An M.A. Thesis News
An M.A. thesis at Basrah University Entitled
By: Zamman Tawfeeq Abdul-Hassan
The thesis has been discussed at the Department of English, College of Education for Human Sciences, University of Basra.
Topic & Abstract: Semantic Relational Structuring and Ideology : a Semantico- Discourse Exploration of Doris Lessing's Time Bites: Views and Reviews. It focuses on investigating ideologies, belief systems, attitudes and perspectives in Doris Lessing's Time Bites: Views and Reviews. Hence, in order for these ideologies and attitudes to be unearthed, a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective is adopted and Winfred Crombie’s semantic structuring relationships are investigated. The crux of the study is to unmask ideologies and attitudes and to check the applicability of Winfred Crombie's theoretical framework to lengthy texts since previous studies, if indeed there is any, focused on example sentences or short texts.
Thesis Outline:
The study is divided into two parts which are theoretical and practical in addition to the last chapter which lists the main conclusions and suggests future research. The theoretical part is divided into two chapters. The first chapter encompasses the main preliminaries starting with a general introduction, the significance, limits, hypotheses, objectives, and procedure of the study. Chapter two begins by presenting a detailed explanation of Discourse, Semantics and Ideology and the relations linking them. In addition, the chapter also presents a detailed account of the theoretical framework of the study to be applied to Doris Lessing's Time Bites: Views and Reviews. It starts with the concept of Semantic Relational Structuring, then, it explains its main categories with illustrative examples from the text and other sources. The practical part is divided into three chapters. Each chapter is concerned with analyzing an essay from Lessing's Time Bites through the use of the morpho- syntactic categories of the Semantic Relational Structuring. The chapters present the methodology, the data, discussion and results of the study.
Conclusions:
The study is concluded by a final chapter that comprises the main findings of the study as well as offers suggestions for future studies. Lessing used Associative relations in general and contrast in particular to discuss racism, social injustice and political corruption. She explored feminist ideologies and showed her loyalty to the feminist cause using associative relations as well. On a different note, her logico-deductive relations mainly reason-result shape most of her argument and introduce her Sufi beliefs and opinions.
