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This thesis presents an ethnographic and discourse analytical approach to the construction of Saudi Arabian nationhood in the post-2016 era following the inception of the national, neoliberal economic reform plan Vision 2030. The analysis examines a dual dataset consisting of ethnographic data as well as textual and visual sources produced for the most part in the context of Saudi Arabia’s National Day and Founding Day celebrations. The framework of analysis draws on social constructivist theories of nationalism as well as Marxist approaches to political economy. The work focuses on the interlinkages of contemporary Saudi nationalism, capitalist political economy and the creation of neoliberal-national subjectivities by examining three core research questions. (1) How are national futures envisioned and pasts remembered in the context of state and elite production of nationalism? (2) How are certain femininities produced as national and what are the qualities that make up national femininities in state and elite discourse? (3) How do national celebrations participate in constructing Saudi Arabian nationhood and what are some popular responses to or understandings of nationalism in their context? The analysis shows how the neoliberal economic reform plan Vision 2030 constructs national, neoliberal subjects by projecting the image of a self-governing, economic and youthful Saudi citizen. Vision 2030 also emerges as an economic imaginary of a future techno-utopian Saudi Arabia, where the “giga projects” undertaken under Vision 2030 have been realized through the ambition-turned-labor of ideal citizens. Meanwhile, Founding Day surfaces as an invented tradition seeking to establish continuity with an “authentic” and suitable Saudi Arabian past at a time when the kingdom is in the midst of a period of economic and social change. The production of national subjects also occurs along gendered lines by producing neoliberal-national femininities: women occupy a dual role as both carriers of tradition and symbols of the nation and its modernity. Also popular Founding Day celebrations surface as practices that contribute to shaping subjectivities through the creation of embodied experiences of the nation along with visualizing its glorified past and utopian future. Participants in such events also participate in this subject formation by deciding whether to take part in celebrations and, if so, how.

Language is a medium of communication but it is also used to construe and negotiate meaning in our social environment. Language can signal group membership and construe identity as a member of a particular group. If people have more than one language in their repertoires, competence becomes a key factor in defining to what degree people choose to identify themselves as part of a specific community of language speakers. My research studies how identity and competence are construed by non-native English speakers. Most English speakers have learned the language in addition to their mother tongue(s), and use it to communicate with other non-native speakers of English. In these situations English is used as a lingua franca (ELF) a contact language between speakers who do not share a first language (L1). In these contexts it is typical that people have learned English as a foreign language (EFL) in school. Typically L2 speakers are taught to communicate with native speakers of the language, and thus foreign language teaching often defines competence in the L2 by comparing learners proficiency level to a native speaker model. This view perceives L2 speakers as learners of the language, and defines their competence in the L2 by the degree learners are able to acquire the target language norms. In lingua franca contexts competence is defined quite differently. Competence in ELF means the ability to use the language successfully with people from various cultural backgrounds, and the ability to negotiate norms to ensure mutual understanding, which, at times, might even mean deviating from the target language norms. The concept of identity is also defined differently in EFL and ELF contexts. In foreign language teaching, speakers are learners who constantly develop their skills with hopes to eventully achieve a native-like competence. In ELF contexts, on the other hand, speakers are seen as users of the language who do not necessarily benefit from a native-like competence level per se. Because ELF users should be able to communicate with people from various backgrounds, achieving a native-like competence might not be enough to ensure successful communication with other L2 English speakers. The purpose of this research was to study how L2 English speakers construe identity as learners and users of English and their competence in the language. The data was collected by interviewing Finnish university students majoring in English philology. The data consists of four interviews in which participants describe themselves as learners and users of English. I approached the data from a discourse analytical point of view, and analyzed the construed interpretative repertoires of identity and competence. My findings show that the construed learner and user identities are context-dependent. The identity that becomes salient in the interpretative repertoires in a given context depends on how the interviewees want to depict themselves in that given environment. The ideals of good language also guide the construction of the interpretative repertoires of identity. The repertoires that idealize native-like language use construe learner identity while the repertoires that emphasize communication skills construe the user identity. My research also indicates that the interpretative repertoires of competence are multifaceted. Competence is construed as intuitive, native-speaker-like knowledge about English language structures, as well as different cognitive and performative skills and abilities. These are, for example, the ability to think in English and to communicate successfully with people from various different backgrounds.

