Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted Investigating the Treatment of Culture in English Language Education within a Saudi University Setting(University of Southampton, 2024-07-31) Altheebi, Jaber; Baird, RobertIn the rapidly evolving landscape of global education, the treatment of culture in English language education (ELE) plays a pivotal role, particularly in contexts undergoing significant transitions. Saudi Arabia, with its ambitious Vision 2030, finds itself at the intersection of tradition and transformation, providing a unique context for examining culture within ELE settings. This PhD thesis delves deep into the intricacies of culture and its role in ELE during this transformative period in Saudi Arabia, underlining the challenges and opportunities it presents. It critically examines such treatment through an ecological lens, capturing the interplay of cultural constructs across educational ecosystems. Such an exploration not only enriches the field of applied linguistics with insights from the Saudi context but also offers theoretical advancements regarding the intertwined relationship between culture, language, and education. To elucidate this relationship, this study delves into educational policies, textbooks, observational data, and insights gathered from interviews. This multifaceted approach seeks to unravel various treatments of culture at various ecosystem levels that constitute the researched setting. The findings of this study reveal diverse, and sometimes contradictory, treatments of culture within the selected Saudi ELE setting, illuminating a divergence between educational policies and textbooks, and actual teaching practices. While educational policies and textbooks used within this setting call for inclusion of cultural discussions, the actual classroom interactions often prioritise traditional language instruction over cultural discussions. This observed divergence can be attributed to discrepancies between policy interpretations, teachers’ and students’ sociocultural affiliations, and overarching perceptions of the role of culture in education. Such divergence prompts critical questions about the forces influencing this shift. This tension not only underscores the intricacies of integrating culture in ELE, but also offers broader insights into the complex and emergent relationship between policy, pedagogy, and real classroom practices.29 0Item Restricted SIGNS, LANGUAGE, AND SPATIAL PRACTICES IN THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE OF TAIF(University of Sussex, 2024-05-17) Alamri, Abdulrazaq; Piazza , Roberta; Robinson, JustynaThis study explores the Linguistic Landscape (LL) of Taif, and examines government and commercial signs to reveal the interplay of languages and power dynamics through the medium of public signage. Taif is the fourth most populated city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh, Jeddah and Makkah. However, while the linguistic landscapes of Jeddah and other Saudi cities have been studied, Taif remains an under-researched city, despite offering a rich multicultural scenario. The study integrates linguistic and visual dimensions to contribute to the existing LL research in Saudi Arabia. Unlike earlier studies, it also combines analysis of de facto language use with predictions concerning future language display. The study’s mixed-method approach uncovers Taif’s multilingualism using inferential statistics to predict the occurrence of languages, and fusing linguistic and semiotic analyses to develop a comprehensive understanding of power relations reflected in the city’s LL. After analysing 4,714 signs, socioeconomic factors emerged as significant determinants of the LL. The old area of Sharqiyah and the gentrified area of Shubra predominantly feature monolingual MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) signs, while Shihar, an expensive area, displays a mixture of MSA and English. The primary languages shaping the LL of Taif are MSA, Classical Arabic, English, Urdu, Informal Arabic, Romanised Arabic and Arabicised English. Inferential statistics (logistic regression) revealed that subject matter and function were the strongest predictors of language choice, while sign placement had minimal impact. Applying a multimodal approach to the data, the social, political and religious meanings of such visual elements as typography, colour saturation and salience, as well as top-bottom and left-right visual design are highlighted. The findings encompass aspects such as the interplay of local and global discourses, reflecting openness to bilingualism and unequal access to spaces. They also highlight the societal relevance of MSA, which reflects the country's formality and social solidarity, as well as the significance of euphemisms in signs, such as those relating to hookah smoking. The interplay of English and Arabicised English reveals themes of beauty, trendiness, luxury, local advertising and the iconicity of English, encapsulating cultural and linguistic dynamics. The cultural undertones of duty and repelling envy within religious discourses are explored. The study also investigates the role of Informal Arabic in softening governmental directive discourse and in promoting local authenticity and intertextual connections. The research further underscores the pragmatism and collective identity evident in ethnicity-related signs. Taif's LL reveals a blend of tradition and modernity, with English and migrant languages complementing Arabic, reflecting its cosmopolitanism and economic drivers. The omission of minority languages in signs suggests a gap between the LL and the city's true linguistic makeup. The study also highlights Taif’s deeply rooted religious discourse and the rise of Informal Arabic alongside the official language