Political speeches are powerful communicative capital. Speeches signal policy positions, preferences and priorities to other legislators, executives and constituents. Current literature diverges on the prime factor that influences political speech. One body of literature claims institutions influence speech. The authority and constraints of political offices condition speeches’ purpose. Legislators use speeches to credit claim and executives to agenda set. A second body focuses on gender. These authors unanimously find that female legislators speak with a “feminine style”, emphasizing traditional women’s issues including healthcare, education and social spending. The institutional literature that examines executive speech ignores gender. The gender-based literature only examines legislators, ignoring executives. The overlap, female executive speech, has not been studied. There has never been a female US national executive, but female executives on the state level, governors, are a valuable resource. Using an original data set of 668 State of the State addresses given by US governors 2001-2016, I attempt to answer whether gender conditions executive speech. My textual analysis suggests that institutions are more important, and that regardless of gender, governors emphasize similar issues in their speeches. However, male governors address national issues more frequently than female governors who tend to focus on state-specific issues.

Este estudo apresenta uma pesquisa sobre a ausência de laboratórios de ciências nas Escolas do Campo, o impacto que a falta deles causa na aprendizagem do ensino de ciências e que alternativas podem ser utilizadas para a melhoria da qualidade deste ensino. Para isso, o objetivo desde trabalho foi realizar a implantação de Clubes de Ciências nas Escolas do Campo como ferramenta complementar para o ensino de ciências, sendo este um espaço democrático de aprendizagem coletiva que possa contribuir na comunidade escolar e na formação dos sujeitos, tornando-os cidadãos atuantes na sociedade em que estão inseridos. Essa pesquisa surgiu diante a dificuldade que foi observada entre os alunos nas aulas de ciências, e do quão significativo é o ensino de ciências para o cotidiano das pessoas. A partir desse diagnóstico partimos para as intervenções práticas de microensino realizadas em cooperação entre universidade-escola, com os acadêmicos do curso de Ciências Biológicas – Licenciatura da UNIPAMPA, oportunizando aos alunos a vivência de aulas práticas de ciências em ambientes não formais de ensino, como os Clubes de Ciências. A abordagem dessa pesquisa foi de natureza empírica qualitativa com o uso de ferramenta de avaliação, a Análise Textual Discursiva – ATD de Roque e Galiazzi (2006), que proporciona a compreensão da realidade dos alunos sem que se quantifiquem dados. Ao final desse estudo, conclui-se que a implantação do Clube de Ciências na escola resultou na melhoria da qualidade do ensino de ciências, expresso na maior participação dos alunos nas aulas de ciências, melhora no rendimento escolar e envolvimento nas atividades extracurriculares da escola. Espera-se que com a adesão dessa primeira escola, todas as outras Escolas do Campo do Município de São Gabriel-RS, venham a aderir ao projeto como uma ferramenta complementar nos currículos de ciências dessas escolas / This study presents a research on the absence of science labs in the Field Schools, the impact that the lack of these laboratories causes in the learning of science education and what alternatives can be used to improve the quality of this education. Therefore, this study aimed to carry out the implementation of Science Clubs in Rural Schools as a complementary tool for science teaching, being this a democratic space of collective learning that can contribute in the school community and in the formation of the subjects, making them active citizens in the society in which they live. This research emerged from the difficulty that was observed among students in science classes, and how significant is the teaching of science to people's daily lives. Based on this diagnosis, we started with the practical interventions of teaching, carried out in cooperation between university-school, with the academics of the Biological Sciences course of UNIPAMPA, giving students the opportunity to experience practical science classes in non-formal teaching environments, such as the Science Clubs. The approach of this research was of qualitative empirical nature with the use of evaluation tool, the Discourse Textual Analysis - DTA of Roque and Galiazzi (2006), which provides an understanding of the reality of students without quantifying data. At the end of this study, it was concluded that the implementation of the Science Club in the school resulted in the improvement of the quality of science teaching, expressed in the greater participation of students in science classes, improvement in school performance and involvement in school extracurricular activities. It is expected that with the accession of this first school, all other rural schools of the Municipality of São Gabriel-RS will join the project as a complementary tool in the science curriculum of these schools.

