PR practice. The study employs a qualitative paradigm with in-depth interviews as the main method. Documentary sources are mostly used as a supplement. This thesis provides detailed qualitative data describing how Thai public relations (PR) practitioners operate in Thailand both offline and online. The findings highlighted that Wattana-dharm Thai has a strong influence on Thai PR practice. There are eight main Wattana-dharm Thai aspects that influence Thai PR practice: 1) Relationship orientation (relationships in a Thai style including Bunkhun, Pen-Mitr, and Alum aluay relationships); 2) Community-based orientation; 3) Sanook orientation; 4) Hierarchical structure; 5) Buddhist orientation, 6) Monarchy institution respect; 7) Face and eyes in society; and 8) Form over the content. Thai PR practice has an emphasis on Saang Kwaampratabjai [impression building] through Wattana-dharm Thai. For example, historically, Thais accepted westerners because they did Saang Kwaampratabjai by bringing technology and development to the country. Thais have a positive attitude toward westerners because of this history of impression. Thai PR practitioners also try to use Saang Kwaampratabjai influence the public, such as journalists and opinion leaders by offering incentives altruistically (e.g. Namjai, Bunkhun, etc). Thai PR practice Saang Kwaampratabjai based on Buddhism and their respect of the monarchy. Thai PR place an importance on details of public’s personal information to instigate Saang Kwaampratabjai. For online PR, Thai PR use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to support Saang Kwaampratabjai. It would appear that ICTs, in part, are used to promote company’s image rather than having any practical use. Hence, the core of Thai PR is how to practice Saang Kwaampratabjai based solely on personal and social relationship. This thesis aims to fill in the gaps in knowledge relating to PR and culture. It will make a contribution to the academic literature on culture and public relations, not only in the West but globally. This will also provide a framework for Thai PR practitioners to improve and develop their work. This thesis examines culture and PR through the lens of Thai terminology and discourse facilitated by a native inside-out view moderated by the distance obtained by leaving my country for a substantial proportion of the period of the study. This distance allowed me to re-consider many taken-for-granted aspects of my own culture, as well as allowing me to take on board other cultural perspectives available in a Western but international university. Thus this thesis is in part autobiographical, product of my research journey that allowed me to engage with a range of fundamental issues central to cross-cultural living such as hierarchy, religion, political and regal institutional frameworks, and gender.

abstract: This study is about Thai English (ThaiE), a variety of World Englishes that is presently spoken in Thailand, as the result of the spread of English and the recent Thai government policies towards English communication in Thailand. In the study, I examined the linguistic data of spoken ThaiE, collected from multiple sources both in the U.S.A. and Thailand. The study made use of a qualitative approach in examining the data, which were from (i) English interviews and questionnaires with 12 highly educated Thai speakers of English during my fieldwork in the Southwestern U.S.A., Central Thailand, and Northeastern Thailand, (ii) English speech samples from the media in Thailand, i.e. television programs, a news report, and a talk radio program, and (iii) the research articles on English used by Thai speakers of English. This study describes the typology of ThaiE in terms of its morpho-syntax, phonology, and sociolinguistics, with the main focus being placed on the structural characteristics of ThaiE. Based on the data, the results show that some of the ThaiE features are similar to the World Englishes features, but some are unique to ThaiE. Therefore, I argue that ThaiE is structurally considered a new variety of World Englishes at the present time. The findings also showed an interesting result, regarding the notion of ThaiE by the fieldwork interview participants. The majority of these participants (n=6) denied the existence of ThaiE, while the minority of the participants (n=5) believed ThaiE existed, and one participant was reluctant to give the answer. The study suggested that the participants' academic backgrounds, the unfamiliar notion of ThaiE, and the level of the participants' social interaction with everyday persons may have influenced their answers to the main research question. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2013

No description available.

