This dissertation departs from the common understanding that the democratic challenge is to strike the right balance between security and democracy; rather it asserts that the relations between security and democracy are discursively constructed by political actors. The dissertation takes as case study a state where the security discourse has been acute and omnipresent since the very beginning of its establishment: Israel. Drawing on discourse theory premises and narrative analyses, the research enlightens how the security-democracy nexus is articulated in political discourse. The study offers a careful analysis of a set of debates held within the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, over laws and decisions taken in the name of security and that generated discussions over democratic values and principles. The main focus of the analysis is the post-second intifada laws, but the study also offers account of previous discursive articulations at play in the 1980s. Indeed, the understanding of the discursive articulations of the security democracy nexus would not be possible without digging into the roots of its discursive articulations. The overall work gives a detailed account of the way the dominant narrative, by articulating security and democracy in a "defensive democracy" story, has reproduced and reshaped the boundaries of the Israeli polity. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

La recherche menée dans cette thèse traite du discours de l’Union européenne sur l’espace judiciaire européen entre 1996 et 1999. En convoquant l’analyse du discours et la lexicométrie dans un cadre théorique de la sémantique argumentative, elle analyse le sens des mots autour de l’expression « espace de liberté, de sécurité et de justice ». L’objectif est de définir comment s’élabore la réappropriation de valeurs universelles au profit du discours et de l’identité européenne véhiculée par les procédés argumentatifs utilisés pour représenter l’espace judiciaire européen. Le contexte politique et les théories linguistiques de la méthode d’analyse exposés, cette thèse porte sur les conditions de communication du discours et de sa particularité sémantique, en montrant qu’il construit une identité en triade renvoyant aux trois valeurs de son emblème triptyque (« liberté, sécurité et justice ») :les institutions, la criminalité organisée et les citoyens. Elle révèle les indices linguistiques de cette construction identitaire avec ses enjeux politiques et de légitimation en introduisant la notion de « normalisation discursive ». Celle-ci adopte un schéma linguistique très marqué conduisant à la mise en œuvre d’un processus de « manipulation argumentative » défini et démontré dans ce travail. Les résultats illustrent que la normalisation et la manipulation engendrent une circularité du discours reposant sur le conflit de deux orientations discursives :celle d’un discours sécuritaire et celle d’un discours sur l’État de droit et la démocratie.<p><p>This thesis studies the discourse of the European Union about the European Judicial Network between 1996 and 1999. Using discourse analysis and lexicometrics within the theoretical framework of argumentative semantics, it explores the meaning of words associated with the expression of « area of freedom, security and justice ». The research mainly aims at understanding how the discourse reappropriate universal values in order to construct, through argumentative processes, a European identity that embodies the European Judicial Network. After presenting the political context and the linguistic theories used in the analysis methods, the thesis examines the conditions of discourse production and its semantic particularities. It argues that the discourse constructs an identity based on the values (liberty, security and justice) conveyed by the three pillars of the European Judicial Network :institutions, organised crime and citizens. The thesis then puts forward the idea of a “discursive normalisation” that helps, through its linguistic forms, to legitimate the identity construction and its political issues. It also defines a process of “argumentative manipulation” resulting from this “discursive normalisation” implementing a very distinctive linguistic frame. According to those results, the research concludes that normalisation and manipulation generate circularity of the discourse, which is based on the conflict between two discursive orientations, on the one hand security and on the other hand democracy and the Rule of law. / Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation langue et littérature / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This study examined the ideograph of <collateral damage> through an analysis of the Bush Administration's rhetoric as well as visual photographs of Iraqi civilian deaths. The project argues that the psycho-dynamic rhetoric of the Bush Administration during a time of visual censorship lead to the dehumanization of Iraqi civilian deaths during the War in Iraq. The method consisted of a textual analysis of the Bush Administration's rhetoric and continued with a content analysis of news media's photographs. The author argues that critics gain a deeper understanding of the disappearing dead phenomenon of Iraqi civilians by examining ideographic fragments of psycho-dynamic rhetoric.

