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Guided by attachment theory and principles of positive psychology, a conceptual model was developed depicting the direct and indirect effects of attachment insecurity, state hope, belongingness, and meaning in life on wellness indicators (i.e., life satisfaction, physical health, and depression) of first generation Latino immigrants in the U.S. Specifically, the present study proposed that the effects of attachment insecurity on Latino immigrants' wellness would be mediated by two tiers of factors. The first tier consisted of state hope (i.e., general state hope, spiritual state hope, mastery state hope) and sense of belonging (i.e., general belongingness; connectedness with mainstream/ethnic community), which represented individual-level and relational factors, respectively, salient in Latino culture. Greater attachment insecurity was hypothesized to contribute to a compromised MIL and poorer wellness by decreasing state hope and sense of belongingness. A total of 352 first-generation Latino immigrants from Texas participated in this study. The exploratory factor analysis on the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale revealed a two-factor factor structure that is different from the two factors of adult attachment typically found with American samples (i.e., anxiety and avoidance). The emerged two factors represent anxious-distancing attachment and comfort-seeking attachment. Results from structural equation modeling analysis showed adequate model fit with the data. The final model indicated that the effects of comfort-seeking attachment on wellness were fully mediated by two layers of mediators (belongingness and state hope as the first layer and meaning in life as the second layer). In addition, the effect of anxious-distancing attachment on wellness was fully mediated by belongingness and meaning in life but not through state hope. Bootstrap methods were used to assess the significance magnitude of these indirect effects. Comfort-seeking attachment explained 13% of the variance in state hope and both attachment variables explained 36% of the variance in sense of belongingness. Anxious-distancing attachment, comfort-seeking attachment, state hope, and sense of belongingness explained 78% of the variance in meaning in life, and the overall model explained 75% of the variance in wellness. Limitations, future directions, and implications for counseling and theory are discussed from attachment theory, positive psychology, and immigration perspectives.

The term ‘new atheism’ was first used in 2006 by Gary Wolf, who was describing the wave of irreligious publishing that was sweeping the world at the time and the social group that was growing alongside it. Since this time there has been an increased scholarly interest in non-religion and irreligion and more articles have been produced on the new atheists themselves. However, this literature has still been in the early stages and has been limited in its use of empirical sources, with only a small number of exceptions (Cimino and Smith 2007, 2010; Bullivant 2008a, 2008b, 2010; Pasquale 2010; Manning 2010; Kosmin and Keysar 2007; Hunsberger and Altemeyer 2006). Due to this lack of empirical data in the literature on the new atheism, it was an imperative to confirm current literature observations with participant data. This research set out to achieve this, using Grounded Theory in which the empirical field itself guided theory formation. This allowed the insider views of participants to inform the investigations within the field, to create categories relevant to irreligious individuals and groups. Using a constant comparison approach, I included the literature and history of the irreligious movement as part of my data after initial participant categories had been discovered. Via this comparison of Historical, Interview and Internet Participant Observation data with the literature, eight sociological categories of the irreligious were discovered along four structural organising dimensions. They were found to have consistent structuring affects throughout irreligious history and continuing into the new atheism itself. They were found to cause continuing division within the new atheism via a number of empirical case studies that show the emergence of sub-groups within the new atheism along these dimensions. These dimensions are covert/public, accommodation/confrontation, substitution/elimination and empathetic/intellectual. The irreligious field is an evolving construct, but many of its changes are driven by the four dimensions described. This will add to continuing academic discussions and critiques of the secularisation thesis and the concept of postsecularity. It will do this by highlighting secularisation as an evolving social process without a teleological endpoint. The new atheism is a particularly poignant example for making this argument, because as has been argued by Borer (2010), the movement is reacting to the perceived failure of the thesis itself. The new atheists feel a need to put forward a public form of irreligion in order to compete with religious views in the postsecular public sphere. It is a world that is still steeped in religious practices and in which the new atheists feel a need for public representation in order to validate their views. This validation can also involve the creation and appropriation of concepts often connected to religion, such as community structures, rituals and moral prescriptions. The mixing of religious and secular practices discovered within the new atheist group helps to highlight the idea that even the most irreligious groups are currently involved in appropriation of religious or religious-like ideas for public use. Moreover, as will be argued, irreligion is not the end point of worldview evolution, even if it is eventually decided that gods or the supernatural do not exist, there will still be continuing divisions within the groups that agree on that idea. This analysis serves to support a version of postsecularity in which dialectical evolution is continuous and religious/secular worldviews are mixing together in a competitive public sphere.

