Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This is a study of the discourses of empowerment and disempowerment that emerge from the critical discourse analysis (CDA) of life-histories written by two classes of Grade 11 high school learners in a township school in Cape Town, South Africa. The line of argument presented by this thesis is that there are political, socio-economic, familial and institutional factors and the discourses that construct them which affect learners’ resilience. / South Africa

The year 2024 started with newspapers filled with articles on farmers taking over European cities. In Germany, the farmers protested the recently announced tax break reduction on agricultural diesel. The protests were quickly instrumentalized by various political actors, which made them highly controversial. This thesis explores how two actors, the German radical right AfD and the center-right CDU, discursively construct climate change within the debates surrounding the farmers’ protests. The focus lies on their use of populism as a strategic communication tool and legitimation strategies that politicize climate change. As such, climate change and environmental discourses are critically reviewed and contextualized, and theories on populism and politicization are presented. The thesis applies a discourse-historical approach (DHA) based on the analytical tools of nomination, predication, and legitimation. The findings conclude that discourses of climate policy conservatism, green patriotism, and climate elitism are applied to re-politicize climate change according to the right-wing agenda. As expected, the AfD mainly applied green patriotism, whereas the CDU applied climate policy conservatism. Both also relied on a newly identified discourse of climate elitism, highlighting the protest dynamics.

Different disciplinary, theoretical, and empirical lenses have contributed to a kaleidoscopic picture of CSO governance. Most of the time, CSO governance is contrasted with corporate governance in business organizations; only rarely is the broad variety of CSOs taken into account. To widen this perspective, we develop an empirically grounded typology of five discourses of organization in CSOs: managerialist, domestic, professionalist, grassroots, and civic discourse. We argue that each of these discourses gives specific answers to the three core questions of governance: To whom is the CSO accountable, i.e., who are the key actors who need to be protected by governance mechanisms? For what kind of performance is the CSO accountable? And which structures and processes are appropriate to ensure accountability? The way in which different discourses answer these questions provides us with a deeper understanding of the reasons behind the manifold notions of governance in CSOs. (authors' abstract)