The environmental problems associated with the boom in hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," such as anthropogenic earthquakes and groundwater contamination, have motivated some citizens living in affected areas such as Denton, Texas to form movements with the goal of imposing greater regulation on the industry. As responses to an environmental threat that is localized and yet mobile, these anti-fracking movements must construct rhetorical appeals with complicated relationships to place. In this thesis, I examine the anti-fracking movement in Denton, Texas in a series of three rhetorical analyses. In the first, I compared fracking bans used by Frack Free Denton and State College, Pennsylvania to distinguish the argumentative claims that are dependent on the politics of place, and affect strategies localities must use in resisting natural gas extraction. In the second, I compare campaign strategies that use local identity as a way of invoking legitimacy, which reinforces narrative frameworks of environmental risk. In the third, I conduct and analyze interviews with anti-fracking leaders who described the narrative of their movement, which highlighted tensions in the rhetorical construction of a movement as local. Altogether, this thesis traces the rhetorical conception of place across the rhetoric of the anti-fracking movement in Denton, Texas, while seeking to demonstrate the value of combining rhetorical criticism with rhetorical field methods.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / My thesis examines the ways in which female performance poets deliver their messages and how those messages inspire, affirm, and encourage their audiences. From the traditions of outsider art—Beat poetry, feminist poetry, jazz, folk, punk, and rap—feminist performance poets choose the public sphere as a platform to witness to social injustices. In naming inequality, these poets challenge patriarchal foundations of gender roles, question academia’s criteria as to what constitutes “good” poetry, and expose social injustices. In this thesis, I examine the work of feminist performance poets Ani Difranco, Alix Olson, Andrea Gibson, Ursula Rucker, and Jessica Care Moore as examples of a new way of reading. Their work is significant in that they continue the tradition of feminist poetry by challenging the patriarchal status quo through a re-socializing and accessible style. Their work allows audiences to commune together in shared experience and promotes social change by demystifying cultural norms and gender codes in order to expose the exclusivity in patriarchal ideologies. These poets draw on a woman-centered spirituality, subvert misogynistic feminine archetypes, pay homage to ancestors and foremothers, and address issues of the body—naming oppression yet making room for pleasure.

Abstract (version française suit)<p>Although the EU is a privileged point of focus for political science studies, its discursive activity has not received all the attention it deserves. This corpus analysis adopts a descriptive approach, based on the Neo-Aristotelian trend in argumentation theory, by using both analytical categories of classical rhetoric and (emic or etic) categories that belong to the conceptualization of the debate entertained by its own participants. The corpus consists of public interventions by representatives of the three main EU Institutions (Commission, European Council and Parliament). The speeches were pronounced between June and December 2005. Since it is discussed every seven years, the topic of the Financial Perspectives offers the possibility of making diachronic comparisons; it also allows identifying values, projects and means of the European construction at a rhetorical level. The last six months of 2005 followed two significant events: the conflicting attitudes of European Governments regarding the Iraq war and the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty by referendums.<p>In the absence of any other metaphysical or natural foundation, the technocratic enterprise provides the European project with a rational and secular justification that is not always assumed as such, though, by the presidents of the Commission. The conceptual metaphors stemming from the preambles to the treaties convey the idea that European integration will be achieved by triggering a gradual process that should lead to the realization of an ultimate aim.<p>From a rhetorical point of view, the Financial Perspectives are in need of legitimacy. In 2005, the rhetorical invocation of dates/milestones, abundantly used by former presidents of the Commission, does not seem to work anymore. Both the requirement of unanimity in the legislative procedure and the habitus of European deliberation make it necessary to find an agreement; this consequently promotes “consensus” as a meta-communicational argument. The notion of a “consensus” runs against such theoretical (epistemological) and pragmatic objections that it proves imperious to wonder about its origin and roots. One should take into account not only scholarly conceptions of “consensus” (Habermas, the Deliberative Democracy movement), but also naïve and popular visions of it.<p>The EU Institutions are aware of the difficulty they meet in awakening citizens’ interest, and they have developed their Communication Policy in order to give themselves the means to overcome this obstacle. A systematic reflection on their strategy should take into account the divergent opinions of Moravscik and Hix, as well as the possibility of grounding the EU project anew on a revival of ancient homonoïa.