Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The President�s use of signing statements is examined rhetorically. Three levels of ambiguous communication are identified and explored: Imposed Ambiguity, Multiple-Message Ambiguity, and Symbolic Ambiguity. All of the current discussion of ambiguity has focused on only the first variety. The findings of this thesis point to the intentional use of ambiguity by the Bush Administration in its signing statements and open the door for other forms of communicative inquiry.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Public spaces are made of lot of signs that take a great part in the construction of modern citizenship. Different kinds of exposed signs constitute essential means of equipment for the environments we are dwelling in and for individual persons. As some studies have stressed out the importance of emplacement and indexicality per se, we propose to switch the look and analyze the activity of workers in charge of signs placement. An ethnography of subway signs installation allows us to shed light on their invisible work that involves heterogeneous ways to treat signs. We assume that placement work enact different pragmatical properties for situated signs. According to circumstances, subway signs can be grasped as texts, indexes, landmarks, objects, part of a network and as a normative stake. For the signs perfomativity to be actualized, workers have to mobilize a composite knowledge that prioritize and articulate in situation these semiotics properties.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study was designed to examine the role of viewers’ issue involvement and the three components of the Theory of Planned Behavior in predicting intentions to sign a cornea donor card. The breakdown of effects for the independent and dependent variables confirms that issue involvement is an important intermediary in the persuasion process. Issue involvement is also a common causal antecedent of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. Compared to non-viewers, viewers exhibited a significantly higher degree of involvement, attitude toward cornea donation, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and intention to pledge cornea donation. The findings of this study suggest that adding issue involvement in the Theory of Planned Behavior enhances the explanatory power of the theory in predicting intentions, which indicate the possibility of combining the Elaboration Likelihood Model and the Theory of Planned Behavior in the prediction of human behaviors. This study also emphasizes the importance of issue involvement in identifying the why and how issue of the Entertainment-Education investigations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In August 2000, Justice O’Loughlin of the Federal Court of Australia handed down the decision in Cubillo v Commonwealth in which Lorna Cubillo and Kwementyay Gunner took action against the Commonwealth Government, arguing that it was vicariously liable for their removal from their families and communities as children and subsequent detentions in the Northern Territory during the 1940s and 1950s. The case is the landmark decision in relation to legal action taken by members of the Stolen Generations in Australia.

The decision provides an interesting site for an examination of the function of race in the reception of evidence in legal claims made by Indigenous people in ‘postcolonising’ countries such as Australia, and in particular the privileging of documentary over oral and other unwritten forms of testimony. In this paper, I will analyse one of the key sites of evidence in the trial—a form of consent with the purported thumbprint of Gunner’s mother, Topsy Kundrilba, which O’Loughlin read as a request that he be removed to St Mary’s Hostel.
I will provide a deconstructive reading of the form of consent, raising a series of questions in relation to the document and its reception by the court. Drawing on a semiotic framework and the work of Jacques Derrida, I investigate the significance of the concepts of intention and iterability to the interpretation of the document, arguing that the thumbprint cannot be read as a signature; it does not function as a sign of individualised identity.

Publication Type: Presentation Proposal
Abstract: Scat, tracks, rubs and scrapes are just a few ways to identify wildlife. Attend this poster session to learn activities and techniques to educate others about the fascinating world of wildlife signs.