Digital Commons Network^™

Translation Studies, Cultural Context, And Dante, Reuven Tsur

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Translation Studies, Cultural Context, and Dante," Reuven Tsur explores limits of legitimacy in translation studies. Tsur's approach is a critique of the theoretical assumptions and their application in Edoardo Crisafulli's cultural interpretation of Seamus Heaney's decisions in translating the Ugolino episode in Dante's Inferno. Crisafulli claims that Heaney's choices show internal consistency, and can be accounted for by appealing to "the Irish situational context." Instead, Tsur argues that Crisafulli's cultural interpretations are arbitrary and that a more satisfactory account can be offered through an analysis of constraints within a conception of the aesthetic object as an elegant …

Examples Of The Motif Of The Shrew In European Literature And Film, Louise O. Vasvári

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Examples of the Motif of the Shrew in European Literature and Film" Louise O. Vasvári presents the shrew-taming story as a masterplot of both Eastern and Western folklore and literature concerned with establishing the appropriate power dynamic between a married couple. Vasvári firts reviews the comparative groundwork of the story she has documented in her earlier studies of the topic. In addition to tracing the bundle of motifs that make up the shrew story from medieval Arabic and European versions to the present, she then devotes attention to Hungarian folklore traditions. In the second part of the …

The Effects Of American Influence On British Culture, Gloria Jean Neely

Theses Digitization Project

This study notes similarities and differences between the United States (U.S.) and the United Kingdom (U.K.). Study findings suggest that while at first glance the United Kingdom and the United States may seem similar in many ways, the differences between these countries are great, making each one unique.

Latent Maximum Entropy Principle For Statistical Language Modeling, Shaojun Wang, Ronald Rosenfeld, Yunxin Zhao

Kno.e.sis Publications

We describe a unified probabilistic framework for statistical language modeling, the latent maximum entropy principle. The salient feature of this approach is that the hidden causal hierarchical dependency structure can be encoded into the statistical model in a principled way by mixtures of exponential families with a rich expressive power. We first show the problem formulation, solution, and certain convergence properties. We then describe how to use this machine learning technique to model various aspects of natural language, such as syntactic structure of sentences, semantic information in a document. Finally, we draw a conclusion and point out future research directions.

Texture Formation In An Expository Genre, Yik Sheng Lee

Student Works (2000-2009)

The purpose of this research is to analyse and determine the language resources that are used to produce Malay essays as required by the local assessment examinations. Essay writing skill is vital for students who are sitting for these examinations. Although such a skill is important students are often left on their own to figure out what resources are available and the ways to use them in order to produce an essay which belongs to the expository genre. The theoretical framework used in this researchs need to fulfil two major requirements. First the theory needs to link the concept of …

Analisis Teks Ucapan Politik Bahasa Melayu Dari Segi Retorik : Satu Kajian Kes Terhadap Ucapan Politik Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Ai Chat Lee

Student Works (2000-2009)

The purpose of this research is 10 analyse the various rhetorical techniques used in 1he political speeches delivered by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. The main objective of this research is to provide a systematic textual analysis of the speeches, from the qualita1ive as well as the quantitative aspects. In addition, relevant phrases that can be classified under various rhetorical techniques are identified and presented. Grimes' (/975) model of discourse analysis is adopted in a modified form and used to analyse three selected texts o f Mahathir 's political speeches. The three texts are Mahathir's speeches during the UMNO General Assembly in …

Pengalihan Kod Dan Percampuran Kod Dalam Komuniti Cina Peranakan Kelantan, Choo Bee Kang

Student Works (2000-2009)

The primary aim of this research is to discuss the communicative behaviour of the local Chinese ( Peranakan Chinese) in Tanah Merah Kelantan. Two aspects embodied in this research are code-switching and code-mixing. This research is also presented because of a few reasons. Firstly, it is aimed to see which types of communicative behaviour occurs more frequently in this community. Secondly, to see the frequency between social variables (sex , age and education) and communicative behaviour. Thirdly, this attempt is also made to see the language choice or type of linguistic code of the informants. The second chapter exposes a …

