The short story is a comparatively modern phenomenon in Kuwait; the first appeared in 1929. There have been two distinct periods in the history of the short story in Kuwait. The first was from 1947 to 1959, the second was from 1962 to 1985. During the first period, it was more of a vehicle for didactic and predicative than for literary purposes. Characterisation was elementary, plot was negatory and structure was primitive. The second period witnessed a considerable development in the genre; the short story became, in all respects, more recognisable as such. Today, the art of short story writing is practised in Kuwait in a manner indistinguishable from that of any other Arab country.

So far, textual hetero-representations of the Romani people (usually called `Gypsies' by the non-Roma) have focused on their foreignness and alleged `non-conformity' to the dominant order. Such depictions, conflating history and myth, art and reality, promote the perception of an unbridgeable divide between the `primitive', `illiterate' Roma and the `civilized' society. In this respect, the forging of a fictional `Gypsy' identity can be seen as an ethnic strategy aimed at endorsing harsh policies of oppression and social marginalization of the Roma. The recent rise of *a Romani written literature has shown that, contrary to common belief, the Roma cannot simply be defined as people `without writing'. This thesis aims to highlight the complex features of their literature, characterized by an irreducible plurality of voices and styles which is in striking contrast with the rigid, monolithic structure of the conventional images of the 'Gypsy'. The intertextual, hybrid features of Romani literature seem to suggest alternative ways of looking at Romani identity which substantially undermine the rigid binarism of ethnocentric definitions of the 'Gypsy'. More specifically, the study of Romani literature enables us to view Romani textual hetero- and auto-representations not as irreconcilable, mutually exclusive terms, but in the light of their interconnections and mutual influences. The adoption of a dynamic, intercultural approach is a crucial factor in our understanding of the complex features of Romani identity, and may ultimately contribute to a profound (and long due) reassessment of the troubled Roma/Gağe relationship.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University. / Cover title. Vita. General index and list of Vedic k-words: p. 75-104.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University. / Cover title. Vita. General index and list of Vedic k-words: p. 75-104.

This book examines the questions of how Gypsy ethnicity, identity and history are interlinked in the context of examining various contested narratives or origins and migration. The text is itself a series of narratives and counter-narratives that engage in a self-critical, deconstructive analysis of the underlying assumptions hitherto presented in many, if not most of the previous scholarship regarding the origins and identity of the Gypsies, with particular focus on the contextual and radically contingent nature of all such texts. As such, the primary examination is an historiographical and theoretical consideration of the questions surrounding Gypsy ethnicity and identity. The dissertation also considers to what extent the production of historical knowledge is affected by those who produce it from within and without the Gypsy community or communities themselves. Most especially, this survey examines the production of literatures in Turkish scholarship, as related to the underlying conception of the book arguing for a re-examination of Romanī historiography from east to west, rather than the ‘traditional’ Orientalist and Europe-centric perspectives deployed by much of the previous scholarship. Moreover, the dissertation focuses upon the Turkish lands to argue that the historical experiences of Gypsies in this region are of critical importance in understanding the development of both European Romanī histories and in acknowledging the flawed basis for the universalist conceptions of European Roma identity and political mobilisation, as they are now articulated. The importance of Islam in the origins and history of the Gypsies is stressed. This theoretical framework underlies the interweaving narratives that make up the latter sections of the text, a reconsideration of the sources for early Gypsy history that posits an alternative narrative.

