Hier ist ein Projekt um die Teilnahme von Frauen an Spitzenpositionen 

in der EU zu fördern.
Ich persönlich könnte damit leben, wenn eine Frau (oder sogar mehr als 

eine) eine Spitzenposition bei der EU bekleiden würde.

Meine Bereitschaft habe ich sogar durch die Abgabe meiner Stimme 

gezeigt. Ich weiß, ich weiß ... ich bin wahnsinnig fortgeschritten mit 

meiner Ansicht :D

---

Here is a project to support the participation of women in top positions in 

the EU.

Personally I could live with it if a woman (or even more than one) were to 

occupy a top position in the EU.

I have even showed my willingness by casting my vote. I know, I know ... 

I am just so progressive with my outlook :D 

--- 

Aquí hay un proyecto para promocionar la participación de mujeres en 

puestos de mando en la Unión Europea.

Yo por mi parte podría sobrevivirlo si una mujer (o incluso más que 

una) ocupase una posición de mando en la Unión Europea.

Además ya demostré mi voluntad por emitir mi voto. Ya lo sé, no hay 

que decirlo ... soy increíblemente progresivo con mi perspectiva .. je 

je

"Was sagst Du zu Haider????" fragte mich meine Professorin.

 ... und ich habe auch wahrscheinlich wenig neues zu dem Thema zu sagen.
 
 Ich persönlich weiß nicht, ob der Tod Haiders so signifikant ist.
 Natürlich war er ein sehr begabter Redner und möglicherweise werden die
 SPÖ (und die ÖVP) bei der nächsten Wahl mehr Stimmen bekommen.
 Allerdings wird Haiders Abwesenheit, glaube ich, nichts daran ändern,
 dass so viele Wähler "an Rassismus glauben". ... Vielleicht muss mehr
 Sozialarbeit geleistet werden, Rassismus mehr in Schulen debattiert werden,
 Austauschprogramme für ALLE Generationen ausgeführt werden!? Ich weiß
 es nicht genau, aber jedenfalls bin ich der Überzeugung, dass politische
 Reden nur die Oberfläche von Hass gegen Fremde sind.
 
 Du meintest in einem deiner Mails an die LIP Gruppe bezüglich des
 Wahlergebnisses, dass eine sehr hoher Prozentsatz der (neuen) Wähler von
 16 bis 18 die FPÖ wählten. Die Größe der Menge vor der Bühne bei
 einer Rede von Haider in einem BBC-Bericht, den ich letztens anschaute,
 fand ich skurril.
 
 Ich glaube alles, was ich bisher über die Situation in Österreich
 gedacht habe, wird in diesem Lied von Texta zusammengefasst:

 The following is taken from an analysis of the rhetoric in this speech given by EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Luis Michel on 21 November 2007, six weeks before the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACPs) were scheduled to complete  negotiations and sign Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs)

Arguments in rhetoric, according to Toulmin (2003:92), consist of three parts in their fundamental structure[1]: a “claim” which is based on “data” and a “warrant” which provides a link for the claim to the data. However, as Toulmin says the warrant often remains unsaid in the specific argumentation in the text, and this may be because the warrant is dubious or by no means an unequivocal truth. In the speech by Michel at the WTO in November 2007, the claim is:

“Aid for trade must be based on countries' own assessments of their strengths and weaknesses in the global competition and on their own trade and development strategies.”

The data are:

“I am glad that we have reached a global consensus on this key parameter to address the root causes of economic marginalisation.”

The implicit warrant here is that countries making “assessments of their strengths and weaknesses in the global competition ...”, i.e. ACPs, are members of the same “we” group (in the data) which “have reached a global consensus”, yet this would be in contradiction to the rest of the text and the first line of this paragraph. The superficial involving of developing countries in global economic policy by western governments and the WTO noted in “global consensus” underlines the arguments of those that claim that these organisations barely involve poorer countries in (economic) decision making (Ghafele, 2004; Holborow, 2006).

