Harold Pinter: A Night Out : A Study in the Political ConnotationsAnd the Abuse of Power

Harold Pinter’s A Night Out is a significant but rarely produced piece of drama. Therefore, there is very little criticism to support or contradict my argument. The reason why I chose to do my essay on this particular play is to open doors for academic research and to try and make it an equal to its sister plays. I will raise questions and topics to prove the play is worth the readers’ time and effort and that A Night Out is a sharp piece of political theatre. Although at first glance it is a simple enough story, a straightforward tale of the nasty consequences of motherly love when it is pushed to the limit, on deeper inspection, a more far reaching and complex analysis of the abuse of power can be observed. The play offers a variety of themes, including: interpersonal power struggles, failed attempts at communication, antagonistic relationships, the threat of impending or past violence, the struggle for survival or identity, domination and submission, politics, lies and verbal, physical, psychological and sexual abuse. The prevailing theme in the play is the abuse of power: powerful parties oppressing weaker ones, and the results of the oppressed party looking for a vent in someone even weaker than themselves.

A comparative study of immigrants’ political participation in Sweden and the Netherlands

This study deals with immigrants’ political participation in Sweden and the Netherlands. Scholars have recognized low level of political participation of immigrants in Sweden compared to the Netherlands. The main goal of this study is to analyze the institutional influence, mainly from political parties over immigrants’ motivation for active electoral participation. The modified actor-context model uses here as the main theoretical framework. In addition, social capital theory employs to analyze immigrants’ voluntary organizational membership. This study confirms that, Swedish immigrants have the lower participation rate in the political sphere, at lest to a certain extent, than its counterparts the Dutch immigrants. This study also confirms the argument that contextual factors can influence actor’s motivations in integration-oriented action, and similarly it validates the necessity of enlargement of the actor-context model.

In Bio-Fuel We Trust

In bio-fuel we trust. Or do we? In this chapter, ethnographic material from Sweden is used to discuss ways sin which trust may influence the choice of bio-fuel for heating purposes. The meaning and substance of trust or distrust, as well as the very conditions for trust, are elaborated on in relation to solar and bio-pellet systems, district heating with bio-fuel, and traditional fireplaces. An important conclusion of this chapter is that the degree to which people perceive others as being like themselves or not tends to be decisive for whether these others are to be trusted, and therefore worth listening to. The context and situation in which a certain heating system is being chosen does not only involve trust in individuals, however, but in companies and the authorities, as well as in the arterfacts themselves. An example is given on how distrust of district heating companies led house owners to reject an offer of district heating despite the comfort and environmental benefit this could have provided. it is shown how this distrust might be resolved by making the rhythm of households and sitrict heating companies more in step with one another. The strong emotional attachment to and deep-felt trust in the traditional fireplace is also analysed, and a question is put forward as to whether these feelings could be transferred to modern bio-pellet stoves. Finally, our great and assured trust in bio-fuel as a main solution to global climate change is shortly commented upon and partly questioned.

