Library: Communications and the Arts

The overall aim of this thesis is to alert journalists and journalism educators to a serious lacuna in current news coverage, one which threatens the well-being of society. Simply stating that a gap in coverage exists, without giving examples, would be unlikely to convince members of such a notoriously skeptical profession. Newsmen and women, it seems, are all "from Missouri." They want to be shown. Part I. The importance of agriculture to society and of farm news to the general public Part II. The importance assigned to agriculture by the major news media and journalism educators.

This is a revisionist study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century satires on science with an emphasis on the writings of Jonathan Swift and, to a lesser degree, Samuel Butler and other satirists. To say, as some literary commentators do, that the satirists attacked only pseudo-scientists who failed to employ the empirical method properly is to beg a crucial question: how could the satirists possibly have distinguished the genuine scientist from the crank? By a failsafe set of Baconian principles perhaps? No, the matter is more complicated. I read the satiric literature on early modern science...

This work is concerned with the evaluation of rhetoric as an essential aspect of Renaissance sensibility. It is an analysis of the Renaissance world viewed in terms of literary style and aesthetic. Eight plays are analysed in some detail: four by George Peele: The Battle of Alcazar, Edward I, David and Bethsabe, and The Arraignment of Paris; and four by Christopher Marlowe: Dido Queen of Carthage, Tamburlaine Part One, Dr Faustus and Edward II. The work is thus partly a comparative study of two important Renaissance playwrights; it seeks to establish Peele in particular as an important fig...

This dissertation is an attempt to define a Chinese "modernism," exemplified by the narrative practices of four major writers in Taiwan today, from the perspective of comparative literature and recent development of literary theory. I propose that modernity of Taiwanese fiction is not so much a result of Western influences as an evolution of Chinese narrative tradition itself. To argue my point I delineate a poetics of Chinese narrative, from which I devise a method of reading and a criterion of evaluation for contemporary Taiwanese fiction in defining its achievement and historical significan...

The literary expression of Afro-Americans has been scrutinized and criticized in exhaustive detail, yet historically perceived by many American and English literary scholars as qualitatively and quantitatively underdeveloped. This was the view held by many literary scholars until the late 1960s when Afro-American literary scholars and black students argued forcefully and convincingly in favor of the plays, short stories, poetry and novels written by Afro-Americans. Despite such noteworthy efforts, however, few scholars have investigated the uneven and sporadic appearance of publications, or th...

Burgoon's expectancy violation model posits that nonverbal rule violations will be evaluated according to the perceptions toward the violator and the behavior itself. However, the violator may have perceptions regarding the appropriateness of the rule. This study measured the perceptions of high school students regarding the rules for classroom interaction. It is believed that the rules for classroom interaction are rules which have been learned through the process of socialization and enculturation into the classroom setting throughout students' careers. These rules should be well known...

The purpose of this study is to examine the questioning behavior of males and females in an undergraduate Speech class. Whether one is analyzing social, mental, emotional, or verbal behavior of students, biological sex is usually a factor. This study describes differences between male and female questioning and discusses the implications of these differences for classroom teaching. The classroom is a small society with its own special language, a language that contributes to classroom events. Student questioning, a behavior that provides information on how students adapt and function...

In this dissertation I investigate how community context affects Spanish language use and English proficiency among Latina and Latino children in the United States, focusing on the children of immigrants. I view children's language attributes through a sociological perspective that recognizes that children learn and use languages within specific social and cultural contexts, and that these contexts have an important effect on language acquisition and use. This theoretical perspective leads to the hypothesis that children's language skills and language use will be affected by the communities t...

The difference between "mass" and "mess," for example, says a lot about the distinctive capacity of phonemes and the alphabet, but very little about the many similarities in these two words. It follows that there is something not exactly alphabetical in language that is prompted by similarities like these. Even quotidian reading exhibits non-alphabetic ingredients, for instance when we skip spelling mistakes or typographical errors; i.e.: when we impose analogies over differences, hermeneutics over semiology, semasiography over the alphabet. Joyce, who once commented that ...

The dissertation studies the extent to which festivals, from a popular event for the masses, evolved into exclusive events, and shows how festivals affect society and are affected by it through practices in accordance with cultural democracy. Festivals relation to society is explained through the following concept-areas: 1. The artist's role 2. The use of festivals 3. The European example 4. Cultural democracy 5. Cultural policy 6. Active participation 7. Cultural tourism 8. The media The dissertation identifies cultural policy, active participation ...