Abstract

This dissertation studies speeches by the EU Commissioners for Trade and for Humanitarian Aid and Development on Economic Partnership Agreeements (EPAs) between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACPs) from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective. Its line of inquiry focuses firstly on the discursive representation of (future) economic consequences of EPAs, then on who is discursively included in decision making and thirdly on forms of address to recipients of the speeches, including intertextual references.

With this study spanning much history and ideally requiring familiarity of texts produced by economists, NGOs and media with opinions on EPAs, I choose to use the “discourse historical approach” and the consequent “triangulation” (Reisgl and Wodak, 2001; Wodak et al, 1999; Wodak 2001).

Thus, the argumentation of these densely rhetorical speeches is compared to the arguments of the other aforementioned text producers. Debates around trade liberalisation and globalization are key. This paper particularly ponders the position of Ha-Joon Chang (2003) who argues that industrial countries, including EU countries first reached high development and then liberalised, of the United Nations Development Programme (2003) which maintains that trade liberalization is a result of development, not a prerequisite.

The analysis considers rhetoric, including argumentation and fallacies; at sentence level, pragmatics, including presuppositions, implicature and speech acts. These analytical tools find unity in considering context to go beyond the semantics of the texts and deem language to be a verbal activity. Furthermore, metaphors are analysed from cognitive linguistic and argumentative perspectives.

Analysis of the speeches indicates several contentious standpoints in the Commissioners’ rhetoric on the benefits of trade liberalisation and the usefulness of aid (at least in comparison to economists’ analysis). It analyses deixis (“us” / “them” groups), metaphors and modality in how pressure is seemingly applied on ACPs to sign EPAs and, thirdly, investigates how the speakers react to critique from other politicians and media sources using ‘path’ metaphors.

Unfortunately, I am a little tied up at the moment and for the next month, so I will keep my own commentary fairly brief by leaving this article here and by endorsing Marcus' concise commentary on this poster on chickerino.com.

The comment at the bottom says about all I have to say on the Times article:

It seems ironic that the internet, which started life as ARPANET - a tool developed so that US academic institutions could assist US military and intelligence services - is now being monitored by these agenices to punish academic institutions for trying to research threats to society.

Sun Tzu once wrote "...if you know your enemy and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles." So what hope is there for students and researchers on courses such as Nottingham's MA in Security & Terrorism; Coventry's MA in Terrorism, International Crime & Global Security or UCL's MSc in Countering Terrorism & Organised Crime?

How are these researchers to know the enemy in order to understand their strengths and weaknesses and inform society, as a business student would analyse a company? Are to assume that all research is illegal or should we instead think of researchers as cyber-scouts / spooks in the hope that the military / intelligence communities would see their worth?

---

Ironically, one of the reasons I am a little busy is because I received a translation to do from the Stasi Museum this morning. Stasi = Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokatrischen Republik) = Ministry for State Security (of the former German Democratic Republic). Paranoid states? ... maybe we really would learn something from history if we did not just focus so narrowly on the geographic region we were born into? ... Still, I am sure that the British Minister for Education and his or her counterpart for Homeland Security have far more important things to do than read the opinions of others.

It's introduced by ... Tears

A Critical Discourse Analysis Study of British Reporting of the Kenyan Elections 2007 

Abstract

This paper studies two tabloids and two broadsheets in their reporting of post-election Kenya in January 2008 – thereby, their presentation of Kenyan and other actors, the newspapers’ interregional comparisons between Kenya and other African nations and their discussions of colonialism, independence and tribes are investigated from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective.

With this study spanning so much history and a desire to read these texts with knowledge of intertextual and interdiscursive references, I choose to use the “discourse historical approach” and the consequent “triangulation” (Reisgl and Wodak, 2001; Wodak et al, 1999; Wodak 2001). Thus, the analysis of four British newspapers’ articles is cross-referenced with Kenyan and various European media as well as with historical and political contextual knowledge. This paper adopts the position of historians, including Berman and Lonsdale (1992), Mudimbe (1988) and Odhiambo et al (1977) as well as anthropologist Haugerud (1995), that colonialism plays a crucial role in modern political issues in Kenya and other former colonies – especially relevant here to the controversy over the division of land amongst tribes at the handover of power in 1963.  