This thesis examines how and why Thai advertising 'Westernises'. Drawing on a literature from the theoretical fields of globalisation, consumer culture and advertising, it interrogates the 'Westernisation' process across the three communicative moments of advertising: production, text and consumption. The research project argues first that Thailand's society, culture and media have historically evolved in relation to both the processes of 'W esternisation' and 'Thainisation', and ·second that class, mapped onto an 'urban' and 'rural' divide, is a key factor in shaping the articulations of 'Western' and 'Thai' cultures in contemporary Thai society. The thesis suggests that advertising represents and manages social change by looking 'back to the future'. As 'apostles of bourgeois modernity', the adverts 'look forward', mythifying modem life as 'future-oriented' and 'developed'. But at the same time, ads 'look backward', offering a 'nostalgic' presentation of what is lost in modem society -- the 'undeveloped' rural which is kept intact rather than modernised. Created by practitioners who identify themselves as 'Thai cosmopolitans', they and their urban audiences use 'Westernisation' to distinguish themselves from the rural peasantry: they set up a symbolic frontier between 'Us' and 'Them'. In contrast, in response to ads, rural people sceptically observe social change and the more 'Western' modem life which they wish to have; however, this is also a rationalisation of what they cannot (yet) have. The thesis concludes that in the 'journey to modem Thailand', although 'Western modernisation' is (re)defmed as 'social development' radiating outward from the metropolitan centre, culturally it is marked by an ambivalent relation to Thai traditional values and to the rural. The latter continue to constitute a necessary counter-pointing narrative of 'W esternisation' within advertising and the self-identity of the Thai middle classes.

Parasitological and selected microbiological safety aspects of Nham (Thai-style fermented pork sausage) were evaluated. Pork meat from pigs experimentally infected with Trichinella spiralis was divided into 4 portions; 3 portions were frozen at -23°C for 12, 18 and 24 hours before they were made into Nham. The formula for fermented sausage included 3% w/w NaCl and garlic, 0.015% each of NaN0₂ and NaNO₃, and either 1.0 or 1.5% w/w commercial starter culture. Fermentation was at 30°C for 96 hours. The higher level of starter culture resulted in faster acid production but no difference in the maximum number of lactic acid bacteria attained. Infected pork, after being frozen for 24 hours, was still found to cause a low level of parasitism. However, the corresponding fermented samples were noninfective. Use of 1.0% starter culture and 12 hours freezing of meat prior to grinding rendered trichinae larvae noninfective after 2 days of sausage fermentation. Staphylococcus aureus (10³ cells per g) and Escherichia coli (10⁴ cells per g) were introduced into the ground pork in a series of experiments. Starter culture levels used were 0.75% and 1.5% by weight. Fermentation without starter culture stabilized the numbers of E. coli but permitted slow multiplication of S. aureus. Adding starter culture at either level increased the rate of acid production during the initial days, resulting in a faster drop in pH and a decline in numbers of both S. aureus and E. coli. After 36 and 48 hours, viable S. aureus were not recovered from products with 1.5% and 0.75% starter culture, respectively. E. coli disappeared from sausages with 1.5% starter culture after 96 hours but persisted at low numbers when the lower level of starter culture was used. The rapid direct plating technique (RPT) for enumeration of E. coli was compared to the two standard methods generally used: plating on Violet Red Bile Agar (VRBA) and Host Probable Number (MPN). Total coliforms from 43 fermented pork sausages were enumerated. The RPT gave data highly correlated to those from VRBA but with a significantly lower correlation to MPN. The regression line of loglO coliform counts from the RPT and VRBA had a slope of 0.76 and an intercept of 0.98. The MPN assay gave significantly higher (P=0.05) numbers than either the VRBA or the RPT. / Graduation date: 1986

