Thesis--Leyden University. / Bibliography: p. [xvii]-xx.

Thesis--Utrecht. / Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 479-487) and index.

Thèse--Upsala. / "Ouvrages consultés": p. [227]-231.

Habilitationsschrift--Heidelberg, 1966. / Bibliography: p. 131-138. Also issued online.

In this thesis connections between messages on the public wall of the Russian social network Vkontakte are analysed and classified. A total of 1818 messages from three different Vkontakte groups were collected and analysed according to a new framework based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) research into cohesion and Simmons’s (1981) adaptation of their classification for Russian. The two categories of textuality, cohesion and coherence, describe the linguistic connections between messages. The main aim was to find out how far the traditional categories of cohesion are applicable to an online social network including written text as well as multimedia-files. In addition to linguistic cohesion the pragmatic and topic coherence between Vkontakte messages was also analysed. The analysis of pragmatic coherence classifies the messages with acts according to their pragmatic function in relation to surrounding messages. Topic coherence analyses the content of the messages, describes where a topic begins, changes or is abandoned. Linguistic cohesion, topic coherence and pragmatic coherence enable three different types of connections between messages and these together form a coherent communication on the message wall. The cohesion devices identified by Halliday and Hasan and Simmons were found to occur in these texts, but additional devices were also identified: these are multimodal, graphical and grammatical cohesion.

As an output of the HERA Travelling Texts project, created with the aim of uncovering the realities of women’s literary culture on the fringes of Europe during the long nineteenth century, this study was conceptualised to find out more about the networks of women writers in Spain around 1900, using the digitised corpuses of contemporaneous periodicals as the primary source material. Each chapter of the study centres on a particular periodical, which is used as the starting point for the community of writers and readers, both real and imagined. This thesis looks at the realities of the literary culture for creative women in the late nineteenth century-early twentieth century, exploring the strategies used by women (and men) to support each other in their literary endeavours, how they took inspiration and courage from each other, how they promoted their own names, and how they were received by wider society. The study will also focus on the transnational nature of this literary culture, looking at how women of different nations influenced each other’s work, with a view to understanding more about how cultural change takes place. Finally, this thesis hopes to persuade the reader that the periodical is a rich and under-utilised resource for discovering more about the lives of women writers and their network of relationships.

La thèse explore les œuvres de Blaise Cendrars, de Victor Segalen et d’Albert Londres sous l’angle de « l’éclat du voyage » et se propose d’analyser les effets produits par la présence du voyage sur un plan diégétique, métadiégétique et stylistique. Chez ces trois auteurs, la notion de voyage dépasse en effet sa vocation thématique pour se faire véritable matière à travailler le langage, le texte et atteindre la sphère de la littérarité en exerçant sur le texte une menace d’éclatement. Le texte affecté par le voyage, loin d’être mis en péril, s’inscrit ainsi dans une modernité littéraire : en prenant le risque, par le détour du voyage, d’une écriture déformant, re-formant, re-définissant la littérature, les trois œuvres examinées illuminent quelques chemins de traverse dans lesquels s’engagent œuvres et critiques contemporaines. Cette étude interroge les premiers écrits de Cendrars (1912-1938) en explorant par quelles voies la présence conjointe du motif du voyage et de l’éclatement conduit à la création d’une représentation fractale du monde. La mise en évidence de trajectoires chaotiques des personnages cendrarsiens au cœur d’un monde ontologiquement fracturé permet l’édification textuelle d’une « anarchitecture » poétique et moderne. L’examen du cycle polynésien de Segalen met en évidence la présence du voyage comme le résultat d’un écart désirant, véritable menace de déchirure entre l’ici et l’ailleurs, soi et l’autre, soi et soi. Cet écart aboutit, à travers une présence textuelle, à la formation d’une poétique littéraire de la diffraction, poussant ainsi l’œuvre aux limites d’un hors-littérature. Enfin, à travers l’étude des reportages d’Albert Londres, la thèse montre comment l’écriture du voyage trouve un regain de force par le détour du reportage.

