Browsing by Subject "discourse analysis"
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Item Characterization, Coordination, and Legitimization of Risk in Cross-Disciplinary Situations(2011-10-21) Andreas, Dorothy CollinsIn contemporary times, policy makers and risk managers find themselves required to make decisions about how to prevent or mitigate complex risks that face society. Risks, such as global warming and energy production, are considered complex because they require knowledge from multiple scientific and technical disciplines to explain the mechanisms that cause and/or prevent hazards. This dissertation focuses on these types of situations: when experts from different disciplines and professions interact to coordinate and legitimize risk characterizations. A review of the risk communication literature highlights three main critiques: (1) Risk communication research historically treats expert groups as uniform and does not consider the processes by which they construct and legitimize risk understandings. (2) Risk communication research tends to privilege transmissive and message-centered approached to communication rather than examine the discursive management and coordination of different risk understandings. (3) Rather than assuming the taken-for-granted position that objective scientific knowledge is the source of legitimacy for technical risk understandings, risk communication research should examine the way that expert groups legitimate their knowledge claims and emphasize the transparency of norms and values in public discourse. This study performs an in-depth analysis of the case of cesium chloride. Cesium chloride is a radioactive source that has several beneficial uses medical, research, and radiation safety applications. However, it has also been identified as a security threat due to the severity of its consequences if used in a radiological dispersal device, better known as a ?dirty bomb.? A recent National Academy of Sciences study recommended the replacement or elimination of cesium chloride sources. This case is relevant to the study of risk communication among multidisciplinary experts because it involves a wide variety of fields to discuss and compare terrorism risks and health risks. This study uses a multi-perspectival framework based on Bakhtin?s dialogism that enables entrance into the discourse of experts? risk communication from different vantage points. Three main implications emerge from this study as seen through the lens of dialogism. (1) Expert risk communication in cross-disciplinary situations is a tension-filled process. (2) Experts who interact in cross-disciplinary situations manage the tension between discursive openness and closure through the use of shared resources between the interpretative repertoires, immersion and interaction with other perspectives, and the layering of risk logics with structural resources. (3) The emergence of security risk Discourse in a post-9/11 world involves a different set of resources and strategies that risk communication studies need to address. In the case of cesium chloride issue, the interaction of experts negotiated conflict about the characterization of this isotope as a security threat or as being useful and unique. Even though participants and organizations vary in how they characterize cesium chloride, most maintained some level of balance between both characterizations?a balance that was constructed through their interactions with each other. This project demonstrates that risk characterizations risks shape organizational decisions and priorities in both policy-making and regulatory organizations and private-sector and functional organizations.Item Code-switching in Arab media discourse(2009-08) Tong, Mu; Wilkins, Karin Gwinn, 1962-; Mohammad, MohammadThis study examines the language situation in the media discourse on The Opposite Direction, al-Jazeera’s flagship talk show hosted by Faisal al-Qasim. It investigates the phenomenon of code-switching between Standard Arabic and different spoken vernaculars during the talk exchange. Theories of code-switching proposed by Gumperz, Giles, and Myers-Scotton et al. are introduced after the history of Arabic discourse analysis is briefly discussed. In order to explain under what conditions code-switching happens, I choose to observe and analyze instances of code-switching in four episodes of the program, focusing on the communicative functions and motivations for language choice. The applicability of relevant theories is examined to find the theories that best account for speakers’ engaging in code-switching in the pan-Arab media discourse.Item Communal Formations: Development of Gendered Identities in Early Twentieth-Century Women?s Periodicals(2013-05-03) Monteiro, Emily Anne JandaWomen?s periodicals at the start of the twentieth-century were not just recorders but also producers of social and cultural change. They can be considered to both represent and construct gender codes, offering readers constantly evolving communal identities. This dissertation asserts that the periodical genre is a valuable resource in the investigation of communal identity formation and seeks to reclaim for historians of British modernist feminism a neglected publication format of the early twentieth century. I explore the discursive space of three unique women?s periodicals, Bean na h?ireann, the Freewoman, and Indian Ladies Magazine, and argue that these publications exemplify the importance of the early twentieth-century British woman?s magazine-format periodical as a primary vehicle for the communication of feminist opinions. In order to interrogate how the dynamic nature of each periodical is reflected and reinforced in each issue, I rely upon a tradition of critical discourse analysis that evaluates the meaning created within and between printed columns, news articles, serial fiction, poetry, and short sketches within each publication. These items are found to be both representative of a similar value of open and frank discourse on all matters of gender subordination at that time and yet unique to each community of readers, contributors and editors. The dissertation then discusses the disparate physical, political, and social locations of each text, impact of such stressors on the periodical community, and the relationships between these three journals. Ultimately, I argue that each journal offers a unique model