Językowe środki wyrażania postawy mówiącego w łotewskich debatach sejmowych

Wydział Neofilologii: Instytut Językoznawstwa

O naruszaniu podstawowych zasad postępowania naukowego. “Wzgórze przeznaczenia archeologii” górą skandalu

„We are paying a high price for the increasingly unequivocal equation drawn between knowledge and science and ordinary market product. The ideal of perfectly unrestrained cognition, the true mother of science, is threatened by the mass drive towards practical use and application of knowledge, a looming departure into nothingness. Politicians and managers of scientific life are guilty of considerable contribution in corrupting respectable university structures, and thus undermining culture of science and scholarly ethics. (…). Acquisition of funds, sponsorship, media presence, popularisation or even striving for commercial gain are recognised by politicians and scientific consultants, but most of all they are accepted by the university management as objectives worthy of effort, not to say the foremost goals of science. University rectors are nowadays interested primarily in the amounts of acquired moneys. The outcomes of research thus financed is subject to virtually no control, nor does it arouse any interest, unless it turns out to be fit to be announced in the media as a sensation, thereby serving the ‘prestige’ of the university”.

Dostęp do informacji jako wyznacznik polityczności

Artykuł dotyka problemu polityczności z punktu widzenia komunikacji, która – jako subdyscyplina politologii – stanowi integralną część programów nauczania przyszłych absolwentów tego kierunku, przez co konieczną wydaje się być dyskusja na temat umiejscowienia tego zagadnienia w ramach dyscypliny. Co ciekawe, dyskurs naukowy zdominowany przez zagadnienia związane z mediami i przesyłaniem danych kanałami informacyjnymi, często pomija kwestie komunikowania bezpośredniego i poziomego; tym odbywającą się między obywatelami, ale – przede wszystkim – samymi politykami. Informacja – jako podstawowa jednostka komunikacyjna – staje się tu jednym z elementów relacji o cesze polityczności oraz środkiem osiągania celów, wpisując się tym samym w dyskusję o podstawach teoretycznych dyscypliny i o granicach badań nad zjawiskami tradycyjnie podejmowanymi w swoich rozważaniach przez przedstawicieli nauk politycznych. The article takes up a problem of " the political " from communication point of view, which-as a sub-discipline of political science-is an integral part of the curriculum for future graduates of this discipline. It seems to be necessary to locate this issue in the branch of studies. Interestingly, scientific discourse dominated by media and information channels, often ignores direct and horizontal communication, especially between citizens and-above all-politicians themselves. Information, as the basic unit of communication, becomes the part of " political relations " and the specific form of meeting a political aim. Therefore, it " fits in " the discussion of theoretical foundations of this discipline and scope of research in the area of phenomenons traditionally analysed by representatives of political science.

The Polish EU presidency in Polish press: Did we actually notice it?

The aim of this paper is to present the findings of a quantitative content analysis of the Polish print media. Sharing the codebook and procedures with an international team, we were able to gain a broad perspective on the media coverage of the first Polish EU presidency. In particular, we focused on: (1) the number of items covering events related to the presidency, (2) the prominence of the topic, (3) genres, (4) main topics, (5) authors of news, (6) authors of opinions, and (7) the way Polish journalists evaluated Poland’s performance during the EU presidency. The findings showed that although Polish print press reported the first Polish EU presidency, the topic’s prominence was not very high. Media organizations rather rarely presented the topic on the front page and they did not change their regular editorial policy. Most of the news items, as well as opinions and comments, were written by staff members. Furthermore, journalists seemed to be more interested in the opinions of national politicians, rather than experts. As a result, the framework of the coverage was predominantly domestic. Journalists working for daily newspapers focused mostly on providing news and their own interpretations of the reported events. On the contrary weekly magazines provided comments and interviews, but again, most of the opinions were expressed by their own journalists and editors.

Zaufanie a stosunki osobiste

Trust is a pervasive phenomenon in our lives. We trust our family members and lovers, our physicians and teachers, our politicians and even strangers on the street. Trust has instrumental value for us, but at the same time it is often accompanied by risk. This is the reason why it is important to distinguish trust that is warranted or justified from blind trust. In order to answer the question how trust is justified, however, it is crucial to know exactly what is the fundamental nature of trust. In the paper, I reconstruct three accounts of trust that operate with the assumption that trust is fundamentally a mental state – the cognitivist account, the voluntaristic account and the affect-based account. I argue that all of these accounts make reference to deeply held intuitions about trust that are incompatible with each other. As a solution to this unfortunate dialectical situation, I suggest to give up the assumption that trust is primarily a mental state. Instead, I argue for a position according to which trust is best understood as a two-place predicate that characterizes a specific relationship in which we can stand to each other.

Universities and Welfare States Coping with Permanent Financial Austerity: Pressures on (Competing) Public Institutions

A chapter linking universities and welfare states to permanent financial austerity can take a shorter or a longer historical perspective. This chapter looks further back (to the postwar expansion of European welfare states) to better understand future transformations of both public institutions. Their long-term sustainability problems did not start with the financial crisis of 2008 but have been growing since the 1970s (Schäfer and Streeck 2013; Bonoli and Natali 2012; Hay and Wincott 2012). Financial austerity is not a post-crisis phenomenon. As a concept, it was used in welfare state research at least a decade earlier, although it does not seem to have been used in higher education studies until recently. Two quotations bring us to the heart of the matter: welfare states and universities are currently changing under adverse financial conditions caused by an array of interrelating and mutually reinforcing forces and their long-term financial sustainability is at stake across Europe. The welfare state is a “particular trademark of the European social model” (Svallfors 2012: 1), “the jewel in the crown” and a “fundamental part of what Europe stands for” (Giddens 2006: 14), as are tuition-free universities, the cornerstone of intergenerational social mobility in Continental Europe. The past trajectories of major types of welfare states and of universities in Europe tend to go hand in hand: first vastly expanding following the Second World War, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, and then being in the state of permanent resource-driven and legitimacy-based “crisis” in the last two decades. Welfare states and universities, two critically important public institutions, seem to be under heavy attacks from the public, the media and politicians. Their long-term sustainability is being questioned, and solutions to their (real and perceived) problems are being sought at global, European, and national levels.