This dissertation consists of two distinct yet related projects on the meaning of life. Part I centers on the challenge of understanding what the, admittedly, vague question, "What is the meaning of life?" is asking. This I call the linguistic project. After assessing the oft-repeated charge of incoherence, surveying extant interpretations of the question, and discussing other significant dialectical issues in Chapter One, I argue in Chapters Two through Four that the question should be understood as the request for a narrative of the world that sufficiently addresses those areas of greatest existential import to human beings. I call this the narrative interpretation, and propose it as a rival interpretive strategy to what I call, following R. W. Hepburn, the amalgam thesis . The amalgam thesis is the most common interpretive approach whereby the question, "What is the meaning of life?" is largely seen as a place-holder for a whole set of questions, such as, "Why are we here?" "What is the purpose of life?" and "What makes life worthwhile?" among others. On the amalgam thesis, the question is viewed as little more than a disjunctive question. In contrast, the narrative interpretation views the question as making a singular request. However, it is a request, the answer to which captures all of the intuitions and sub-questions thought to be relevant to the meaning of life under a single unifying construct (i.e., a narrative). After a detailed discussion of the necessary and sufficient conditions of the narrative interpretation, I enlist the concept of Weltanschauung in order to lend further philosophical plausibility to this interpretation. Finally, I consider several philosophical advantages it enjoys over the amalgam thesis.

This thesis examines Judith Butler's account of performative agency in relation to its critics, in particular, the question of whether Butler's thesis disavows materiality and thereby agency. These questions are answered by reading Butler's work through the work of Merleau-Ponty, in particular, by comparing Butler's account of performative agency to Merleau-Ponty's account of bodily intentionality. It is argued that a common ground underlies these featured concepts. I identify this common ground through the institution of the concept "simultaneity" to express a relationship of reciprocity between meaning and materiality through which ontological and epistemological significance is, reciprocally, sedimented and transformed; stabilised and destabilised.

Research methods from both the qualitative and quantitative paradigms were used to answer the question concerning how adult readers navigate through informational text embedded in a hypermedia environment to construct meaning.

Data revealed that disjunctions occurred between the teacher's intentions for making the assignments and the students interpretations of the assignments on some level with all three essays. Data analysis also indicated that the written texts which the students produced were shaped by sociocultural influences, personal and educational influences, intertextual influences, and motivational influences.

This thesis examines Michael Dummett's form of a theory of meaning for natural language. I argue that Dummett's extension of Frege's formal techniques to the semantics of natural language, based on the categories of sense, force and tone, and the centrality of truth, provides an inadequate theoretical account of linguistic competence. Part One examines the celebrated sense-force distinction. Dummett's schematic model of force-indicators and sentence-radicals ignores or mishandles semantic features of numerous ordinary expressions and linguistic forms. In many cases the distinction is blurred, and worse, univocity is sacrificed. A chief culprit is the restrictive nature of true-false polarity. The principal thesis that force attaches only to complete sentences is compromised, and Dummett's handling of force-indication fails to account for the distinct elements of word-order, verbal mood and intonation contour. In Part Two I attempt to distinguish genuine varieties of tone, inspecting the different differences among e.g., 'lift'-'elevator', 'cheekbone'-'zygoma', 'ere'- 'before 1 , 'Chinese'-'Chink', 'and'-'but 1 and others, as well as the contribution of adverbs like 'still' and 'almost'. Both Frege and Dummett consign to this general category many expressions which do not belong; for some other cases, tonality is a matter of use, but not meaning. Minimally, the sense-tone boundary needs redrawing. More accurately, the notion of sense, identified with the determination of truth-conditions, must either be broadened to incorporate some non-truth-conditional aspects of word-meaning, or else be replaced by another term possessing the broader role. In Part Three a single general characterization of meaning is advanced which accommodates both individual expressions and linguistic forms. I support the idea that a formulation in terms of a primitive notion of 'making things out to be a certain way', aligned with the poles of correctness and incorrectness, captures in a systematic way the expressions and forms which proved resistant to Dummett's canonical form of explanation.

Chapter 1. Wittgenstein's conception of Philosophy I begin by comparing Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy to Russell's, noting that they held different views of philo- sophy in relation to natural science. Wittgenstein's method of examples' is compared with the Socratic method. Might philosophy be different from what it in fact is? Wittgenstein was a philosopher of language; the theory of meaning as fundamental. Examples given of the Private Lan- guage Argument and the philosophy of mathematics. Recapitu- lation. Appendix 1. Translation of 'Ober Dogmatistnus' from Wittgenstein und der Wiener Xreis. (pp 182 - 184) Appendix 2. Translation of a chapter of the Big Typescript on the nature of philosophy (pp 406 - 435). Corresponding passages noted. Chapter 2 . Preliminary considerations in the Tractatus A sketch of the genesis of the Tractatus, showing that Wittgenstein placed great emphasis on the doctrine of showing and saying. Tractatus concerned with a perfect language? No, but with the conditions for any language. 'Ordinary' and 'logical' propositions in the Moore notes were not explained adequately. The possibility of 'semantic ascent' in relation to the doc- trine of saying and showing. Sketch of the picture theory. Explanation of the difference between 'abbilden', 'darstellen' and 'vertreten'. Discussion of isomorphism and the relation between language and ontology. Example taken of relation"of Names and Objects. Structure and form. Comparison with Frege, and Frege's problems with 'the concept horse'. Waismann's criticism of Frege's use of Bedeutung repudiated. [continued in text ...]