Arguably, the impact of Darwinism on the novel is an indispensable part of the study of English literature. However, with regard to such literary study there is an ongoing aversion towards approaching Darwin outside the confines of his contemporaneous Victorian setting. This thesis explores what remains an extremely under-represented area of current scholarship; namely, the active status of Darwinism as an influence upon contemporary novelists. To address this gap, this study starts by conducting textual and comparative analyses of a representative selection of contemporary British novels, a literary field that, since 1990, has featured significant authors who have found in Darwin a source of intellectual and literary inspiration. The aim is to argue that Darwin's classic texts, and more recent incarnations of his theory such as Sociobiology, are deployed as a materialist discourse, used to subvert various problematic assumptions in the declining Postmodernist philosophy, the previously dominant theoretical paradigm. For novelists including Ian McEwan, A.S. Byatt and Jenny Diski, Darwinism provides the tools to define human nature in an oppositional manner to the Social Constructivism which reduces the human to a blank slate ready for society's dictation. A universal human nature can be seen manifested in biological phenomena including competition, altruism, reproduction and aggression. The treacherous territory of biological determinism is still present, yet the desire to experiment is carried forward by McEwan in Enduring Love and Saturday into the realm of challenging traditional religion. In a more nuanced manner, Jim Crace's Being Dead manages to create a wholly naturalistic narrative of death. Finally, reinstating alterative meta-narratives is a practice that comes fully into its own in contemporary renditions of history. Byatt's Neo-Victorian novels, Possession and Morpho Eugenia, exhibit faith in knowing the past as if it were an evolutionary process of accumulated changes. Moreover, Diski's serio-ironic Monkey's Uncle is focused on how the present is haunted by the past in the form of immortal DNA coils. This study analyses the texts in a manner suggesting a paradigm shift in literary scholarship, where Darwin is no longer seen as simply an ideological threat. As the sciences continue to become more hermeneutically enigmatic, and as literature seems embedded in an elitist Postmodernist trajectory, there is now huge democratic potential in the New Darwinian Novel which invites the everyman of today to participate in the controversies of both disciplines.

Ski areas attract and cater to tourists and are often powerful symbols of cultural identity and place-based meaning. Within contexts of mountain tourism development, ski areas also communicate messages to orient visitors and residents to special features and qualities of the natural environment. This research specifically focuses on how Vermont ski areas and their neighboring rural communities use language, symbolism and imagery, within the context of website communications, to shape cultural meanings of nature and place. A sample of small, medium, and large ski areas, representing a range of development sizes, locations, and recreational offerings, were paired with their adjacent rural communities. A qualitative content analysis and a textual analysis of photographic images and written texts from ski area and town websites examined presentations of “nature” and place. Website presentations were compared across ski areas of different sizes, and between towns and ski areas. Findings show that portrayals of “nature” differ by the size of the ski area, but are similar across rural towns – though towns tended to produce a discourse about “nature” divergent from that of ski areas. In addition, both ski resort and town websites used images and texts of “Vermont” symbolically in constructing their place identity, though they did this in different ways. This study contributes a better understanding of the ways that ski areas and rural communities work both independently and collaboratively to create and sustain meaningful physical places and cultural myths. Aligning public communications electronically to present a more unified place identity to visitors and residents alike has potential planning and management implications for tourism development, especially in rural regions in Vermont and elsewhere.

