Horn, Charles Lawrence2024-08-142024-08-1419951995https://hdl.handle.net/1828/18241This thesis is an analysis of a series of negotiated agreements. The documents--'Memoranda of Understanding' between a provincial government and Aboriginal groups--are examined using techniques from socio-linguistics, discourse analysis, literary and political theory, text grammar, and semiotics. A number of relevant theoretical and methodological issues are examined, and a close reading of the selected texts is performed. The results point to the centrality of certain modes of discourse to governmental activities, and to the utility of a discursive approach to studying public policy. The analysis suggests that these texts encode and enable a range of social relations. They establish a series of discourse entities and construct relationships between them; they are locations for the construction and authorization of identity; they articulate a certain spatial practice, and they are vehicles for the development of a certain 'Aboriginal public sphere'.213 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis