Browsing by Subject "Discourse"

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13

Open Access
Changing naturalization discourses for neoliberal mega projects under AKP rule : cases of 3rd bridge, 3rd airport and canal Istanbul
(2017-08) Eriş, Hacer
This thesis elaborates on the question of how Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) articulation of legitimization discourses for mega projects such as 3rd Bridge, 3rd Airport and Canal Istanbul changes in line with the rising opposition at both domestic and international levels. The thesis utilizes Historical Marxist Geography’s insights to indicate the issues to be legitimized about the neoliberal urban practices; such as gentrification of cities, strengthening of class-relations, rent seeking motives behind urban management and exclusion of majority from the decision-making procedures. While Marxist geographers argue that the elites articulate legitimization discourses based on economic development, environmental sustainability and urban security promises; they tend to ignore the socio-political context. This thesis directs attention to the socio-political atmosphere to analyze how AKP elites articulate their naturalization discourses. The historical process of AKP’s construction of hegemony over domestic politics led to the emergence of strong opposition since 2013. The evolution of the Party’s articulation of the opposition and further othering practices against it will be analyzed to demonstrate how AKP has articulated these developments for the legitimization discourses of neoliberal mega projects. To understand the changes in legitimization discourses, the Critical Discourse Analysis will be employed on the speeches given by AKP elites between 2010-2013 - in the absence of widespread opposition - and after 2013, when the government had started to face strong opposition in domestic and international arenas and pursued further othering practices against alleged enemies.
Open Access
Clash of discourses: the US national debate on relations with Haiti, 1789-2004
(2008) Pakin, Esra
This dissertation is a historical-comparative analysis of the rhetorical forms and frames that have shaped United States-Haitian relations, departing from the predominantly action-oriented perspective of international relations literature. The study expounds continuity and change in official foreign policy discourse as “The United States” and “Haiti” were reinterpreted through time. It also displays how these constructions of “self” and “other” have been contested within the public and political domain. This work is a contribution not only for its elaboration on the mostly unattended public, press and congressional critique of Haitian policy, but also for shedding further light on the role of African Americans in U.S. foreign policy making.
Open Access
Constructing Turkish “exceptionalism”: Discourses of liminality and hybridity in post-Cold War Turkish foreign policy
(Elsevier, 2011-02) Yanık, L. K.
This article examines the discursive practices that enable the construction of Turkish “exceptionalism.” It argues that in an attempt to play the mediator/peacemaker role as an emerging power, the Turkish elite construct an “exceptionalist” identity that portrays Turkey in a liminal state. This liminality and thus the “exceptionalist” identity it creates, is rooted in the hybridization of Turkey’s geographical and historical characteristics. The Turkish foreign policy elite make every effort to underscore Turkey’s geography as a meeting place of different continents. Historically, there has also been an ongoing campaign to depict Turkey’s past as “multicultural” and multi-civilizational. These constructions of identity however, run counter to the Kemalist nation-building project, which is based on “purity” in contrast to “hybridity” both in terms of historiography and practice.
Open Access
Critical discourse analysis of tweets and entries of dissidents in Turkey: the irresistible lure of voting
(2019-08) İnce, Tuğçe
Turkey had 12 major political elections in last 10 years. Such intensive election environment had profound impacts on voters. Especially after the elections conducted in 2018 and 2019 many dissident voters first stated on online websites that they will abstain from political elections, and yet later on stated that they actually voted after all. In this paper, through a discourse analysis of statements of dissident voters on online platforms such as Twitter and Ekşi Sözlük, I will demonstrate what accounts for turnout among dissidents in Turkey. There are 3 main factors, which are political, social and psychological factors, revealed around the dissidents’ statements. According to 750 online posts on Twitter and Ekşi Sözlük out of countless many, most of the dissidents went to the ballot box as a reaction to polarized political environment generated by the ruling party AKP and to say that they exist and will not yield to black propaganda. In relation with political factors, such as polarized political environment and political figures which attracted dissidents, voters cast their vote since their social circles (families and friends) influenced them to do so. As a third factor, psychological factors brought dissidents to the ballot box by mostly awakening their feelings of remorse and gratitude. In the light of my findings it is important to see that in a hybrid regime like Turkey voting is not only a fundamental act of political participation but also a struggle for life for the opposition.
