In this mixed methods study, I explore the reasons for the low level of women in elected office in Europe. I analyze the impact of three structural factors (number of years since women's suffrage was enacted, type of electoral system, and presence of legal gender quotas) and three attitudinal factors (level of gender equality, percentage of female professionals, and level of religiosity) on the percentage of women in national legislatures in each of the European countries. Specifically, I pose the following research question: Which structural and/or attitudinal factors are more influential for women's political representation in European countries? In order to answer this question, I begin by performing ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses of the variables. My Europe-wide and Western Europe regression results indicate that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between the favorability of a country's electoral system to the election of women and the level of women's political representation in that country. Proportional representation electoral systems are particularly beneficial to female candidates. In addition, unlike previous scholars who focus on the dominant religion, I apply the concept of religiosity (the importance of religion to a country's citizens) to women's political representation. I find a statistically significant negative relationship between the level of religiosity in a country and the level of women's political representation in that country. Countries in which citizens are particularly religious tend to be conservative and less likely to encourage the election of women. However, none of the variables are statistically significant in the regression analysis of Eastern Europe, which indicates the need to take regional factors into consideration. In the second part of the study, I examine four case studies (Sweden, Ireland, Hungary, and Macedonia). The case studies permit in-depth analyses of the individual countries, and show the manner in which structural and attitudinal factors interact in a particular country context. In the case of Macedonia, structural factors have mitigated the effects of negative attitudinal factors. In most of the case studies, however, a combination of structural (electoral system and gender quotas) and attitudinal factors (gender equality and religiosity) affect the level of women's political representation in the country. Ultimately, the case studies demonstrate how the country-specific context impacts the election of women to parliament.

L’histoire de l’Anatolie « hittite » constitue une page importante de l’histoire du Proche-Orient ancien du deuxième millénaire avant J.-C. Pendant longtemps après la découverte des Hittites la recherche s’était focalisée sur le cœur de l’Empire hittite. Excepté le Sud-Est les zones périphériques sortent peu à peu de l’ombre C’est dans cette perspective que cette thèse s’inscrit : les rapports entre l’empire hittite et les entités politiques situées à l’Est dont le territoire avait été considéré comme le berceau d’un peuple d’origine toujours obscure : les Arméniens.Un certain nombre d’inscriptions cunéiformes hittites ont été étudiés dans le but de trouver des traces des Proto-Arméniens en Anatolie orientale au deuxième millénaire avant J.-C. Notre recherche est donc constituée selon le plan suivant : Dans le cadre du premier chapitre, nous examinerons l’histoire de la philologique régionale, y compris les langues. Nous présenterons les écoles de pensée et les méthodes appliquées par les grands savants occidentaux et soviétiques dès 19ème siècle pour le classement de ces langues « voisines » régionales qui appartiennent pourtant à des familles linguistiques différentes.Dans le cadre du deuxième chapitre, nous étudierons la géographie historique de l’Anatolie orientale (régions mentionnées par les sources hittites et arméniennes), considérées comme le berceau des Arméniens. Le troisième chapitre a été consacré à l’étude comparée du vocabulaire hittito-arménien. Dans le cadre du dernier chapitre (chapitre 4), nous présenterons et étudierons les textes hittites relatifs à l’Anatolie orientale. / The history of 'Hittite' Anatolia is an important part of the history of the ancient Near East of the second millennium B.C.For a long time after the discovery of the Hittites, the research had focused on the heart of the Hittite Empire. With the exception of the Southeast, the peripheral areas gradually emerge from the shadows. It is in this perspective that this thesis takes place: the relations between the Hittite empire and the political entities situated in the East, whose territory had been considered the cradle of a people of obscure origin : the Armenians.A number of Hittite cuneiform inscriptions have been studies with tha aim of finding traces of the Proto-Armenians in Eastern Anatolia in the second millennium B.C.Our research constituted according to the following plan: Within the framework of the first chapter, we will examine the history of regional philology, including languages. We will present the schools of thought and the methods applied by the great Western and Soviet scholars of the 19th century for the classification of these neighboring regional languages which belong to different linguistic families.In the second chapter, we will study the historical geography of Eastern Anatolia (areas mentioned by Hittite and Armenian sources), considered the cradle of the Armenians.The third chapter was devoted to the comparative study of the Hittite-Armenian vocabulary. In the last chapter (chapter 4), we will present and study the Hittite texts relating to Eastern Anatolia.