Conversational Implicature In Spoken Discourse : An Analysis Of A Radio Chat Programme, Joyce S. Ariadurray

Student Works (2000-2009)

This study focuses on conversational implicature in the informal spoken discourse of a Malaysian radio chat programme. The study observes that conversation consists of utterances which have literal and non-literal meaning or underlying, intended and implied meaning. The study examines the implied meaning conveyed by the speakers, the inference made by the listeners and the strategies employed. Data is collected by recording sample programmes and the spoken discourse is examined using the Gricean framework, that is, the Cooperative Principle, the four conversational maxims and the violations of the maxims. For each maxim violation, the researcher also identifies and quantifies the …

The Nonverbal Communication Of Pain As Recognized By Alternative Health Care Providers, Jodi L. Pope

Masters Theses

Recognizing nonverbal messages of pain in a health care setting is essential. The nonverbal communication of pain is a communication aspect typically overlooked in modern health care environments. This research surveyed alternative health care providers to determine what nonverbal behaviors they recognize as pain indicators and how they react to those behaviors. Massage therapists and chiropractors from a Midwest county filled out surveys and participated in a focus group. Fifty nonverbal pain indicators, such as guarding body parts, postural inequalities, gait, and clenched fists, among others, were charted. Several other topics such as learning how to determine nonverbal pain indicators, …

A Comparative Study Of Standard American English And Non-Standard American English Accents, Casey S. Gleason

Masters Theses

Through the birth and maturation of the American society, dominant cultures have developed and become the accepted norm of America. However, with the constant flow of immigrants entering America, a variety of cultures and languages entered, also. The English language has remained the dominant language, while Standard American English has remained the dominant accent. Those who do not display Standard American English (SAE) often fall victim to a lower level of speaker credibility than those who speak SAE. One's sex may also affect speaker credibility due to different communication styles. The affect one's combination of accent and sex has on …

Rethinking Our Approach To The Basic Course: Making Ethics The Foundation Of Introduction To Public Speaking, Jon. A. Hess

Basic Communication Course Annual

The basic public speaking course is often taught from a standpoint of effectiveness. That approach can be problematic due to the dangers of technique. The use of ethics as a foundation for public speaking can overcome this drawback and has other advantages. Included in these advantages are its fidelity to the subject matter, promoting more responsible use of power, improved fit with the liberal arts mission of higher education, and better meeting student needs.

Issues in implementing an ethics-based course are discussed, such as identifying ethical issues and engaging in dialogue. The model is illustrated through a description of one …

What's Basic About The Basic Course? Enriching The Ethosystem As A Corrective For Consumerism, Roy Schwartzman

Basic Communication Course Annual

A marketplace mentality featuring the student as consumer reaches deeply into educational practice today. This essay examines the roots and implications of framing public speaking education in economic terms. The amorality of the marketplace could be supplemented by closer attention to how values infuse the communication process. A value-laden communication environment, or ethosystem, may contribute to greater student awareness of their obligations to others and yield a fuller description of communication education.

Communication And Professional Civility As A Basic Service Course: Dialogic Praxis Between Department And Situated In An Academic House, Ronald C. Arnett, Janie M. Harden Fritz

Basic Communication Course Annual

Communication departments frequently offer basic service courses to other campus departments or schools. A communication course sensitive to the mission of the university or college of which it is a part, as well as to its own mission, allows programs that include such a course in their curriculum to distinguish themselves from competing programs. Additionally, such a mission-sensitive course further defines departmental and university identity, assisting in institutionalizing a mission. Offering such a course provides an opportunity for dialogic praxis to occur between departments situated within the context of a local institution. Dialogic praxis involves knowledge of one's own position, …

Investigating Processes Of Social Knowledge Construction In Online Environments, Catherine Mcloughlin, Joseph Luca

Research outputs pre 2011

On-line forums provide opportunity and potential for collaborative work, dialogue and study that can increase the flexibility of learning while motivating participants. By enabling teacher-learner and learner-learner interaction online systems can support the essential elements of a learning conversation by providing scope for discussion, dialogue and interaction. It is argued that this medium presents a socio-cognitive educational domain, unique in its potential for dialogue, participation and collaboration and a departure from face-to-face didactic paradigms of learning. Often, the types of verbal interactions and the means by which new knowledge is created on-line are not well understood. The paper provides frameworks …