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major health problem among women worldwide. In Thailand, risk factors of CVD in rural Thai women have not yet been examined. The purpose of this predictive correlational study was to examine risk factors of CVD in rural Thai women. Non-modifiable risk factors, modifiable risk factors (physiological, behavioral, and psychological risk factors), contextual risk factors, as well as, coping were conceptualized as major variables in this study.The sample consisted of 149 rural Thai women who had been diagnosed with CVD and resided in rural northern Thailand. A set of questionnaires and physiological measures were used to obtain data. The Chi-square test and the Pearson correlation technique, as well as the Multiple regression were used for data analysis.The results revealed that age, hypertension, cigarette smoking, stress, depression, and poverty had positive relationships with the severity of CVD. BMI, physical activity, education level, and family income were inversely related to the severity of CVD. However, total cholesterol, diabetes mellitus, menopause status, alcohol consumption, distance to hospital, transportation to health care, and coping had no relationship to the severity of CVD. A few of the physiological and behavioral risk factors were significant predictors of the severity of CVD in rural Thai women. These included high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, and physical inactivity. Notably, psychological stress and the contextual risk factors of income and poverty were also significant predictors of the severity of CVD in these women. Moreover, there were the significant moderator effects in predicting to the severity of CVD: total serum cholesterol and family income, diabetes and distance to a hospital, BMI and transportation, menopause and income, cigarette smoking and transportation, and depression and poverty.In conclusion, the findings from this study suggested that few of traditional risk factors of CVD were significant risk factors for CVD. Noteworthy findings demonstrated that psychological stress and contextual risk factors played an important role in contributing to CVD in rural Thai women. It is suggested that specific and effective interventions are needed for these women in order to reduce their morbidity and mortality rates of CVD.

This dissertation is aimed at analyzing and discussing the perception of the local people of Chiang Mai towards tourism. Tourism in Thailand and its importance to the country is illustrated in the first chapter. The current position of Tourism in Thailand is indicated in the second chapter with tourism statistics and major trends shown between 1985-1995. This chapter also reviewed the importance of tourism within the Thai economy. The third chapter elaborated some of the major issues in Thai tourism with special attention to economic, environmental and sociocultural issues, as well as the related problems. In chapter 5 anticipated advantages and observed disadvantages in local community involvement in tourism in Chiang Mai are elaborated. Chapter 5 explains the research methodology followed by study results in chapter 6. Chapter 7 concluded the study's hypothesis as well as the objectives of this research. The implications from field - work and the policy issues are also noted. The conclusions from the study investigating the inner city of Chiang Mai residents' perceptions toward tourism development in the areas of arts and culture ; environmental circumstances ; employment ; infrastructure development and social problems revealed that on one side, there was a high degree of agreement among the respondents with regards to economic gain and employment created by tourism. Infrastructure development was also viewed positively by the respondents. On the other side, tourism was perceived as the cause of the environmental degradation and social problems. It is hoped that this study will serve as a source of reference and a guideline to be used by both private and public sectors in considering perception of local Chiang Mai people to tourism. The author has drawn articles from a variety of sources, including tourism journals, local newspapers and magazines. Field-work in the form of the samples were systematically chosen from the inner city of Chiang Mai to guarantee the outcome from the specified area of study.

