Diploma thesis "National identity in France and its role in the politics of Nicolas Sarkozy" deals with national identity as a political instrument used by the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy during his five-year term (2007-2012). The main objective of this work is to prove that the national identity in his discourse served to increase his popularity or to obtain far-right voters and that Nicolas Sarkozy used this policy instrument throughout his mandate despite the fact that he officially turned away from it after a failed public debate on the subject in 2010. As methodological basis for research on the topic and achievement of the objectives "critical discourse analysis" was selected and also "analysis of metaphors" was used as its complement. In the theoretical part of the thesis some of the basic scientific findings that deal with the "nation", "identity" and the development and construction of "national identity" are presented and discussed . The research consists of three main chapters devoted to the analysis of Nicolas Sarkozys' speeches during the given period. Chapters are divided according to the changing role of national identity in Sarkozy's political discourse - from the campaign tool in 2007, through the recovery of this instrument in 2009 and 2010 to its insertion in the...

Men’s violence against women is a common social problem affecting many women worldwide. How the problems are described will influence social work, thus making it important to grasp the discourse regarding men’s violence against women. Therefore, this study aims to examine the Swedish political discourse regarding men’s violence against women in order to understand the social conditions relating to violence against women. The political parties being studied are Sverigedemokraterna, Moderaterna, Kristdemokraterna and Liberalerna, since these parties hold the parliamentary majority. Political programs and websites of the parties were studied, as well as public radio and television programs and political speeches featuring the leaders of the political parties. The material was analyzed by using two theoretical perspectives, Connell's theory of masculinity and Butler's theory of grievability. The results of the study drew attention to several tendencies within the Swedish political discourse related to men's violence against women. Three forms of violence were commonly recurrent, such as sexual violence, intimate partner violence and honor-related violence. The violence was often interpreted in the political discourse as a result of culture and values related to people with foreign backgrounds. Furthermore, the study indicates that the parties rarely name violence against women as men’s violence against women and often exclusively refers to intimate partner violence. In addition, the violence is mostly described through gender neutral terms, which ultimately conceals the fact that women more often are victims to violence and that men usually are perpetrators of violence.

Работа посвящена исследованию роли метафоры как средства манипулирования в политическом дискурсе, на примере дебатов между Хиллари Клинтон и Дональдом Трампом во время президентской кампании 2016 года. Автор анализирует использование метафор и их влияние на аудиторию, раскрывая механизмы манипуляции, которые лежат в основе такого использования. Работа имеет целью повысить информированность читателей и помочь им развить более осознанный подход к политическим сообщениям, основанный на анализе метафорического языка и его эффектах на аудиторию. Целью данного исследования является анализ роли метафоры в политическом дискурсе, а также раскрытие механизмов манипуляции, которые связаны с использованием метафор. В исследовании автор стремится более глубоко понять, как политические лидеры могут использовать метафоры для воздействия на аудиторию, формирования определенных образов и манипуляции мнениями людей. В результате исследования автор выявил ряд ключевых результатов. Во-первых, оба кандидата активно использовали метафоры в своих выступлениях и дебатах. Хиллари Клинтон использовала метафоры, связанные с образованием и экономикой, чтобы подчеркнуть свою экспертизу и стабильность. Дональд Трамп же в своих метафорах обращался к насилию, угрозам и созданию образа «американского героя». Во-вторых, метафоры, используемые обоими кандидатами, имели сильное эмоциональное воздействие на аудиторию. Они создавали определенные ассоциации, вызывали эмоциональные реакции и убеждали слушателей в правоте высказываемых идей и политических взглядов. В-третьих, анализ метафор позволил выявить механизмы манипуляции, используемые в политическом дискурсе. Оба кандидата использовали метафоры, чтобы создать определенные образы, усилить эмоциональные реакции и вызвать у избирателей чувство кризиса и необходимости перемен. Исследование подчеркивает важность осознания и критического анализа метафорического языка в политическом дискурсе. Понимание механизмов манипуляции при помощи метафор позволяет развить более информированное и осознанное отношение к политическим сообщениям и повысить критическую грамотность восприятия политической риторики. / This paper is devoted to the study of the role of metaphor as a means of manipulation in political discourse, using the example of debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. The author analyzes the use of metaphors and their impact on the audience, revealing the mechanisms of manipulation that underlie such use. The work aims to raise readers' awareness and help them develop a more informed approach to political messaging based on an analysis of metaphorical language and its effects on audiences. The purpose of this study is to analyze the role of metaphor in political discourse, as well as to reveal the mechanisms of manipulation that are associated with the use of metaphors. In the study, the author seeks to better understand how political leaders can use metaphors to influence the audience, form certain images and manipulate people's opinions. As a result of the study, the author identified several key findings. First, both candidates actively used metaphors in their speeches and debates. Hillary Clinton used metaphors related to education and the economy to emphasize her expertise and stability. Donald Trump, on the other hand, in his metaphors turned to violence, threats, and creating an image of an "American hero. Second, the metaphors used by both candidates had a strong emotional impact on the audience. They created certain associations, evoked emotional reactions, and persuaded listeners of the validity of the ideas and political views expressed. Third, the analysis of metaphors revealed the manipulation mechanisms used in political discourse. Both candidates used metaphors to create certain images, enhance emotional reactions, and evoke a sense of crisis and the need for change among voters. The study highlights the importance of awareness and critical analysis of metaphorical language in political discourse. Understanding the mechanisms of manipulation through metaphors allows us to develop a more informed and conscious attitude toward political messages and to increase the critical literacy of the perception of political rhetoric.

