This study investigates the effects of including a recipient in writing instructions on the quality of writing produced by L2 English students. To evaluate the effect of the recipient, writing performances are first assessed in texts written in response to instructions that do not explicitly specify a recipient. They are subsequently compared to writing performances by the same students in texts produced for similar instructions but this time with an explicitly stated recipient. The results of the main experiment are complemented with test-taker surveys that capture the students’ own perceptions about the differences between the two tasks. The participating pupils are from two classes at an inner-city municipal Upper Secondary school in Sweden, one at level ENG05 and the other at level ENG07. The study is inspired by communicative language teaching where the writer’s adaptation to the recipient is central. The study tests for the recipient effect along a broad spectrum of linguistic and communicative measures. The results show that students in both classes performed at a higher level with an explicit recipient across all four communicative measures and two out of four linguistic measures. The study also identified a generally stronger recipient effect in ENG05 than in ENG07 and a mixed pattern when comparing students with differing abilities in English. The main finding of the test-taker survey is that students prefer doing tasks with a specified recipient but are slightly more familiar with tasks without a recipient. They also report that they rarely imagine an English-speaking recipient when writing a task and that they often write with the teacher in mind.

General Abstract Objective: In April 2006, the Scottish Liver Transplant Unit (SLTU) became the first NHS transplant unit in the UK to offer the option of Living Donor Liver Transplantation (LDLT). This represented a unique opportunity to evaluate the functional and psychosocial impact of LDLT upon healthy donors and their recipients. Subsequent aims were to investigate the challenge of introducing LDLT in Scotland and to establish the perceived deterrents and attractions of the procedure. An additional aim was to evaluate the impact of Living Donor Kidney Transplantation (LDKT) upon donors and recipients. Design: A series of cross sectional and longitudinal studies were designed for the purpose of this thesis (3 quantitative, 2 qualitative, and 1 mixed methods). Method: Self report questionnaires were used in each of the quantitative studies, with the addition of neuropsychological computerized tests in two studies. Semi-structured interviews were employed in the qualitative studies. Main Findings: •Prior to its introduction general support for the option of LDLT was found, although it was highlighted that the risk involved was not well understood by the general public. •Since becoming available LDLT has not been a readily acceptable treatment option from the perspective of patients due to the perceived risk for the donor, but it may be considered as a “last option”. Family members were motivated to save their loved one’s life but the personal implications of donating resulted in reconsideration of LDLT. • Staff at the SLTU perceived a lack of family commitment in relation to LDLT, which is explained as a cultural factor contributing to the slow uptake of LDLT. In Scotland, a donation from a younger to an older generation is not easily accepted. This, in addition to patients’ optimism that a deceased donation will arrive, and the poor health of potential donors, is thought to have affected the uptake of LDLT. As has the unit’s conservative approach to the promotion of LDLT. This approach is the result of a perceived reduction in the need for LDLT and a preference to avoid the risk to a healthy donor and conduct transplants with deceased donations. • In over 3 years, only one couple completed LDLT. The recipient showed functional and psychosocial improvement from pre to post procedure, whilst the donor showed slight deterioration in aspects of quality of life 6 weeks post donation, which did not always completely return to a baseline level by 6 months. The donor made sacrifices to provide her husband with a fresh start to life and unmet expectations were found to effect quality of life. •Willingness to become a liver donor is not thought to be influenced by the frame of the information provided. •Like the LDLT donor, LDKT donors experience some functional and psychosocial deterioration at 6 weeks post donation, but donors largely recover by 6 months post donation. However, the anticipated benefit to recipients was not evident and may not be quantifiable until after 6 months post operation. Conclusion: This thesis has added to current knowledge on living organ donation and specifically represents the first psychological evaluation of a UK LDLT programme. The slow uptake of LDLT was unexpected and has resulted in informative, novel research.

