Ce mémoire analyse la réception de l’auteur autrichien Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) au regard des scandales qui ont marqué sa carrière. Tantôt identifié comme l’imprécateur de l’Autriche, tantôt comme écrivain exceptionnel, il aura remis en question le rôle de son pays dans le national-socialisme et multiplié les attaques ad hominem. Il aura tenu un rôle ambigu dans l’espace public. Tout en insistant sur le caractère fictif de ses œuvres, il se mettait en scène de façon provocatrice dans le discours public ainsi que dans sa fiction. Ce mémoire s’intéresse au fonctionnement du scandale en tant qu’événement social complexe ayant lieu dans l’espace public. Les chercheurs s’entendent pour considérer le scandale comme un trouble ou une irritation résultant d’une transgression, apparente ou avérée. Il s’agit en outre d’un phénomène intégré dans l’ordre social et géré par les médias, caractérisé par l’actualisation des valeurs morales. Dans la présente étude, il est postulé que le capital symbolique (cf. Bourdieu) joue un rôle d’a priori et de catalyseur dans les scandales. Une accumulation initiale de capital symbolique assure une visibilité médiatique automatique. Le capital d’identité de Thomas Bernhard – soit la personnalisation du capital symbolique – est hybride et complexe, de sorte qu’il est difficilement appréciable. La difficile appréciation du capital de l’auteur se traduit par l’incertitude des journalistes et du public quant à son message : réactions dispro-portionnées, critique du particulier perçue comme mise en cause de l’universel. Toute dé-claration, toute œuvre de Bernhard est assujettie à ses prestations « scandaleuses » antérieu-res. Ce mémoire insiste sur le caractère autoréférentiel du scandale et s’intéresse aux actes de langage performatifs (cf. John L. Austin). Le corpus comporte des romans de Bernhard, leurs recensions, des articles de quotidiens, des lettres de lecteurs, des documents juridiques ainsi que la correspondance entre Bernhard et Siegfried Unseld. / This master’s thesis analyzes the reception of the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) and focuses on the scandals that punctuated his career. Acclaimed exceptional writer, he was, however, often referred to as Austria’s injurer. He called into question the in-volvement of his country in National Socialism and proliferated ad hominem attacks on politicians. His role in the public sphere was ambiguous: whilst insisting on the fictive character of his works, he staged himself provocatively. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to show the functioning of scandals as com-plex social events taking place in the public sphere. Scholars consider scandals as public offenses resulting from real or apparent transgressions. Scandals are integrated into the so-cial order and are handled by the media. They trigger actualization of moral values. This study postulates that symbolic capital (cf. Bourdieu) plays a role in scandals. It is both the prerequisite and the catalyst for successful scandalization. An initial accumula-tion of symbolic capital insures quasi automatically media attention. The identity capital of Thomas Bernhard – i.e. the personalization of his symbolic capital – is hybrid and intricate. This renders its interpretation difficult. The complexity of the capital configuration leads to an ambivalent appreciation of the author’s message by journalists and the public. Reactions are disproportionate and Bernhard’s particular though hyperbolic criticism is perceived as a questioning of universal values. Each and every declaration or work by Bernhard is subor-dinated and appreciated in regards to his preceding “scandalous” achievements. This mas-ter’s thesis emphasizes the autorefential nature of scandals and devotes a special interest to performative speech acts (cf. John L. Austin). The corpus includes some of Bernhard’s plays and novels, book reviews, newspaper articles, letters to the editor, court transcripts and Bernhard’s correspondence with his publisher Siegfried Unseld. / Diese Magisterarbeit untersucht die Rezeption des Autors Thomas Bernhard (1931–1989) angesichts der Skandale, die seine Karriere kennzeichneten. Bernhard galt zugleich als Österreich-Beschimpfer und als außergewöhnlicher Literat. Er stellte die Rolle Österreichs im Nationalsozialismus in Frage und griff wiederholt prominente Österreicher persönlich an. Einerseits bestand er auf den fiktionalen Charakter seiner Werke, andererseits inszenier-te er sich provokativ in der Öffentlichkeit. Das Interesse der Arbeit gilt dem Funktionieren des Skandals als komplexes sozia-les Ereignis, das in der Öffentlichkeit obwaltet. Konsens herrscht in der Forschung darüber, dass ein Skandal ein auf einem realen oder vermuteten Normbruch beruhendes Ärgernis ist. Es handelt sich um ein im Gesellschaftssystem eingeschriebenes Phänomen, das von den Medien behandelt und zum Auslöser von Kontroversen über normative Fragen wird. Diese Arbeit geht von der Annahme aus, dass das symbolische Kapital (vgl. Bourdieu) eine Vorbedingung des Skandals ist. Eine ursprüngliche Akkumulation symbolischen Kapitals sichert mediale Aufmerksamkeit. Das Identitätskapital Bernhards – die Personalisierung seines Kapitals – war hybrid und komplex, sodass es nur schwierig einzuschätzen war. Diese erschwerte Einschätzung seines symbolischen Kapitals führte zur Unsicherheit der Journalisten und des Publikums bezüglich seiner Botschaft: Immer wieder kam es zu überzogenen Reaktionen. Vor allem Bernhards hyperbolische Kritik des Beson-deren wurde pauschal als Infragestellung des Allgemeinen (des Österreichischen) wahrge-nommen. Jedwede Äußerung und jedwedes Werk Bernhards wurde vor dem Hintergrund seiner vorhergehenden »skandalösen« Leistungen gedeutet. Diese Arbeit betont den selb-streferentiellen Charakter und den pragmatischen Gehalt (vgl. John L. Austin) des Skan-dals. Der Korpus erfasst Texte von Bernhard, Rezensionen, Zeitungsartikel, Leserbriefe, Gerichtsprotokolle, Rechtsprechung und Bernhards Briefwechsel mit seinem Verleger Siegfried Unseld.

This study sought to investigate and to record any recurring patterns in the form and communicative impact of Shona advertisements. Motivation to carry out the study came from a realisation of a growing interest in using the Shona language for advertising and the fact that very few studies have been done on Shona advertisements. For methodology, examples of Shona advertisements were qualitatively analysed using some communications and discourse analysis approaches of the speech act theory and text linguistics. A structured interview with advertising agencies randomly selected and a questionnaire on the impact of advertisements were also used. The findings of the research included that Shona was used in advertisements in order to reach out to the majority of the Zimbabwean population. In addition, Shona was also found to have been developed enough to handle formal issues like advertisements. This finding further shows that Shona advertisements reflect an instance of diglossia leakage from Shona L(ow) to Shona H(igh). Another finding is that Shona advertisements reflect some characteristics of the Shona speech community in form. These include code-switching, slang and word- division problems. An innovation in code-switching noted in some Shona advertisements is the use of three languages, namely, English, Shona and Ndebele in one advertisement. It was also established that everything about the elements of Shona advertisements communicate. For instance, the message may be visual, tactile and olfactory. It also emerged that the Shona commercial advertisements had a presenting and a hidden agenda at the same time. To achieve this the advertisements used persuasive techniques such as advertising claims, cultural hooks and personalities as spokespersons. It was also noted that most readers of advertisements do not interpret them up to the hidden persuaders but end with the direct meaning. On the other hand the Shona advertisements that gave information such as health issues have no hidden agenda. One recommendation made is that advertisements be read and studied to raise the level of awareness about the persuasive techniques used in order to distinguish between misleading advertising and those that give useful information. Some recommendations were made for future research such as carrying out similar studies of informal Shona advertisements, advertisements by n'angas/inyangas (traditional healers), prophets and political campaigns. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

The focus of dissertation belongs to the field of learning Czech as a foreign language and deals with the acquisition of pragmatic competence of non-native speakers. Whereas this is a broad area, the work concentrates on speech act request. The aim is to describe how two students of Czech acquired the speech act during a one-year intensive course. The theoretical background is given in Chapter I. The term Interlanguage Pragmatics is introduced to Czech readers. The Chapter further maps what the pragmatic research of non- native speakers generally deals with and what questions it asks. Attention is paid to possible methods for collecting data for research of pragmatic competence, what kinds of errors non- native speakers usually make, what environment is suitable for the acquisition of pragmatic competence or how individual differences among students affects pragmatic competence. In the second chapter attention is paid to speech act request. We present an overview of major longitudinal studies. On the bass of this longitudinal research it was found that students of English go through five stages of development when acquiring request. The stages are presented here in detail. In the research part of the dissertation the investigation of how two non-native speakers (a student from Taiwan and a student...