The United States (U.S.) military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 was met with turmoil as Taliban regained control of most of the country, including Kabul. These events have affected many and were widely discussed on social media, especially in the U.S. In this work, we focus on Twitter discourse regarding these events, especially potential opinion shifts over time and the effect social media posts by established U.S. legislators might have had on online public perception. To this end, we investigate two datasets on the war in Afghanistan, consisting of Twitter posts by self-identified U.S. accounts and conversation threads initiated by U.S. politicians. We find that Twitter users' discussions revolve around the Kabul airport event, President Biden's handling of the situation, and people affected by the U.S. withdrawal. Microframe analysis indicates that discourse centers the humanitarianism underlying these occurrences and politically leans liberal, focusing on care and fairness. Lastly, network analysis shows that Republicans are far more active on Twitter compared to Democrats and there is more positive sentiment than negative in their conversations. / Master of Science / The United States (U.S.) military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 was met with turmoil as Taliban regained control of most of the country, including Kabul. These events have affected many and were widely discussed on social media, especially in the U.S. In this work, we focus on Twitter regarding these events, and study if public's opinion change over time especially by the posts of legislators. Therefore, we used two datasets about unrest in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. One datasets consists of of Twitter posts by self-identified U.S. accounts and the other one are the conversation threads initiated by U.S. politicians. We find that Twitter users' discussions revolve around the Kabul airport event, President Biden's handling of the situation, and people affected by the U.S. withdrawal. According to our findings based on several methods analyzing the content of the posts of Twitter users, the pressing issues are the humanitarian concerns for the people who could be the target of Taliban. Last but not least, we also studied the relationship between legislators and twitter users along with the dominant sentiment about the topic. Our analysis shows that Republicans are far more active on Twitter compare to Democrats and there is more positive sentiment than negative in their conversations.

This Study is concerned with the WP-Indonesia conflict and the development of its narrative since 1949 as well as the shifting in power dynamics. It reveals that the past decades have not changed the essential power dynamic of Indonesia holding the main power by portraying itself as the “protector,” while WP describes them as a “colonising power”. Nevertheless, a slow trend has been detected as the Papuan narrative shifts towards WP presenting independent ways of governing to the global community, portraying itself as being on the same level as other sovereign states. Further research could investigate the differences in national versus international narratives and their influence on public opinion. The narratives are being traced using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and framing theory by Robert Entman. Combining these frameworks, the narratives are analysed by focusing on the presented issue, cause, moral judgement, suggested resolutions and portrayed power imbalances. Moreover, the data that are being used involve public statements by the political elite of each party.

