This thesis explores the environmental politics surrounding agricultural biotechnology innovations and diffusion. Recent developments in agricultural biotechnology are accompanied by growing social concerns that such innovations pose risks to the environment and to human health. Biosafety is a term used to discuss the possibility of such risks. Currently, the regulation of agricultural gene-technology and biosafety are contentious environmental issues for national and international policy communities. However, detailed studies of the conflicts and complexities generated by biotechnology for environmental governance are scarce. In particular, little is understood of the ways in which biotechnology issues emerge on regulatory agendas, and research gaps remain on how differing perspectives of biotechnological risks impact on policy outcomes. This thesis makes a significant contribution to these outstanding research issues. My contribution is a new analytical framework that unearths the discursive role biotechnology plays in constructing international environmental policy regimes. I develop this framework on the understanding that the use of language resources like storylines, metaphors and other rhetorical devices are critical in shaping environmental policy in general and biotechnology governance in particular. This analytical framework couples a language analysis to an investigation of the practices of institutional power. The result is a discourse analysis that provides important and useful insights into the theory and practice of biosafety policy. In other words, my thesis explores both the ‘talking’ and the ‘doing’ of policymaking and thereby provides new insights into the contested and uncertain environmental policy area of international gene-technology regulation. Specifically, I undertake a discourse analysis of international biosafety politics within the Convention on Biological Diversity. I apply my discourse analysis to a case study: the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2000. My research provides a different reading of international gene-technology politics, one that questions the constructed nature of biotechnology as a policy problem and reveals the power relations involved in producing particular policy options and outcomes on biosafety. There are a number of key research findings that emerged from the application of my discursive analytical framework to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. I find that biosafety is a highly fluid concept. It can enlarge or contract depending on the way in which language resources are mobilised by policy actors and interest groups to secure definitions and generate consensus around their preferred understandings of biosafety. Moreover, my research indicates that the more radical texts for biosafety can be recast by dominant interest groups into scripts for shallow reform agendas. Institutionalised policy practices also effect policy outcomes. My research finds that the use of Expert Panels, for example, is important in shaping international policy communities’ understanding of the policy problems posed by biotechnology risks. In the light of these findings, my thesis argues that the ability of interest groups and policy actors to win language games within institutional settings also enables them to secure their preferred policy outcomes. I import the concept of authorship as a new policy concept to discuss the ways in which such groups exercise social power to secure their understanding of biosafety, which thereby effect the ‘writing’ of the dominant accounts of what constitutes an acceptable international biosafety standard within the Cartagena Protocol. In short, my thesis is a new account of biosafety politics that fills some of the current knowledge gaps about how biotechnology is emerging onto regulatory agendas. It also demonstrates the mechanisms of power and the language struggles that determine biosafety policy outcomes within multi-lateral environmental agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Genres are constituted, implicitly and explicitly, through their construction of the past. Genres continually reconstitute themselves, as authors, producers and, most importantly, readers situate texts in relation to one another; each text implies a reader who will locate the text on a spectrum of previously developed generic characteristics. Though science fiction appears to be a genre concerned with the future, I argue that the persistent presence of lost race stories – where the contemporary world and groups of people thought to exist only in the past intersect – in science fiction demonstrates that the past is crucial in the operation of the genre. By tracing the origins and evolution of the lost race story from late nineteenth-century novels through the early twentieth-century American pulp science fiction magazines to novel-length narratives, and narrative series, at the end of the twentieth century, this thesis shows how the consistent presence, and varied uses, of lost race stories in science fiction complicates previous critical narratives of the history and definitions of science fiction.