This thesis investigates the publishing history of a significant New Woman author of the Edwardian period, Katherine Cecil Thurston (1875-1911). Until now Thurston's literary career has been the subject of little academic investigation. It is the aim of this thesis to contextualise her life and work within that of a New Woman writer and explore her relationship with those involved in the publishing process. By examining the narrative of Thurston's work and her interaction with Edwardian society we see how such New Woman authors contributed to the development of women's writing. The focal argument of the thesis is that Thurston used her femininity to generate an audience of female readers while at the same time creating alternate visions for women's lives, thus championing the cause of feminism. Thurston challenges many of the traditional, established views of the late Victorian period; however she was keenly aware of the need to operate within the bounds of traditional gender roles in order to ensure the publication of her work and the support of her conservative readership. Through her relationships with her publishers and readers we see how the opening decade of the twentieth century was fraught with unease and doubt about women's role within it. This thesis builds on recent studies by feminist critics in terms of rehabilitating women writers who have been omitted or lost from literary and publishing history. This research adds another author to that body of work and broadens our level of understanding of the position of woman authors of the period. By establishing the details of Thurston's life and work, this thesis aims to open new channels of investigation and as such amounts to a significant contribution to our awareness and understanding of New Women authors.

This thesis examines the syntax of the sentence and the style of three of Alberto Arbasino’s early works: Le piccole vacanze (1957), Il ragazzo perduto (1959) and Fratelli d’Italia (1963). The period in which these works were written and published was one of great linguistic changes, with Italian starting to become the language spoken by the majority of the population and the consequent formation of a new variety, the italiano dell’uso medio. This social evolution has also consequences for the language of narrative: whereas some authors embrace the lingua media and a clear, communicative style (stile semplice), others reject it and opt for linguistic experimentation. Although Arbasino is typically placed in this second slant of narrative writing, one cannot so easily assign him to a group or stream, since from the beginning of his career he developed a personal poetics influenced by modernist writers, as well as his own ideas on language and style. The aims of this study are first of all to chart the birth and diachronic evolution of Arbasino’s style, and evaluate the influence of his syntactic choices on it. Then investigate how the syntax of each work compares to the lines of development of contemporary Italian and to the language of contemporary narrative. My analysis begins with a comprehensive outline of the features of contemporary Italian and of the styles of writing in post-war narrative, ending with a focus on the character of Arbasino’s poetics and ideas on language and style in the decade 1954-1964. A brief chapter then illustrates the methodology used, based on quantitative analysis of syntactic aspects, and clarifies terminology. Thereafter, the core of the thesis is composed of three case studies that examine thoroughly the syntax of the sentence and other important syntactic devices of the three works separately, comparing data with corpora of Italian and with studies on narrative language. Finally, a concluding chapter highlights the lines of development of syntax and style in the three works. On the basis of this research, it is clear that the syntax of the sentence places Arbasino among experimental writers tending to break with the linguistic standard. Moreover, Arbasino’s syntactic choices in the three works reflect an increasing distance from traditional literary modes of representation and the progressive affirmation of his own literary project, founded in the poetics of realismo critico.

This thesis aims to explore the spaces created by migrant communities as they make their place in a new homeland. Theoretically conceived of as translocality, these place-making practices are constructed through vibrant relationships between countries, mainly across national orders. I set out to understand the impact of the global on the local in these negotiations between and within migrant groups and the receiving population through the lens of language practices. Previous studies of translocality have focussed on larger, global cities and this research aims to shed some light on the phenomenon in the super-diverse urban environment of a smaller city. A migrant’s first encounter with a dominant institution in the host country is often in the health domain. My case study is located in a hospital maternity department where large numbers of migrants require language support and is considered to offer a rich site of translocal interactions. I use a qualitative ethnographic methodology and interpretation through induction from contextualised subjective data and a theme-oriented discourse data analysis. This approach is suitable for a study, which requires an understanding of how individuals and groups perceive and construct their worlds, difference, agency and power relations. My findings reveal the control of languages by local governance framed by dominant monolingualism. The reality of in situ multilingualism of the interpreters and patients accessing healthcare in the city is challenging this monolingual dominance. I suggest the vertical top-down to grass roots relationship of the control of languages is becoming increasingly non-hierarchical as the hospital responds to this linguistic reality. The light shed on the negotiation of translocality may inform effective professional practice in the health domain. This knowledge can be of use to other public sectors, language policy makers and planners that engage with members of migrant communities.