Pretendemos investigar, filiados à Análise de Discurso de linha francesa, a assunção (ou não) à autoria pelo sujeito - professor no contexto escolar, por meio de textos escritos. Pela Análise de Discurso, entendemos que o sujeito, considerado como posição discursiva, pode ocupar a posição - autor dependendo das condições de produção nas quais formula seus dizeres, costurando o intradiscurso (o fio discursivo) no interdiscurso (relação com outros discursos, o já-dito), historicizando, assim, o que diz. Utilizamos, para compreender o movimento do sujeito em relação à autoria no texto escrito, recortes de um corpus formado por 15 textos dissertativo-argumentativos produzidos por 03 sujeitos - professores que atuam no Ensino Fundamental na cidade de Ribeirão Preto. Para a produção desses textos, os sujeitos foram convidados à leitura de textos fílmicos, literário, científico que foram discutidos em 05 encontros, com o objetivo de fazer circular uma multiplicidade de sentidos sobre educação, tema central das produções dos sujeitos. Para compreendermos, então, o funcionamento do discurso dos sujeitos professores no contexto escolar, retomamos a tipologia discursiva de Orlandi (2006a), observando que o discurso pedagógico tende a ser autoritário, isto é, um discurso no qual o sentido aparece como único, não havendo espaço para que os interlocutores possam discutir (ou disputar) os vários sentidos possíveis a partir de suas interpretações/leituras sobre um texto ou qualquer outro objeto simbólico/discursivo, o que implica na forma como o sujeito exerce seu gesto interpretativo. Entendemos que para ocupar a posição de autor, é preciso trabalhar com a polissemia, com o discurso polêmico, criando condições para que o sujeito possa mobilizar, interpretar, colocar em jogo, os vários sentidos possíveis que as leituras dos diversos textos que circulam na escola podem trazer. Para falarmos de sujeito e autoria, retomamos ainda noções caras à Análise de Discurso, tais como formações ideológicas, formações discursivas e imaginárias, memória discursiva, arquivo, os quais conformam o lugar e as possibilidades de enunciar do sujeito. O autor, nessa perspectiva, deve ser responsável pelo que diz e se colocar na origem ilusória de seu texto, produzindo um efeito de coerência e de continuidade entre seu texto e ele próprio (ORLANDI, 2004; FOUCAULT, 2009a, 2009b). Nossas análises mostram que ao tecer um texto dissertativo-argumentativo, o sujeito-professor tende à reprodução dos sentidos, à paráfrase, o que acreditamos se dar devido a forma como o arquivo, seja como campo de documentos (PÊCHEUX, 1997b) ou como campo enunciativo que sustenta a possibilidade de dizer (FOUCAULT, 2009c) é tratado nas atividades escolares, desde as séries iniciais, tendendo à restrição, por meio da leitura, ao sentido permitido, que deve ser reproduzido nas atividades de linguagem ao longo dos anos escolares, o que interdita o acesso do sujeito, seja na posição de aluno ou de professor, à assumir a autoria. Vemos como possibilidade de criar condições para a assunção à autoria no contexto escolar, o trabalho com a polissemia, com o discurso polêmico, instaurando, assim, a possibilidade de o sujeito questionar os sentidos dados como legítimos por efeito da ideologia e tecer novos sentidos, inscrevendo-os no interdiscurso, historicizando-os. / We intended to investigate, based on the French Discourse Analysis, the assumption (or not) of the authorship by the subject teacher in the school context, through written texts. According to Discourse Analysis, we understand that the subject, taken as discursive position, can occupy the position of author depending on the production conditions in which he formulates his speeches, weaving the intradiscourse (the discursive thread) into the interdiscourse (relationship with other speeches, the alredy-said), historicizing, this way, what is said. We used, to understand the subject\'s movement in relation to the authorship in the written text, cuttings of corpus consisting of 15 dissertational-argumentative texts produced by 03 teacher subjects that work in the Elementary and Middle School in the city of Ribeirão Preto. For the production of those texts, the subjects were invited to read a serious of movie, literary and scientific texts, with where then discussed in five meetings in with the objective was to allow the circulation of a multiplicity of meanings about education, the focal theme of the subject´s productions. To comprehend the working of the teacher subject discourse in the school context, we retook the discursive typology by Orlandi (2006a), observing that the pedagogic discourse tends to be authoritarian, that is, a discourse in which the meaning appears as unique; the speakers don\'t have the opportunity to discuss (or to argue) the several possible meanings based their interpretations/readings of a text or any other symbolic/discursive objective, which implicates in the way as the subject exerts his interpretative gesture. We understand that to occupy an author\'s position, it is necessary to work with the polysemy, with the polemical discourse, creating the conditions for the subject to mobilize, to interpret, to consider, the several possible meanings that the readings of the various texts that circulate at the school can bring. To speak about subject and authorship, we still we also considered some highly regarded notions of the Discourse Analysis, such as ideological formations, discursive and imaginary formations, discursive memory, archive, which conform the place and the possibilities of enunciation of the subject. The author, in that perspective, should be responsible for what he says and puts himself in the illusory origin of his text, producing an effect of coherence and continuity between his text and himself (ORLANDI, 2004; FOUCAULT, 2009a, 2009b). Our analyzes show that when weaving a dissertational-argumentative text, the teacher subject leans towards the reproduction of the meanings, to the paraphrase, what we believe is do to the way the archive, either as a documental field (PÊCHEUX, 1997b) or as enunciative field that sustains the possibility to saying (FOUCAULT, 2009c) is treated in the school activities, since the initial series, leading to the limitation, through the reading, to the allowed meaning, witch should be reproduced in the language activities along the academic years, what obstruct the subject\'s access, regardless of his position, as student or teacher, to assume the authorship. The work with the polysemy, with the polemic discourse, establishing the subject possibility to question the meanings taking as legitimate by effect of the ideology, to weave new meanings, enrolling them in the interdiscourse and historicizing them, opens, in our view, the pathway to create the conditions for the assumption of the authorship in this context.