Introduction. Grice's first definition of speaker's meaning is described and stated. An important class of counterexamples lead to adopting a definition by Schiffer, which employs the notion of mutual knowledge. I.1 Signals have no semantical structure, but have meaning. The intention is announced of defining '2 means p in G' in terms of speaker's meaning. I.2 A signal's meaning consists in its being governed by a certain kind of convention. Schiffer's' analysis of 'x means p in G' is given. I.3 An account of convention by Schiffer is stated. His two definitions together do not provide a convention which governs meaning. I.4 A form of convention is proposed which is adequate for defining 'x means p in G'. It is argued that there are specifiable circumstances in which, if one utters a signal, then one's utterance accords with the convention only if one means such and such. ll Introduction. Not all signals are propositional; hence, to give their meaning, one must quantify into 'to mean that', about which there are difficulties. II.1 A theory of Quine's is described in which he accounts for a limited kind of quantification into belief contexts. It is argued that Quine's fails to make sense of a certain valid inference. II.2 It is claimed that, contrary to entrenched assumptions, there are occurrences of singular terms which are both referential and non-extensional, that is, which do not satisfy what some have called 'Leibniz' Law', which is here called the" substitution principle". II.3 The substitution principle is not a priori true. A general explanation of exceptions to it is offered. II.4 The logical form of sentences containing non-extensional but referential occurrences of singular terms in belief contexts is stated. The theory requires that, on such occurrences, singular terms have a dual role. II.5 Several points here. First, belief of things is under some uniqueness conception of them. Secondly, this cannot in general be construed in terms of uniqueness properties. Thirdly, what is required is sometimes that the believer's conception of something is as being uniquely related to him. Fourthly, a problem about self-ascriptive beliefs, and a way of representing their logical form. II.6 An apparent difficulty in extending the account to 'means' is dealt with. III.1 An account is given of certain signals which have pure indexical meaning - that is, signals which mean it is F - extending the device of Chapter 1. III.2 Qualified indexicality, as in signals which mean the E is F, requires some new apparatus, in particular, the notion of referring. III.3 A definition of referring qua, produced jointly with Schiffer, is given. III.4 'z means the E is F' is defined, extending the kind of definition used for 'z means it is F', and using the notion of referring qua. III.5 An account is given of the meaning of signals which are (as it were)" token-reflexive". III.6 How to represent complex referential embedding in the specifying of the meaning of signals. "Referential qualifier" is defined. III.7 A general account is given of what conventional restrictions there are on the references which are made on the utterance of a signal. The notion "super-reference" is defined; this captures how one's primary references are related to one's n-ary references. III.8 Incorporating super-reference, and earlier points about the relation between meaning and reference, we arrive at a general account of what is meant on the utterance of any indicative signal, regardless of referential complexities. The definition of meaning for all indicative signals. III.9 An account of the logical structure of speaker's imperative meaning. How to ascribe meaning to imperative signals, and to signals which have specific illocutionary forces. The final definition of meaning for all simple signals. lV.l It is argued that the assumption that there are separate conventions for word meanings is superfluous. The convention which governs sentence meaning incorporates a complex abstract relation which associates each sentence with each of its meanings. A general definition is given of what it is for a sentence to mean Such and such. IV.2 A problem is raised about the nature of the entities which are to serve as meanings (propositions and propositional functions.) It is claimed that the unanalyzed notion of proposition will not enable us to state recursively the relations which relate sentences to their meanings. lV.3 An identification of propositions with certain intensions - namely, functions from possible worlds to truth values - is rejected from counterexamples. Carnap's notion of intensional isomorphism serves as a constraint of any adequate account of propositions. IV.4 Propositions are identified with intensional structures, certain hierarchically ordered entities which contain both intensions and structural functions, which are functions from intensions to intensions. Propositional functions and referential qualifiers are similarly construed. IV.5 Frege's theory that the denotatum of a that-clause is the sense of its embedded sentence is shown to be compatible with the requirement that the meaning function for a language be recursively specifiable. IV.6 It is claimed that, with an important qualification which is consistent with the general program, the notion of word meaning is derivative from that of sentence meaning. An example of how this may be shown for a particular language is given. A similar claim is made about the derivativeness of logico-syntactic vocabulary, and an example of how to do it for a simple language is given. The concluding words express a certain unsupported bias concerning the nature of grammar.