This thesis analyses the construction of reproductive, sexual, and parental rights in selected birth control fatwas, issued by the Egyptian Dar al-Iftaʾ, the institution responsible for issuing official fatwas in Egypt. I conduct a textual analysis of the fatwa discourse by examining how the religious arguments are constructed and what modes of reasoning are employed and towards what aims. Birth control is chosen as the focus of this thesis due to its importance in modern Egypt as the country struggles with the problem of overpopulation as well as the significance of this issue for gender rights within marriage. Birth control accordingly is both a private and public matter. The nine fatwas were collected from the website of Dar al-Iftaʾ in April 2021. I used the search words birth control (manaʿ al-ḥaml) and family planning (tanẓīm al-nasl). The fatwas were issued between the years 2005 and 2016. I analysed the data from a critical feminist perspective. This feminist textual approach was informed by the scholarship on gender and Islamic law, and specifically by the works of Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Kecia Ali, Judith Tucker, and Lena Larsen. I examined these fatwas in relation to the interpretive approaches and discourse of traditional jurists from the past as well as their discursive functions within the context of contemporary Egypt and its statist discourse on birth control and governance. The study shows first that the researched fatwa discourse constructs reproductive, sexual, and parental rights within the framework of the classical fiqh models of marriage, i.e., a hierarchical relationship between man and woman, even if the permission of women for the use of birth control is emphasised. The male authority is most evident in cases of disagreement about the use of birth control. Second, the researched fatwas are also shaped by and reflect the Egyptian government discourse of creating a modern nation whose building blocks are small nuclear families with educated and prosperous children. The findings affirm the multiple functions of fatwas. They are on the one hand an integral part of Islamic textual tradition and thus reproduce their principles and methodologies. Yet they are also a discourse that is very much located in the contexts in which the fatwas are reproduced, reflecting the needs and concerns of the communities and times of those contexts.

Pro graduni käsittelee suomalaisia, jotka ovat kääntyneet juutalaisiksi ilman aikaisempaa juutalaista taustaa ja perhettä. Data perustuu haastatteluihin, joita arvioin straussilaisella grounded theory-menetelmällä. Tutkimuskysymykseni ovat, kuinka nämä käännynnäiset näkevät mitä juutalaisuus on ja kuinka he arvioivat omaa kääntymistään. Tutkimuseni mukaan kääntyjän aikaisempi uskonnollinen tausta on varsin todennäköisesti epätavallinen, eikä hänellä ole merkittäviä aikaisempia juutalaisia sosiaalisia suhteita. Internetillä on kasvava rooli kääntyjän tiedonhaussa ja verkostoissa. Juutalaisuudessa kääntynyt näkee tärkeimpänä eettisyyden sekä juutalaisen lain, halakhan. Kääntymisen nähdään vahvistavan aikaisempi maailmankuva ja identiteetti, ja kääntyjä hyväksyy rabbiinisen näkemyksen kääntymisprosessista. Lopuksi vertailen tämän tutkimuksen tuloksia muihin kääntymistutkimuksiin ja -teorioihin, joiden väitteet ja tulokset eivät aina vastaa oman tutkimukseni tuloksia.