In the last three decades, Speech Act Theory has been displaced from the spotlight of pragmatic research and relegated to the back seat of this field. This has been the case despite the potential this theory still has to serve pragmatic research. This study is an attempt to revive and develop speech act theory by means of applying it to interactive naturally-occurring discourse proposing a number of different types of speech act and incorporating into analysis a wider range of pragmatic IFIDs. The main purpose of the study is to: (1) investigate speech acts in interaction and find out which 'illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs) are used to identify speech acts in an interactive context, and (2) compare the investigated speech acts and IFIDs cross-culturally between English and Arabic. Regarding data, the study investigated 12 English and Arabic short news interviews (six each). Some of these were video-recorded live from BBC and Sky news channels (English dataset) and Al-Arabiya, Sky news Arabia and Al-Wataniya channels (Arabic dataset). Other interviews were downloaded from YouTube. Two topics were the focus of these interviews: (1) the immigration crisis in 2015 (six English and Arabic interviews), and (2) the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015 (six English and Arabic interviews). The study investigated the two datasets to find which speech acts are used in short news interviews and what interactional IFIDs are used to identify them. Results show that many different speech acts are used in news interviews — the study counted 48 individual speech acts in the analysed interviews. However, it was found that a mere itemizing and classification of speech acts in the classical sense (Austin‘s and Searle‘s classifications) was not enough. In addition, the study identifies various new types of speech acts according to the role they play in the ongoing discourse. The first type is termed turn speech acts‘. These are speech acts which have special status in the turn they occur in and are of two subtypes: 'main act' and 'overall speech act'. The second type is 'interactional acts'. These are speech acts which are named in relation to other speech acts in the same exchange. The third type is ̳superior speech acts‘. These are superordinate speech acts with the performance of which other subordinate (inferior) speech acts are performed as well. The study also found three different types of utterances vis-à-vis the speech acts they perform. These are 'single utterance' (which performs a single speech act only), 'double-edged utterance' (which performs two speech acts concurrently) and 'Fala utterance' (which performs three speech acts together). As for IFIDs, the study found that several already-established pragmatic concepts can help identify speech acts in interaction. These are Adjacency Pair, Activity Type, Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle, Facework, Context (Co-utterance and Pragmalinguistic cues). These devices are new additions to Searle‘s original list of IFIDs. Furthermore, they are expanding this concept as they include a type of IFID different from the original ones. Finally, the study has found no significant differences between English and Arabic news interviews as regards speech acts (types), utterance types and the analysed IFIDs. The study attracts attention to Speech Act Theory and encourages further involvement of this theory in other genres of interactive discourse (e.g., long interviews, chat shows, written internet chat, etc.). It also encourages further exploration of the different types of speech acts and utterances discussed in this study as well as probing the currently-investigated and other IFIDs. It is hoped that by returning to the core insight of SAT (i.e., that language-in-use does things) and at the same time freeing it from its pragmalinguistic shackles, its value can be seen more clearly.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Giessen. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(文学) / 甲第18000号 / 文博第637号 / 新制||文||599(附属図書館) / 30858 / 京都大学大学院文学研究科行動文化学専攻 / (主査)教授 吉田 和彦, 教授 田窪 行則, 教授 吉田 豊 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Letters / Kyoto University / DFAM

This thesis presents a study of Pakistani documentary, with a focus on the ways in which it represents Pakistan’s national identity and history. The study examines three sources of documentary production – state media, commercial television channels, and independent filmmakers – as three distinct voices of Pakistani documentary. The study argues that the discourses of these institutions are governed by their respective ideological, political, and economic priorities. These factors result in two competing approaches to Pakistan’s national history and identity: right-wing and left-wing. The Islamic ideology of the state governs the discourse of state-sponsored documentaries. The commercial television documentaries take an anti-establishment position, however, they remain faithful to Islamic ideology of the state to a large extend. The independent filmmakers, on the other hand, offer a liberal perspective of history and a secular identity of Pakistan. Hence, they offer a critical view of the state’s Islamic ideology as a governing principle of historiography and identity formation. The notion of representation entails the issues of authenticity, credibility, and truth-value, associated with the various methods adopted by the filmmakers. Hence, attention is paid to the styles and modes of documentary, with a reflection on the documentarian’s individual approaches to realism. The documentaries have been placed within historical and political contexts considering Pakistan as a postcolonial state, which also functions as a critical framework of this study.

The Proto-Indo-European causative/iterative suffix *-ei̯e- was inherited by Old Iranian and persists in almost all Middle and Modern Iranian languages as -aya- and -ēn- (-Vn-) respectively. Comparably, in the Indic branch -aya- functions as a causative suffix in Sanskrit beside another suffix -āpaya which became the productive causative suffix -āvē- in Middle Indic and still used in Modern Indic today. Evidence shows eight Eastern Iranian languages- †Khotanese, †Khwarazmian, Parachi, Wakhi, Munji, Pashto, Ormuri, and Yidgha- using the morphological causative suffix in addition to the expected Iranian one -aya- or -Vn-. This alternative causative suffix is reconstructible as *-au̯ai̯a- and its attested reflexes have the forms -VwV-, -Vv-, and -wV-. Moreover, in two dialects of the Northwestern Iranian language Gilaki, Dakhili and Langaroudi, the causative suffix is not -Vn- but is rather -be(ː)- in the present tense. In this study I examine the synchronic function of the Gilaki causative suffix -be(ː)- as well as its diachronic origins. I show that Gilaki -be(ː)- primarily functions as a causative suffix and that it is a form which cannot be explained as an innovation within Gilaki itself through phonological or analogical change. As a matter of fact, I demonstrate that this suffix is better explained as deriving from PIr.*-au̯ai̯a- and is connected to the aforementioned Eastern Iranian suffixes. I also argue the reason for realization of /p/ and */u̯/ in -āpaya and *-au̯ai̯a- is phonological and probably goes back to some stages of PIIr.