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    'Weeaboo Japanese' : exploring English-Japanese language-mixing in online Japanese popular culture fandom : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Philosophy in Linguistics at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Gardiner, Rowan Elizabeth Arbuthnott
    The complexities of a globalised modern society pose methodological and theoretical issues for linguistic research in areas such as Language Contact, Language-Mixing, and Sociolinguistics, due to the commodification and transmission of language and language features resulting in new language interactions. The boundary between definitions of language borrowing and code- switching is currently a matter of increased interest, particularly in terms of research identifying cases of language use involving unskilled participants. This study investigates and linguistically analyses the presence of Japanese language features within English language contexts that are produced by members of online discussion forums who are fans of Japanese popular culture, and for whom fluency in Japanese language is not assumed nor required for participation. Corpus linguistics techniques were employed on data gathered from two online sources in order to identify what linguistic features were present and establish their extent according to frequency. These same corpora were qualitatively analysed to establish community attitudes towards English-Japanese language mixing and what these results indicated in terms of policing and community norms, and overall what both the quantitative and qualitative results meant for how the language phenomena could be defined according to current theoretical paradigms. The results showed that the most frequent word class was nouns, and the semantic domains found were mostly related to Japanese fandom concepts that were topical to the forum, such as specific interests, clothing and fashion, food, media related terms, and religion and cultural terms. Most instances were single-word insertions, and where the few multi-word segments occurred they were specifically in reference to a negative stereotype within the community (weeaboo). This stereotype also indicated language policing was a factor affecting language use, and the results showed that while the Japanese language had high status, language use was socially restricted to specific situations and extents of use. The language phenomenon is described as mostly language borrowing behaviours, but as the words retain a high level of knowledge of related assignations and also occur concurrently with a few code-switching type behaviours, the usage-based approach where both elements are considered different aspects of the same continuum is seen as a preferable theoretical paradigm.
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    Knowledge management in web communication technologies : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Science in Information Systems at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2005) Yang, Jingyu
    In the tertiary educational area, the web communication technologies have been used for a long time for communication among students and teachers. The discussion forum system is one important type of web communication tools. This thesis suggests an advanced category of web-based discussion forum system to enhance the ability of knowledge management in the tertiary educational area. In this project, a prototype web-based discussion forum system is developed that not only contains the benefits of the traditional web communication tools, but also overcomes various shortcomings of current discussion systems by using various technologies such as keyword search methodology, concept-based search methodology, interactive query expansion technology, and concept map methodology. This project provides a solution which students can effectively and efficiently capture, retrieve, and share useful knowledge and relevant information in a web-based discussion forum.
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    Automating the measurement of critical thinking in discussion forums : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Information Systems at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2011) Corich, Stephen Paul
    Critical thinking is seen as an essential skill for survival in the 21st century and those involved in education agree that encouraging students to think critically is an essential requirement of the educational system. There is considerable debate among educationalists concerning the most effective way to encourage the development of critical thinking skills and little agreement on the best way to measure evidence of critical thinking. This study examines what is meant by the term critical thinking and investigates some of the tools that have been used to measure evidence of critical thinking. The study concentrates on the measurement of critical thinking among discussion forum participants and describes the development and testing of a tool designed to automate the process of measuring critical thinking. Since the study involved the design, development and testing of a computerised tool, an action research approach was adopted. Action research gained popularity among information systems developers around the mid 1990s. It is seen as a methodology that encourages the generation of scientific knowledge by allowing the researcher to modify intentionally a real setting and carefully evaluate the results. The study describes the development of an automated text classification system that uses content analysis to classify discussion forum transcripts using critical thinking models developed by Garrison, Anderson, & Archer (2000), Henri (1992) and Perkins & Murphy (2006). The findings from the study suggest that automated tools have the potential to assist in the measurement of critical thinking abilities and are worthy of further investigation.