Theories in the international political economy literature, economic liberalism and dependency, are explored in order to test the effect of U.S. aid, trade, and investment on human rights conditions in recipient states. Two measures of human rights conditions serve as dependent variables: security rights and subsistence rights. The data cover approximately 140 countries from 1976-1996. Pooled cross-sectional time series analysis, utilizing ordinary least squares (OLS) with panel corrected standard errors, is employed due to the temporal and spatial characteristics of the data. The results indicate that foreign assistance and economic policy may not be the best approaches to altering poor human rights practices in the area of security rights. Economic and military aid is negatively associated with levels of security rights, supporting the traditional dependency perspective. While the results from trade and investment are generally in the positive direction, the lack of consistent statistical evidence suggests that increased trade and investment relationships do not dramatically improve security rights. We can conclude, however, that trade and investment fail to have the negative effect on security rights in less developed countries which critics of globalization suggest. Economic aid has a statistically significant negative effect on subsistence rights, while military aid seems to benefit the human condition in recipient states. However, extreme negative effects on security rights accompany any benefit realized in the area of subsistence rights from military aid. Trade and investment have a positive and statistically significant effect on basic human needs providing support for the liberal perspective. It appears that American businesses and politicians can forge ahead with seemingly self-interested motivations and economic policies as American economic gain ironically serves to benefit the well being of citizens in other states. However, in spite of political rhetoric and even sincere intentions regarding foreign assistance policy, it appears that the road to human rights hell is paved with good intentions.

L’essai Mind the Gap porte sur les questions de la distance et de l’absence dans la narration de récits à la deuxième personne. Au coeur de ma réflexion se trouve L’absence, de Pierre Vadeboncoeur, un texte hybride, à la fois essai philosophique et lettre d’amour. La lecture de L’absence permet de mettre en lumière la relation qui apparaît entre Je et Tu dans deux oeuvres de statut et de forme bien différents, soit les récits Et tu n’es pas revenu par Marceline Loridan- Ivens et Enfance par Nathalie Sarraute. Dialogue à sens unique d’une part et dédoublement narratif d’autre part, les deux oeuvres mettent à l’épreuve certaines notions développées par Vadeboncoeur pour expliquer la dynamique particulière en jeu quand une narration est dirigée vers Tu, des notions inédites telles que l’être augmenté, l’empreinte et l’Ailleurs de l’écriture. S’adresser à l’autre en l’absence de, c’est transcender cette absence pour en faire une distance, pour se mettre en marche, pour s’engager à franchir le gap. L’enjeu de mon essai est de documenter ce dispositif de l’écart (entre narrateur et narrataire) et de son franchissement à la fois impossible et essentiel. Le bon chien est le récit fragmenté d’une narratrice qui s’adresse à celle qu’elle était bien des années plus tôt pour se remémorer leur passé commun dont elle croit s’être affranchie. C’est l’histoire d’une enfant sage et studieuse, d’une ballerine appliquée et travaillante, d’une amoureuse effacée, c’est l’histoire d’un bon chien. / Mind the Gap examines the issues of distance and absence in second person fiction. The analysis focuses on Pierre Vadeboncoeur’s L’absence, a hybrid text that is both a philosophical essay and a love letter. L’absence is used as a starting point to highlight the relationship between I and You in two works of fiction that are very different in form and status: Marceline Loridan- Ivens’s Et tu n’es pas revenu and Nathalie Sarraute’s Enfance. Part one-way dialogue, part split narrative, the two works challenge a set of novel concepts such as l’être augmenté (the enhanced being), l’empreinte (the imprint) and l’Ailleurs de l’écriture (the elsewhere of writing), developed by Vadeboncoeur to explain the unique dynamics of second person narratives. To address the other in the other's absence is to transcend that absence in order to create a distance instead and make a commitment to bridge the divide. This paper looks to explain how the distance between narrator and narratee is achieved and how closing that gap is both impossible and essential. Le bon chien is the fragmented story of a narrator who reminisces with her earlier self of many years back about a shared past that she believes she has freed herself from. It is the story of a well-behaved studious child, a dedicated hard-working ballerina, a faded lover—it is the story of a good dog.