Open Access
Cross-national reconstruction of managerial practices: TQM in Turkey
(Sage Publications, 2007) Özen, Ş.; Berkman, Ü.
Drawing on the discursive and translative perspectives, we examine the discourse produced by an elite group of corporate executives to legitimate TQM (total quality management) at the national level in Turkey. The findings indicate that the legitimating agencies largely used ethos justifications exploiting the macro-cultural discourses prevalent in the Turkish context. As such, they reconstructed TQM as a blueprint embracing solutions to the problems at societal, organizational, and individual levels. Based on the findings, we propose that reconstruction of imported practices in recipient contexts is more likely to involve ethos justification when compared to the construction of the original rhetoric because of the nature of cross-national translation. The strategy of ethos justification is even more likely when legitimating actors also strive to legitimate themselves as a social group, and/or to promote the practice to the public. Furthermore, the recipient discourse will be less coherent if legitimating actors have less formal authority and loose structure, and the target audiences have diverse values and expectations. We suggest that, under these circumstances, the reconstruction of the imported practices is more likely to produce fashions than institutions, a limited diffusion of the practice in contrast to the intentions of legitimating actors.
Open Access
Current approaches to punctuation in computational linguistics
(Springer/, 1997) Say, B.; Akman, V.
Some recent studies in computational linguistics have aimed to take advantage of various cues presented by punctuation marks. This short survey is intended to summarise these research efforts and additionally, to outline a current perspective for the usage and functions of punctuation marks. We conclude by presenting an information-based framework for punctuation, influenced by treatments of several related phenomena in computational linguistics. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Open Access
A Foucaultian reading of genetic science : archaeologizing the science of the gene
(2003) Çevik, Neslihan Kevser
In recent decades the problems posed by modern genetics has increasingly become a subject of debate within the social sciences. Those debates lead us to ask whether genetics is strictly a scientific endeavor. That begs a further question which forms the focus of this study: What else is modern genetics besides being a scientific concern? The aim of the thesis, therefore, is to begin to ask what genetic science really is. In order to achieve that goal the thesis seeks to examine gene technology through Foucaultian eyes. With that in mind Chapter I sketches an interpretation of Michel Foucault’s theoretical position. On the basis of that chapter, it can be argued that he conceives of power as the painstaking control of the life conditions of the body. Such a conceptualization of power interprets the government of the body both in terms of the tactics of domination and in terms of the techniques of the self. Chapter 2, by showing the way in which he applied this conceptualization to historical experiences provides us ii with an intriguing perspective through which to consider what modern genetics is. That archaeological approach conceives the constitution of new modalities of power in terms of dislocations and discursive transformations. Chapter 3 seeks to apply that interpretation of Foucault to modern genetics. As a result of such a reading, it is argued that modern genetics is not only a scientific concern, but also a new technique of the self (ethopolitics) and a new tactic of domination (molecular politics.)
Open Access
Globalisation and/or Europeanisation? the case of flexicurity
(Routledge, 2013) Tsarouhas, D.; Ladi, S.
The relationship between globalisation and Europeanisation is conventionally studied by focusing on the domestic level. In this article we explore this relationship at the international level instead. We examine the way in which the two phenomena in the form of the ILO and the EU relate to one another. Adopting a discursive institutionalist approach and focusing on flexicurity, we investigate whether, how and under what conditions the discourse on flexicurity provides a point of convergence or divergence between globalisation and Europeanisation. Our empirical data reveals attempts by the European Commission to use globalisation as a legitimating device for a market-accommodating programme for labour market reform. The ILO remains more sceptical, both about the overall effects of globalisation and the more concrete uses of flexicurity. Meanwhile, the concept of flexicurity is subject to change and rearticulation in line with the evolving policy agenda endorsed by the Commission and/or the member states. The relationship between Europe and globalisation is thus far from neutral. 'Europe' is active in shaping globalisation; translated into the work undertaken here, Europeanisation could be conceived as a facet of globalisation rather than as a bulwark to it, or merely as a process running parallel to it.
Open Access
An information-based approach to punctuation
(1998) Say, Bilge
Punctuation marks have special importance in bringing out the meaning of a text. Geoffrey Nunberg's 1990 monograph bridged the gap between descriptive treatments of punctuation and perspective accounts, by spelling out the features of a text-grammar for the orthographic sentence. His research inspired most of the recent work concentrating on punctuation marks in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Several grammars incorporating punctuation were then shown to reduce failures and ambiguities in parsing. Numberg's approach to punctuation (and other formatting devices) was partially incorporated into natural language generation systems. However, little has been done concerning how punctuation marks bring semantic and discourse cues to the text and whether these can be exploited computationally. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the semantic and discourse aspects of punctuation marks, within the framework of Hans Kamp and Uwe Reyle's Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) and its extension by Nicholas Asher, Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT), drawing implications for NLP systems. The method used is the extraction of patterns for four common punctuation marks (dashes, semicolons, colons, and parentheses) from corpora, followed by formal modeling and a modest computational prototype. Our observations and results have revealed interesting occurrences of linguistic phenomena, such as anaphora resolution and presupposition, in conjunction with punctuation marks. Within the framework of SDRT such occurrences are then tied with the overall discourse structure. The proposed model can be taken as a template for NLP software developers for making use of the punctuation marks more effectively. Overall, the thesis describes the contribution of punctuation at the orthographic sentence level to the information passed on to the reader of a text.
Open Access
The 'other(s)' in the discourse of Kemalist women : "sublime womanhood creates the sublime nation"
(2002) Doğan, Setenay Nil
This study analyzes the ‘other(s)’ in the discourse of Kemalist women through a discourse analysis oi Kadin Gazetesi (1947-1979), a woman magazine published by the Kemalist women. The representation of the inferior and undesii'ed ‘others’ in Kadin Gazetesi will be examined. The thesis also aims to discuss the role of the nationalist and Kemalist discourses in the formation of gender discourse and woman que.stion in Turkey.
Open Access
Rape discourses in Turkey : the case of Turkish television series Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne?
(2012) Yener, Yasemin
The television series Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne?, which first aired in September 2010, turned in to a phenomenon. The rape scene in the first episode was anticipated for months and after it aired, scene was talked about for very long time. In mass media, series was addressed widely. There were many different criticisms regarding the rape scene. Mainly, it was blamed for vividly representing the act of rape, thus encouraging and rape and humiliating women in various newspaper articles. However, while doing so, newspapers employed a number of rhetoric that may be elucidated as normalization of rape discourse through concealing by deceiving and trivializing rape. In this study, newspaper articles related to Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne? published in Zaman, Hürriyet, Posta, Radikal and Cumhuriyet newspapers are studied and evaluated in terms of discourse they employ in order to determine rape discourses in Turkish newspapers.
Open Access
Reading product de(sign): an inquiry into discursive aspects of design culture
(1996) Timur, Şebnem
Every design can be considered as an expression, and every expression conveys meanings to the receiver, of different sorts. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the ways of meaning production and consumption through the material forms of our contemporary culture, focusing on product and graphic design. The product's discourse is articulated and received both through the material being of the object, and its representations or reflections on graphical forms. Firstly, in order to demonstrate the existence of the discourse of the designed item, the process is conceptualized as a process of communication, assigning the production stage the role of encoding and the consumption, that of decoding. Secondly, advertising is included in the discussion as an intermediary level of communication with its own independent system of signification. Thirdly, the relationship between design and language is explored through the efforts of integrating semantics in the design process as a methodology. Then related with the debate on language, the finished product's functioning as a sign within the system of signification of semiotics is discussed. Lastly, examples of different readings of design are presented with implications for future readings.
Open Access
Rights based approaches to development in international development organizations
(2009) Güçlü, Sibel
In the recent years, rights talk is used within development theory and practice at a frequent rate; under the heading of rights- or human rights-based approaches to development. Although there are significant challenges; the past two decades have witnessed a momentous rise of attention of the multilateral institutions, international organizations, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) to the approach. The main argument of this thesis is that the implementation of rights-based approaches seriously depends on how the idea is framed. This thesis utilizes framing in the context of the UNDP. By looking at the official policy notes, project documents, concept papers and briefings, this study traces how human rights-based approaches to development are framed within the UNDP.