Cette thèse traite de l’utilisation des symboles traditionnels dans la vie politique indonésienne. Nous nous sommes intéressés à l’exploitation de ces symboles dans la manière de présenter les discours politiques au sein de la communauté. Notre travail de recherche durant la période des élections de 2014 montre que le sujet de la légitimité est présent au cœur des discours électoraux. L’incorporation et l’utilisation des symboles traditionnels au sein des discours sont efficaces pour attirer l’attention du peuple et pour obtenir un soutien électoral. Les partis politiques, les hommes politiques et la Commission électorale à l’échelle locale exploitent ces symboles et les personnages mythologiques pour faire passer leurs messages aux citoyens. La plupart de politiciens prennent délibérément l’image de ces figures mythologiques pour servir leurs propres intérêts. Les hommes politiques profitent du réseau de parenté pour créer une légitimité culturelle en tant que leaders choisis pour la communauté. Ils essayent de retracer leurs liens généalogiques avec les grands personnages de l’histoire en les arborant ainsi dans leurs discours électoraux à travers les médias. Cette exploitation est authentifiée par la croyance populaire selon laquelle seuls les individus de grandes familles (balung gedhé) issues de la royauté peuvent devenir leurs leaders. Certaines des pratiques culturelles sont aussi organisées dans des lieux sacrés par les politiciens pour asseoir leur légitimité au sein de la communauté locale et à travers lesquels les citoyens reconnaissent leur supériorité. Ces manières dont les hommes politiques produisent leurs discours sont vivaces à l’intérieur de la communauté qui est toujours en attente de la présence d’une personne ayant la qualité d’une figure messianique qui va apporter la prospérité à la communauté. / This thesis deals with the use of traditional symbols in Indonesian politics. We have been interested in using these symbols in the presentation of political discourse in the community. Our field research during the general elections of 2014 shows that the subject of legitimacy is present at the heart of the electoral discourse. Politicians exploit the kinship network to create cultural legitimacy as chosen leaders for the community. They try to trace their genealogical ties with the great personality of the nation by supporting them in their electoral discourse through the media. This exploitation is authenticated by the popular belief that only individuals of great families (balung gedhé) from royalty can become their leaders. Some of the cultural practices are organized by politicians in sacred places to establish their legitimacy within the local community and through which people recognize their superiority. The incorporation and the use of traditional symbols in discourses are effective in attracting the attention of the people and in gaining electoral support. Political parties, politicians and the Election Commission at the local level employ these symbols and mythological characters to transmit their messages to citizens. Most politicians deliberately take the image of these mythological figures to serve their own interests. These ways in which politicians produce their discourses are persistent within the community which is always waiting for the presence of a person with the quality of a Messianic figure that will bring prosperity to the people.

The present study aims to explore how deictic personal pronouns are used in political speeches by the two American presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, during the 2020 United States presidential election. Donald Trump’s usage of the personal pronouns I, you, he/she, we and they is analysed and compared to Joe Biden’s usage of the same personal pronouns. The study has shown that Joe Biden has a preference for the first-person singular pronoun I while Donald Trump has a similar preference towards the third-person plural pronoun they. Both candidates also use the pronoun we just as often, however, Joe Biden’s we is mostly the universal we, referring to all Americans, while Donald Trump’s we is mostly the royal we, referring to his government. This study shows that the same deictic pronouns can be used to indicate inclusion and exclusion.

The reform of the United Nations Security Council belongs among the most discussed topics in the field of international relations. The criticism calling for adjustments to the Council's structure arose with the transformation of the international scene during the years of the Cold War. The process of decolonisation and the subsequent growth of the UN membership along with the decline of Great Britain and France fuelled the international pressure calling for the UNSC to reflect this new situation in its composition. However, in spite of the great number of proposals, since 1963 there has not been any major change. France, a permanent member of the Security Council, continued maintaining its negative attitude towards the reform until the end of the Cold War. Nevertheless, shortly after the end of the Cold War, the position of France changed. This change was articulated through the speech of Alain Juppé at the plenary meeting of the General Assembly in 1993, where France openly supported the UNSC reform. It can therefore be said that in 1993 there was a great change in French foreign policy. This thesis analyses how this change is projected in political discourse. Its aim is examining the nature of argumentation in the abovementioned discourse along with the way it corresponds to the...

This thesis documents the grammatical processes and semantic impact of innovative ways to pejoratively reference individuals through adjectival nominalization. Research on nominalized adjectives suggests that when meanings shift from having one property (1) to becoming a kind with associated properties (2), the noun form often encodes stereotypical attributes: [1] "Her hair is blonde." (hair color); [2] "He married a blonde." (female, sexy, dumb). Likewise, the linguistic phenomenon of genericity refers to classes or kinds and different grammatical structures reflect properties in different ways. In 1 and 2 above, the shift from adjectival blonde to indefinite NP a blonde moves the focus from the definitional characteristic to the prototypical. Similarly, adjectival gay [3] is definitional, but the marked, nominal form [4] adds socially-based conceptions of the "average" gay (example from Twitter): [3] jesus christ i make a joke and now im a gay man? (sexuality) [constructed]; [4] jesus christ i make a joke and now im a gay? … (flamboyant, abnormal). To investigate innovative reference via nominalization, two corpus studies based in human judgment were conducted. In the first study, a subset of the corpus (N=121) was annotated for pejoration by five additional linguists following the same guidelines as the original annotator. In the second study, 800 instances were annotated by non-experts using crowd-sourcing. In both studies we find a correspondence between nominal status and pejorative meaning.