This dissertation includes three essays on the Thai economy. The first two chapters focus on the impact of the insurgency in Southern Thailand, and the third paper analyses the effect of the government's rice pledging scheme. The insurgency in the southern region of Thailand, including Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat, and some parts of Songkhla province, began in 2004. As the end of 2017, the total number of deaths was 6,686 persons, including military, government officials, insurgents, and civilians. The conflict has run for more than a decade and is likely to continue in the near future. However, few studies focus on the effect of this insurgency. In particular, none of the economic literature has considered this issue yet, although the study of the economics of terrorism has been a very active field since the September 11 attack. Therefore, this research is among the first that analyses the economic effect of the insurgency in Southern Thailand. In the first chapter, I employ a synthetic control analysis to examine the economic impact of this insurgency. I use the Thai Socio-Economic Survey to construct panel data at the provincial level. The result shows that households in the affected provinces had real expenditure per capita lower than its predicted level about by about an average 16.21 percent per annum. Furthermore, I divide households into subgroups based on their characteristics and estimate the treatment effects separately. First, I divide the observations by urban and rural areas. The results indicate that the insurgency had an impact on urban households more than rural households. I next divide the sample by age of household head. The estimates exhibit that the most affected group was the youngest group, those 20 to 34 years old. On the contrary, the oldest group, whose older than 50 years, were the least affected. While the first chapter indicates the macroeconomic effect, and the affected area is treated as a single treatment unit, the second chapter examines the impact of the insurgency at the district level by exploiting the variation in violent incidents and deaths among districts from 2004 to 2017. The empirical results suggest that areas with a high insurgency intensity experienced migration outflows and hence negative net migration. Over the long-term, I also find that districts with high numbers of incidents and deaths had lower average growth in population and lights at night as compared to more peaceful districts. For the labour market, the results do not show any effect of the insurgency on monthly wages and working hours of local employees. This research contributes to the literature on the economics of terrorism, and the results are consistent with most studies that indicate the negative impact of insurgency on the economy and outflow migration. However, my study is among the first to illustrate the heterogeneous effect of the insurgency. In fact, the results suggest that the magnitude of the impact depends on the characteristics of households and the local-level intensity of the insurgency. In the third chapter, I examine the impact of the Thai rice pledging scheme. This policy aimed to resolve the rice over-supply problem during the harvest season. The program allowed farmers to use their products as collateral. Consequently, farmers could store their products during the low-price harvest season and redeem them back to sell when prices increased. Generally, the pledging price was set close to the market price, and a limited amount of rice was eligible for pledging for each household and each area. However, the rice pledging scheme during 2011 to 2014 allowed for an unlimited amount of rice to be pledged at a high price. Hence, rice farmers experienced temporary increases in sales prices during this period. This chapter aims to examine the impact of this program on revenues of rice farmers by using annual household panel data from 2009 to 2015. The results indicate that the policy did increase the nominal revenues of rice farmers by approximately 35 percent annually. Moreover, the heterogeneity analysis indicates that only the middle 50 percent rice farmers by income level benefited from the program, while the top and bottom 25 percent of rice farmers did not gain from the policy.

This thesis is a genealogy of the Thai conception of détente in the long 1970s (1968-1980), largely based on newly declassified documents in Thailand. It argues that Thai détente marked a history of rupture in Thai foreign policy narrative that was fundamentally different from the hegemonic discourse of anticommunism. By the late 1960s, the latter had become seriously challenged by the deteriorating situation in the Vietnam War and exacerbated by the concomitant prospect of American retrenchment. This sequence of events resulted in discursive anxiety in Thailand and the idea of 'flexible diplomacy' was initiated by Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman to cope with the changed environment. Since then, détente emerged as a new diplomatic discourse to normalize relations with the Communist powers in general, and specifically, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC). The thesis closely examines three episodes of Thai détente, including that of Thanat Khoman (1968-1971), M.R. Kukrit Pramoj and Chatichai Choonhavan (1975-1976), and General Kriangsak Chomanan (1977-1980). It argues that each episode, epitomized by varying concepts of 'flexible diplomacy' and 'equidistance', developed out of discursive struggles between détente proponents and Cold Warriors. These struggles precipitated attempts to sustain the anticommunist discursive hegemony, which culminated in the military coups in November 1971 and October 1976. The thesis demonstrates how these coups can be interpreted as events born out of foreign policy, and specifically to deter, or at least temper, the course of détente. The thesis also asserts that, throughout the long 1970s, détente in general transformed Thai foreign relations with the Soviet Union and the PRC from the discourses of 'enemy' towards 'friend'. This diplomatic transformation was represented in numerous diplomatic practices, such as ping-pong or sports diplomacy, petro-diplomacy, trade, cultural diplomacy, the establishment of diplomatic relations, and normal state visits. Despite its decline in the early 1980s, the détente discourse remained intact and determined Thai diplomacy toward the Communist powers. Finally, the thesis interrogates the so-called bamboo or bending-with-the-wind diplomacy, which is often treated as an ahistorical 'tradition' of Thai diplomacy, and argues that bamboo diplomacy emerged as a new narrative or knowledge only in the early 1970s. It aimed at not only legitimizing Thailand's changing diplomatic practices, namely détente, but also constituting the metanarrative that could explain and evaluate (the success or failure of) Thai diplomacy in the past. This narrative was then an invented tradition, which was socially and epistemically constructed as a result of the transformative practices of détente in Thailand. By tracing the birth of bamboo diplomacy, the thesis constitutes a history of the present.