The "Pueblo and the Public" is a case study of a public issue as presented in newspapers. The issue is whether or not to raze the old Mexican part, the Pueblo, of downtown Tucson. The dissertation is in four parts and is described as follows. Part One defines terms and reviews theory relating speech to thought and society and develops an analytical approach to the research based on the framework of Ogden and Richards (1989). It concludes with a review of urban renewal as a national policy and as an academic debate that raised questions that were never resolved. Part Two is a geographical study of the Pueblo, within Tucson and its history. Geographic descriptions are based on archival information and interviews with old residents. Part Three describes the content of a newspaper text drawn from a 15-year coverage in Tucson's English-language daily newspapers. This text is examined as a story and analyzed in terms of its concepts and its schemes of reality. Part Four makes a comparison between the text's schemes of reality and geographic schemes of reference. A summary is made and the questions from the national debate are answered. The conclusion is that the Ogden and Richards' framework is useful in understanding the situation. The newspapers framed the public issue in a way that did not give the public an adequate or appropriate basis to make an informed decision about razing the Pueblo. The main findings are that speech transmits meaning in three distinct ways at the same time. First, it has form and sequence which expresses ideas having historical context. Second, the listener translates form and context into attitudinal schemes and responds to them. Third, form, context and situation are modified by symbols and meta-ideas. It is concluded that correctly interpreting the meaning of speech requires performing three different cross-referencing operations: (1) to where the action is located, (2) to antecedent action, and (3) to how the listener is situated.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/186054 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Gourley, John. |
| Contributors | Saarinen, Thomas F., Mann, Lawrence D., Zube, Ervin H., Velez Ibanez, Carlos |
| Publisher | The University of Arizona. |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) |
| Rights | Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. |
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