The thesis deals with the problem of the expulsion of Germans in Czech literature, particularly in novels such as Stain/Stigma, The Expulsion of Gerta Schnirch, and Lost Children. All these three works were published after 1989 and thus are not influenced by a socialist discourse. They pit, on the contrary, against it and in the way of describing the theme they follow up The Divine Rainbow by Jaroslav Durych and Adelheid by Vladimír Körner. The expulsion is relatively often reflected. Starting with Anna Sedlmayerová, through Václav Řezáč, Vladimír Körner, Zdeněk Šmíd, and finishing with Kateřina Tučková. Each of them approaches this theme in their individual way. Řezáč in the spirit of his time-discourse, which he co-creates with his work; Durych and Körner rail against Řezáč's conception; Šmíd and Tučková both feel a personal need to give their opinion, as the expulsion partly touches them and speaks to them through the land and the town. The identity of literary characters is in large measure defined by the time-discourse, in which the work originates, and the discourse of the period, which is depicted. Two types of influence arise from this. The part of the discourse is folk myths, transformed and modified for several times, so they can be used for particular aims and a particular period. How influential for the literary discourse of the expulsion were the myths created is going to be clear from the conclusions. Similarly I will try to answer the question how far are the discourse and the formation of the identity of literary characters in interpreted works tied to each other.

The thesis 'The role of the Czech public media in the pension reform discourse' aims to provide a critical reflection on the role of the Czech Television and the Czech Radio in the debate over the changes in the pension scheme of the Czech Republic. The principal method used for that is the discourse analysis, which comprises quality and quantity analysis of the media output, interviews and personal observation. The research project focuses on the context the debate over the pension reform occurs and how it is presented in the public media. The theoretical part summarizes the theoretical concepts used in the research project, i.e. concepts from the field of public policy, social policy, mass communication and discourse analysis. The empirical part examines the institutional development of the pension reform, its variations in political, scholarly (Czech and international) and public discourse. The major part of the research project is based on the discourse analysis of the pension reform discourse in the Czech public media. The role of the public media in the pension reform discourse is deduced on the basis of the theoretical and empirical parts.

The notion of salience in the discourse analysis models how the activation of referred objects evolves in the flow of text. The salience algorithm was defined and tested briefly in an earlier research, we present a reproduction of its results in a larger scale using data from the Prague Discourse Treebank 1.0. The results are then collected into an accessible shape and analyzed both in their visual and quantitative form in the context of the two main resources of the salience - coreference relations and topic-focus articulation. Finally, attempts are made with using the salience information in the machine learning NLP tasks of document clustering and topic modeling. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The thesis follows the relation between gender and language use of individuals for whom German is a foreign language. It is based on the hypothesis, that the language of men and women shows some typical characteristics. On the background of the development of feminist or gender linguistics the thesis gives an overview of the different concepts, which are trying to explain the relationship between gender and language. Presented are also specific language characteristic of men and women. Further an important theoretical basis is the theory of social construction of reality. Following the theory the thesis examines how are the individuals being styled into their respective gender roles and what influence this stylization on their language use has. The practical part of the thesis is based on a research conducted by an online-questionnaire. Based on data collected from individuals with German as a foreign language the thesis studies perception of a gender-specific language on one hand, as well as the own language stylization of the respondents into their respective gender roles on the other. The thesis looks for an answer to the question, whether and to what extent the use of a foreign language affects the language construction of an own gender identity. Key words: gender, communicative domain, identity, German...

The thesis is focused on the study of discourse markers in English informal language. The main corpus includes seven face-to-face conversations of native and non-native speakers and serves as the basis for the research. At first, necessary linguistic terms are defined. Then, the corpus and speakers{\crq} characteristics are presented. The practical part concerns frequency, different functions and positions of particular discourse markers. The factors which might influence the possible choice of discourse markers and its motivation are focused on. Attention is also paid to the frequency of discourse markers used by the class of non-native speakers who were divided to the sub-classes of pre-intermediate, intermediate and advanced. The work further observes co-occurrence of the markers and ambiguous expressions that are not easily distinguishable. Finally, the results of the research are interpreted and analyzed.