<p>During recent years, resilience theory – originally developed in systems ecology – has advanced as a new approach to sustainable development. However, it is still more of an academic theory than a discourse informing environmental politics. The aim of this essay is to study resilience theory as a potential environmental discourse in the making and to outline the political implications it might induce. To gain a more comprehensive knowledge of resilience theory, I study it in relation to already existing environmental discourses. Following earlier research on environmental discourses I define the discourses of ecological modernization, green governmentality and civic environmentalism as occupying the discursive space of environmental politics. Further, I define six central components as characteristics for all environmental discourses. Outlining how both the existing environmental discourses and resilience theory relates to these components enables an understanding of both the political implications of resilience theory and of resilience theory as an environmental discourse in relation to existing environmental discourses. The six central discourse components I define are 1) the view on the nation-state; 2) the view on capitalism; 3) the view on civil society; 4) the view on political order; 5) the view on knowledge; 6) the view on human-nature relations. By doing an empirical textual analysis of academic texts on resilience theory I show that resilience theory assigns a limited role for the nation-state and a very important role for civil society and local actors when it comes to environmental politics. Its view on local actors and civil society is closely related to its relativist view on knowledge. Resilience theory views capitalism as a root of many environmental problems but with some political control and with changing perspectives this can be altered. Furthermore, resilience theory seems to advocate a weak bottom-up perspective on political order. Finally, resilience theory views human-nature relations as relations characterized by human adaptation to the prerequisites of nature. In conclusion, I argue that the empirical analysis show that resilience theory, as an environmental discourse, to a great extent resembles a subdivision of civic environmentalism called participatory multilateralism.</p>

<p>By first arguing for the fact that globalization is a concept under contest within the social sciences this thesis develops a tool to classify perspectives of globalization. This tool is then applied to textual documents that represents the so called globalization councils (or initiatives) of Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. Each document is then classified as falling within one of four perspectives of globalization; Liberalisms, Marxisms, Constructivisms and Post-colonialisms. By analyzing a number of documents tied to all four councils and initiatives the thesis is able to interpret what perspective of globalization that is dominant within each of them. Since all four nations examined aspire to use scientific methods to deal with the challenges of globalization they should reflect the diverse state of explanations present within the social scientific community. The thesis finds that this is not the case. While the Norwegian initiative establishes a platform where the concept of globalization could be said to be broadly debated and understood, the other three nations show an astonishing conformity around the perspective named Liberalisms.</p><p>In a concluding discussion the thesis argues that the results of the study cannot be fully explained by differences within the institutional arrangement among the councils and initiatives. Instead the thesis holds that the results can be explained by investigating how science is used in modern society to establish truths that are not necessarily the views of the scientific community. Using theories by Georg Henrik von Wright and Chantal Mouffe the essay concludes that the conformity could be understood as a part of a process that some social scientists call post-politics.</p>

During recent years, resilience theory – originally developed in systems ecology – has advanced as a new approach to sustainable development. However, it is still more of an academic theory than a discourse informing environmental politics. The aim of this essay is to study resilience theory as a potential environmental discourse in the making and to outline the political implications it might induce. To gain a more comprehensive knowledge of resilience theory, I study it in relation to already existing environmental discourses. Following earlier research on environmental discourses I define the discourses of ecological modernization, green governmentality and civic environmentalism as occupying the discursive space of environmental politics. Further, I define six central components as characteristics for all environmental discourses. Outlining how both the existing environmental discourses and resilience theory relates to these components enables an understanding of both the political implications of resilience theory and of resilience theory as an environmental discourse in relation to existing environmental discourses. The six central discourse components I define are 1) the view on the nation-state; 2) the view on capitalism; 3) the view on civil society; 4) the view on political order; 5) the view on knowledge; 6) the view on human-nature relations. By doing an empirical textual analysis of academic texts on resilience theory I show that resilience theory assigns a limited role for the nation-state and a very important role for civil society and local actors when it comes to environmental politics. Its view on local actors and civil society is closely related to its relativist view on knowledge. Resilience theory views capitalism as a root of many environmental problems but with some political control and with changing perspectives this can be altered. Furthermore, resilience theory seems to advocate a weak bottom-up perspective on political order. Finally, resilience theory views human-nature relations as relations characterized by human adaptation to the prerequisites of nature. In conclusion, I argue that the empirical analysis show that resilience theory, as an environmental discourse, to a great extent resembles a subdivision of civic environmentalism called participatory multilateralism.

