Populist forces in Europe are on the rise with parties like the National Rally in France and the Polish Law and Justice enjoying significant support of the population. While these parties often...Show morePopulist forces in Europe are on the rise with parties like the National Rally in France and the Polish Law and Justice enjoying significant support of the population. While these parties often focus on issues of immigration or security, their stance on LGBT rights is often less clear. Mudde's ideational approach describes populism as a “thin-centred ideology” dividing society into “the elite” and “the people,” implying that populists believe that there is no need for minority protection as the people are seen as “homogenous.” Populist parties in Western Europe, however, sometimes use LGBT rights to argue against immigration. As this trend seems to be absent from Eastern Europe, a “rainbow curtain” that divides LGBT-friendly and unfriendly populist parties could be drawn. This thesis challenges the assumption that Eastern European populism automatically opposes LGBT rights, focusing on the Czech populist movement Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO). Using a discursive approach that does not assume that populists are against minority protection, the thesis examines ANO's attitudes towards LGBT rights on online news platforms and social media discourse from 2013 to 2024, with a focus on Prague Pride, same-sex adoption, and marriage, and ANO's relationship with Hungarian Fidesz. The analysis shows that ANO's attitudes are ambiguous, influenced by the politician asked (liberal vs. conservative members), timing (early enthusiastic support vs. later disregard or opposition), specific rights (same-sex unions vs. marriage and adoption), and platform (news vs. social media). Two main explanations follow from the primary source analysis. ANO's catch-all strategy to attract diverse voters and its use of LGBT rights to polarise and split the governing coalition.Show less
This thesis focuses on the representation of Jewish women in Czech Holocaust prose, providing a comparative analysis of Arnošt Lustig's The Unloved: From the Diary of Perla S., Jan Otčenášek's...Show moreThis thesis focuses on the representation of Jewish women in Czech Holocaust prose, providing a comparative analysis of Arnošt Lustig's The Unloved: From the Diary of Perla S., Jan Otčenášek's Romeo, Juliet and Darkness and Ladislav Fuks's The Cremator.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
The main objective of this thesis is to tackle the key questions that arise when one becomes aware of the omnipresence and seemingly unrestricted polysemy of the Czech reflexive marker se/si. Do...Show moreThe main objective of this thesis is to tackle the key questions that arise when one becomes aware of the omnipresence and seemingly unrestricted polysemy of the Czech reflexive marker se/si. Do all its different functions have something in common? And why are its equivalents in languages like English and Dutch exploited to a much lesser degree? Building on insights and solutions offered both by Czech structural grammarians and scholars working within different functionally oriented frameworks of present-day linguistics such as linguistic typology and Construction Grammar, the thesis attempts to draw a coherent picture of the semantic network underlying the different functions of the marker and to set this picture in a historical and crosslinguistic context.Show less