Perception of the Russian Threat in the Czech Political, and Administrative Discourse Abstract The goal of this diploma thesis is to find how the Russian threat is perceived in the Czech political, and administrative discourse. The author decided to use constructivism, and discourse analysis to achieve the goal. Concretely he was inspired by Teun A. van Dijk's approach. The author chose actors, which in his opinion are the most important for shaping of the Russian threat construct in the Czech political, and administrative discourse. There are two categories of chosen actors. First category is composed of relevant institutions: The President of the Czech Republic, and his office, and The Government of the Czech Republic. The author chose five sub-actors to represent the government: The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Ministry of the Defence and Armed Forces of the Czech Republic, Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, and Ministry of Industry and Trade. Second category is aimed on parliamentary political parties, and movements in the Chamber of Deputies. The discourse could be characterized like fragmented. Chosen institutions mostly recognize possibility of Russian threatening behavior. They do not perceive any military threat for the Czech...

This diploma thesis analyses Vladimir Putin's justification of the annexation of Crimea based on an interpretation of the discourse used in his Crimean Speech. The research uses the "Discourse- Historical Approach," inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis, as the methodological and conceptual foundation of the analysis. In addition, it incorporates other linguistic and social representation theories. The historical background of Crimea and Ukraine is used as a basis for assessing Russia's claim on Crimea. The analysis is categorized into four appeals: 1) the appeal to common history and culture; 2) the appeal to historical military involvement; 3) the appeal to justice; and 4) the appeal to international law. The appeals are contextualized using broader historical themes associated with the discourses used by Putin to justify the annexation. The interpretation is informed by historical context within each category. In the conclusion, the research presents the finalized interpretation, in which Putin's justification for the annexation of Crimea is shown to be constructed using the manipulation and selective recounting of historical facts. This diploma thesis uses a close textual reading and analysis of Vladimir Putin's Crimean Speech to expose the myths and manipulations he uses as a justification...

aj Two years ago there was a need to re-define the position of The North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the system of international relations and to identify it`s main threats and their perception. The strategic concept from the 1999 has become obsolete document which couldn't adequately react to new threats. In the 2009 the process of creation new strategy started. There was assembled a group of experts under lead of Madeleine Albright to stimulate a discussion across member states about the nature and task of NATO and the current perception of security through a number of seminars and conferences. Subsequent analysis of the current security discourse served to NATO Secretary General as a form of recommendations for the preparation of the new strategy. The process of creation was as important as its outcome document, because it included the general professional public in addition to national governments. In my diploma thesis, besides the main themes of the new strategy, I will focus mainly on reflection of Czech debate on the new strategy. I introduce the concept of epistemic communities by Peter Haas, through which I define epistemic Czech group that dealt with the creation of a new NATO strategy.

This thesis named "Analysis of the Official Israeli Discourse during the Second Intifada: Legitimization and Categorization" is concerned with discursive construction of Palestinian terrorism and Israeli security policies by Israeli officials in the period following 2000. The paper draws on works which refuse to perceive language as neutral communication means to describe the social reality, and instead approach it as a tool to impose and maintain social and political inequality and dominance of some groups over others. These theoretical foundations underpin the following research which examines legitimation strategies employed by Israeli officials in order to justify Israeli controversial measures aiming to quell Palestinian terrorism during the Second Intifada. The paper identifies several discursive schemes through which Israeli state representatives purported to legitimize Israeli security policies that were harshly criticized at the time. The basic strategy is to depict and categorize Israelis as peace yearning people who relentlessly offer far-reaching compromises aiming to achieve calm, which proposals are being adamantly rejected by Palestinians whose only reaction is resort to terror. The thesis further deals with Israeli officials' reframing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a part...

As a student of the final year of my master‘s programme I assume that I have been exposed to myriad perceptions throughout my studies, whether during lectures, compulsory practices or studio work, that have formed me as a student and future architect. Despite the fact I understand my study as an opportunity for personal development and university institution as a platform for „self-improvement“, the subsequent discursive formation cannot be avoided. Primarily, at my study begginings I have perceived theses, informations or solutions presented by teachers, as universal thruths. The lecturers rarely emphasize that their statements are possible interpretations, personal opinions, what means they are existing in certain philosophical or ideological framework. Over time one begins to doubt and relativize. As a critical introspection of „faculty-discourse“, which I have gone through my studies, I decided to question the concept of Space. The analysis I have done in my thesis confirms, that the Space is for the majority of teachers integral part of architect‘s work. The opinions which circulate around this concept penetrate to the students‘ thought apparatus throught teaching. Then they take them as an argumental arsenal for their own practice. To answer the question: „What is the Space?“, however is not the subject of this work. The work with the Space, which for many architects symbolize a boundary between „building“ and „Architecture“, is according to my analysis appearing as a controversial conception what an architect actually does. A clear definition of the architectural Space does not really exist and in this aspect by constant repetition of the term of the Space, we are exposing it to the risk of absolute emptying. The space in architectural theory and consequently in architectural discourse was invented relatively recently (1893).