La presente tesis doctoral es un estudio de la recepción de Shakespeare desde 1939 hasta 1975 (período de la dictadura de Franco). El trabajo comienza desgranando el canon de las producciones de Shakespeare en España desde 1772 hasta 1936, comenzando por las primeras producciones, para continuar analizando el teatro shakespeariano durante la dictadura de Primo de Rivera y la II República. Este preámbulo nos servirá para comprobar posibles influencias en la conformación del canon del teatro franquista y de la forma de representar las obras de Shakespeare. Profundizaremos en el estudio de los condicionantes políticos y culturales en la España de Franco, determinando cuál fue el papel de la censura en España y de la ideología. A continuación se vislumbra un rápido bosquejo de las producciones shakespearianas en países de ideología análoga en la misma franja temporal para estudiar posibles paralelismos. Para el estudio del canon shakespeariano se utilizan los fondos documentales existentes en torno a la prensa del momento, así como los archivos de la censura y las colecciones fotográficas de las obras representadas. Todo ello nos servirá para establecer unas conclusiones en torno a la recepción de Shakespeare en los teatros nacionales franquistas. / This work is study on the recception of Shakespeare from 1939 until 1975 (Franco´s dictatorship in Spain). The study starts in the canon observed in the Shakespere´s performances from 1772 until 1936, from the very first productions, to continue analysing Shakespere´s theatre at Primo de Rivera´s dictatorship and the 2nd. Spanish Republic. This introduction will guide us to see possible influences when studying the Francoist canon and its way of performing Shakespeare´s plays. I am also deepening in the cultural and political background, determining which was the role placed by censhorship and ideology in Spain. There is also an interesting account on the Shakespeare´s performances in Fascist countries at the same time to see possible parallelisms. For the study of Shakespeare´s canon I have been using the press at that time, as well as censorship files and photo collections. Bearing all that mind I am conforming some conclusions on Shakespeare´s reception at the Spa nish National Theatres.

Drawing on the fieldwork in a village community in Eastern Thailand, Ban Noen PutsaPluak Ked, this thesis explores the complex relationships between processes of globaIisation, representations in the mainstream media and activist media; and villagers' responses to change. The research, summarised here has three interrelated objectives: First, to examine how globalisation and industrialisation are represented in the mainstream and activist media. Second, to investigate the role played by the activist media in promoting counter visions of possible futures. Thirdly, to investigate the practices and ideas that local people have developed to resist or accept globalisation. The research employs a multi-method approach combining ethnographic methods, a questionnaire survey; textual analysis; and focus groups. The findings point to a complex relationship between mediated representations and visions of modernity. They also demonstrate that villagers' responses are strongly stratified by age, length of residence, and relation to the pivot of the new industriaIisation- a major chemical plant and that they remain strongly influenced by the crucial nexus of traditional Thai society, the patron client system. Additionally, content analysis and critical discourse analysis suggest that Thai news television programmes reproduced both the ideology of globalism and the celebration of consumerism. Moreover, the voices of marginalized groups and local people are also absent from the activist media.

The medieval historian engaged with the systems of power and authority that surrounded him. In his account of the Peasants' Revolt in late medieval England, the ecclesiastical historian Henry Knighton (d. 1396) both reinforced and challenged the traditional order. This thesis explores the ways in which his ideological perspectives shaped his understanding of the events of June 1381 and how this understanding was articulated through the structure, language, and cultural meaning of the historical text. The reconstruction of authorial intention and reclamation of both Knighton and the medieval reader as active participants in the creation of history challenge a historiography that has long disregarded Knighton as an unremarkable historical recorder. Instead, they reveal a scholar whose often extraordinary approach to the rebels and traditional authorities expresses a great deal about the theory, practice, and construction of power and authority in late medieval England.