This thesis investigates the dynamics, motivations and external factors influencing the migration trajectories of 22 young, well-qualified Polish and Spanish migrants in the South of England. The study is among the first ones researching the current movement of people from Spain to the UK in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007/08, and comparing it to post-EU-accession migration from Eastern Europe. The methodology involves semi-structured, autobiographical interviews focusing on participants’ migration experiences, with a particular focus on their professional ambitions in the UK labour market. The findings of the study demonstrate how both groups interpret emigration as an act of establishing a certain form of normality, be it social, economic or individual. Overall, however, the narratives reveal differences that run along the lines of nationality. In the Polish narratives in particular, a strong focus on the immediate present becomes evident. The present life in the UK, no matter how challenging, is almost always compared to a past in Poland that is retrospectively defined as ‘abnormal’. Participants create a discourse of escape that is then used to make sense of an often ‘not ideal’ present in which participants, despite being university educated, spend prolonged periods of time in low-level jobs. The Spanish narratives, on the other hand, tend to be highly politicised and participants display a strong sense of individualisation and political anger. Most narratives are characterised by an ‘ideology of progress’. Spain is referred to as a space of personal and professional stagnation, while time spent in the UK is seen as a conscious investment in human capital such as English skills. The aim of this investment is the establishment of a certain socio-economic status in the future, and menial jobs in the UK are acceptable as long as participants work towards that goal. In summary, the thesis analyses how both groups react to social and economic changes in times of a global economic crisis, and describes how participants tend to meet unknown circumstances with a known set of behavioural dispositions.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the discourses created and shaped by pro- immigration asylum-seeker advocates who were working in the Greater Southampton Area between 2006 and 2009. Through this analysis, I assess the factors shaping these discourses and seek to understand who benefits from these discourses and, ultimately, whom they harm. Adopting the approaches of both critical discourse analysis and linguistic ethnography to situate these discourses within the wider historical contexts of immigration to Southampton, I examine the socio-economic and political conditions in Britain as a country of destination, paying particular attention to British policies of immigration and refugee settlement and integration. I then concentrate on three themes that are dominant throughout these discourses and demonstrate how these themes - and the identities that they describe and go some way to shape - are created and shaped by the language in these discourses. These three themes are liminality, helplessness and mistrust. I engage in this analysis by conducting linguistic ethnography: living and working alongside the individuals I describe herein and conducting interviews with them in order to fully understand their discursive practice. I use a triangulation method that contrasts data emerging from ethnographic interviews with the critical discourse analysis of texts produced by these discourse communities. I argue that the discourses created and shaped by these discourse communities have fostered a condition in which asylum-seekers are portrayed as being helpless, preternaturally encumbered and, at the end of the day, as being a burden on the State.

This thesis aims to examine the ways in which national identity can be discursively created within a state. I consider the case of Nicaragua in the 1980s and investigate how the government of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) established a conception of the national in the country through official discourse. Despite various studies into the political situation of Nicaragua during this time period, little research has been done in the role of language in constructing a sense of national identification in the country, and this thesis is a contribution to addressing that gap in the research, following the examples of Ruth Wodak et al. (1999) and Nicolina Montesano Montessori (2009). I challenge the dominant Eurocentric theories on national identity as to their relevance in a Latin American context. Particularly, Anderson (2006), Smith (1991), Gellner (1983) and Hobsbawm (1990) are shown to each have partial applicability to studies of the region, but ultimately are not sufficient in themselves to fully address the unique circumstances seen in Latin America. I propose that two other elements must be included as contributing elements to national identity formation: radical Marxism and liberation theology. In analysing the data, I adopt a critically oriented discourse analysis approach as I research the strategies employed in a government led redefinition of the nation. Applying the discourse-historical approach (Wodak et al. 1999), I probe the data for particular structures aimed at creating hegemony over the discursive terrain. Through a comparison of three separate corpora composed of government publications, opposition publications and ethnographic interviews, I consider the questions of how the FSLN discursively created a sense of national community and whether and how that discourse was adopted by non-governmental actors. In answering these questions, the discourses are situated in the specific cultural, political and historical milieu of post-revolutionary Nicaragua.