of contested feminist identity specific to the society and culture from which the periodical arises, and that is established within editorial columns and articles and practiced within the figurative space of poetry and fiction selections in each journal.Item Education or Educaci?n? A Comparative Analysis of the Discourses of Latino/A Students and Three Community Colleges(2014-12-18) Flacy, Kathleen AnneThe main question addressed in this dissertation relates to the discourses that Latino/a students and community colleges bring to the educational table. From this question come corollary questions concerning the concept of education and the linguistic and cultural realities that inform the conception of educaci?n. Using theories of cognition, metaphor, and sociocultural linguistics, this dissertation illustrates that overlaps and divergences in the semantic conceptualization of the constructs of education and educaci?n, as well as their actualizations in practice, are informed by the habits of categorization that are held by persons involved in the American educational system and by students who come from the various Latino/a communities in the United States. In what might be termed the contact zone of education and educaci?n this dissertation addresses the questions of discursive stasis, resistance, transcultural negotiation, values hierarchies, and positive discourses that contribute to individuals? success?defined as achievement of the goals of the individual within the educational milieu. Examination of the rhetorical and discourse literacies that underlie the communicative habits and expectations of Latino/a students and the instructors, administrators, and the community colleges involved in this study shows that educaci?n socializes individuals to value familismo, personalismo, simpat?a, respeto, confianza, cortes?a, humilidad, and empat?a. Community colleges that address these values supportively do so by engaging in positive discourses not only in their written forms, but in terms of institutional and classroom level actions.Item Status & solidarity through codeswitching: three plays by Dolores Prida(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Anderson, Sheri L.This analysis employs the sociolinguistic framework of status and solidarity (Holmes, 2001) to examine the use of codeswitching on the relational development between the characters in three plays by Cuban-American playwright Dolores Prida. The three plays discussed are Beautiful Se?oritas (1978), Coser y cantar (1981) and Bot?nica (1991). Linguistic scholars recognize the lack of linguistic analysis of literary texts; specifically, codeswitching at present is not fully explored as a linguistic phenomenon in written contexts. Furthermore, Prida's works have never before been appraised using linguistic methodology. Hence, this work aims to add to scholarly research in the fields of codeswitching, discourse analysis, and literary linguistics, using the status and solidarity framework to examine the codeswitching in Dolores Prida's plays. Dolores Prida is a feminist and Hispanic dramatist whose central theme is the search for identity of Hispanic immigrants, specifically women, in the United States today. Due to her ideological stance, it is expected that a strong emphasis on solidarity rather than status and the use of affective rather than referential speech functions are present in the relationships in her plays. Accordingly, the analysis of Bot?nica reveals that indeed codeswitching between the characters does affect their relational development in maintaining solidarity and intimacy. However, the relationships found in Beautiful Se?oritas and Coser y cantar do not offer such conclusions, due to the variable nature of the relationships identified. Further analysis of these and other literary works will more accurately determine benefits of the status and solidarity framework as applied to the codeswitching research.Item What Is Writing? Student Practices and Perspectives on the Technologies of Literacy in College Composition(2011-10-21) Spring, Sarah CatherineDespite the increasing presence of technology in composition classrooms, students have not yet accepted the idea of multiple writing technologies ? in fact, most students do not yet fully understand the role of the word processor in their individual writing process. The research goal of this dissertation is therefore to examine the physical experience of writing, both in and outside of a computer composition classroom, from students? perspective by investigating their definitions of writing and how they understand the relationship between writing and technology. To highlight student writing practices, the analysis uses both qualitative and quantitative data from two classes in a PC computer lab at Texas A and M University, one freshman composition and one advanced composition course. Several important patterns have emerged from the analysis of this data, and each of the main chapters focuses on a different student perspective. Chapter II argues that students tend to view computers simply as instruments or tools, an understanding that affects how they perceive and work with classroom computers. Because how they perceive and approach computers affects their writing, Chapter III examines student theories of writing and technology. The discussion postings indicate that students write differently at home than they do in the classroom, and this distinction creates context-bound theories. They are more familiar with the personal context, often exhibiting an inability to translate their ease with this type of writing or computer functions into an academic environment. Their makeshift theories lead to writing practices, and Chapter IV examines student responses for patterns regarding how writing happens. Specifically, discomfort with academic writing leads them to compose with a computer because they believe technology makes this process faster and easier; however, their choice of medium can actually derail writing when made for reasons of ease or convenience. This study finds that physical set-up of the classroom and the curriculum are factors that have perpetuated these problems. Despite these obstacles, a computer classroom approach has unique advantages, and a new approach is proposed, one that focuses on developing rhetorical flexibility or the ability of students to produce multiple texts in multiple contexts.