Technology As The Representative Anecdote In Popular Discourses Of Health And Medicine, Lynn M. Harter, Phyllis Japp

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Using a Burkean framework (1969), this article approaches medical dramas as cultural texts to be read for dominant meanings of health and health care. Burke’s representative anecdote illuminates the melding of science, technology, and healing in popular discourses of health, establishing technological intervention as the norm and marginalizing nontechnological (i.e., alternative) forms of health care. Popular entertainment reinforces this anecdote in narratives of healing as technological competence triumphing over nature.

Finding The Meanings Of College Drinking: An Analysis Of Fraternity Drinking Stories, Thomas Workman

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

College drinking has traditionally been studied from a public health perspective that attempts to quantify behavior as a means toward description, explanation, and intervention. This article offers a critical and cultural approach to understanding the meanings and functions of high-risk drinking and the ways in which those meanings are reproduced within the culture. Data were collected via an ethnographic study of fraternity members at a large midwestern university to explore the communication of excessive drinking norms. Viewed from various narrative and structural theories, the study examines collected drinking stories as a source for analyzing the construction of meanings surrounding drunkenness …

A Genre Analysis Of Advertisements In A Local Newspaper, Moi Moi Yong

Student Works (2000-2009)

This study attempts to investigate the organisation of advenisements on private institutions of higher learning taken from 'The Star' daily and to provide a descriptive account of how the advertisements are structured Twenty advertisements on different private institutions of higher learning are selected and analysed using the nine move structure analysis adapted by S. Kathpalia (1992). This genre based move structure is employed as a format to study the structure of these advertisements. It is revealed that there is a uniform pattern of organisation of the elements in the advertisements. An eight move structure is identified. It is also found …

The Prayer Of The Holy Name In Eastern And Western Spiritual Traditions: A Theoretical, Cross-Cultural, And Intercultural Prayer Dialogue, E. James Baesler

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

Investigates the Holy Name prayer from the perspectives of eastern Hindu and both eastern and western Christian spiritual traditions. Interpersonal prayer as spiritual communication; Historical and theoretical dialogue; Comparison of the method and function of Eastern and Western Holy Name prayer traditions.

Monday Morning And The Millennium : Cultural Studies, Scepticism And The Concept Of Power, Mark Gibson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The thesis examines the use or the concept of power in cultural studies, offering a revisionist perspective on the history or this use. The dominant approach to questions or power in the field, it is argued, is a 'rationalist' one: the various phenomena comprehended under the concept are conceived ultimately as instances or the one phenomenon. This approach implies that positions in relation to power share a common referent allowing them to be assessed according to general criteria of 'correctness' or theoretical adequacy. It also allows developments in debates around power to be represented in terms or a narrative or …

Spartan Daily, December 1, 2000, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 115, Issue 62

A Quest For Common Ground: Communication Factors Among Latino Patients, Medical Practitioners And Interpreters In The Daviess County, Kentucky Area, Sandra Merkel-Finley

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Statistical evaluation of the number of Hispanics in the United States in a given year varies. However, all data suggest that the Hispanic population will become the largest ethnic minority in the United States in the new millennium. This research illuminates for health care providers and interpreters cultural factors to consider in the delivery of patient-centered and efficacious care for the ethnic patient, specifically the Latino. The research project answered the question What culture-related factors impact effective communication between Mexican patients and American medical nurses in the Daviess County, Kentucky area? The project focused on the interpersonal aspects of culture …

The Internet In Turkey And Pakistan: A Comparative Analysis, Peter Wolcott, Seymour E. Goodman

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

The Global Diffusion of the Internet Project was initiated in 1997 to study the diffusion and absorption of the Internet to, and within, many diverse countries. This research has resulted in an ongoing series of reports and articles that have developed an analytic framework for evaluating the Internet within countries and applied it to more than 25 countries. (Seehttp://mosaic.unomaha.edu/gdi.html for links to some of these reports and articles.)