Tämän tutkielman kysymyksenasetteluiden tavoitteena on selvittää, miten ruotsinkielinen koronavirusta koskeva kriisiviestintä toteutuu käytännössä valtioneuvoston kansliassa. Lisäksi tarkastellaan, onko valtioneuvoston kanslian nettisivuilla yhtä monta ruotsinkielistä tiedotetta kuin suomenkielisiä ja missä aikaikkunassa ruotsinkieliset tiedotteet on julkaistu. Näistä ruotsinkielisistä tiedotteista analysoidaan myös selkokielisyyden piirteitä. Tutkielman teoriataustana toimivat erityisesti Jannika Lassuksen (2017) artikkelit, joissa syvennytään ruotsinkieliseen viranomaiskieleen ja viranomaisteksteihin Suomessa. Lisäksi Hedlundin (2006) ja Sommardahlin (2012) julkaisut selkokielen kriteereistä toimivat sekä teoriana että analyysipohjana tutkimukselle. Aineistona tutkimuksessa on käytetty sähköpostikeskustelua valtioneuvoston kanslian kanssa sekä kahdeksaa tiedotetta, jotka on julkaistu valtioneuvoston kanslian nettisivuilla ajalla 16.3.2020-15.4.2020. Kyseiset tiedotteet käsittelevät poikkeusoloja ja rajoituksia Suomessa. Tutkimusmenetelmä on laadullinen sisällönanalyysi. Havainnot valtioneuvoston kanslian kanssa käydystä sähköpostikeskustelusta teemoitellaan, samoin huomiot ruotsinkielisten tiedotteiden määrästä ja julkaisuajankohdista. Virallista menetelmää selkokielianalyysille ei ole, joten tiedotteiden tarkempi analysointi perustuu Hedlundin (2006) ja Sommardahlin (2012) julkaisuissa esitettyihin selkokieltä koskeviin sääntöihin ja ohjeisiin. Tutkimuksen keskeiset tulokset ovat, että valtioneuvoston kanslian kaksikielinen kriisiviestintä noudattaa kielilakia (423/2003) siltä osin, että yksilön hengen, terveyden ja turvallisuuden kannalta oleellinen tieto on annettu molemmilla kansalliskielillä: kaikista suomenkielisistä tiedotteista on annettu siis myös ruotsinkielinen vastine. Kahdeksasta tutkimuksessa käytetystä tiedotteesta seitsemän on julkaistu ruotsiksi alle kahdessa tunnissa suomenkielisen alkuperäistekstin julkaisemisen jälkeen, eli valtioneuvoston kanslian voidaan nähdä myös noudattavan sen tehostetun viestinnän periaatteita oikea-aikaisella viestinnällään. Selkokielianalyysi osoittaa kuitenkin, ettei hallintolain (434/2003) 9 § säädetty velvoite asiallisesta, selkeästä ja ymmärrettävästä kielestä täysin täyty ruotsinkielisissä tiedotteissa. Selkokielen periaatteisiin kuuluu esimerkiksi lyhyiden lauseiden kirjoittaminen, mutta analysoidussa materiaalissa havaitaan jopa 46 sanasta muodostuva lause. Myöskään selkokielen vaatimus erikoistermien selittämisestä ei aina täyty analysoiduissa tiedotteissa.

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract The focus of this study is on an English variant known locally as Alaska Village English, which theoretically falls within the categories of pidgin and creole languages. These contact languages lexicalized by English are still spoken in many different places in the United States. The goal of this study is to identify instances of syntactic variation between Village English and Standard American English that is variant enough to potentially interfere with learning to read. Because leveling of grammatical markers is a rule rather than an exception in all contact languages, the theoretical review section explains the difference between pidgin and creole languages and contrasts uniformitarian theory of creolization with the concept of creole exceptionalism. The latter theory maintains that the language with the simplest grammar gradually replaces the local heritage language, while the former is based on the hypothesis that languages change either because internal or external forces act upon them. The morphosyntax of African American Vernacular English, Hawai’ian Pidgin/Creole, and Village English are contrasted with a non-regional contact language of global use of English as a lingua franca. The final contact language is discussed under language acquisition where the morphosyntactic structure of English of a child entering kindergarten at the age of five years is laid out in a comparative manner. The pivot schemas used by adults speaking Village English do not include Where is X?, Let’s X, and What is Y Xing? because these are replaced by Iñupiaq expressions of Nauŋ X?, Kiita! and Suvat? which helps understand why the lack of copula and auxiliaries is characteristic to Village English. The syntactical analysis is based on a corpus of 4 000 words spoken by four adults speaking Village English. It revealed the highest degree of variation in the marking of past/present tense and four other verb tense-aspect features. The use of pronouns, prepositions, and determiners is also impacted as they are not used in a manner consistent with Standard American English constructions. Since the educational system and current reading instructional methods are based on the mastery of Standard American English, it is not surprising speakers of Village English experience learning difficulties when faced with decoding morphosyntactic features they have not yet mastered. Therefore, this study supports the need to implement Standard American English language instruction in support of a traditional reading curriculum.