This thesis deals with the issue of memory and remembering in the post-communist area. In particular, it examines the form, extent and success of the Holocaust reflection and coping with the past on the example of the speeches of Czech and Polish presidents from 1993 (Václav Havel), or 1995 (Aleksander Kwaśniewski) until the access to the European Union in 2004. Author of the thesis assumes that the fall of Communism and the restoration of the democratic establishment represented a significant impetus for the countries in question to deal with their past. At the same time, they try to prove that the Holocaust memory politics of key political representatives of the Czech Republic and Poland has been one of the important factors in the creation of their post-communist democratic identity - and not only with respect to an unofficial demand of the unifying Europe to cope with the heritage of the past. Through the analysis of selected presidential speeches, the thesis identifies and evaluates the image of Holocaust created by the Czech and Polish presidents on the one hand and the weaknesses in the Holocaust memory politics of both actors on the other. After theoretical and conceptual introduction (chapter one), the experience with the Holocaust in Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and...

This thesis deals with the topic of homegrown Islamist terrorism in the European Union. The target of this research is to provide an interpretation of the homegrown terrorism in the political discourse of the EU as an entity and selected member states - France, the United Kingdom and Slovakia. Building on assumptions of social constructivism and securitisation theory, the thesis explores the patterns in the discourses during the years 2015 - 2018 and seeks to identify potential similarities and differences in the political discourses of respective countries. While studying the changes in the discourse, the thesis analyses how the issue of homegrown terrorism has been securitised, thus how the narratives of political authorities shape perception of the homegrown terrorism as a major threat for Europe. In order to organise the arguments in a more objective manner, the research uses a qualitative method of thematic analysis. Our findings suggest that themes which are of general concern in all the discourses are, among others, prevention of terrorism and radicalisation, the significant role of the internet in spreading Islamist propaganda and the problem of returning foreign fighters However, some themes were identified as state-specific, such as highlighting the homegrown nature of current terrorism...

In the dissertation the author presents the analysis of the use of phraseological units in modern political discourse in Russia and the Czech Republic. The author shows that phraseology can be a tool for increasing the expressiveness of a speech, for contacting and influencing the audience in the political discourse. The analysis of cognitive and pragmatic specifics of idioms and metalanguage commentaries in the speech of politicians in a comparative aspect is carried out. As a result the author showes the specifics of the use of phraseological units in describing the speech image of a politician. Key words: phraseology, phraseologism, discourse, political discourse, political linguistics, cognitive linguistics, image of a politician, speech portrait of a politician.

In their book, Fairclough and Fairclough (2013) claim that political leaders’ main role is to make choices in difficult situations. Due to the coronavirus outbreak worldwide, every political leader was called to make difficult decisions and to announce them to their respective public. As a result, there is plenty of new data to be analyzed from a linguistic perspective. The goal of this study is to explore and analyze Boris Johnson’s ten first speeches on Covid-19 addressed to the nation between the 3rd and 23rd March 2020 (from herd immunity policy to strict lockdown). The corpus was examined in terms of lexicon structures (personal pronouns and verbs) and syntax structures (modal verbs), which, according to van Dijk (1997), are persuasive techniques. The findings suggest that the extensive use by Boris Johnson of the personal pronoun ‘we’ (exclusive) as well as the use of the personal pronoun ‘I’ show his active involvement in the fight against Covid-19. This involvement is also corroborated through (a) his use of event verbs, which indicate a continuous action; and (b) his selection of modal verbs of obligation, which mostly follow the personal pronouns that refer to the Prime Minister and/or the decision makers. This paper concludes that syntax and lexicon structures were used in Boris Johnson’s speeches as tools of persuasive techniques.

Since the emergence of Covid-19 in December 2019, metaphors to talk about the pandemic have been extensively used in political discourse. This study aims to compare metaphors for Covid-19 in the discourse of political leaders of the UK, the USA, Canada, and Australia by drawing upon three conceptual metaphors found by De la Rosa (2007). The following conceptual metaphors are investigated: DISEASE IS A WAR, DISEASE IS A NATURAL FORCE, and DISEASE IS A JOURNEY. To find metaphors for Covid-19, one corpus of transcribed political discourse was compiled for each country. The corpora were then searched using lemmas of words specific to each conceptual metaphor. By drawing upon conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) instances of metaphor usage were then analyzed. The frequency results showed the natural force metaphor to be the more frequently used in the UK and Canada corpora. In contrast, no occurrences of natural force metaphors were found in the USA or Australia corpora. The war metaphor was most frequently used in the USA corpus, and in the Australia corpus, the war and journey metaphor were used at similar frequencies. The findings of this study indicate that there is a difference in both frequency and choice of conceptual metaphors between the four corpora. The analysis also suggests that different metaphors can be used for different purposes.

This master's thesis deals with the British political Conservative discourse on Global Britain in the years 2016-2020 and the United Kingdom's place in the post-Brexit world. After the unexpected results of the EU referendum, the British government introduced the concept of Global Britain as their new foreign policy orientation. This paper assumes that the idea of the UK opened to the whole world and embracing old friends and new allies alike is built upon the imperial nostalgia and the idealisation of their past. It focuses on the various ways in which nostalgia manifests itself in the Conservative discourse of 2016-2020, specifically in the public speeches of its key representatives and election programs. In the theoretical part, this paper explores the academic debate on Global Britain and the role of history in the post-Brexit world. It uses the memory studies and operationalisation of the concept of nostalgia as a framework for the source analysis. The empirical chapter presents the research results in two ways - based on the thematic categories and individual speakers. The former follows the various ways in which the nostalgic manifestations are used to create a vision of a post-Brexit global Britain, while the latter focuses on the individual approaches in the efforts to communicate that image.