The purpose of this thesis is to discern whether Dutch gamers and non-gamers want to play games in Dutch and if so, what they think of existing translations. In order to investigate the research...Show moreThe purpose of this thesis is to discern whether Dutch gamers and non-gamers want to play games in Dutch and if so, what they think of existing translations. In order to investigate the research question, an online survey was created and distributed amongst a Dutch sample audience consisting of five different types of gamers, including non-gamers; questions involved the subject’s opinions on several areas of videogame translation and localisation, with a focus on subtitling and dubbing. My hypothesis was that the target group would be willing to play more games if a higher number of them were translated into Dutch in the first place, or if current videogame translations were improved upon in some way. Only the first part of the hypothesis turned out to be false.Show less
This study concerns the possible influence of Christian culture on Islamic metaphorical language. In order to reveal whether or not such Christian influence is indeed apparent in the metaphorical...Show moreThis study concerns the possible influence of Christian culture on Islamic metaphorical language. In order to reveal whether or not such Christian influence is indeed apparent in the metaphorical language of Dutch Muslims, the responses of Dutch Islamic teenagers to principal Christian metaphors referring to God, which were applied to Allah, were analysed. The main research question was the following: How do Dutch Islamic teenagers respond to principal Christian metaphors referring to God applied to Allah? The selected principal Christian metaphors referring to God were the following: GOD IS A MASTER, GOD IS A KING, GOD IS A JUDGE, GOD IS A FATHER and GOD IS A HUSBAND. The analysis showed that the Islamic participants in this study only accepted the metaphors which also occur in the Quran, i.e. GOD IS A MASTER and GOD IS A JUDGE. The metaphor GOD IS A KING also occurs both in the Bible and the Quran, but this metaphor received mixed reactions, as some participants thought it was too ‘earthly’ to be appropriate when referring to Allah. The exclusively Christian metaphors were rejected by all the Islamic participants in this study. This rejection was based on the notion that these metaphors were too ‘earthly’ to be appropriate when referring to Allah as well. Thus, no Christian influence on the Islamic metaphorical language was detected in this research. Moreover, based the results in this study, the conclusion is that Christians and Muslims perceive and understand their deity in different terms: God the Father and God the Husband are exclusively Christian.Show less
This thesis examines the persuasive differences between U.S. President Barack Obama’s war speech on ISIL (2014) and former President George W. Bush’s war speech on Iraq (2003). Obama and Bush Jr....Show moreThis thesis examines the persuasive differences between U.S. President Barack Obama’s war speech on ISIL (2014) and former President George W. Bush’s war speech on Iraq (2003). Obama and Bush Jr. both made use of various language strategies to influence the audience’s perception of their speech. Because Obama needed to gain much more public approval in 2014 than Bush Jr. did in 2003, it is expected that Obama’s speech contains much more persuasive strategies than Bush Jr.’s speech. The stylistic and linguistic analysis in this thesis, however, show that this is not the case. Obama does not make more use of persuasive strategies than Bush Jr. does, but focuses on different strategies instead.Show less
The stylistic conditions for language switching in the lyrics of pop songs were examined in a corpus of Eurovision Song Contest entries. This phenomenon was examined in the lyrics of songs...Show moreThe stylistic conditions for language switching in the lyrics of pop songs were examined in a corpus of Eurovision Song Contest entries. This phenomenon was examined in the lyrics of songs performed in a language other than English, but which involved one or multiple language switches to English. A corpus of song lyrics was analysed on various stylistics aspects on a textual level, i.e semantics and pragmatics. The analysis sought to show which content/language/context factors contribute to these language switches in songs. Songs that involve language switches to English are found in great numbers in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC); almost 120 out of nearly 1300 entries in the contest from the last sixty years feature some sort of switch to English lyrics, which is a fair number for a corpus. This thesis will explore language switching in ESC songs throughout time.Show less
Since the era of the Enlightenment, the future has often been seen as something which is foreseeable and can be planned but, nowadays, the issue of planning is more related to a dystopian future...Show moreSince the era of the Enlightenment, the future has often been seen as something which is foreseeable and can be planned but, nowadays, the issue of planning is more related to a dystopian future than to a utopian one. This thesis examines the current method of future study – scenario planning – and analyses two recent future studies of Dutch retail carried out by two retail industry associations, HBD in 2007 and NRW in 2011. The emphasis is on their discourse in which ‘drastic changes’, ‘trends’ and ‘scenarios’ are important words and phrases. The results of the stylistic analysis indicate that HBD and NRW worry a lot about the future. The formulated scenarios in their future studies nevertheless act as resolutions in a complex policy situation. Although the two retail organisations share their criticism of the national retail policy and their experience of a more market driven retail sector, there remain substantial differences between them in that HBD pursues the use of a professional economic register whereas NRW puts emphasis on marketing language.Show less
This thesis investigates the conceptual metaphors use of four (former) prominent American politicians in representing their worldviews. A review of the research regarding this topic shows that...Show moreThis thesis investigates the conceptual metaphors use of four (former) prominent American politicians in representing their worldviews. A review of the research regarding this topic shows that Democrats and Republicans arguably apply different cognitive models to structure their worldview via the use of metaphorical language. In thesis I will illustrate that each politician has his style regarding his metaphorical language-use. Although Democrats and Republicans show dissimilarities in their metaphorical language, the language of both Democrats and Republicans primarily represent the shared worldview of American exceptionalism.Show less