Maisterintutkielmani käsittelee italian kielen tyypillisen verbilausekkeen, verbo supporto –rakenteen, käyttöä. Verbo supporto –rakenteet ovat kollokaatioiden alalaji ja ne muodostuvat verbistä, määritteestä sekä mahdollisesta artikkelista tai prepositiosta (esim. prendere una decisione – tehdä päätös, fare una telefonata – soittaa puhelu). Näitä rakenteita käytetään paljon italian kielessä ja ne ovat tärkeä osa myös vieraan kielen kielitaitoa. Rakenteet eivät usein käänny muille kielille muuttumattomina, mikä vaatii huolellisuutta kielen opiskelijoilta ja aiheuttaa usein interferenssiä. Aihetta tarkastellaan tutkielmassani sekä kielitieteellisestä että -didaktisesta näkökulmasta. Teoriaosassa avataan termin merkitystä ja asemaa kielitieteessä sekä vieraan kielen oppimisessa. Erityisesti korostetaan verbin käyttöä ja erilaisia muunnoksia kyseisessä rakenteessa. Tärkeimpiä käsitteitä ovat verbo supporto, collocazione (kollokaatio) ja interferenssi. Keskeisiä lähdeteokset ovat Elisabetta Jezekin “Lessico. classi di parole, strutture, combinazioni” (2005), Roberta Mastrofinin “Classi di costruzioni a verbo supporto in italiano: Implicazioni semantico-sintattiche nel paradigma V + N” (2004) sekä Anna Cicalesen “Le estensioni di verbo supporto: Uno studio introduttivo” (1999). Didaktista pohjaa luo mm. Batia Lauferin ja Tina Waldmanin tutkimus ”Verb-noun collocations in second language writing: A corpus analysis of learners’ english” (2011). Tutkielman analyysia varten on laadittu A2–C2 tasoisille opiskelijoille tarkoitettu kysely, johon vastauksia tuli 56 kappaletta. Kyselyä jaettiin sähköisesti Suomen italianopettajille ja -opiskelijoille syksyllä 2020. Vastauksia analysoidaan sekä kvalitatiivisin että kvantitatiivisin menetelmin. Kysymykset lajitellaan vastausten pohjalta temaattisesti. Tutkimuskysymyksissä korostuu verbo supporto –rakenteiden käyttö, suomen kielen vaikutus siihen, rakenteen suhde sen yksiosaisiin synonyymeihin (esim. tehdä päätös vs. päättää) ja opiskelijan italian kielen tason vaikutus. Analyysin pohjalta voidaan todeta, että suomen kielen vaikutus näkyy useissa esimerkeissä ja sitä esiintyy kaikilla taitotasoilla (A, B ja C), joskin se on runsainta alkeistasolla. Melko tyypillistä on myös yksiosaisen verbin käyttö verbo supporto –rakenteen tilalla. Tutkimustulokset eivät ole yleistettävissä pienen otannan ja tutkielman laadullisten piirteiden takia. Tutkielmani voi kuitenkin antaa ideoita verbo supporto –rakenteiden sisällyttämisestä italian opetukseen sekä auttaa ennakoimaan tiettyjä vaikeuksia, joita suomenkieliset opiskelijat kohtaavat kieliopinnoissaan.

The thesis deals with the use of counterfactuals in historiography from the point of view of causal explanation. It studies the various roles that counterfactual claims and counterfactual reasoning play in causal explanation and causal thinking in historiography. The aim is to defend the use of counterfactual what if -questions and inferences in the context of causal explanation and to create methodological guidelines for that use. The theory that is used in this thesis to explicate the role counterfactuals in causal explanation is the contrastive counterfactual theory of causal explanation. The thesis consists of five discussion chapters. The second chapter introduces the basic concepts of the thesis and analyzes the debate on counterfactuals that has churned among historians within the past decades. The arguments of the opponents of counterfactual reasoning are divided into four categories: metaphysical arguments, semantic arguments, epistemological arguments and arguments based on historians disciplinary identity. The analysis of the arguments of the defenders of counterfactuals shows that there is a missing link in their main argument according to which the use of counterfactuals in historiography is justified because counterfactuals and causal reasoning are inherently linked together. The argument needs to be filled with a theory of causal explanation the contrastive counterfactual theory that explicitly shows how causal claims are related to counterfactual claims and helps to solve various methodological problems related to the use of counterfactuals in historiography. In the third chapter the history and basic ideas most notably the ideas of contrastive explanandum and ideal intervention of the contrastive counterfactual theory are jotted down. It is showed how contrastive counterfactual theory deals successfully with the problems that have haunted the other counterfactual theories of causal explanation. Chapters four, five and six are dedicated to applying the contrastive counterfactual theory to the most puzzling questions in philosophy of historiography in order to see how far the ideas of contrastive causal explanatory claims and ideal interventions can go in solving these issues. Chapter four shows how the theory solves e.g. the problems of separating explanatory causes from background factors and the question to what extent historians causal explanations can be said to be objective. The final sections of the chapter compare the contrastive counterfactual theory both to the non-causalist view of explaining human action and to the covering-law model on scientific explanation. Based on the comparisons it is concluded that the contrastive counterfactual theory can be considered to be the most fruitful theory to approach the problems of historiographical explanation. Chapter five deals with the epistemology and methodology of causal and counterfactual inferences in historiography. The method of process tracing is introduced as a way to make use of evidence to support causal and counterfactual claims. Historians evidence consists of traces of the past, as well as, of general theoretical ideas on the mechanisms that guide human behavior, society and culture. It is argued that it is sometimes extremely difficult or even impossible to assess the truth of some counterfactual claims due to the lack of evidence that historians often face. The idea of ideal intervention and its conditions are introduced to solve some of the major conceptual and methodological problems of causal and counterfactual reasoning in historiography, e.g. the problem how to choose sensible counterfactual antecedents. It is shown that complexity and non-modularity of the systems studied is the other major source of difficulty for historians causal and counterfactual inferences, in addition to the problems caused by the lack of evidence. In the end of the chapter, the difference between historians counterfactual could-inferences and would-inferences is explicated, and it is argued why would-inferences are central to causal explanation, whereas could-inferences serve the goals of tracking moral responsibility and prevention. Chapter six discusses the uses of counterfactuals in historians causal reasoning. It is suggested that historians engage in four types of reasoning when they weigh causes in order to determine their causal significance or importance. It is also shown how the ideas of the contrastive counterfactual theory can be applied in all these cases. First of all, historians seek to select causes by separating them from the causal background. Secondly, historians can weigh causes with the help of using various contrastive explanatory questions. Thirdly, they try to assess the necessity and contingency of a result, and fourthly, they are interested in defining the sensitivity of causal relations. The final section of the thesis presents how counterfactual reasoning works in the construction of historiographical narratives. The final closing chapter seeks to give a balanced answer to the arguments of the critics who question the use of counterfactuals in historiography, and to provide a toolkit for counterfactual explanatory reasoning in historiography based on the findings of the previous chapters. In addition, the results are assessed from the point of view of the contrastive counterfactual theory in order to evaluate whether the theory needs further developing. Most of the topics discussed in the thesis are illustrated with examples mainly from political history, social history, history of international relations, and economic history. The arguments and conclusions should, however, be applicable to all fields of historiography.