L’infinitif est souvent présenté comme un mode qui ne présente ni les marques de temps, ni de personne, ni de nombre. De ce fait, la grammaire traditionnelle le classe parmi les formes non personnelles du verbe avec le gérondif et le participe. Cependant, l’infinitif sert à exprimer un ordre, un conseil, une interdiction, entre autres actes directifs. On le retrouve dans les modes d’emploi de divers produits, dans les recettes de cuisine, dans le code de la route, dans les libellés de conseil, pour ne citer que quelques exemples. Selon les grammaires, dans cet emploi, l’infinitif serait utilisé à la place de l’impératif, dont il serait l’équivalent. Au vu de ces affirmations, cette thèse se propose d’étudier les caractéristiques de l’infinitif injonctif. Pour ce faire, nous nous intéressons à la catégorisation de l’infinitif et aux propriétés de l’injonction. En effet, l’utilisation de l’infinitif injonctif soulève des questions. Le texte injonctif est associé à un acte d’intimation à l’action ; il s’agit d’un acte directif par lequel un locuteur veut agir sur le comportement de son destinataire. Alors comment expliquer qu’une forme qui serait non personnelle et intemporelle puisse être employée dans un genre qui s’inscrit résolument dans une situation de communication où la présence d’un locuteur ne fait pas de doute, et où le message est destiné à un public déterminé ? Notre recherche a permis de montrer que l’infinitif est une forme verbale à part entière, avec des particularités qui lui sont propres. Notre étude sur corpus vient confirmer cette position au vu de l’organisation des constituants très riche de l’infinitif injonctif / The infinitive is often described as a mood which does not possess time, person or number markers. Hence, traditional grammars classify it as impersonal, along with the gerund and the participial. However, the infinitive can express an order, an advice, and a prohibition, among other directive speech acts. It is used in instruction manuals, in cooking recipes, in traffic regulation texts, in advisory texts, to name a few. According to grammars, in such cases, the infinitive is used instead of the imperative. It would thus be similar to the imperative. On the basis of these statements, this thesis intends to study the characteristics of the injunctive infinitive. To do this, we consider the categorisation of the infinitive as well as the properties of the injunctive discourse. Indeed, the use of the injunctive infinitive raises questions. The injunctive text relates to a directive speech act through which the speaker attempts to get the addressee to perform the action described. How is it, then, that an impersonal and tenseless verb form can be used in a discourse which is clearly linked to a communication situation where there is no doubt as to the existence of a speaker and where the speech is directed towards a particular audience? Our research shows that the infinitive is a verb form in its own right, with its own unique features. Our corpus-based study confirms this fact, as shown by the rich syntactic possibilities with the injunctive infinitive.

This study examines speech acts, modalities, and the use of the informal “you” in the instructions for the national tests in Swedish and Swedish as a second language, as well as teachers’ own instructions for written assignments. The study also aims to explore whether the usage of the components show a power relationship between the instructions and the students. The intention is then to use these linguistic components as markers of power and to investigate how the power relationship unfolds between sender and receiver. The interpersonal metafunction in systemic functional grammar is employed as the method for this study, where each sentence in the instructions is broken down, analyzed based on its language acts, modalities, and use of “you.” These are then discussed in relation to systemic functional grammar and previous research. In summary, the results of the study indicate a power relationship between sender and receiver where the receiver, in more cases, ends up in a position of inferiority compared to the sender. The instructions and assertions provided cannot be counted or opposed by the student without risking their performance on the examination. The results also indicate that the questions available to the students were sometimes leading, where the sender already had an idea of the answer they were looking for. Despite sometimes being leading, the questions can serve as guidance for students' thought process, thus functioning as a support for their writing, which also applies to offers and aids.

This thesis examines 'improvement' of wetland commons in early modern England as a contested process of rapid environmental change. As a flagship project of agrarian improvement, drainage sought to alchemise pastoral fen commons into arable enclosed terra firma and promised manifold benefits for crown, commoners, and commonwealth alike. In practice, however, improvement schemes generated friction between the political and fiscal agendas of governors and projectors and local communities' customary ways of knowing and using wetland commons, provoking the most sustained and violent agrarian unrest of the seventeenth century. This thesis situates the first state-led drainage project in England, in the northern fens of Hatfield Level, in the context of the local politics of custom, national legal and political developments, and international movements of capital, expertise, and refugees; all of which intersected to reshape perceptions and management of English wetlands. Drawing on the analytic perspectives of environmental history, this thesis explores divergent ideas and practices generating conflict over the making of private property, reorganisation of flow, and reconfiguration of lived environments. This thesis argues that different 'environing' practices - both mental and material - distinguished what was seen as an ordered or disordered landscape, determined when and how water was understood as a resource or risk, and demarcated different scales and forms of intervention. Rival visions of the fenscape, ways of knowing land and water, and concepts of value and justice were productive of, and produced by, different practices of management, ownership, and use. Drainage disputes therefore crossed different spheres of discourse and action, spanning parliament, courtroom, and commons to bring improvement into dialogue with fen custom and generate a contentious environmental politics. In seven substantive chapters, this thesis investigates how improvement was imagined, legitimised, and enacted; how fen communities experienced and navigated rapid environmental transformation; and how political, social, and spatial boundaries were reforged in the process. By grounding improvement in the early modern fenscape, this thesis reintegrates agency into accounts of inexorable socio-economic change, illuminates ideas at work in social contexts, and deepens understandings of environmental conflict.