Despite intensified and concerted efforts to realise sustainable development. Western industrialised countries have in recent years experienced several mass protests against institutions perceived variously to have the potential to govern the global economy in environmentally sustainable or unsustainable ways. This thesis examines how different actors in the news media attempt to legitimate and de-legitimate neoliberal approaches to economic governance on grounds that these approaches are or are not environmentally sustainable. By using a critical discourse analysis perspective to analyse texts produced by actors with competing political commitments (neo-liberal and left-liberal), it discusses how primarily profit-driven generic conventions can govern what can and cannot be said in debates on sustainability. The thesis suggests that the effectiveness of (cultural) politics aimed at legitimating and de-legitimating neo-liberal approaches can be understood in teens of the relationship between an instrumental rationality geared at maximising the effectiveness of existing institutional systems and a communicative rationality geared at achieving understanding.

This thesis reflectively and critically examines a series of research case studies initiated by a research-whānau. It explores the thinking, experiences and reflections of this research-whānau, as they worked to enhance the educational achievement of Māori students. Authorship of the thesis was undertaken by me (Mere Berryman). However, the methodology involved a collaborative, retrospective and critical reflection of research-whānau experiences and thinking, in the light of the research findings and experiences since the inception of this research-whānau in 1991. In the course of this work, the research-whānau have been able to explore what it has meant to put the principles of kaupapa Māori research into practice while working within a mainstream organisation (Specialist Education Services then the Ministry of Education). Our research work has involved repositioning ourselves from dependence on Western research methodologies to a better understanding and application of kaupapa Māori conceptualisations of research. The thesis begins by identifying mainstream and kaupapa Māori events that have historically and still continue to impact upon Māori students' educational experiences. These events provide the wider context for the work of this research-whānau at the interface of Te Ao Māori and Te Ao Pākehā, and for the 11 case studies that exemplify changes in our thinking and research practice over a period of 15 years. The thesis employs an indigenous (and specifically Māori) worldview as the framework for description, critical reflection, and theorising around these case studies. Common themes are collaboratively co-constructed then each theme is explained in relation to relevant Māori theory. The thesis concludes with the shifts in theorising and practice made by the research-whānau during the course of our work as we sought to contribute in ways that were more transformative and self-determining. We argue that these shifts in theorising and practice are also required of others if we are to change the status quo and contribute constructively to improving Māori students' potential.

In this thesis I analyze the presence of difference in the nomadic feminist theologizing of a group of eight Catholic women from an Australian diocese. This small christian community named Sophia-of which I am a member-has been meeting since October 1993 to support one another and share stories of our experiences as marginalized Catholics. In attempting to name and understand the various levels of rejection we had encountered, group members reflected on the performances of Catholic Church leaders, and we theologized on church leadership as well as other ecclesial and doctrinal issues. Participants readily agreed to be involved in the research project I was proposing, and they became interactive partners with me during the period that produced the theological discourses analyzed in the thesis. This production stage involved four phases: firstly, open or non-directed theologizing on issues raised by participants; secondly, a guided study-with myself as facilitator-of five traditional Matthean leadership texts; thirdly, a guided study of five Matthean women's leadership texts-again facilitated by me; and fourthly, a return to open or non-directed theologizing. My analysis of the group's theologizing focuses on d~'erence. Using Rosi Braidotti's work on embodied sexual difference which identifies three coexistent levels of difference, I explore and account for difference as it occurs: between women (Sophia) and men (the male representative voice of the institutional church); among women (in the seemingly homogeneous Sophian group); and within individual women (in Sophia). The analysis identifies signifiers of difference that signal Sophia ~s nomadic feminist renegotiations of dominant canonical Catholic discourses. Moreover, I account for the resisting readings mobilized by various Sophian members by exploring ideologies and key elements of interest-specifically power, conflict, desire, agency-that underpin Sophia 's theologizing. In doing this, difference, as evidenced in the multiple voices/perspectives that constitute the Catholic tradition and that feature in Sophia ~ theologizing, is valorized. The designing and de-signing of Sophia ~s nomadic feminist theological discourses in this thesis demonstrates that Sophia 's theological 'acts of going' intensified difference and engendered for participants multiple, transformative pathways and kaleidoscopic rainbows of ever so beautiful theological possibilities.