A proposed Model for Country Branding : an experimental Application on Nigeria

In the era of globalization, countries compete with each other for attention, respect and trust of potential consumers, investors, tourists, media and governments of other nations. Branding is the most powerful tool that a nation can utilize for effective differentiation strategies and for creating competitive advantage over other nations. Unfortunately, not every nations or destination marketers have a broad understanding of the concept of branding and how a country can be successfully branded. Hence, this study has proposed a model that could be used as a valuable guide for country branding. Also the model is recommended for countries struggling with image crisis; on the mission to improve the image internationally. Nigeria is a good example of countries with image crisis; it is one of the most populated countries in the world with a population of about 160 million inhabitants and growth rate of 2.553percent annually. Despite the abundant resources (e.g. coal, petroleum, natural gas etc.) that the nation is endowed with, it is quite disappointing that the population below poverty line is still at the alarming rate of 70percent of the total population. The mismanagement and poor leadership of the nation characterised by corruption, fraud, embezzlement of public fund etc. has culminated into serious image crisis that is slowing down the potential for investment and economic growth. However, there has been series of image rebranding campaigns but no tangible achievement has been recorded. It is quite questionable though, if image rebranding will provide the kind of future that Nigeria envisaged, considering the socio-political situation and the economic imbalance; compounded by the obvious fact that the nation has no known brand. Therefore, this paper argues that there is need to redirect the effort invested on image rebranding to the creation of a unique and competitive brand for the country. It was established from the study that a nation’s brand is capable of improving the reputation of the nation as well as stimulate the expectation of the target audience. However, it was also established from the study that a wrong approach to branding could mislead the target audience and attract negative publicity. Hence, as a contribution of the study to the field of branding, a model was proposed as a functional guide for country branding. Also, considering the abysmal performance of Nigeria’s image in the international community and to strengthen the argument that brand creation is required for the country; an experimental application of the proposed model was conducted using Nigeria as the case country. The first phase of the model suggested a major improvement in the society; this is required to further enhance the strengths of the country and to motivate the much needed community participation and confidence in the brand creation. It is the conclusion of the study that a strong nation brand can offset the image problem if it is built on something concrete, genuine, and uniquely identifiable with the country, capable of connecting to the cognitive psychology of the target audience.

Manipulation in Newspaper Articles : A Political Discourse Analysis of Lexical Choice and Manipulation in Japanese Newspaper Crisis Reporting in the case of North Korea

This paper analyzes some forms of linguistic manipulation in Japanese in newspapers when reporting on North Korea and its nuclear tests. The focus lies on lexical ambiguity in headlines and journalist’s voices in the body of the articles, that results in manipulation of the minds of the readers. The study is based on a corpus of nine articles from two of Japan’s largest newspapers Yomiuri Online and Asahi Shimbun Digital. The linguistic phenomenon that contribute to create manipulation are divided into Short Term Memory impact or Long Term Memory impact and examples will be discussed under each of the categories.The main results of the study are that headlines in Japanese newspapers do not make use of an ambiguous, double grounded structure. However, the articles are filled with explicit and implied attitudes as well as attributed material from people of a high social status, which suggests that manipulation of the long term memory is a tool used in Japanese media.

För Sverige i framtiden : Bio-objektifiering av ny medicinsk teknologi

Taking Sweden into the future – Bio-objectification of new medical technology In this article, we analyze how contemporary discursive silences around new biotechnologies such as cybrids and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), have been enabled by earlier policy processes in the area, e.g. boundary work around what is human and non-human, living and non-living, subject and object. The analysis of policy processes around xenotransplantations and the use of human embryonic stem cells, shows that the stem cells’ and xenografts’ “bio-identities” become stabilized through high expectations for the future, a lack of therapeutic possibilities and struggles over definitions of life. The policy processes around human embryonic stem cells and organs from other animals, are characterized by a normalization of certain understandings of ”life”, trust in scientific progress and it’s national financial potentials and a categorization of criticism as irrational. Through these “bio-objectification processes”, debate and decision making has been moved from a political and public context into ethical committees and research funding bodies. The article concludes by discussing consequences of this political non-handling of biomedical technologies and how these bioobjects could be re-politicized.

The use of the pronouns we, us, and our in political speeches : A comparative study of the inaugural addresses of Bush and Obama

Pronouns carry considerable importance in language. The speaker’s identity and connection to the audience emerges through the consistent use of certain pronouns (De Fina, 1995). This research is about the use of we, us, and our in political discourse. Specifically, their use will be examined in the inaugural addresses of George W. Bush in 2005 and Barack Obama in 2009. The aim of this research is to examine the frequencies and the co-occurrences of these pronouns and then compare their use in these two speeches. More specifically, how do the pronouns examined affect the message and enhance hearer credibility. This is done by applying (a) a quantitative corpus linguistics analysis and (b) qualitative analysis of the context of use. The results show that there is a difference in frequency of pronoun use; however, the usage of pronouns is rather similar in the two speeches