used by the authorities, underscoring the city's nuanced sociolinguistic dynamics. Keywords: Linguistic Landscape (LL), Multilingualism, Logistic Regression, Multimodality.27 0Item Restricted Multimodality in Saudi Arabian COVID-19 Cartoons: A Thematic and Humour Analysis(University of Leeds, 2024-05-01) Almohissen, Ahlam; Adami, Elisabetta; Elfarahaty, Hanem; Thurston, Timothy; Watson, JanetThe present study investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic was portrayed in Saudi cartoons and how humour around it was created. The Youm7 website was employed as a data source. A total of 212 multimodal cartoons were collected between December 2019 (the date on which COVID-19 was announced to the world) and March 2021 (the date when Saudi Arabia lifted all the restrictions related to the pandemic). These cartoons underwent two different types of analysis and resampling to address the two primary aims specified above. In addressing the pandemic’s portrayal in the cartoons, content analysis and multimodal analysis were employed to deduce the thematic presentation and participants' representation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerning humour creation, adapting and adopting Yus’ (2016, 2021) incongruity-resolution classification along with humour forms (Dynel, 2009; Alsadi & Howard, 2021) was applied with a more stratified sample involving 61 cartoons. The findings reveal ten main themes with their sub-themes. These are virus transmission rate, the emotional and physical consequences of COVID-19, the impact on education and work, vaccine rollout, lockdown, international political discourse, public protection, the change in social relations, the impact on travel and tourism, as well as the economic impact of COVID-19. Moreover, these themes show some similarities and differences with existing research in relation to phases of the pandemic. On the other hand, the deduced sub-themes depend more on the Saudi phases, government actions, and people's reactions. The findings also present five main subjects: COVID-19, earth, Saudi men and women, Saudi authorities, and international countries and governments. The representation of the participants varies multimodally in relation to the four phases of the pandemic in Saudi Arabia. Regarding the humour creation, the results show that the three Yus’ (2021) incongruities (frame-based, writing-image and writing-based) and resolutions (implication-based, frame-based, and writing-based) are presented in the data. However, the findings show the addition of a fourth classification (image-based) along with the three presented classifications to be applicable to cartoons, resulting in 15 common taxonomies. Moreover, eight humour forms were identified: joke, putdown, pun, irony, exaggeration, metaphor, metonymy, and comparison. These humour forms are mostly shown to occur multimodally, but they also sometimes occur in image or in writing mode alone. The relationship between humour forms and incongruity was found to be mostly dependent on the shared mode. The representation of humour, in general, is found to be based on three factors: the cartoonists’ interest, linguistic knowledge and cultural knowledge. This study contributes to understanding the history of Saudi Arabia during the pandemic (2020-2021). Moreover, the study contributes to the growth of multimodality by showing its essence in deducing the thematic presentation and the creation of humour. It also contributes to the field of humour, specifically making a methodological contribution by introducing an adaptation of Yus' (2021) incongruity-resolution theoretical approach, as this represents the first application of the approach to cartoons. Overall, the combination of humour and multimodality contributes to the shifting tendency from focusing on pure linguistics to multimodal communication.21 0Item Restricted A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Arabs and Americans in Sand Castle (2017)(Macquarie University, 2024-04-16) Asiri, Khalid; Lukin, AnnabelleThe representation of Arab people in American media has been a topic of considerable scholarly interest (Auge, 2002; Michalak, 1988; Ramji, 2016; Riegler, 2010; Said, 1978; Semmerling, 2006; Shaheen, 2012). Given the relations between the US and the Middle East since the Second World War, American war films provide a particularly significant environment for the construction of ideas about Arab people. The immersive and multimodal nature of film allow the creation and projection of certain ideological content; yet, only a handful of studies have examined the role of film in creating dominant stereotypes about Arab people. This thesis takes an American war film, the semi-autobiographical Sand Castle (2017), to examine the ways in which the combination of modes in film, specifically the visual and the linguistic, come together to express what Bateman calls the “underlying logic” of a film (2013, p. 248). Two scales of analysis are combined: two selected scenes from the film in which Arab characters are central are analysed in detail with regards to their visual and linguistic modes. This analysis, together with a description of key themes within the film, provide a wider context for the micro analysis of the two scenes. Two methods of analysis are adopted: the first is the Multimodal Social Semiotic Approach (SSMA) proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen developed in their book Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2021). This approach offers a toolkit for the analysis of “interactive meaning”, where the focus is on: type of participants, camera angle and frame size as well as social distance. The linguistic framework used to analyse the verbal communications between American and Arab characters in the film is from Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics, drawing on Halliday and Matthiessen (2014). The findings of the SSMA analysis as well as the linguistic analysis of the two selected scenes, together with the analysis of key themes in the film, are interpreted in relation to the ideology of Orientalism proposed by Edward Said (1979) who defined it as “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (1978, p. 3). The study contributes to our understanding of the ways that ideologies are incorporated into the micro-patterning in film, and how such patterns accumulate to create the “underlying logic” of an ideological position such as Said’s Orientalism.43 0Item Restricted AVAILABILITY AND MAKING SIGNIFICANT CO- SPEECH GESTURES IN L2 CLASSROOMS(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-12-07) Allmulla, Ahmad Mohammad; Hazel, SpencerThe study describes the English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ recurrent hand gestures and the design of co-speech hand gestures with gaze immediately in IRE and repair sequences. The primary aim is to examine the hand gestures at the TRP and co-speech hand gestures along with other semiotic resources (such as gaze, body postures, locations, movement in space, moving his head around different students) that teachers draw on when they address students to answer questions and in and after repair initiation in various classroom contexts. The study adopts the methodological framework of Conversation Analysis to investigate the teachers’ hand gestures and co-speech hand gestures. The database consists of 30 video-recorded Saudi different EFL lessons from which 35 instances have been identified for the analysis. The study focuses on two embodied phenomena that are relevant to classroom participation. At first, the analysis of these hand gestures is combined with all other multimodal resources deployed by themselves and students to show their functions. One recurrent hand gesture is that the teachers insert their hands inside their pockets as they select the next speaker students for a turn and after they initiate other repairs designed for selected students. The hold of this gesture can elicit the students’ next action and encourage self-selection without being in a mutual orientation with the teachers. The second recurrent hand gesture is that teachers put one hand on their chin after they ask questions and after they initiate repair. It is found that the teachers circulate while sustaining such a hand gesture to select the next speaker. The hold of this gesture can elicit the students’ next action. These hand gestures pragmatically represent the teachers’ availability actions as the recipient of the students’ next actions which can be held until the students accomplish the next suitable interactional move. In addition, the analysis of these two hand gestures reveals that the pockets and chin are two temporary positions where another can perform various co-speech hand gestures that are deployed in a way that makes their gesture salient. Second, the study sheds light on the teachers’ gaze and co-speech hand gestures as they initiate other repairs for pursuing the students’ corrections/responses. The findings show that teachers are intelligible actors who can make value for their gesticulation.7 0Item Restricted Availiability and Significant Co-speech Gestures in L2 Classrooms(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-12-07) Almulla, Ahmad Mohammad; Hazel, SpencerThe study describes the English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ recurrent hand gestures and the design of co-speech hand gestures with gaze immediately in IRE and repair sequences. The primary aim is to examine the hand gestures at the TRP and co-speech hand gestures along with other semiotic resources (such as gaze, body postures, locations, movement in space, moving his head around different students) that teachers draw on when they address students to answer questions and in and after repair initiation in various classroom contexts. The study adopts the methodological framework of Conversation Analysis to investigate the teachers’ hand gestures and co-speech hand gestures. The database consists of 30 video-recorded Saudi different EFL lessons from which 35 instances have been identified for the analysis. The study focuses on two embodied phenomena that are relevant to classroom participation. At first, the analysis of these hand gestures is combined with all other multimodal resources deployed by themselves and students to show their functions. One recurrent hand gesture is that the teachers insert their hands inside their pockets as they select the next speaker students for a turn and after they initiate other repairs designed for selected students. The hold of this gesture can elicit the students’ next action and encourage self-selection without being in a mutual orientation with the teachers. The second recurrent hand gesture is that teachers put one hand on their chin after they ask questions and after they initiate repair. It is found that the teachers circulate while sustaining such a hand gesture to select the next speaker. The hold of this gesture can elicit the students’ next action. These hand gestures pragmatically represent the teachers’ availability actions as the recipient of the students’ next actions which can be held until the students accomplish the next suitable interactional move. In addition, the analysis of these two hand gestures reveals that the pockets and chin are two temporary positions where another can perform various co-speech hand gestures that are deployed in a way that makes their gesture salient. Second, the study sheds light on the teachers’ gaze and co-speech hand gestures as they initiate other repairs for pursuing the students’ corrections/responses. The findings show that teachers are intelligible actors who can make value for their gesticulation21 0Item Restricted Translating Instagram Poetry into Arabic: A Case Study of Rupi Kaur(Saudi Digital Library, 2023) Alghamdi, Noha; Sonsogni, Marco; Hill, SallyThis thesis is a case study in literary translation studies. It consists of a creative component comprising 70% of it, which is an anthology of contemporary English Instagram poetry translated into Arabic, and a critical component comprising 30%, which is a commentary outlining the linguistic, literary, and cultural aspects promoting my translation choices. Born in Punjab, India in 1992 to Indian parents, Rupi Kaur emigrated with her family as a child to Canada where she became a leading Instagram poet, illustrator, and stage performer. Kaur has received little academic attention to date and has remained undertranslated in Arabic. Instagram poetry is both very widely accessible and culturally specific. Literary translators and academics have demonstrated how deeply intertwined language, multimodality, poetry, and culture are. Translating Kaur's poetry equivalently is a complex task, both culturally and linguistically. Therefore, this thesis seeks to study the challenges of translating contemporary poetry in a multimodal context and provides both translators and scholars with a discussion of negotiating verbal and non-verbal meanings across languages and cultures. By providing an annotated translation of Milk and Honey, The Sun and her Flowers, and HomeBody in Arabic, accompanied by a critical commentary, I endeavor to show how, despite all the restrictions imposed by the field of multimodality and literary translation, as well as the difficulties of poetry translation, a translator can still produce a well thought-out and reliable translation that conveys the literary cultural and visual aspects of poetry, and more specifically of this young best-seller contemporary Instagram poet. This project makes three significant contributions. First, I introduced a new phenomenon of literature writing in the social media era. Second, I offer a case study of Rupi Kaur and her literary contributions in the field of poetry writing. Finally, I make a twenty-first century author’s words available in Arabic with a scholarly apparatus for the first time. This thesis consists of three main parts alongside the introduction. The first part is contextualizing Kaur, her books, and some other popular Instagram poets (instapoets). In the second, there is a review of literature about poetry translation and multimodality theories. The third part includes the translations themselves as well as annotations followed by an analysis of Zina's translation of Milk and Honey into Arabic70 0Item Restricted PEN-AND-PAPER VERSUS IN-PERSON COMPUTER-SUPPORTED L2 COLLABORATIVE WRITING: A MULTIMODAL (INTER)ACTION ANALYSIS(Newcastle University, 2023-03-01) Alzahrani, Dhaifallah; Satar, Muge; Lopez, ElaineSecond language (L2) collaborative writing is a well-established research area. However, investigations of L2 collaborative writing beyond the written text are limited, particularly the multimodal aspects and the utilisation of novel digital tools and modes in the writing process (Elola & Oskoz, 2017; Li & Zhang, 2021; Strobl & Satar, 2017). The present study examines learners’ multimodal (inter)action in L2 collaborative writing and compares pen-and-paper collaborative writing (PPCW) and in-person computer-supported collaborative writing (iCSCW). By applying Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis (Norris, 2004, 2019, 2020) as the underlying framework, the present research delineates and compares the higher-level mediated actions (HLMAs) that learners in four triadic groups attended to throughout the writing process. It also examines the multimodal construction of the HLMAs of disagreeing and correcting at the micro-level, illustrating the lower-level mediated actions (LLMAs) and the utilisation of available mediational means. Analysis of the HLMAs that learners attended to in the writing process revealed that while there were some similarities between the two settings, there were also numerous contrasting points. The observed HLMAs were categorized under the main stages of the writing process, demonstrating that the iCSCW setting facilitated fluid transitions between different writing stages and enabled high levels of equality and mutuality amongst group members. It also showed that the roles of the typist/editor/reviewer were dynamically altered in the iCSCW, which, consequently, enabled a recursive writing style. In contrast, learners in the PPCW setting predominantly followed a linear route of planning, drafting and revising. The micro-level analysis of the HLMAs of disagreeing and correcting demonstrated that the learners exhibited varying hierarchical modal configurations across the two settings. Furthermore, the findings also revealed how the learners’ utilisation of the mediational means available in the iCSCW setting enabled negotiations, which, in turn, led to mutually agreeable disagreement resolutions. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that learners put extra effort into accomplishing the HLMA of correcting in the PPCW setting, producing a range of LLMAs compared to how smooth and effortless it was in the iCSCW setting. Moreover, it showed that the iCSCW setting could afford other-initiated other-corrections to emerge due to high levels of equality and mutuality. This study adds to our existing understanding of learners’ multimodal (inter)action during L2 collaborative writing and the impact of mediational means on the multimodal construction of disagreements and corrections. It also offers theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications.22 0