Since the late seventies, the violence, speed and spectacle associated with the genres of war films, Westerns and the spectacular melodramas of early cinema have developed into a distinct genre of its own – the action film. With the development of the stylistic language at the core of this generic universe came derogatory generalisations and a tendency to categorise simplistically. To overcome these simplifications, this thesis explores the shifts in generic language to distinguish its subtleties and complexities of logic. Overwhelmingly the genre is considered masculine, but the purpose of this thesis is to explore the logic of this masculinity and analyse the effect of the feminine upon it. Beginning with overviews of the theoretical attempts to grasp the concept of genre that focus primarily on the limitations of the view of their having distinct boundaries, the theory that genre theory has failed is investigated. Leaving this view of boundaries through an exploration of symbolic universes that have translucent boundaries, the filmic movement of genre passes back and forth through the theoretical frameworks. The intention is not to analyse the overall concept of genre, but to focus on the symbolic universe and the language intrinsic to action films. The rules of action cannot be simply transposed onto other generic categories but stand-alone. Genre theory does not fail if approached from a perspective of discourse analysis focusing on the development of symbolic universes. Using Jacques Lacan’s theory of the four discourses, and focusing primarily on the oppositions of the Master’s and the Analyst’s discourse, the question moves from the listing of conventions as the markers of the boundaries of genre, to exploring why the combination of certain conventions and signifiers coming together created the genre. Through Lacanian discourse analysis it becomes apparent that the generally acknowledged logic of masculine and feminine are limited. The masculine is the ‘norm’ that appears to need no explanation, but the feminine has transgressed the norm and shown the construction of fantasy inherent in the genre. This has led to post-action films that are ambiguous both in their generic structure and symbolic language.

It is a truism in contemporary understandings of semantics that there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between a word and its referent. As Wittgenstein has suggested, we can only know the meaning of a word by understanding the way it is used, and these uses are known often to be variable and highly context-dependent. / The issue of the variable meanings of terms is especially important when the term in question has assumed some centrality within a particular social domain, when its meanings are contested, and when the way the term is interpreted has a major bearing on subsequent social and institutional practices. In contemporary debates about the aims and purposes of higher education one such term is ‘critical thinking’. Whilst there is general unanimity in the higher education literature about the importance of ‘critical thinking’ as an educational ideal, there is surprisingly little agreement about what the term means exactly, as well as what exactly students should be taught in order to be appropriately critical in their field. / This thesis reports an empirical study which investigated conceptions of critical thinking as they are held by academics from a range of humanities disciplines: History, Philosophy, and Literary/Cultural Studies. The broad method used was a ‘textographic’ one, focusing both on how the concept of critical thinking was talked about by informants in interview, and also how it was constructed in a range of texts used by them in their teaching on undergraduate programs. / The study found a good deal of variation in the meaning of the term ‘critical’, not only between the three disciplines, but also within them. This variation was located in a number of areas: in the epistemic entities to which students needed to direct their thinking (e.g. textual vs. phenomenal entities), and in the various analytical modes they were required to adopt (e.g. evaluative vs. interpretative modes). The broad principle to be drawn from these findings is that the nature of one's thinking is indivisible from the object to which that thinking is directed. / The varieties of critical thinking found in the study provide some challenge to certain generic understandings of critical thinking, ones that have assumed increasing influence in higher education debates in recent years. The study concludes by suggesting that the teaching of critical thinking is likely to be more effective if handled within the context of students’ study in the disciplines, as opposed to a generic extra-disciplinary approach. It is also suggested that an important part of becoming a critical thinker in the academy is being able to recognise and to negotiate this variety of critical modes.

<p>Terry Pratchett, writer of humorous, satirical fantasy, is very popular in Britain. His Discworld series, which encompasses over 30 novels, has witches as protagonists in one of the major sub-series, currently covering eight novels. His first “witch” novel, Equal Rites, in which he pits organised, misogynist wizards against disorganised witches, led him to being accused of feminist writing. This work investigates this claim by first outlining the development of the historical witch stereotype or discourse and how that relates to the modern, feminist views of witches. Then Pratchett’s treatment of his major witch characters is examined and analysed in terms of feminist and poststructuralist literary theory. It appears that, while giving the impression of supporting feminism and the feminist views of witches,</p><p>Pratchett’s witches actually reinforce the patriarchal view of women.</p>