This thesis offers a critical analysis of the implications of ideological mediations in the translation of English-Kurdish geopolitical texts. It makes an original contribution by enabling a deeper comprehension of the role of re-contextualisation of socio-political texts in situations of constant contemporary conflict in the Middle East. It does so by exploring the reproduction of stance and voice in the translations of a geopolitical commentarial genre commissioned by newspapers. The study provides an account of how patterns of translation choices are conveyed in newspaper commentary articles on the geopolitical issues originally published in English and then how these patterns are re-conveyed in full translations of these articles for four quality Kurdish-language newspapers with different editorial policies: Sbeiy, Kurdistan-i-New, Xendan, and Rudaw. The case study explores the Kurdish translation of English journalistic articles covering general political developments in Middle East and Kurdistan in particular over a significant four-year period of 2011-2014. It is employed as an example of the rewriting activity that has been effective in achieving significant geopolitical results in favour of the media agencies that are considered politically aligned outlets. The study questions the extent to which ideologies involved in leading translation practice and inquires what the Kurdish case-study apprises us about wider practice. The methodology is a hybrid of corpus- and critical narrative-analytical methods that operate within the discipline of descriptive translation studies. The study deployed tripartite models to analyse and depict the interplay between ideology and a translator’s behaviour within media contexts. It adapts Toury’s three-phase descriptive methodology and Chesterman’s concept of norms as complementary models in order to describe the type of norms operating within the context of Kurdish media translation. It also developed critical narrative analysis for further investigating and for describing the normative effects of socio- political factors on the behaviour of the translator within the same realm. The outcomes of the data analysis have revealed that media translation choices are driven by ideology. The socio-political ideology plays a significant role, both historically and currently in the occurrence of stylistic shifts. On the level of meaning, however, the majority of shifts occur due to the current political power dynamics in Kurdistan. The results have also shown that media translation in Iraqi Kurdistan is not neutral and it is largely affected by the policy of the parties to which the media news agencies are aligned. This study encompasses six chapters, a conclusion and appendices.

This study is an exploration of familial bilingualism in which I examined the reported experiences of a small group of bilingual family members who live in the South of England and whose heritage languages are French or Spanish. The study, located in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, draws upon the main fields of bilingualism, second language acquisition, language ideologies, family language policies, as well as bilingualism and emotions. It offers evidence of the difficulties to transmit heritage languages and implement familial bilingualism because of a mixture of intertwined ideological and practical factors. Having experienced familial bilingualism, I was interested in understanding the meaning that familial bilingualism had for other families and how familial bilingualism subjectively affected family members in their everyday lives and in their interactions at home and in society. To conduct the study, I adopted an interpretative approach in which I tried to derive context-situated interpretations from the narratives of my participants. Thus, my data enabled me to examine the complexity of maintaining and transmitting heritage languages within families. The data highlighted the strong link between familial bilingualism and society as the heritage languages of the participants could be construed as social capital that the parents had to transmit in order to be 'good parents'. The data also highlighted the complex relationships between bilingualism and emotions not only at societal level but also at individual and familial levels. The salient emotions revealed in the data comprise feelings of responsibility about maintaining and transmitting heritage languages as well as feelings of insecurity and isolation generated by migrating and belonging to bilingual families. A greater understanding of familial bilingualism and how families view their languages as lenses through which they negotiate family and societal relations, as well as emotions and education, is not simply an academic exercise but is arguably of importance to all of us, given the world in which we live, with diversity and migration featuring as major political and ideological issues.

In certain Germanic languages, there is a group of verbs called preterite-present verbs that are often viewed as irregular, but in fact behave very predictably. They exhibit a morphological phenomenon called deponency, often in conjunction with another morphological phenomenon called heteroclisis. I examine the preterite-present verbs of three different languages: Old Norse, Modern Icelandic, and Modern German. Initially, I approach them from a historical perspective and then seek to reconcile their morphology with the modern perspective. A criteria is established for a canonical preterite-present verb, and then using a lexical programming language called DATR, I create code that generates the appropriate paradigms while also illustrating the morphological relationships between verb tenses and inflection classes, among other things. DATR is a programming language used specifically for language models.

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) is remembered as one of Russia's most influential and celebrated filmmakers. Over the course of his career he released seven feature films: Ivan’s Childhood (1962); Andrei Rublev (1966, USSR release 1971); Solaris (1972); Mirror (1975); Stalker (1979); Nostalghia (1983); and The Sacrifice (1986). Drawing on a history of post-war Soviet cinema, this thesis brings his films into contact with the concepts outlined in Gilles Deleuze’s two radical books on film: Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Deleuze's Cinema books provide a system of classifications – what he calls a taxonomy or geology – of cinematic images. While their primary focus is on Western-European and American cinema, this thesis re-conceives Deleuze’s approach to film outside of that narrow context. My approach is informed by the specific historical, cultural, and industrial contexts of Tarkovsky's films, establishing the first sustained encounter between Deleuze and post-war Soviet cinema. In doing so, I offer a fresh perspective on Deleuze’s cinema concepts by re-conceiving the division between his 'movement-image' and 'time-image' in the context of the post-war Thaw, the development of the Soviet space programme, Stagnation, and the escalation of nuclear threat following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

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