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The present dissertation examines social stratification, as well as social inequality and its reproduction through government textual representations in a community in the outskirts of Mexico City: Ciudad Satélite. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis approach and interdisciplinary methodological tools, this study defines the type(s) and salient features of discourse used in government written communication in Cd. Satélite, as well as how some discursive strategies operate. The objective of the analysis is to illuminate how citizens interpret government communication in the subject community, and to illustrate how the Plain Language campaign has impacted such community. Chapter I demarcates the analytical background and guidelines, and it reviews several studies that focus on oral and written discourse in order to establish the basis of the communicative relationship between citizen and government. It also explains the relation of the subject community to the structure of the Mexican government. Chapter II provides a detailed description of Ciudad Satélite, the corpus and the surveyed citizens, and it also establishes the relation to the analytical guidelines. It also explains the methods used for the collection of linguistic and graphic data, and it demarcates how data was sorted and coded. The data analyses are in Chapters III and IV. Chapter III broaches linguistic accessibility of government written communication through a quantitative analysis of readability indexes as a way to shed light on accessibility of government documents. It explains the terminology, significant markers of readability and how they relate to each other. It then explores readability levels of documents, tasks, and government offices, and how and which particular social groups interact with texts using variables such as gender, age, education, occupation and identity. Chapter IV takes a multimodal approach of salient identified modes through qualitative and quantitative approaches. It considers citizens’ reaction to semiotic data and incorporates their responses in the analysis, which aim to describe the political representations in the linguistic landscape of the subject community and how citizens perceive such representations. This chapter also explores the type of persuasion used by government in the subject community through specific graphic images. Chapter V provides a discussion of all relevant data that aims towards explaining how certain meanings are perceived and thus created and maintained in the government-citizen text interaction. It explores accessibility of government linguistic resources considering readability indexes, modal representations and symbolic power, in order to show the unequal access to institutionally controlled linguistic resources. / Spanish

This PhD thesis concerns language and racism. The aim is to explore how racism is reproduced in interaction in public debates on immigration, integration and refugee policy. From a constructivist pragmatic perspective, language is considered as a practice that composes and makes sense of our social world and all the phenomena and individuals that we perceive in it. Racist discourses discriminate against and privilege people by categorising them according to notions of cultural, ethnical, racial, religious and national differences. The thesis has two main themes: 1) the linguistic reproduction of, and response to, racist discrimination and privileging in interaction, and 2) the role of language in various public arenas, and the norms and conditions for participation in these arenas. The thesis comprises five studies. Study I examines racist discourses and conditions for participation in an online newspaper comments section. Study II examines how the phrase “politically correct” is used and negotiated in the same comments section, and how its usage leads to the reproduction and normalisation of racism. Another comments section is the focus of Study III, in which discriminating and privileging categorisations of Muslims, Islam, Swedes and Sweden are analysed. Study IV examines an anti-racist forum on the social networking site Instagram. In the study, the reproduction of norms of whiteness is analysed, as well as power relations that are evoked, sustained and transformed in interaction. Finally, Study V is an analysis of linguistic, visual and material reproductions of political positions and racist discourses in a debate among party leaders on Swedish television. The thesis demonstrates how normalisation of racism is accomplished in interaction, and how reproduction of hierarchically structured difference and bigoted stereotypes are performed, and challenged, through language. The medium, combined with the user’s speech acts, set up the norms and conditions for participation, and for the discursive processes that reproduce the relations and structures of power.

