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Transformative Subjects: American Children’S Periodicals, 1855-1905, Emily R. Dehaven

Theses and Dissertations--English

Through this dissertation, I explore the ways that authors and editors use the form of children’s periodicals to discuss questions of childhood independence, the structure of the family, and the balance of power between children and adults with regards to literary texts. I examine the ways in which adults and children negotiate control over the periodicals and over the images of transformation present within those texts. Periodicals offer a unique opportunity for interaction between readers and editors. Magazines and newspapers encouraged readers to write into the magazine to offer their own insights and opinions. Readers of children’s magazines even had …

Curious Natures: Constructing Queer Ecologies In Early America, Richard Lee Parmer Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation argues that early American writers often constructed queer ecologies in order to naturalize Anglo-American civilization and justify its expansion into Native American territories. Since there is so little textual evidence on the subject, the major challenge to studying sexuality in early America is approaching sexuality studies creatively—to broaden both our understanding of what counts as sexual discourse and our frameworks for analyzing it. My dissertation addresses this challenge through what many ecocritical scholars of sexuality call queer ecology. In their groundbreaking anthology on the topic, Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erikson remind us that, historically and in the present, …

Syncretic Immersion: Tolkien’S Languages As History, Artifacts, And Meta-Narratives, Stewart Raymond Zdrojowy

Online Theses and Dissertations

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth has been dissected and researched by philologists, medievalists, and literary theorists for decades. Though his work with languages (both historical and invented) has garnered attention over the past few decades, few scholars have looked at his languages in terms of their rhetorical functions within the narrative (as history), with the narrative (as artifacts), and without (as cultural participation). Mark Wolf’s theories on immersion is applied to Tolkien’s legendarium and illuminates his works as uniquely fixated in several modes of immersion at once. Narrative immersion is utilized to understand Tolkien’s works as a furthering of cultural values, languages, …

Interpreting Minorness And Minor Characters In The Victorian Novel, Grace Pregent

Dissertations

An unprecedented and staggering wealth of characters floods the Victorian novel with its rich social representation of the nineteenth century. in reading these capacious narratives that seemingly accumulate objects, plots, and people, critics continuously privilege plot and minimize or dismiss the intricate participation of minor characters in the construction of meaning. Studies of literary characterization have classically struggled to articulate a theory of character that moves beyond reductive dichotomies€”flat or round, major or minor€”but that does not become inflated and cumbersome. Despite a lack of comprehensive critical attention, minor characters are no minor matter, and the brevity of their textual …

Thinking With Christian Existentialism: Freedom In Burke’S Logology And Berdyaev’S Dostoevsky, Steven J. Mailloux

English Faculty Works

Kenneth Burke’s logology is a way of thinking about how to understand the use of language—what he calls “symbolic action”—and how to use language to make sense of various human practices, including interpretive acts. This is a dialectic in thought between rhetoric as language-use and interpretation as making-sense. In The Rhetoric of Religion Burke’s theotropic logology uses theology to interpret symbolic action and symbolic action to interpret theology. Burke extends to other interpretive projects this same rhetorical-hermeneutic strategy of analogically translating words from one domain into another, from one meaning into another. This strategy is one way Burke thinks with …

A Socioeconomic Analysis Of Francophone And Anglophone West Africa, Jackson Gagne

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project seeks to examine and analyze the socioeconomic performances of four West-African countries; two from Francophone (French-speaking) West Africa and two from Anglophone (English-speaking) West Africa. It will tackle questions such as:

• What is the current socioeconomic condition of countries in this region?
• Which country is most suitable for investment?
• Is there a marked difference between the Francophone and Anglophone countries of West Africa?

And many more.

Nine Stories And The Society Of The Spectacle: An Exploration Into The Alienation Of The Individual In The Post-War Era, Margaret E. Geddy

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the thematic links between three of J. D. Salinger’s short stories published in Nine Stories (“A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” “Down at the Dinghy,” and “Teddy”), ultimately arguing that it is a short-story cycle rooted in the quandary posed by the suicide of Seymour Glass. This conclusion is reached by assessing the influence of T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” on these stories, something that is understood through the Marxist frame of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.

Effects Of E-Learning Based On Microlearning Approach On Undergraduate Students’ English Pronunciation, Natcha Boonyabenjarit

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This study aimed 1) to develop an e-learning based on the microlearning approach and 2) to examine quality of the developed e-learning. To examine the quality, three research instruments including pretest and posttest, a perception survey questionnaire and a quality evaluation form were used. The sample group consisted of 21 Thai undergraduate students in Faculty of Education at Chulalongkorn University. Descriptive statistics which were mean and standard deviation (SD) and one sample t-test were employed for the data analysis. The findings from one sample t-test, at a significance level of .05, illustrated the students’ noteworthy improvement of the pronunciation skills …

Humayun Ahmed And Archival Hauntings: The Subaltern Experience Of The 1971 Liberation War Of Bangladesh As Portrayed In Debi, Nilima Islam

Dissertations and Theses

In this paper, I argue how Humayun Ahmed's Debi offers insight into the function that archives play in creating radical nationalism in a country like Bangladesh; how these archives work to consolidate political power for a select few, and how they further subjugate and silence the country’s subalterns.

Interlanguage Pragmatics: An Investigation Of Pragmatic Transfer In Responses To English Tag Questions By L1 Thai Learners, Wattana Wattananukij

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The research investigated pragmatic transfer in responses to English tag questions by L1 Thai learners based on the theory of interlanguage pragmatics, specifically pragmatic transfer (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993). There were two participant groups: a native control group and two experimental groups. The control group consisted of three native English speakers formulating the baseline data. The experimental groups were categorized according to their English proficiency levels: the intermediate and the advanced groups, with 16 participants in the learners’ group. An oral discourse completion task and a written discourse completion task (Blum-Kulka, 1982) were employed to elicit the participants’ responses to …

Systematicity Of L1 Thai Learners’ L2 English Interlanguage Of ‘Wish-Clauses’, Rawisiree Suteerapongsit

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The current study aimed to investigate the production of L2 English ‘wish-clauses’ by L1 Thai learners, based on the Interlanguage Hypothesis (Corder, 1981; Selinker, 1972, 1992). It was hypothesized that L1 Thai learners showed systematicity in their interlanguage in the use of ‘wish-clauses’ and that their IL was shaped by language transfer and transfer of training, which are among the psychological processes of IL construction. English ‘wish-clauses’ examined in the study were three types of hypothetical or counterfactual wish: wish about the present, wish about the past, and wish about the future. A Cloze Test and a Situation Task were …

A Corpus-Driven Study Of The English Present Perfect In General And Textbook Corpora, Chanakarn Chareonkul

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Corpus linguistic research has consistently shown that there is an interconnectedness between patterns and meanings in language use (Hunston and Francis, 2000; Römer, 2006). With regard to the present perfect, little attention has been paid to the relationship between verb patterns and meanings expressed through the tense. This may be one of the reasons why second language learners frequently encounter difficulties in mastering the English present perfect. As Yoshimura et al. (2014) argue, language learners are likely to have a problem with the form/pattern-meaning mapping in the use of the present perfect. To fill this gap, the present study takes …

The Effects Of Project-Based Writing Instruction On Writing Ability And Critical Thinking Skills Of Thai Efl Undergraduate Students, Apapan Ruengkul

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This present study aimed to (1) investigate the effects of project-based writing instruction on writing ability of Thai EFL undergraduate students, (2) examine the effects of project-based writing instruction on critical thinking skills of Thai EFL undergraduate students, and (3) explore the attitudes of Thai EFL undergraduate students towards project-based writing instruction. This study employed a mixed-method research design with a one-group, pre-test-post-test design to collect both quantitative data and qualitative data. The study participants were 24 first-year undergraduate students at Srinakharinwirot University. Five research instruments were created to elicit data including the pre-test and post-test of writing ability and …

Stress Patterns And Metalinguistic Knowledge Before And After Praxis Intervention On The Pronunciation Of English Derivational Suffixed Words By Thai Learners, Chedtinee Piyapattaranop

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This research study investigated the stress patterns and metalinguistic knowledge of Thai learners on the pronunciation of English derivational suffixed words. The study compared how the learners performed before and after the praxis intervention, where the stress placement rules of English suffixed words were explicitly taught and trained. Thirty first-year university students were selected by stratified random sampling based on their proficiency levels and were grouped into the high and low proficiency groups. They took the pre-test which was the read aloud task of the base and the suffixed words. Their performance was recorded, and the stress patterns were analysed. …

Semiotic Landscape Of Bangkok Sex Tourism Spaces, Joey Andrew Lucido Santos

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Sex tourism, though a potentially significant site of investigation, has received limited scholarly attention in the semiotic landscape research in the past two decades. Addressing this gap, I interrogate the discursive construction of Bangkok sex tourism spaces focusing on Silom areas, Cowboy alley, Nana Plaza. The study aims to identify the patterns of linguistic and semiotic choices in sexed signs, analyze the role of linguistic and semiotic resources in indexing gender and sexuality, and investigate the discursive construction of Bangkok sex tourism spaces. The data comprised 122 photographed sexed signs. I also did the non-participant observation in the areas investigated …

The Effects Of Project-Based Drama Approach Via Blended Learning Environment On Thai Efl Undergraduated Student's Speaking Skills, Tunyaphoom Phu-Ngamthong

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The objectives of this study were 1) to examine the effectiveness of project-based drama approach via blended learning environment on English speaking skills, and 2) to investigate the students’ opinions towards project-based drama approach via blended learning environment on English speaking skills.The framework was derived from the combination of three models; Teaching English through Drama for Oral Skills Model, the Project-Based Learning framework, and the Blended Learning Model. The study was conducted face-to-face and online for 14 consecutive weeks in the second semester of Academic Year of 2020 at Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University. The participants were 51 third-year students who …

Avoidance Of The English Passive Construction By L1 Chinese Learners, Yang Wang

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This research investigated avoidance behaviour as one of the strategies L2 learners may resort to because of L1-L2 differences, or the non-existence of L2 structures for L1 learners (Schachter 1974; Dagut and Laufer 1985). Schachter (1974) proposed the Avoidance Behaviour Hypothesis, whereby L2 learners were likely to avoid using some L2 structures due to the aforementioned difficulties in L2 acquisition. Later researchers, i.e. Dagut and Laufer (1985), and Laufer and Eliasson (1993), claimed that L1-L2 differences tended to play a role, or at least would be the 'best predictor' (1993, p46) of avoidance. However, recent researchers, i.e. Thiamtawan and Pongpairoj …

Development Of Out-Of-Class Extensive Reading To Enhance Perceived English Reading Self-Efficacy Of Underserved Students, Chanisara Tangkijmongkol

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Perceived English reading self-efficacy is one of the essential factors that facilitate development of English language ability as it motivates learners to read and learn. The present study aimed to investigate the outcomes of out-of-class extensive reading to enhance perceived reading self-efficacy of underserved student and to explore underserved students' attitudes towards out-of-class extensive reading. In this study, a mixed-method research design, with a particular focus on the use of narrative inquiry, was employed, and the study participants consisted of five lower secondary students in a slum community in Bangkok, Thailand. The purposively selected participants were between 14 and 15 …

Speculative Satire In Twentieth-Century Utopia And Dystopia, Benjamin Craig Parker

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This study integrates the literature and correspondence of such Inklings authors as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien into the arc of Commonwealth utopian and dystopian literature of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because utopian authors such as Samuel Butler, William Morris, and H. G. Wells employ the utopian form pioneered by Thomas More but largely abandon More’s Augustinian Catholic view of human nature, their works frequently fail to address the impediments to justice and equity that More satirically addresses in Utopia. Thus, the speculative fiction of later Augustinian Christian authors such as Lewis and Tolkien complements …

Utopian Discourse In Contemporary Speculative Fiction, Casey Alan Jergenson

Dissertations

I argue in this dissertation that utopianism is a vibrant form of cultural production in the post-Cold War period, despite the paucity of recent texts depicting €œgood€ societies. Most literary historical accounts of the genre place the decline of the utopian narrative in the early twentieth century, with a brief resurgence in the 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary culture has since become inundated with dystopian and post-apocalyptic visions of the future. If we take this generic distribution at face-value, it seems symptomatic of the utopian idea's retreat from cultural production since the 1980s. Influential critics have resisted this narrative by demonstrating …

So How Does Elastic Grammar Create Meaning In Children’S Literature?: Storytelling And Elastic Grammar In Haroun And The Sea Of Stories (1990), Inkheart (2003), And A Monster Calls (2011), Kate Lomas Glendenning

Theses : Honours

So why is grammar an unsung hero that rarely receives acknowledgement? And why do the first two sentences of this abstract start with coordinating conjunctions? This thesis will explore elastic grammar: a term I coined to recognise style devices that are traditionally thought of as grammatically incorrect but are used to create a deeper level of meaning within fiction. The analysis of the elasticity of grammar will be conducted through close readings of three children’s books and three elastic grammar devices. Since each novel’s primary focus is storytelling, this thesis analyses elastic grammar that relates to storytelling. The three elastic …

A Poetics Of Violence: Representations Of Violence As Storytelling And World-Building Tools Of The Theater, Richard Gilbert

Dissertations

This dissertation explores how representations of violence do dramaturgical work in theatrical production. Playwrights write scenes of violence, and directors and designers stage them, with specific dramaturgical goals in mind. The project of this work is to develop a theoretical framework for understanding how productions use representations of violence. Ideally, that framework will be of use both to critics seeking to analyze productions with violence and to practitioners who want to more consciously shape their own use of violence.

Representations of violence create a sudden change in the audience's affective experience of the fictional world. I call that sudden change …

A Corpus Linguistic Approach To Discursive Representation Of Lgbt Identities In The Bangkok Post Newspaper, Duangkamon Chuaikun

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The present study examines how each group of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) is represented discursively in Bangkok Post, a major English-language newspaper in Thailand. The data comprise LGBT-related news articles from 2012 to 2019. Statistically significant collocates of each term were extracted via AntConc and Sketch Engine and were then categorized according to their semantic relations as observed from their concordance lines. Findings from the Bangkok Post corpus show that the key terms share common semantic preference patterns that point to the discourse about LGBT political movement. However, the terms; GAY and TRANSGENDER are also associated with “crime”, …

Review Of When Novels Were Books. By Jordan Alexander Stein., Mark A. Mattes

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

But novels ARE books, you might be thinking. Jordan Stein points out that this is true, but not in the way that many of us have thought to be the case. Twentieth- and twenty-first century literary history, Stein argues, has too often failed to deliver a programmatic discussion of the media history of genre. Attention to changes and continuities in the early Anglophone novel’s artifactual status within an evolving, transatlantic media ecology, supplements, and in some cases rethinks, critical understandings of the development of novelistic form. Stein’s method is axiomatic for those working at the intersection of form and format: …

Race, American Enlightenment, And The End Times, Mark A. Mattes

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This chapter examines eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century visions of apocalypse regarding the future of black lives in the American body politic. It begins with readings of Jefferson’s fear of a black planet in Notes on the State of Virginia and Crèvecoeur’s depictions of racial terror in Letters from an American Farmer. The chapter then investigates the writing of an African American herald of the end times, Christopher MacPherson. The chapter reads the apocalyptic jeremiad of MacPherson’s pamphlet, Christ’s Millennium (1811), as a reparative response to the suppression of black voices and the annihilation of black lives.

‘Not Shap’D For Sportive Tricks:’ Representations Of Disability In Film And Digital Broadcast Cinema Adaptations Of Early Modern Drama, Grace Mccarthy

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In films that feature disability, we see the recursive and discussion-limiting impulse to say “this representation is negative. Therefore, the representation should not be seen,” based on critical theories and methodologies outside the purview of film studies. Unfortunately, the overlay of an English, narratological, sociological, or medical methodology and terminology onto a film representation of disability is ultimately recursive and self-limiting; critical and advocate calls for accuracy to the lived experience of people with disabilities in on-screen representations decline to engage with the visual construction of cinematic representations of disability and the often fascinating cinematographic and thematic patterns that emerge …

The Digital Literacy Practices Of Transfronterizx Esol College Students: Los De Esol, Laura E. Mendoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation aims to contribute knowledge to the literature about ESOL students' digital literacy practices related to educational purposes. I studied the varied digital literacy practices the students used as mediating tools to perform their university activities (e.g., crossing to come to school, communicate with classmates/instructors about assignments, completing assignments). This study takes place on the U.S. side of the borderland area of El Paso, Texas-Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The participants were 43 transfronterizx ESOL college students, who were young adults between 18-25 years of age enrolled in the ESOL program at Sun University. I draw on ethnographic and netnographic …

A Learner Corpus Study Of The Article System, Yusof Siti Fatimah

Student Works (2020-2029)

Studies on learner language tend to compare learners’ second language with a target language. Informed by recent reconceptualization of language learning in which bilingual minds are viewed as fundamentally different from monolingual minds (see, e.g., the notion of multicompetence by Cook, 1991, 2013), the present study explores how learner language is studied as a separate and independent linguistic system. By using Antconc 3.4.4w, this study analysed a recently developed learner corpus of written data by a group of secondary school students in Malaysia, examining how language development takes place over time. Participants composed essays based on a picture prompt and …

Impoliteness Strategies In Online Discussions On Cheating In A Virtual Reality Game, Chia Wen Fong

Student Works (2020-2029)

This research study identifies the impoliteness strategies found in the forum’s post comments discussing accounts of grief play activities mainly spoofing in a social game, Pokemon Go, and discusses how impoliteness is accommodated in the interactions among forum members in the conveyance of their perceptions towards cheating in social gaming. Data is collected from five complaint posts in a subforum, r/pokemongo, that discusses topics and contents related to Pokemon Go which is part of a megaforum, Reddit. Culpeper’s (2011) Impoliteness Framework and the constructs of Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) are used to analyse the data collected. The findings show that …

An Analysis Of Spoken Feedback On Speech Presentations, Woei Ling Wong

Student Works (2020-2029)

Evaluative feedback is often observed in the context of language classroom and are often dialogic. A general rule of thumb is that evaluative feedback represents largely “post-observation evaluation” which relies on performance-based criteria. For non-dialogic evaluative feedback, it usually dwindles down to written form such as appraisal reports. The domain of non-dialogic spoken evaluative feedback is a domain which remains untapped due to restrictions to such interaction platform. This discourse study aims to describe different aspects of how non-dialogic spoken feedback is managed among trained evaluators within a specific linguistic context based on the Discourse Analysis Model that defines the …