This thesis examines to what extent public opinion about Syrian and Ukrainian refugees is either perpetuated or challenged by media discourse in Dutch newspaper media. Currently existing studies...Show moreThis thesis examines to what extent public opinion about Syrian and Ukrainian refugees is either perpetuated or challenged by media discourse in Dutch newspaper media. Currently existing studies mainly focus on the reception and perceptions of refugees coming from the Global South. By specifically focusing on war refugees, and adding the comparative component of Ukrainian refugees, this thesis aimed to identify whether disparities that are apparent in public opinions, are also tracible in the Dutch newspapers NRC, De Telegraaf, and De Volkskrant. Dutch public opinion shows a greater support of the reception of Ukrainian refugees, than any other group of war refugees. To examine whether the latter is apparent in media discourse, this study combines two methods: Corpus Linguistics (Content Analysis) and the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Corpus Linguistics shows the presence of three prominent themes in word usage in articles regarding both comparative cases: pronouns, locations, and times and quantities. These three themes served as a foundational base for the CDA. CDA shows a prominence of the ‘us versus them’ dichotomy in media discourse, mainly through the use of ‘othering’ language. Additionally, the presence of discussions of repatriation in case of Syrian refugees, perpetuates the disparity in support of reception of both groups of war refugees. With the contribution of academic literature, the content analysis, and critical discourse analysis, this paper concludes that Dutch media discourse perpetuates public opinions regarding Syrian and Ukrainian refugees. However, it is important to note that due to contextual factors, it is important to be aware of the nuances that might apply.Show less
The significance of strategic autonomy, a notion that concerns the European Union’s (EU) global role and its ability to act autonomously, has increased, largely due to Russia’s war against Ukraine....Show moreThe significance of strategic autonomy, a notion that concerns the European Union’s (EU) global role and its ability to act autonomously, has increased, largely due to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Because of its allusion to the EU’s global role, strategic autonomy also pertains to its power, prompting this paper to explore the notion of strategic autonomy with regard to the EU’s power. However, due to its sui generis nature, characterising the EU’s power is notoriously challenging. Firstly, Galtung’s (1973) distinction between power-over-others and power-over-oneself is employed to demonstrate that strategic autonomy primarily concerns the latter, in contrast to Helwig (2022) who implicitly argues that it involves the former. Secondly, this thesis argues that strategic autonomy is an effort to achieve actorness, a notion that establishes criteria for an actor’s ability to act, in turn facilitating the projection of power. Third, in regard to its power-over-others, the concept indicates an objective by the EU to increase its hard power, or punitive power in Galtung’s (1973) terms. Through the pursuit of power-over-itself and actorness, strategic autonomy represents a clear direction in terms of the EU’s global role, namely the quest of escaping its enigmatic character and becoming a ‘normal’ international actor.Show less
In this exploratory study, the productions of the phoneme /ʀ/ were examined in the speech samples of 25 children. All children (aged 2;11 - 6;3) have a (presumed) Developmental Language Disorder...Show moreIn this exploratory study, the productions of the phoneme /ʀ/ were examined in the speech samples of 25 children. All children (aged 2;11 - 6;3) have a (presumed) Developmental Language Disorder and were attending either a toddler Intervention Group or an Auris Language school. From each child a language sample was elicited twice in a play situation and during a picture naming task, by their speech therapist, with an interval of 3 months. The productions of target /ʀ/ within these speech samples were studied and analyzed in terms of correctness, substitutions and deletions. Productions revealed a wide variety of renditions of target /ʀ/, the most significant being /ʀ/ -> [l], [ʋ],and [j]. It was difficult to determine progress in the productions of /ʀ/ between the two recordings, which indicates the need for a longer interval between recordings, or more recordings. A deviating development of /ʀ/ could be observed in the data of this specific group of children.Show less
This paper examines the intrinsic relationship between the Western model of nature conservation and the forced removal of pastoralists, the Maasai, in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The...Show moreThis paper examines the intrinsic relationship between the Western model of nature conservation and the forced removal of pastoralists, the Maasai, in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The historical background contextualises the origins of so-called fortress conservation in the colonial period and the establishment of protected areas. The research takes a political ecology approach to establish a connection between nature conservation activities of international actors, national policymaking in conservation areas and the impact on the Maasai’s livelihood. The case of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area illustrates the enhancement of securitised nature conservation concerning biodiversity protection of ecosystems. However, this approach excludes indigenous peoples from the discourse of ecosystem protection and is inherently neo-colonial. For a better understanding, it argues for the equal inclusion of indigenous peoples in nature conservation efforts.Show less
Dit onderzoek focust op de vergelijkingen die werden gemaakt tussen de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog. In het bijzonder staan vergelijkingen in de media en...Show moreDit onderzoek focust op de vergelijkingen die werden gemaakt tussen de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog. In het bijzonder staan vergelijkingen in de media en egodocumenten van Nederlandse soldaten centraal.Show less
How does the notion of the common good in Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses compare to the common good of classical political philosophy? It would seem that Machiavelli, as the harbinger of...Show moreHow does the notion of the common good in Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses compare to the common good of classical political philosophy? It would seem that Machiavelli, as the harbinger of modernity and amoral political 'machiavellianism', can leave no room for the common good in his thought. However, a close examination of The Prince and the Discourses on Livy will reveal that the common good is allotted an ambiguous place in Machiavelli's thinking. The author concludes that, whereas Machiavelli's Prince is a truly amoral work devoid of consideration for the common good, the Discourses on Livy show a unique mixture between 'machiavellian' themes and classical ideas about liberty, the mixed regime, and statesmanship in the common interest.Show less
Code switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written...Show moreCode switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written conversations. Different multilinguals will have different switching patterns. These patterns can vary depending on the speaker’s language proficiency, community norms, the typology of their languages, and the cultural or political relations these languages might have with one another, among many other reasons. Code switching between Spanish and English and Spanish and French has been the subject of various studies. Although trilingual research is rare (e.g. Parafita Couto et al., 2023; Valdés Kroff et al., 2023), there has also been some research on the connection between Spanish, French and English, but most of this work is based in the French-speaking provinces of Canada (e.g. COLEM, 2023; Pato, 2019, 2022). This paper aims to study the code-switching patterns among a set of trilingual siblings living in Geneva who have Colombian heritage and attend a British school in the city. The participants recorded themselves for up to 30 minutes having casual conversations following a prompt in three separate occasions. The switches were identified alongside general information about the corpus, such as how many languages were present in each clause, the clauses’ matrix language, the general use of each language in the corpus, among others. This paper focuses on intraclausal switching. We followed Deuchar et al. (2007)’s methodology which categorises each intraclausal switch into insertion, alteration, or congruent lexicalisation according to the code switching pattern it most aligned with following Muysken’s typology of bilingual speech patterns (2000).Because English, Spanish and French are typologically similar, combined with the fact our participants are fluent in all three languages, and due to the culturally open context of Geneva, we expected alternation to be the dominant switch pattern in the recorded conversations. Having said this, since the participants go to a British school where their education is mainly in English, and because the Colombian community in Geneva is not as big as other bilingual communities around the world, a dominant insertional pattern was also a possibility. The corpus was composed of mainly unilingual clauses with 7.8% of the first recording being bilingual clauses, 19.6% of the second recording, and 8.95% of the third. Only three clauses in the entire corpus were trilingual out of 1215. Once we had analysed the entirety of the conversations, the dominant pattern was indeed overwhelmingly insertion with 77.55% of the switches in the corpus presenting this pattern. Congruent lexicalisation was present in 11.56% of the switches and alternation in the other 10.88%. Although these results do not necessarily align with our expectations of codeswitching in Switzerland, we believe our participants’ specific background, namely the fact that language separation is encouraged in the different spheres of their lives, could explain the prevalence of insertion over alternation in our case study. We hope our research will contribute to bigger corpus studies of trilingual codeswitching patterns in different communities.Show less
Bij het uitbreken van de Eerste Wereldoorlog ging de Tweede Kamer in Nederland een periode in dat later de 'godsvrede' genoemd zou worden. Het beleid van de regering werd in die periode unaniem...Show moreBij het uitbreken van de Eerste Wereldoorlog ging de Tweede Kamer in Nederland een periode in dat later de 'godsvrede' genoemd zou worden. Het beleid van de regering werd in die periode unaniem door het parlement goedgekeurd. De gedachte hierbij was dat de Nederlandse regering in dat geval zo goed als mogelijk ervoor kon zorgen dat de Nederlandse neutraliteit gewaarborgd zou blijven. Toch waren er wel parlementaire debatten, waarbij lange toespraken van parlementariërs niet zeldzaam bleven. Wat werd er tijdens de debatten besproken, terwijl het beleid unaniem goedgekeurd werd? Hoe keken de parlementariërs naar hun eigen rol en naar de rol van het parlement als instituut? Wat voor retoriek gebruikten de parlementariërs bij hun toespraken? Hoe keek de Nederlandse pers naar de toespraken van de Kamerleden?Show less
We live in a post-truth era. Truth is no longer relevant in matters of political deliberation and objective facts are subordinated to emotive appeals and spurious opinions. This is crippling the...Show moreWe live in a post-truth era. Truth is no longer relevant in matters of political deliberation and objective facts are subordinated to emotive appeals and spurious opinions. This is crippling the political legitimacy of western liberal democracies, as these rely strongly on Enlightenment ideals of rationality, science and truth-based solutionism. At least, that is the common view. This thesis builds on a radically different conception of post-truth politics, one that sees it as an attack on the current knowledge game of established elites. It argues that post-truth politics is epistemically different from lies and bullshit. Fundamentally, it is a strategy that attacks the epistemic authoritarianism pervading our liberal democracies. This strategy wishes to uncover the game-like nature of truth in politics that is intimately linked to power and authority. Consequently, it seeks to level the playing field of the truth game. By doing so, I ultimately argue for the claim that this conception of post-truth politics is in line within the framework of political legitimacy as expounded by Rawls and Habermas.Show less