Objectives: The aim in this thesis has been to generate information relevant for strategic positioning and future evaluations within the scientific field of sport and exercise psychology. This has been done by request, and in collaboration with The Group of Sport and Exercise Psychology at the Institution of Psychology at the University of Umeå. Research questions:  (1) How does the cognitive structure within the field of sport and exercise psychology take shape with respect to research topics in current sport-psychological research, i.e. the research front? (2) How does the social structure within the field of sport and exercise psychology take shape with respect to formal scientific collaboration? Data: 879 articles published between 2008-2011 were used in this study. The population of articles were collected from a set of 5 core journals: International Journal of Sport Psychology, Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, The Sport Psychologist, Psychology of Sport and Exercise. The original set was expanded by collecting relevant sport psychology articles from Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports and Journal of Sports Sciences. Methods: (1) The bibliometric indicator normalized bibliographic coupling combined with hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis was used for mapping the research front. With this approach articles are basically clustered with respect to shared refererences, which in this context is understood as a measure of topical similarity. (2)  For the mapping of social structures a collaboration analysis was performed by extracting and visualizing social networks based on the bibliometric indicator coauthorship.     Results: (1) Identification and classification of 80 clusters based on topical similarity in collaboration with a subject expert. (2) Providing a map of formal scientific collaborations between countries based on coauthorship. (3) Providing a map of social networks based on coauthorships between individual researchers. (4) Identification and contextualization of central researchers based on production within the visualized coauthor network. The publications of each researcher were traced to corresponding clusters in the research front to gain information about in which subject areas and topics these central researchers publish. (5) Identification of research groups with high coauthor values, i.e. high intensity in their formal collaboration. Furthermore the publications from these groups were connected to corresponding clusters, i.e. giving information about in which subject areas and topics these groups publish.

This essay attempts to propose an art practice based on an ethical and aesthetic relation of author, subject, and viewer. This relationship is productive of results that are seen as critical to a precise, useful, and ethical representation of social problems. / text

published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

In the late 1990s, motion picture and television production began a process of rapid digitalization with profound implications for cinematographers in Hollywood, as new tools for “digital cinematography” became part of the traditional production process. This transition came in three waves, starting with a post-production technique, the digital intermediate, then the use of high-definition video and digital production cameras, and finally digital exhibition. This dissertation shows how cinematographers responded to the technical and aesthetic challenges presented by digital production tools as they replaced elements of the film-based, photochemical workflow. Using trade publications, mainstream press sources, and in-depth interviews with cinematographers and filmmakers, I chronicle this transition between 1998 and 2005, analyzing how cinematographers’ responded to and utilized these new digital technologies. I analyze demonstration texts, promotional videos, and feature films, including Pleasantville, O Brother Where Art Thou, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, The Anniversary Party, Personal Velocity, and Collateral, all of which played a role in establishing a discourse and practice of digital cinematography among cinematographers, producers and directors. The challenges presented by new collaborators such as the colorist and digital imaging technician are also examined. I discuss cinematographers’ work with standards-setting groups such as the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the studio consortium Digital Cinema Initiatives, describing it as an effort to protect “film-look” and establish look-management as a prominent feature of their craft practice. In an era when digitalization has made motion pictures more malleable and mobile than ever before, this study shows how cinematographers attempted to preserve their historical, craft-based sense of masterful cinematography and a structure of authority that privileges the cinematographer as “guardian of the image." / text

Šiuo darbu siekta nustatyti, ar asmeninių elektroninių laiškų kalboje atsiskleidžia autoriaus idiolektas ir kokiais leksiniais bei grafiniais požymiais jis pasireiškia.. Tyrimui buvo surinktas šešių autorių asmeninių neoficialaus bendravimo elektroninių laiškų tekstynas. Tekstyno duomenys apdoroti pasitelkiant WordSmith Tools programą ir atlikta gretinamoji tekstų analizė: lyginti kalbos vienetų pasikartojimo dažniai tiriamųjų autorių laiškuose ir nustatyta, kad vienų autorių dažniau ar rečiau nei kitų vartojami kalbos vienetai skiria autorių idiolektus. Iš nustatytų kalbos požymių apibendrintos su idiolektu sietinų kalbinės raiškos vienetų grupės. Nustatyta, kad leksikos lygmenyje idiolektus aiškiausiai skiria autoriaus vertinimą ir nuostatas perteikiantys bei modalumą reiškiantys žodžiai bei iš galimų leksinių konkurentų pasirenkami žodžiai ir trumpiniai. Taip pat idiolektus žymi skirtingų autorių nevienodai dažnai pasirenkamų skyrybos ir grafinių ženklų vartojimas. Remiantis atlikto tyrimo rezultatais disertacijoje pateikiamos rekomendacijos teismo lingvistinius autorystės tyrimus atliekantiems ekspertams. / The current study aims to establish, if authors idiolect can be recognized in electronic mails language and to determine the features of lexis and graphics, which can be linked to idiolect. The data has been derived from a corpus of 65,000 words consisting of electronic letters written in Lithuanian by six persons. The WordSmith Tools software was used to generate frequency lists of six subcorpora, representing each person’s language. By using the contrastive method the frequency data of six persons language were compared. The lexis and graphics elements, which were used by one person more often or more rarely than by others and were not determined by the topic, were linked to authors idiolect. As a result of the analysis the classification of lexical and graphical elements is given, which can help recognizing idiolect. The study shows that on a lexical level the main differences between idiolects are in the usage of the modality and stance expressing words, and also the words and abbreviations, which are differently chosen from possible variants. On a graphical level idiolects can be recognized from punctuation marks, emoticons and graphic symbols, used at a different frequency. Based on research results the recommendations for authorship attribution examinations are given.