<p>DISCLAIMER. The content of this thesis represents solely the views of its author and cannot in any circumstances be regarded as the official position of the European Commission.<p><p><p><p><p><p><p>Résumé<p>Quoique l’Union Européenne (UE) soit un objet de prédilection pour les politologues, son activité discursive n’a pas reçu toute l’attention méritée.<p>La thèse offre une analyse de corpus effectuée sur base d’une grille de lecture incluant des catégories rhétoriques étiques et émiques. Elle adopte une approche descriptive puisée dans le versant néo-aristotélicien de l’étude de l’argumentation. Le corpus a été constitué d’interventions publiques tenues par les représentants des trois principales Institutions Européennes (Commission, Conseil Européen, Parlement Européen) entre juin et décembre 2005. Le sujet des Perspectives Financières, débattu à intervalles réguliers, permet des comparaisons diachroniques ;il permet aussi de contraster les valeurs, les projets et les moyens de la construction européenne. La conjoncture des six derniers mois de 2005 présente la particularité supplémentaire que le projet de Traité Constitutionnel venait d’être rejeté et que les gouvernements européens s’étaient auparavant divisés sur l’intervention en Irak.<p>En l’absence d’un fondement métaphysique ou naturel, l’entreprise technocratique fournit au projet politique européen une justification rationnelle et laïcisée, même si elle n’est pas assumée explicitement en tant que telle par tous les présidents de la Commission. Les métaphores conceptuelles mobilisées dans les préambules des traités traduisent le fait que l’unification européenne devrait s’accomplir à la fois par l’entremise de réalisations progressives et à travers la poursuite d’un objectif lointain.<p>Sur le plan rhétorique, les Perspectives Financières sont en manque d’une légitimité emblématique. La clause des rendez-vous, des étapes cruciales, abondamment utilisée dans le passé par les présidents de la Commission, cesse de fonctionner en 2005. La nécessité d’un accord, issue tant de la lettre de la procédure législative par unanimité que de la coutume des délibérations, est devenue matière à un argument méta-communicationnel qui en est arrivé à englober toute circonstance susceptible de faciliter le « consensus ». Cette dernière notion soulève des réticences théoriques (épistémologiques) et pragmatiques qui imposent de s’interroger sur son origine. La problématisation que nous avons opérée tient compte non seulement des conceptions savantes du « consensus » (Habermas, courant de la Démocratie Délibérative), mais aussi de ses variantes populaires ou vulgarisées.<p>Les Institutions Européennes sont conscientes de la difficulté qu’il y a à motiver l’intérêt citoyen, et elles ont voulu, à travers leur Politique de Communication, se donner les moyens de dépasser cet obstacle. La thèse mène, à ce propos, une réflexion plus générale qui tient compte des avis opposés de Moravcsik et Hix, et d’une éventuelle refondation dans l’homonoïa de la rhétorique classique.<p>DISCLAIMER. Le contenu de cette thèse représente le point de vue de son seul auteur et ne peut en aucune circonstance être considéré comme la position officielle de la Commission Européenne. <p> / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

La communauté nationale constitue le sujet d’analyse de départ de nombreuses études historiques contemporaines. Depuis la Révolution française, la nation, acteur légitimateur de l’État souverain, est considérée comme l’incarnation et l’expression d’une identité collective, elle-même composée de celle de la multiplicité des citoyens qui la constituent. Aussi, dès cette époque, les historiens se sont-ils attachés à édifier des histoires « nationales », coïncidant bien souvent avec une quête des éléments fondateurs essentiels de la nation. La doctrine élitiste et la tradition stato-nationaliste se sont longtemps conjuguées pour privilégier l’image de nations homogènes, faisant de ces histoires « nationales » en réalité l’histoire de la nation symboliquement majoritaire de l’État-nation censé représenter la diversité de ses citoyens. Or, la démocratisation et la diversification des sociétés occidentales ont progressivement invalidé ces postulats. Depuis la Deuxième Guerre mondiale la nécessité se fait ressentir de redéfinir la nation sur la base de la reconnaissance de son assise populaire et de la diversité de sa composition. Ce besoin se traduit par un intérêt croissant accordé aux minorités nationales, tant dans le monde politique que dans la communauté scientifique. Toutes les minorités ne bénéficient toutefois pas de cet élan, si bien que certaines restent encore largement ignorées à l’heure actuelle. Notre étude se penche sur deux d’entre elles :les francophones de Flandre et les anglophones du Québec, grands laissés pour compte des historiographies respectivement belge et canadienne. L’évolution de ces anciennes minorités dominantes, autrefois « définisseurs de situation » en Belgique et au Canada, est pourtant fondamentale pour comprendre les conflits linguistiques qui ont occupé (et occupent encore) ces pays. Elle est déterminante pour la forme que prennent les identités flamande et québécoise et, partant, les nations