The purpose of the research was to conduct a study of the impact of gentrification on the Metropolitan Atlanta area. This research focused on the policies that influenced or affected recipient communities because of gentrification. These changes are attributed to residents relocating from various sections of a transitioned community to another community. Available research, however, does not fully address the new challenges recipient communities face because of a boost in its population. Current research does not fully address the pressure on recipient communities’ resources due to (possible) lack of housing, schools, transportation, and social services because of an influx of citizens; nor does the current research fully address an overall strategy to sustainable community and economic development for recipient communities.

The goal of this thesis is to identify specific language elements in selected opinion pieces that appeared in Rudé právo newspaper over the course of 1975. The first part of the thesis examines terms such as persuasion, propagandism and manipulation, and considers the interrelations between these terms. Following sections of the paper are devoted to the characterization of distinct elements of persuasion as traced in diverse articles of Rudé právo. In a pragmatic perspective, the thesis describes such linguistic attempts at manipulating the reader as means to praise the communist regime or to defame its adversaries. KEYWORDS Propagandsim, persuasion, manipulation, Rudé právo, text, communism, capitalism, follower, adversary, author, reader.

1 ABSTRAKT The topic of this thesis is "The food advertising in the mass-media". It focuses basically on defining the conception of advertisement, determines its purpose and intentions. There is a following analysis of the chosen audiovisual and printed advertisement materials for the groceries of the Czech and Russian social environments and their comparison. First of all this thesis focuses on the advertisement research from the linguistic and psycholinguistic point of view, nevertheless other approaches to advertisement analyses are described as well, mostly marketing which is a part of advertising.

Aim of this thesis is to map how they can live on their own media carrier marketing strategy and media promotions. Through case study - Prima Cool TV - I dissert on the monitoring of its anchorage in the media environment through their own television channel, but also the cooperating contact channels created by the proprietor of the station. The thesis presents couple of theoretical insights from marketing and media strategy, particularly in the application for the media. It analyzes in detail the concept of strategy and position in the marketing, various forms of strategy - thinking and management. It elaborates forms of strategic management, monitors media strategy, as a form of marketing and the usefulness of the media (media providers) in their own media in particular. To obtain an objective view on the subject work brings several known methods. Expert theories are confronted with (by) the Prima Cool TV case study. In this tracked subject the thesis analyzes the usefulness of its own media space for marketing and media strategies. The analysis subject is the TV audience, program structure, communication with recipients and fostering awareness of the TV station in the Czech media market. Above all it confronts theoretical knowledge to specific steps of FTV Prima, in the frame of examined issue....

The thesis entitled "Pragmatic and stylistic analysis of the horoscopes in periodicals" deals with the horoscopes from linguistic point of view; the greatest attention is paied to the pragmatic and stylistic aspects. The goal of the thesis is to identify the typical features of horoscopes on the basis of pragmatic and stylistic analysis. The research material comprises of 1752 astrological predictions taken from sixteen different periodicals. The author and the recipient of horoscope are characterized in each chapter and selected attributes of the target group are studied in each chapter as well - age, gender, social roles and status. It is dealt with the intention of horoscopes; its impact on recipient and strategies used by authors of horoscopes are analyzed too. The thesis presents the way vocabulary and other language tools are used in horoscopes to communicate intention of their authors. The analysis also deals with themes of horoscopes.

Legal aspects of sports financing from the government budget Abstract The present thesis deals with legal aspects of sports financing process. Sports financing from the government budget, constitutes the greatest fraction of income to sports organizations and sports clubs. The present study scrutinizes the legal aspects of financial support of sports from the government budget, via thorough analysis anchored in legal research. Individual sections of the thesis ponder the redistribution of funds from the government budget. First, it explains how the whole process of funding from the state budget commences, what actors are involved in it and also what volume of financial aid is granted to the department of sport. The thesis describes and evaluates the individual parts of the process, which has led to an overview of the entire issue of state financing of sport. It also outlines the development of sports support throughout the past century and further explains why effective legislation is still considered to be inadequate. The present study further illustrates the current institutional provision of sport support system. The thesis deals with the issue of sports financing from levies on lottery companies and its influence on the support of sport. The governing point of the present thesis is the notion of state...