The current study aims to establish, if authors idiolect can be recognized in electronic mails language and to determine the features of lexis and graphics, which can be linked to idiolect. The data has been derived from a corpus of 65,000 words consisting of electronic letters written in Lithuanian by six persons. The WordSmith Tools software was used to generate frequency lists of six subcorpora, representing each person’s language. By using the contrastive method the frequency data of six persons language were compared. The lexis and graphics elements, which were used by one person more often or more rarely than by others and were not determined by the topic, were linked to authors idiolect. As a result of the analysis the classification of lexical and graphical elements is given, which can help recognizing idiolect. The study shows that on a lexical level the main differences between idiolects are in the usage of the modality and stance expressing words, and also the words and abbreviations, which are differently chosen from possible variants. On a graphical level idiolects can be recognized from punctuation marks, emoticons and graphic symbols, used at a different frequency. Based on research results the recommendations for authorship attribution examinations are given. / Šiuo darbu siekta nustatyti, ar asmeninių elektroninių laiškų kalboje atsiskleidžia autoriaus idiolektas ir kokiais leksiniais bei grafiniais požymiais jis pasireiškia.. Tyrimui buvo surinktas šešių autorių asmeninių neoficialaus bendravimo elektroninių laiškų tekstynas. Tekstyno duomenys apdoroti pasitelkiant WordSmith Tools programą ir atlikta gretinamoji tekstų analizė: lyginti kalbos vienetų pasikartojimo dažniai tiriamųjų autorių laiškuose ir nustatyta, kad vienų autorių dažniau ar rečiau nei kitų vartojami kalbos vienetai skiria autorių idiolektus. Iš nustatytų kalbos požymių apibendrintos su idiolektu sietinų kalbinės raiškos vienetų grupės. Nustatyta, kad leksikos lygmenyje idiolektus aiškiausiai skiria autoriaus vertinimą ir nuostatas perteikiantys bei modalumą reiškiantys žodžiai bei iš galimų leksinių konkurentų pasirenkami žodžiai ir trumpiniai. Taip pat idiolektus žymi skirtingų autorių nevienodai dažnai pasirenkamų skyrybos ir grafinių ženklų vartojimas. Remiantis atlikto tyrimo rezultatais disertacijoje pateikiamos rekomendacijos teismo lingvistinius autorystės tyrimus atliekantiems ekspertams.