This research is concerned with Pakistan's participation in the US-led 'war on terror' in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. The study seeks to explain how Pakistan's state practice in the aftermath of 9/11 was normalised and made possible. In explaining the state practice, the study draws on a constructivist conceptual framework; which is further enhanced by incorporating key theoretical insights from critical realism. In the first instance, the study proposes that Pakistan's participation in the 'war on terror', seen as a set of actions and practices, was an outcome of a specific domestic political discourse. This discourse enabled and legitimised the state's alliance with the US and its abandonment of the Taliban regime. Secondly, the study is concerned with explaining why the particular discourse emerged in the shape and form that it did. In this context, the argument is that a depth 'critical realist' ontological inquiry can reveal underlying and enduring global and domestic social structural contexts, and traces of agential influence as connected to the discourse. Consequently, this study conceptualises Pakistan's actions in the context of the 'war on terror' as emerging from a multi-causal complex in which discourse, structure and agency are complicit. The study represents a departure from realist readings that emphasise a mono-causal relationship between the US and Pakistan. Instead, this research uses a synthesis of critical realism and constructivism to add a fresh perspective in terms of how we may conceptualise Pakistan's political practice in this instance.

Šios disertacijos tyrimo objektas – kalbinės politinės konfliktinės komunikacijos išraiškos priemonės, būdingos Lietuvos ir Didžiosios Britanijos vadovų politiniame diskurse (1998–2008). Šis tyrimas atskleidžia faktą, jog kalbinės priemonės yra glaudžiai susijusios su kalbančiojo ideologija bei kultūros nulemtomis kalbinėmis praktikomis. Disertacijoje tiriamos tokios kognityvinės lingvistikos sąvokos, kaip konceptualiosios metaforos, domenas, prasmės sritis bei kalbinės priemonės – nominacijos. Žvelgiant iš siauros lingvistikos metodologijos perspektyvos, komparatyvinė analizė ir aprašomasis analitinis metodas naudojami Lietuvos ir Didžiosios Britanijos vadovų konfliktinės komunikacijos diskurso tyrime. Didžiosios Britanijos ir Lietuvos politiniame diskurse isreikštas konfliktas turi bendrų ir skirtingų bruožų. Bendrumą nulemia bendra konfliktinės komunikacijos esmė – politinių jėgų pozicijų ir interesų nesutapimai. Skirtumai remiasi įvairių politinių kultūrų ypatumais. Politinė konkurencija tiek Lietuvoje, tiek Didžiojoje Britanijoje remiasi domenais pokyčiai ir nauda. Tos pačios POLITIKA – TAI KARAS, POLITIKA – TAI KELIONĖ ir VALSTYBĖ – TAI PASTATAS metaforos Šios yra būdingos abiejų šalių politinei komunikacijai. Tačiau Didžiosios Britanijos politiniame gyvenime konfliktinė komunikacija turi ideologinį pobūdį, o Lietuvos vadovų konfliktinės komunikacijos diskurse politinis konfliktas išreikštas ne kaip ideologinis konfliktas. / The object of this research is the linguistic means of political conflict communication that are characteristic of the political discourse of the political leaders of Great Britain and Lithuania (1998–¬2008). This dissertation discloses the fact that linguistic means are closely related to the ideology of the speaker and linguistic practices are conditioned by culture. Such cognitive linguistic concepts as conceptual metaphors, domain, meaning field and such linguistic means as nominations are analysed in this dissertation. Looking from the narrow perspective of linguistic methodology, comparative analysis and descriptive-analytical methods are applied in the conflict communication discourse research of the political leaders of Lithuania and Great Britain. The conflict which is expressed in the political discourse of these countries has both similarities and differences. Resemblance is determined by the general essence of conflict communication, i.e., the discrepancy between positions taken by political forces and interests. Differences are based on the peculiarities of the two political cultures. Political competition in both Lithuania and Great Britain is based on the domains change and benefit. The same POLITICS IS WAR, POLITICS IS A JOURNEY and THE STATE IS A BUILDING conceptual metaphors are characteristic of political communication of both countries. However, conflict communication has an ideological nature in the political life of Great Britain while in the discourse... [to full text]