This thesis contains the results of my research between 1994 and 1998 into the uses of fictional autobiography in personal development. The topic arose out of my observation, both of my own experience and the experience of students attending my creative writing courses, that writing fictional autobiography as part of a writing apprenticeship not only enabled the development of writing skills and the finding of a writing 'voice', but often had a therapeutic effect on the writer's relationship with himor herself, and with his or her significant others. I set out to explore this observation through an examination of my creative writing course 'Autobiography and Fiction' (subsequently called 'Autobiography and the Imagination'), which I taught at the University of Sussex Centre for Continuing Education from 1991 to 1996. I issued questionnaires to all 78 students who had taken this course, to generate data on the benefits of engaging in the writing of fictional autobiography. I also conducted interviews on the same topic with 5 of these students. I analysed the resulting data using the theory of the Germani American psychoanalyst Karen Horney, and to a lesser extent that of object relations theorists D.W. Winnicott, Christopher Bollas and Marion Milner. Where appropriate, I also used theory of literary and social narrative. The thesis presents the three main findings of the research, namely, that the writing of fictional autobiography (1) can facilitate a closer contact with the inner life, resulting in a stronger sense of identity and the finding of a 'writing voice'; (2) can help to reveal and work through problems of identity which cause writer's block; and (3) can provide a means of're-writing' self-narratives which have been 'written' in the psyche by family and society. The thesis concludes with some suggestions as to how fictional autobiography might be used in a self-analytic or psychoanalytic context.

This thesis argues that contemporary theorizations of online identities on social-networking sites (SNS) require more robust accounts of the relationship between language, perfomativity, and the tensions of the material/virtual binary. In her analysis of subject formation on multi-user domains, Internet sociologist Jenny Sundén uses poststructuralist philosophy to theorize identity as a process of “textual performativity”. Citing Sundén, many contemporary sociologists theorizing subjectivity on SNS use the terms “writing the self” and “performing the self” and overlook the poststructuralist philosophy that informs them. To explore the lack of philosophical analyses within sociological accounts of subject formation on SNS, and to rethink “writing” and “performing” the self, I draw on the work of J.L. Austin, Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida. I argue that creating a self on SNS is a ”sedimentation” process whereby different discursive identity performances are reiterated over time, and I investigate the implications of archiving and externalizing the self.

This thesis argues that contemporary theorizations of online identities on social-networking sites (SNS) require more robust accounts of the relationship between language, perfomativity, and the tensions of the material/virtual binary. In her analysis of subject formation on multi-user domains, Internet sociologist Jenny Sundén uses poststructuralist philosophy to theorize identity as a process of “textual performativity”. Citing Sundén, many contemporary sociologists theorizing subjectivity on SNS use the terms “writing the self” and “performing the self” and overlook the poststructuralist philosophy that informs them. To explore the lack of philosophical analyses within sociological accounts of subject formation on SNS, and to rethink “writing” and “performing” the self, I draw on the work of J.L. Austin, Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida. I argue that creating a self on SNS is a ”sedimentation” process whereby different discursive identity performances are reiterated over time, and I investigate the implications of archiving and externalizing the self.

This study mainly aimed at investigating the academic writing needs and writing self-efficacy beliefs of graduate students studying at an English-medium university, Ankara. Furthermore, such areas that have a crucial role in determining writing needs as the frequency of writing tasks, usefulness of written sources, perceived importance of academic writing, and role of Turkish while writing were explored. In this study, quantitative data via &ldquo / Academic Writing Needs Assessment Survey for Graduate Students&rdquo / were collected from 213 graduate students enrolled at Graduate School of Social Sciences. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, and multiple regression analyses were employed to analyze the data. The results of descriptive statistics indicated that the graduate students need a wider vocabulary repertoire in order to cope with the challenges of academic writing and they are mostly assigned longer research papers. In addition, using journal articles published in the area of specialization during writing was the most common method and more than half of the graduate students stated that when stuck with finding the right word, they first look for a Turkish word first. The exploratory factor analysis produced two factors and the regression analyses were carried out. The results yielded that the predictors accounted for 24% of the variance in productivity-related academic writing needs, and 22% of the variance in accuracy-related academic writing needs. For the productivity-related academic writing needs, writing self-efficacy and academic status made a significant contribution and for the accuracy-related academic writing needs, writing self-efficacy and English proficiency exam score were significant.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Psychology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

À partir d’un corpus constitué de neuf romans mexicains publiés entre 2000 et 2010 par Guillermo Arreola, Mario Bellatin, Patricia Laurent Kullick, Guadalupe Nettel, Cristina Rivera Garza et Jorge Volpi, ce travail explore les spécificités et les convergences de l’écriture fictionnelle à la première personne à l’aube du XXIe siècle. Qu’il s’agisse de récits ouvertement romanesques, prétendument autobiographiques ou autofictionnels, ils s’éloignent tous du modèle canonique de l’autobiographie et transgressent la frontière entre le référentiel et la fiction. Cette thèse cherche à mettre en évidence les caractéristiques les plus significatives de ces écritures qui accordent une large place à l’introspection, que le je narrateur se livre à l’exercice mémoriel de la convocation de souvenirs d’enfance ou qu’il s’interroge sur son identité et sa relation au monde et à l’altérité. Dans quelle mesure ces romans reflètent-ils les questionnements et les inquiétudes contemporaines sur l’écriture du je ? Quels regards, concordants ou divergents, posent-ils sur le sujet lorsque celui-ci est au centre de l’énonciation et de l’univers narratif ?Dans un premier temps, ce travail propose une partie rétrospective qui s’attache à rappeler les écueils et les principales évolutions qu’ont connus les écritures du je depuis l’avènement de l’autobiographie traditionnelle basée sur le modèle rousseauiste. L’époque contemporaine s’emploie à trouver des alternatives à ce modèle canonique, au point d’abandonner bien souvent l’exigence d’authenticité référentielle.La seconde partie s’attache en effet à observer les nombreuses failles de la mémoire des différents narrateurs. Il en résulte une absence de pacte autobiographique au profit de textes qui revendiquent la place capitale de l’invention dans l’écriture de soi. L’opposition entre fiction et authenticité se fissure : l’activité mémorielle passe en partie par une (ré)invention de soi et, ce faisant, n’en est que plus « authentique ».Il apparaît également une récurrence du thème du double en tant qu’alter ego intérieur, lorsque les narrateurs subissent métamorphoses ou dédoublements. Ce devenir autre est parfois synonyme de dissolution menaçante du sujet ou signe, au contraire, d’une revendication de sa nature changeante, évolutive et inconstante, essentiellement schizo.Enfin, ce travail s’intéresse au rôle déterminant de l’altérité à la fois dans le processus de construction identitaire subjective et dans sa mise en récit. Le je se configure à travers les rapports qu’il tisse avec l’autre. Cela vaut tant pour les protagonistes que pour les romans, qui étendent les pratiques introspectives et autoréflexives au texte lui-même, faisant la part belle à la métatextualité et à la transtextualité.À travers l’étude de la thématique introspective, cette thèse s’interroge en somme sur le regard que posent ces représentants de la jeune génération de la littérature mexicaine sur la place du sujet dans un monde désenchanté ou désarticulé, et sur les possibilités de renouveau de l’écriture créative. / Based on a corpus that includes nine Mexican novels, published between 2000 and 2010 by Guillermo Arreola, Mario Bellatin, Patricia Laurent Kullick, Guadalupe Nettel, Cristina Rivera Garza and Jorge Volpi, this work investigates the specificities and convergences of fictional writing in first person at the beginning of the 21st century. Whether the tales happen to be frankly fictional, supposedly autobiographical or autofictional, they all get away from the canonical example of autobiography and they infringe the border between authenticity and fiction. This thesis seeks to evidence the most significant characteristics of these writings which grant much importance to introspection, when the first-person narrator seeks into childhood memories or wonders about the own identity and relationship towards the around world and alterity. How do these novels reflect the contemporary concerns about the writing of the self? Which converging or diverging looks do they take at the self, as it is the main figure of narrative enunciation and universe?This work opens with a retrospective chapter about the main changes and pitfalls that the self-narratives have encountered since the success of traditional autobiography, based on Rousseau’s example. The past decades have been looking for alternatives to this canonical example and many writers often get away from the absolute requirement of authenticity.The second part endeavours to observe the many breaches in the narrators’ memory. In result, the autobiographical pact disappears in favour of texts which claim the prime importance of invention in the self-writing. Opposition between fiction and authenticity seems to be cracking apart: memorial activity includes a process of self-(re)invention which does not make it less “real”, quite the opposite.It is also clear that the topic of the double as an inside alter ego is recurrent, when the narrators go through metamorphosis and split personalities. This becoming other may be a synonym of a threatening dissolution of the self or, on the contrary, a sign of a claim of its changing, inconstant and essentially schizo nature.Finally, this work focuses on the determining role of alterity both in the process of identity and subjective construction, and in the story of it. The self gets to build itself up through the relationships with otherness. This stands both for the characters and for the novels, in which the introspective and auto-reflexive practices extend to the text itself, meaning a solid presence of metatextuality and transtextuality.By studying the introspective topic, this thesis actually wonders about the look these young Mexican writers take at the place of the self in a disillusioned or dislocated world, and at the possibilities of a renewal for the creative writing.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-10T11:07:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 WANNESSA CARDOSO SILVA.pdf: 1011543 bytes, checksum: 33330689cb09028192642236594c0d69 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-06-26 / This text, "The speech I metaliterário on Sun Casmurro, Machado de Assis", aims to analyze the autobiographical confessional writing related to the book Dom Casmurro, from the aspect of meta-language and the author-narrator character concealing the work, with a view in speech analysis and aesthetics of reception. The study aims to understand the work in its aspects discursive, aesthetic and recepcionais. In this sense, the critical approach is principle phenomenology and hermeneutics. / Este texto, O discurso do eu metaliterário em Dom Casmurro, de Machado de Assis , objetiva analisar a escrita autobiográfica confessional relacionada ao livro Dom Casmurro, sob o aspecto da metalinguagem e da dissimulação do autor-narrador personagem na obra, com vistas na análise do discurso e da estética da recepção. O estudo visa compreender a obra em seus aspectos discursivos, estético e recepcionais. Nesse sentido, a abordagem crítica tem como princípio a fenomenologia e a hermenêutica.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how ethos and choice of persona are used for self-representation in the autobiography Kriget är slut (2010) by Morgan Alling. The essay uses theories of self-representation in accordance with Aristotle and Roger D. Cherry, among others. The method of the essay is a thorough close textual analysis, mainly in accordance with Stephen Browne's definitions. The result shows that Alling uses the persona to give a voice of narration and attitude to the story and that ethos is used to write narration convincingly.

La nouvelle géographie symbolique de la santé mentale en Italie, étayant une prise en charge du bien-être psychique et social de l’individu par lui-même et la communauté, pourvoit une recomposition de la relation du corps en souffrance avec le corps social. Le désir de la reliance nourrit ainsi la création esthétique de soi par l’art autobiographique de personnes ordinaires, dévoilant des sujets en souffrance confrontés avec une nouvelle présence à eux-mêmes, les autres et le monde. La triangulation et l’analyse d’un corpus autobiographique d’écritures déposées auprès de la Fondation Archive National Journal Intime (Pieve Santo Stefano, Arezzo-Italie), et le corpus d’images, textes et autobiographies, réalisées dans le cadres des activités des Ateliers de l’Imaginaire Autobiographique (Catania-Italie), soutiennent une compréhension approfondie du désir d’autobiographie. L’analyse des syntaxes sensibles et des formes de sensibilités et consciences poétiques et mythiques collectives, découvre un imaginaire nocturne synthétique et dramatique étayant des corps autobiographiques qui prennent sens et support métaphorique et symbolique. Une sociologie de l’écriture de soi questionne ainsi des formes spécifiques de textualisation de l’imaginaire symbolique et social, nous montrant une société souhaitant d’être révélée à elle-même par ses errances dans la quête mythobiographique, découvrant le sens de notre existence et de notre époque. L’objet social et culturel mythanalysé des écritures de soi en souffrance, nous questionne en dernière analyse au sujet des transformations du système symbolique et des mutations des valeurs sociales. / The new symbolic geography of mental health in Italy, which sustains the psychic and social well-being of the individual through himself and the community, also favors the restructuring of the relationship of the body in distress with the social body. The desire of reliance feeds the aesthetic self-creation, the art of autobiography practiced by ordinary people, revealing suffering persons in relation with a new presence to themselves, others and the world. The triangulation and analysis of a autobiographical corpus of writing stored at the Fondazione Nazionale Archivio Diaristico (Pieve Santo Stefano, Arezzo-Italia), and the corpus of images, texts and autobiographies, carried out during the activities of the Ateliers dell’Immaginario Autobiografico (Catania-Italia), support a deep comprehension of the desire of autobiography. The analysis of sensitive syntax, the forms of sensitiveness and of the poetical, mythic and collective consciousness, discovers a synthetic and dramatic nocturnal imagery, revealing autobiographic body which acquires meaning and metaphorical and symbolic support. Therefore a sociology of the self-writing questions the specific forms of textualization of the symbolic and social imagery, showing us a society which tries to show itself through its wanderings of autobiographic research, discovering the meaning of our existence and of our time. The social and cultural subject myth-analyzed of the self-writings in suffering questions us finally regards the transformation of the symbolic system and the changings of social values.