The Rights of Creativity is a study of Swedish copyright history from the birth of Sweden’s first copyright legislation in the early 19th century to the passing of the current law in 1960. As the title suggests, the law is regarded as part of a wider cultural context and the dissertation moves beyond the borders of legal history and analyses the law in relation to the history of literature, film, television and other media that partly reflect and partly intersect with the legislative process. The main object of the study is to see how the author is constructed in legal and cultural discourses during the 19th and 20th century. The dissertation focuses on three Swedish copyright laws from 1877, 1919 and 1960, but these laws and their preambles are also related to a few contemporary cultural intertexts, namely: August Strindberg’s novel Röda rummet [The Red Room] from 1879; the director Mauritz Stiller’s films Gunnar Hedes Saga [The Blizzard] and Gösta Berlings saga [The Saga of Gösta Berling] from 1923 and 1924, and finally the television shows Hylands hörna and Skäggen from 1962 and 1963. Apart from this it also pays some attention to the Freedom of the Press Act from 1810 that came to include Sweden’s first copyright statement, as well as to the development after 1960. Eventually it aims to show how the historical legacy has affected the copyright legislation and debates of today. / Skapandets rätt handlar om hur den juridiska synen på upphovsmannen rätt och skapandets villkor har förändrats i förhållande till den kulturella utvecklingen i Sverige under 1800 och 1900-talet. Avhandlingen består av en kronologisk studie av de upphovsrättslagar som antogs 1877, 1919 och 1960, men den behandlar också 1810 års tryckfrihetsförordning och de senaste årens rättsutveckling i korthet. Denna upphovsrättshistoriska exposé placeras in i ett litteratur- och mediehistoriskt sammanhang och lagtexterna underkastas en intertextuell analys där deras relation till några olika kulturella intertexter analyseras. Inledningsvis diskuteras hur 1810 års Tryckfrihetsförordning kom att innefatta Sveriges första upphovsrättsbestämmelse. Därefter kontrasteras Sveriges första separata upphovsrättslag från 1877 mot August Strindbergs genombrottsroman Röda rummet, allt i ljuset av Jürgen Habermas teori om den borgerliga offentligheten. 1919 års lagstiftning relateras sedan till Mauritz Stiller filmatiseringar av Selma Lagerlöfs romaner En herrgårdssägen och Gösta Berlings saga. Instiftandet av dagens upphovsrättslag från 1960 analyseras slutligen mot bakgrund av den nya tidens TV-medium som här exemplifieras av Hylands hörna och Skäggen. Avslutningsvis knyts allt samman i en kapitel där historiens lärdomar appliceras på dagens debatt. Här diskuteras hur tre föreställda oppositioner mellan konstnär-publik, privat-offentligt och original-kopia har format upphovsrättens historia och hur de fortfarande färgar samtidens upphovsrättsdiskussioner.

Idiolect refers to an individual’s unique use of language. Therefore, the author of a text can be identified by his/her use of language. This study is focused on Joan Hambidge’s recognisable idiolect across the boundaries of genres. It is expected that Hambidge will have a unique and recognisable idiolect, regardless of the genre she writes in. By making use of forensic linguistic principles, methods and applications, it has been shown that it is possible to determine an individual’s idiolect. Even though forensic principles are specifically focused on identifying an author, the methodology used in the research field can be applied to a corpus linguistic study to determine how clearly an individual’s idiolect features across the boundaries of genres. By researching the research subject, explaining her oeuvre, creating a literary background, as well as discussing the literary approaches that Hambidge uses in her respective genres, and what she writes about, the necessary literary background was created, which contributes to the complete image of Hambidge and her influences. By creating this background, it is possible to determine which external factors have an influence on Hambidge's idiolect. Linguistic research was done to determine the origin and background of sociolinguistics; as well as factors that can influence an individual’s idiolect. The background of forensic linguistics was provided, as well as the various corpus linguistic methods that can be used in a study such as this one. After the background was provided, the empirical analysis was executed, in which both stylistic and stylometric analyses were performed by making use of inter- and intra-corpus linguistic research, according to which Hambidge’s idiolect was identified. To identify Hambidge’s idiolect, the Taalkommissie corpus was used as a reference corpus to determine whether the idiosyncratic characteristics that were found in the Hambidge corpus truly are a unique feature or whether they can also be found in the Taalkommissie corpus. The application and execution of the methods made it possible to determine to which extent, if at all, Hambidge has a unique idiolect, and how this idiolect features across the boundaries of genres. The research has determined that Joan Hambidge has a unique idiolect and that the idiolect is especially clear when research is done about her corpus in its entirety. When Hambidge’s separate genres were compared to each other, it was clear that genre influences idiolect, but also that Hambidge did not follow the prescribed genre conventions. Even though the two novels that were compared, did not match as was expected, the other, various genres did agree. Various categories were identified, from which it is clear that distinguishing characteristics can be found in Hambidge’s corpus. It can therefore be said without a doubt that Hambidge has a unique idiolect across the boundaries of genres. / MA (Afrikaans and Dutch), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014