Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item OBAMA IN TIME AND LULA IN VEJA: A CASE STUDY OF PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN COVERAGE IN NEWS MAGAZINES OF THE UNITED STATES AND BRAZIL(2011) Pereira, Sonia Cristina Pedrosa; BEASLEY, MAURINE H.; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Journalism and its links with nationhood and the ideologies that have built the nations (race, gender, and class, according to the historians) are the subjects of this study. They are researched through the analysis of the news coverage of two presidential elections which were remarkable in the both countries studied, the United States and Brazil. The elections of the first African-American president of the United States, Barack Obama, and of the first worker president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, are comparable for their symbolism and historical relevance. Textual and historical analyses are combined in this dissertation to investigate, in the narratives of each nation and its ideologies, the meanings that the news magazines analyzed produced during the coverage of those elections. A total of 24 cover stories published in Veja (Brazil) and Time magazine (United States) within a period of approximately eight months in the years of 2008 (Time) and 2002 (Veja) are analyzed. In this close textual reading, visual grammar is also taken in account, since journalism is a language that communicates with its readership by means of layouts (especially in the case of magazines). In this study of interpretive character, the critical discourse analysis approach is used to investigate meaning ranging from the layout of the news magazines (with pictures and so on) to the lexical choices in the written text. This is a study mainly of language and its relationship with the world, in which ideology occupies a special place. It is an international research, a cross-cultural examination of the news coverage of two important elections. In this comparative study, made possible due to the knowledge of the two native languages of the publications (English and Portuguese) by the researcher, the target language is in fact international journalistic language. The study found journalism both working for social change and at same time reproducing racist ideologies in the United States. In Brazil, the examination showed that journalism does not always nurture nationalistic sentiments, but that it can be used to keep the hegemony of one region over the rest of the country.Item EL PROCESO SEMIÓTICO DE UN HÉROE DECIMONÓNICO: UN ESTUDIO EN TORNO A LOS "TEXTOS-TUMBAS" DE ANDRÉS BELLO(2010) DeLutis-Eichenberger, Angela Nicole; Aguilar Mora, Jorge; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In October of 1865, the body of one of the most prominent figures of the 19th century, Andrés Bello, was laid to rest in Chile, the country that had been deemed by various authors and, on occasion, by Bello himself, as his adopted homeland. However, the initial burial site did not remain a fixed one of corporal exhibition. By the turn of the century, the remains were exhumed and placed in a more splendid mausoleum that prompted a re-valuation of his signifier, as an array of discourses exemplify. In this analysis of Bello, the physical transition serves as a metaphor for the shifts in his textual re-presentations that were fashioned in a series of 19th century archives, and that culminate in his re-production as cultural and international hero (a signification that is generally accepted in current criticism and in his contemporary biographical sketches). Therefore, by tracing the displacements of his various signifiers created in archives that, based on the aforementioned metaphor, we denominate as "text-tombs", this study illustrates how several (unfavorable) representations of Bello were manipulated by authors, including Bello, to textually exhume and entomb him once and again as an international figure acclaimed for his many achievements. Bello's participation in politics during a time marked by hegemonic shifts, coupled with trends in historiography, leads to his re-production as a traitor of the patriots and of the Spanish government, signifiers that are subsequently exhumed and re-written to postulate him as a victim wrongfully accused of treason against the patriots. Through self-inscriptions created during his first exile in London, Bello builds his own image as a nostalgic exile in suffering and a self-conscious writer who anticipates a textual and personal improvement. These inscriptions ultimately lead to his re-configuration as a formidable scholar of Cidian studies and an illustrious composer of nationalistic poems. Finally, his representations as a foreigner in Chile were also utilized to later posit him as a cultural hero of many nations. From these semiotic shifts we arrive at a final inquiry: Who really was Andrés Bello, the self-inscriber who seemingly invited his own textual revisions by others?