belge et canadienne. La comparaison de ces deux minorités permet, quant à elle, de cerner la complexité et la spécificité des nationalismes flamand et québécois. Partant du postulat que les nations sont des constructions sociales imaginées, cette étude a pour ambition de retracer les étapes de la formation nationale en Flandre et au Québec, en se concentrant sur le rôle de l’altérité dans celle-ci. Elle se focalise sur l’analyse des discours des minorités et des majorités dans ces régions, conçus comme des actes de définition identitaire interactifs et interdépendants. Elle se penche sur les villes d’Anvers et de Montréal, lieux de cristallisation des débats communautaires respectivement en Flandre et au Québec. Enfin, elle considère les périodes charnières au cours desquelles les majorités en ces régions se lancèrent à la « reconquête » de « leur » société, sanctionnant par là même la minorisation effective des francophones de Flandre et des anglophones du Québec. Ouvrant la porte d’un domaine laissé en friche, nous espérons ainsi donner une impulsion nouvelle à la recherche historique en Belgique et au Canada, en faisant (re)découvrir l’histoire de ces sociétés sous un angle inédit. / Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In this study, Janis Edwards and Carol Winkler’s method, based on Michael McGee’s ideograph, is applied to non-discursive forms in order to understand the extent to which these images can be understood as a representative form functioning ideographically. Artifacts for analysis include the 2008 Shepard Fairey Obama “PROGRESS” and “HOPE” images, related campaign graphics, and parodies, political and non-political, humorous and serious. Literature on visual rhetoric, the ideograph, and extensions of McGee’s ideograph to visual forms was reviewed. When the method was applied to the artifacts, the Obama “HOPE” image was found to be an example of a representative form. Additionally, the representative form was demonstrated to function ideographically in the parodied examples analyzed in this thesis. Opportunities for further study on the visual ideograph and additional artifacts were proposed.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In this study, rhetorical analysis through the framework of victimage ritual is employed to analyze four Boko Haram messages on You Tube, five e-mail messages sent to journalists from leaders of Boko Haram, and a BlogSpot web page devoted to Boko Haram. The aim of this analysis is to understand the persuasive devices by which Boko Haram leaders create, express, and sustain their jurisprudence on acts of violence. The goal of this study is to understand how leaders of Boko Haram construct and express the group’s values, sway belief, and justify violence. The findings show that Boko Haram desire to redeem non-Muslims from perdition, liberate Muslims from persecution, protect Islam from criticism, and revenge perceived acts of injustices against Muslims. The group has embarked on this aim by allotting blame, vilifying the enemy-Other, pressing for a holy war, encouraging martyrdom, and alluding to an apocalypse. Boko Haram’s audience is made to believe that Allah has assigned Boko Haram the task to liberate and restore an Islamic haven in Nigeria. Therefore, opposition from the Nigerian government or Western forces is constructed as actions of evil, thus killing members of the opposition becomes a celestial and noble cause. This juxtaposition serves to encourage the violent Jihad which leaders of Boko Haram claims Allah assigned them to lead in the first place. As a result of this cyclical communication, media houses, along the Nigerian government, Christians and Western ideals become the symbolic evil, against which Muslims, sympathizers and would-be-recruits must unite. By locking Islam against the Nigerian government, Western ideals and Christianity in a characteristically hostile manner, Boko Haram precludes any real solution other than an orchestrated Jihad-crusade-or-cleanse model in which a possible coexistence of Muslims and the enemy-Other are denied, and the threat posed by the enemy-Other is eliminated through conversion or destruction. As a result, this study proposes that Boko Haram Internet messages Boko Haram’s mission reveals a movement of separatism, conservatism, and fascism. A movement based on the claim that its activism will establish a state in accordance with the dictates of Allah.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / During the early Cold War, 1949 through 1963, the federal government, through such agencies as the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) (1950-1957), the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM) (1958-1960), and the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) (1961-1963), regarded children and young adults as essential to American civil defense. Youth-oriented, voluntary organizations, including the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA), assisted the federal civil defense programs by promoting civil defense messages and agendas. In this thesis, I will explore how the GSUSA and BSA translated federal civil defense policies for their Scouts. What were the civil defense messages transmitted to Scouts during the early Cold War? How were those messages disseminated? Why? What was the social impact of BSA and GSUSA involvement with civil defense on America’s evolving national ideals?