The approach of Wodak et al is though also supplemented by consideration of transitivity and syntactic transformation, (Fowler, 1991; van Leeuwen, 1996), lexis (Fowler, 1991), deixis as well as modality, implicature, presuppositions and speech acts (Chilton, 2004). Therefore, the emphasis of this study at sentence level is less on rhetorical devices and more on the pragmatic, syntactic and lexical levels (Fowler, 1991:80-5, 92-3). Overall, there is overt interest in the presentation of actors and how they are predicated (in relation to other actors).

This paper demonstrates how four British newspapers prominently feature western actors in their reporting of the Kenyan elections and all four report the opinions and advice from the EU and most frequently from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. On the other hand, Kenyan political actors are frequently foregrounded in sentences from the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Times where they are predicated with negative connotations, including low assessments of their political credentials, e.g. “not statesmanlike” or the repeated reporting of counter-accusations from Kibaki and Odinga of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”.

In studying (African) inter-regional comparisons made by the papers, analysis of implicature and attribution yielded some interesting points. All the British newspapers were keen to give a ‘before and after’ account of Kenya, such as “previously seen as one of Africa’s strongest democracies” or “economic powerhouse”.

A discussion of post-election Kenya opens into an analysis of the newspapers’ reporting of aggression where attribution of “violence” was repeatedly presented as “tribal” in the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Times. The Guardian more often used the less aggressively connotated “ethnic tensions”. More interesting in itself, however, was the observation that the papers dedicated very little or no space to a discussion of political organisation being a cause of the violence. Indeed, we noticed how references that could have potentially have signalled historical problems involving British governments did not do so, e.g. choices such as “since independence” and not ‘after colonialism’, no discussion of the “Commonwealth” and umpteen references to “tribe” without a single mention of ‘divide and rule’.

(520 words not including title) Keywords: “Them” group, Kenyan elections, Critical Discourse Analysis, colonialism, discourse historical approach

Gestern bekam ich die folgende Email von der Uni Innsbruck / Yesterday I received the following email from Innsbruck Uni:

Sehr geehrter Herr Sarazin,

es freut mich, ihnen mitteilen zu dürfen, dass ihr Beitrag akzeptiert wurde. Ich

hänge ihnen jetzt die registration form an. ... /                                       

Dear me,

I am happy to be able to inform you that your contribution has been accepted. 

Attached is the registration form ...

Das nenn ich einfach fett Alda / That's what I call phat geeza

Könnte es wohl passender sein, dass ich meinen allerersten Vortrag auf 

einer Konferenz in der Stadt geben werde,wo mein akademischer 

Mentor der Doktor jetzt arbeitet? /

Could it be more fitting that my very first presentation at a conference 

will be in the city where my academic mentor Der Doktor now works? 

Vielen Dank geht an den Johannes, der mein Englisch für dieses Abstract 

verständlicher machte. Jetzt seit acht 

Monaten verlasse ich mich auf deutsche Muttersprachler, um mein 

schrottiges Englisch zu verbessern :D  /

Many thanks go to Johannes who made my English more comprehensible 

for this abstract. For eight months now, I have been relying on German 

native speakers, in order to correct my rubbisch English .. ha ha ..  

A pesar de ser algo / muy espéctico hacia todos los estados del mundo, no tengo ningún problema de (ab)usar las oportunidades que nos ofrecen y, por ejemplo, aceptar las invitaciones de la Embajada de Colombia donde trabaja mi amiga Ma como diplomática. Así hoy vamos al concierto del Cuarteto Manolov:

Jueves 3 de julio de 2008

20:00 horas

Universität der Künste- Konzertsaal Bundesallee
Bundesallee 1-12
10719 Berlin

Cuarteto Manolov en conjunto con el trío alemán

de jazz contemporáneo: “Out of Print”

... Así tocan los compays: