Conceptualisation and enactment of critical literacy for senior high school EAL learners in Queensland, Australia : commitments, constraints and contradictions

This case study examined four teachers' understandings and teaching of Critical Literacy with senior English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners in two Queensland high schools. Despite continuous, rapid curriculum change in Australia and efforts to diminish Critical Literacy, the four teachers continued to feature it successfully in their teaching with often marginalised learners. They used critical literacy to provide access to and critique dominant language codes, and to draw on learners' diverse experiences. To a lesser extent, the teachers created opportunities for redesigning dominant texts. Implications are important for policy production and interpretation, school planning and teacher professional development.

Betydelser i barnfamiljsbroschyrer : Systemisk-funktionell analys av den tänkta läsaren och institutionen

This thesis concerns Swedish and Finland-Swedish brochures to families with children, presenting family allowances from the social insurance institutions in the two countries. The aim of the study is to analyse what meanings are conveyed with reference to the conceivable reader and the institution in the brochures. The material consists of information brochures in Swedish from Kela, the social insurance institution of Finland, and Försäkringskassan, the Swedish social insurance agency, issued during 2003–2006. The general theoretical framework is systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) as presented by Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) and Holmberg & Karlsson (2006). The study consists of a quantitative study of the lexical choices of the social insurance brochures. Furthermore, a qualitative process and participant analysis is annotated with the UAM Corpus tool and the results are quantified. Speech functions and modal auxiliaries are analysed qualitatively. The analysis shows that material and relational processes are most common. The relational and verbal processes are used more in the Sweden-Swedish brochures, while the material processes are more common in the Finland-Swedish brochures. The participants in the brochures are the institution, mentioned by its name, and the conceivable reader, directly addressed with “you” (du). In addition, the referent “child” is often mentioned. The participants assigned for the reader are Actor, Receiver, Carrier and Speaker. In the Finland-Swedish texts, the reader is often an Actor, while the reader in the Sweden-Swedish texts is a Carrier. Thus, the conceivable reader is an active participant who takes care of his or her own matters using the internet, communicates actively to the institution and has legal rights and obligations. The institution is visible in the texts but does not have an active role as the name of the institution is mostly used in circumstances. The institution is not often a participant, but when it is, it is Actor, Receiver, Listener and Carrier, expecting the clients to address it. Speech functions are performed in different ways. For instance, questions structure the reading process and commands are realised by modal auxiliaries, not by imperatives. The most common modal auxiliary is kan (can, may), and another common auxiliary is ska (shall, must). Statements are surrounded by subordinate clauses and adverbs that describe situations and criteria. The results of the study suggest that the brochures in the two countries are similar, in particular when produced in similar ways, that is, when the Finland-Swedish texts are not translated. Existing differences reflect the differences in the institutions, the social insurance systems and the cultural contexts. KEYWORDS: Finland-Swedish, Swedish, comparative analysis, SFL, discourse analysis, administrative language, institutional discourse, institutional communication

Notions of Nation : A Critical Discursive Psychology perspective on the Isle of Man

At the the heart of this study can be seen the dual concern of how the nation is represented as a categorical entity and how this is put to use in everyday social interactions.This can be seen as a reaction to the general approach to categorisation and identity functions that tend to be reified and essentialized within the social sciences. The empirical focus of this study is the Isle of Man, a crown dependency situated geographically central within the British Isles while remaining political outside the United Kingdom. The choice of this site was chosen explicitly as ‘notions of nation’ expressed on the island can be seen as being contested and ephemerally unstable. To get at these ‘notions of nation’ is was necessary to choose specific theoretical tools that were able to capture the wider cultural and representational domain while being capable of addressing the nuanced and functional aspects of interaction. As such, the main theoretical perspective used within this study was that of critical discursive psychology which incorporates the specific theoretical tools interpretative repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions. To supplement these tools, a discursive approach to place was taken in tandem to address the form and function of place attached to nationhood. Two methods of data collection were utilized, that of computer mediated communication and acquaintance interviews. From the data a number of interpretative repertoires were proposed, namely being, essential rights, economic worth, heritage claims, conflict orientation, people-as-nation and place-as-nation. Attached to such interpretative repertoires were the ideological dilemmas region vs. country, people vs. place and individualism vs. collectivism. The subject positions found are much more difficult to condense, but the most significant ones were gender, age and parentage. The final focus of the study, that of place, was shown to be more than just an unreflected on ‘container’ of people but was significant in terms of the rhetorical construction of such places for how people saw themselves and the discursive function of the particular interaction. As such, certain forms of place construction included size, community, temporal, economic, safety, political and recognition. A number of conclusions were drawn from the above which included, that when looking at nation categories we should take into account the specific meanings that people attach to such concepts and to be aware of the particular uses they are put to in interaction. Also, that it is impossible to separate concepts neatly, but it is necessary to be aware of the intersection where concepts cross, and clash, when looking at nationhood.

Práticas discursivas de estudantes no Facebook e em blogs: do ciberespaço à escola

As novas tecnologias da informação e da comunicação (TIC) já fazem parte da realidade de um grande quantitativo de pessoas. Mesmo aquelas menos favorecidas economicamente, leem, escrevem, fruem e se comunicam na web, incluindo nossos estudantes. No entanto, muitos educadores afirmam que esses mesmos alunos não têm interesse pela leitura e pela escrita. Geralmente, as leituras e textos produzidos no ciberespaço por esses estudantes são desconsideradas ou menosprezadas no espaço escolar. Diante desse contexto, nosso trabalho propõe compreender como os gêneros discursivos/textuais lidos e/ou produzidos por alunos no ciberespaço são configurados; e não apenas isso, busca refletir sobre possibilidades de a escola inserir gêneros, discurso(s) e linguagem (ns) construídos na Internet, não somente a partir de sua recontextualização na escola, conforme critica Bernstein (1996), mas para além, entendendo esses gêneros e toda a possibilidade que carregam como meios para a interação e para a produção de sentidos diversos. Tendo como base principal as considerações de Bernstein (1996), Bakhtin (1992; 2006; 2008) e da Análise Crítica do Discurso de Fairclough (2001), os objetivos desta dissertação são: (1) identificar traços recorrentes presentes nos gêneros discursivos/textuais com os quais nossos estudantes, alunos de duas escolas públicas, com faixa etária entre os 12 e os 19 anos, estão em contato na web, além de buscar (2) contribuir para a incorporação desses gêneros pela escola, refletindo e discutindo com os próprios alunos acerca de caminhos que podem ser trilhados para que a escola, de alguma maneira, abarque os gêneros circulantes na Internet, sem deixar de lado os gêneros já trabalhados no ambiente escolar

The Media in Wales: Voices of a Small Nation

Barlow, D.; O'Malley, T.; and Mitchell, P. (2005). The Media in Wales: Voices of a Small Nation. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. RAE2008

Comunidade real, comunidade imaginada: observação participante em contexto de estágio numa associação cultural: relatório de estágio

Relatório de Estágio submetido à Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Teatro - especialização em Teatro e Comunidade.

De la Bretagne au Québec : le succès de Théodore Botrel (1868-1925), chansonnier breton

La version intégrale de ce mémoire est disponible uniquement pour consultation individuelle à la Bibliothèque de musique de l’Université de Montréal (www.bib.umontreal.ca/MU).

Adaptivity in programming languages

A programming style can be seen as a particular model of shaping thought or a special way of codifying language to solve a problem. An adaptive device is made up of an underlying formalism, for instance, an automaton, a grammar, a decision tree, etc., and an adaptive mechanism, responsible for providing features for self-modification. Adaptive languages are obtained by using some programming language as the device’s underlying formalism. The conception of such languages calls for a new programming style, since the application of adaptive technology in the field of programming languages suggests a new way of thinking. Adaptive languages have the basic feature of allowing the expression of programs which self-modifying through adaptive actions at runtime. With the adaptive style, programming language codes can be structured in such a way that the codified program therein modifies or adapts itself towards the needs of the problem. The adaptive programming style may be a feasible alternate way to obtain self-modifying consistent codes, which allow its use in modern applications for self-modifying code.

Os rostos da pobreza brasileira: análise crítica dos discursos do governo federal, da Veja e da Cufa

Brazilian constitution says that all Brazilians have basic survival rights such as education, sanitation and food, but these basic rights are luxury for some. So, thinking about this, this paper aims to develop a critical analysis about the (re)production of the discourse on poverty, and consequently on the poor, given by the federal government, through the official website of the program Brazil Without Poverty (Brasil Sem Pobreza), the media, represented by Veja magazine, and by those who affirm to be representatives of the poor; like the Single Central Slums (Central Única das Favelas CUFA). Our aim is to present a critical reflection on the discourses about the poverty in the voices of the government, Veja magazine (media representative) and CUFA (poor representative) and their contribution to the development of the meanings of the theme in Brazilian society. In order to do so, we have identified categories based upon Bajoit (2006a) to classify which the author calls faces of poverty . We have used the Sociological and Communicational Discourse Approach (ASCD) as developed by Pedrosa (2012a, 2012b, 2012c), within the Critical Discourse Analysis as theoretical apparatus, and also the studies in which the ASCD is built upon such as Sociology for Social Change (BAJOIT, 2006), the Cultural Studies (HALL, 2005), and the Functional Systemic Linguistic, especially the Evaluating System (MARTHIN & WHITE, 2005, VIAN JR et al, 2011). Thus, the discourse on poverty or on fighting poverty, extracted from news, chronicles and other genres of the mentioned vehicles, are taken as object of study to understand identities that are created and renewed on poverty and on the Brazilian poor, as their dependence on the government and civil society, their exploitation by the economy, and even the media that sometimes features them as delinquent

Notas sobre a presença de Mead na obra de Habermas

Habermas pensa a questão da individuação e da socialização a partir dos estudos de George Hebert Mead, que, na sua concepção, foi o primeiro a refletir substancialmente sobre um modelo de eu produzido socialmente. Mead oferece todo subsídio teórico para o desenvolvimento de uma teoria da evolução humana que envolve o processo de individuação e de socialização. Pelo paradigma de intercompreensão, ou seja, da relação intersubjetiva de indivíduos que se socializam por meio da comunicação e se reconhecem mutuamente, Mead permite a mudança de paradigma da consciência de si, da autorreferência de um sujeito que age isoladamente para o indivíduo que processa trocas sociais mediante a linguagem. Portanto, um dos principais componentes da teoria de Mead, em que Habermas busca contribuição para sua Teoria da Ação Comunicativa, é o processo de constituição do eu, sua identidade. Mead acredita ser a individuação representada como um processo que é linguisticamente mediador da socialização e da construção de uma história de vida, na qual os sujeitos são conscientes de si. É esse meio linguístico estabelecido entre os sujeitos e o meio do entendimento intrassubjetivo e histórico vital que possibilita a formação de uma identidade de sujeitos socializados. É o reconhecimento intersubjetivo e autoentendimento mediado intersubjetivamente que propicia a formação da identidade. Esse quadro conceitual será fundamental a Habermas, na sua acepção de eu pós-convencional.

Entre Portugal e São Paulo: um percurso artístico em construção

Pós-graduação em Artes - IA