In Anlehnung an das Self-Regulated-Strategy-Development-Modell von Harris und Graham (1996) wurde das Selbstregulatorische Aufsatztraining (SAT) zur Förderung der Schreibkompetenz bei Grundschülern der 4. und 5. Klasse entwickelt. SAT integriert die Vermittlung von Schreibstrategien (hier: „Erzählendes Schreiben“) mit Merkmalen selbstgesteuerten Lernens (Zielsetzung, strategisches Planen, Selbstbewertung und Selbstkorrektur). <br><br> Die Wirksamkeit des Trainings wurde in drei Studien untersucht: 1. Eine Pilotstudie diente der Überprüfung der prinzipiellen Eignung von SAT zur Förderung von Schreibleistungen bei Grundschülern der 5. Klassen (N = 42) und der Optimierung seiner Teilkomponenten und Vorgehensweisen. 2. In der Hauptuntersuchung wurden die Effektivität und Nachhaltigkeit des SAT-Programms bei Schülern der 4. Klasse (N = 154) im Vergleich zu zwei Bedingungen getestet: (a) der isolierten Einübung von Schreibstrategien (Aufsatztraining) und (b) konventionellem Aufsatzunterricht (Unterrichtskontrollgruppe). 3. In einer weiteren Studie wurde die Wirksamkeit des Trainings speziell bei Schülern mit ungünstigen Lernvoraussetzungen überprüft; die Studie diente zudem der Illustration des dabei gewählten Vorgehens am Einzelfall (N = 6). <br><br> Die ermittelten Befunde sprechen übereinstimmend dafür, dass die Kombination aus strategischem plus selbstregulatorischem Training (SAT) die stärksten und nachhaltigsten Effekte auf die Schreibleistung erzielt. Der Trainingseffekt generalisiert zudem auf die Erinnerungsleistung bei der freien Wiedergabe einer Kurzgeschichte. Schüler mit schwachen Aufsatzleistungen und ungünstigen Lernvoraussetzungen profitieren von dem SAT-Programm in besonderem Maße. <br><br> In der Diskussion werden Aufgaben für die zukünftige Forschung erörtert. Forschungsbedarf besteht u.a. hinsichtlich (a) einer stärkeren Verknüpfung von Schreibtrainings mit der kognitionspsychologischen Forschung; (b) der Dekomposition und gezielten Überprüfung der einzelnen Trainingskomponenten; (c) der Ausweitung des SAT-Programms auf andere Textgenre; (d) der Integration verfeinerter Revisionsstrategien in das Förderprogramm; und (e) dessen Implementierung in den Regelunterricht. / Extending on Harris and Graham′s (1996) Self-Regulated-Strategy-Development-Model, I designed an curriculum-integrated intervention program (SAT) to promote the composition skills of elementary school-age students. SAT combines the instruction of task strategies required to write good narratives with the explicit instruction of self-regulation procedures (goal setting, strategic planning, self-evaluation, self-correction). <br><br> Three studies examined the effectiveness of the training: 1. A pilot study investigated the viability of the SAT-program among 5th graders (N = 42) and served to refine its components and procedures. 2. In a sample of 4th graders (N = 154), the main study tested the strength and stability of the SAT effects in relation to two comparison groups: (a) Students who were taught the same set of task strategies but received no instruction in self-regulation procedures (strategy-only condition); (b) students who received conventional classroom teaching in composing (control condition). (3.) A third study served to examine the effectiveness of the SAT-program in a group of low achieving 5th graders and to illustrate its instructional steps in a number of single cases (N = 6). <br><br> Results obtained from these studies converge in showing that a writing program that conjointly addresses both task strategies and self-regulation procedures (SAT) is most effective in producing strong and lasting effects on elementary school students′ composing skills and generalization performance. Among all students, low achievers were most likely to benefit from the SAT-program. <br><br> The discussion highlights a number of issues for future research on writing. Specifically, it is argued that there is a need to (a) further explore the cognitive and meta-cognitive processes underlying good writing, (b) examine the effectiveness of specific training components incorporated in the present version of SAT, (c) crossvalidate the reported SAT effects with respect to various writing genre, (d) incorporate more elaborated revision strategies into the training program, and (e) implement components and procedures specified in SAT into conventional classroom teaching.