The current report applies the analytic framework to compare and contrast the Internet experiences of Turkey and Pakistan, through mid-2000. Although historically these countries have not been closely related, there are …

University Reporter - Vol. 05, No. 04 - December 2000, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1996-2009, University Reporter

No abstract provided.

Concepts Of World Literature, Comparative Literature, And A Proposal, Marián Gálik

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Concepts of World Literature, Comparative Literature, and a Proposal," Marián Gálik surveys the concept of world literature as it occurs within comparative literature based on Goethe's Weltliteratur. Given its recurrent yet problematic occurrence, he proposes a way in which comparatists can acknowledge and address the problems of the concept of a world literature. The concept is surveyed across various texts and studies and is mapped out in accordance with the ways in which it has been defined and discussed. The picture that emerges is the problem of national delimitations within the context of an international setting. Gálik …

Comparative Literature And The Culture Of The Context, Jan Walsh Hokenson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Comparative Literature and the Culture of the Context," Jan Walsh Hokenson poses a series of interrogatives around the question of what, as comparatists, we have learned about "literature in the context of the culture it represents" (Mario J. Valdés). She argues that in theoretical terms, culture has become the new vessel for the old wine of sources and influences, and that global intercultural contexts will change the analytical categories for comparatists in the coming millennium. In Hokenson's opinion, if comparative literature is to survive it must regain the panoptic view, and if it is to thrive as …

Comparative Literature In India, Amiya Dev

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity. He therefore argues that to speak of an Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic. Such a characterization, he urges, either overlooks or obscures manifest interrelations and affinities. His article compares the unity and the diversity thesis, and identifies the relationship between Indian commonality and differences as the prime site of comparative …

Comparative Literature In Slovenia, Kristof Jacek Kozak

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Comparative Literature in Slovenia," Kristof Jacek Kozak provides a historical overview of the practice of theory in the discipline of comparative literature in Slovenia. Despite its small size and relative low profile, Slovenia is taken as an exemplar within comparative literature scholarship. Kozak observes that the development of comparative literature in Slovenia may be characterized by an attempt to both arbitrate and mediate between distinct poles. On the one hand, Slovenian scholarship has felt the need to secure or determine itself in accordance with its own interests and concerns. On the other hand, it has recognized the …

Theory, Period Styles, And Comparative Literature As Discipline, Slobodan Sucur

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Theory, Period Styles, and Comparative Literature as Discipline," Slobodan Sucur attempts to answer the following question: Can a rapprochement be brought about between various, often antagonistic, literary-theoretical views and the concept of comparative literature itself, which requires accord, consensus, agreement, etc., for it to function as a concrete body and discipline? Sucur attempts dealing with this question in three parts of the paper: First, he establishes a relationship/link between the theoretical discord of today (humanism, formalism, deconstruction, etc.) and the high theorizing which began during the Jena-Berlin phase of Romanticism (Shelling, Hegel, F. Schlegel, etc.); secondly, he …

Comparative Literature In The United States, Manuela Mourão

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Comparative Literature in the United States," Manuela Mourão offers a historical overview of the debates about comparative literature as a discipline, from the early years of its institutionalization in the United States until the present. Mourão summarizes the most pointed -- and anxious -- interventions of prominent scholars in the field and she discusses the permanent sense of crisis that has typically been part of the discipline. Further, Mourão links the permanent anxiety of the discipline with the prescriptive tendencies that have continued to endure until the present. She then looks at the debates that followed the …

Comparative Literature And The Ideology Of Metaphor, East And West, Karl S.Y. Kao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West," Karl S.Y. Kao offers a comparative reading of the ideological function of metaphor within Eastern and Western thinking. Nietzsche is recognized as the earliest serious challenger to the concepts of meaning and truth within the West, whilst Derrida and de Man are discussed with respect to their conception that figurality is inherent within -- and integral to -- Western philosophical and literary discourse. Parallel to this conception of conceptuality is the Eastern view of language and literature. Kao notes that the Western opposition between logic and rhetoric …