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary approach that is used to analyze the relations between discourse and social practice. CDA has a normative aim by addressing social wrongs (such as misuse of power) via the use of language. This study uses Gee’s (1996) method of discourse analysis, which focuses on prosody, cohesion, discourse organization, contextualization signals, and thematic organization, on seven COVID-19-related tweets by Donald Trump, the president of the United States (2017–2021). This qualitative approach analyzes how Trump’s COVID-19-related tweets feature misuse of power and whether these tweets are populist by nature. The study also has a quantitative approach which features a corpus of 640 COVID-19-related tweets from Trump from January 2020 to January 2021. This demonstrates how often Trump used neutral terms versus Sinophobic (xenophobic towards China) terms to refer to the coronavirus, the disease, and the pandemic. The quantitative results also feature a list of the most frequently used words in the tweets which were generated by the corpus software AntConc. The qualitative findings showed that Trump’s COVID-related tweets featured ambiguous and unjustified claims, logical fallacies and were often self-centered. The tweets that featured Sinophobic terms were, contrary to expectations, more hostile towards Trump’s political opponents and the media than China. The quantitative results showed that Trump used neutral terms such as ‘COVID’ or ‘Coronavirus’ more often than Sinophobic ones, although after excluding retweets, the difference was less significant. The most frequently featured words in Trump’s tweets support the qualitative finding that many of his tweets were especially hostile towards his political opponents and the media. Applying CDA to tweets, which have merely a 280-character limit, is somewhat of an unorthodox approach. However, this qualitative approach enabled a much more nuanced analysis of the tweets than a purely quantitative result would have done. In this study, especially the findings on Trump’s argumentation tactics and the cohesion in the tweets are applicable in future studies. As one of CDA’s advantages is its interdisciplinarity, similar approaches that draw from different sciences may be taken to analyze similar political discourses in the future.

Vertailen tutkielmassani eurooppalaista veijarihahmoa (trickster) kettua ja Pohjois-Amerikan alkuperäiskansojen veijarijumaluutta kojoottia ja näihin liittyvien tekstien sovellutuksia vieraan kielen opetuksessa suomalaisessa oppimisympäristössä. Tutkielman tavoite on tarkastella eurooppalaisen ja pohjoisamerikkalaisen veijarihahmon eroja sekä osoittaa tekstien käyttökelpoisuus englannin vieraan kielen opetuksessa. Teoriataustana toimii Louis Owensin kehittämä kulttuurienvälinen lähestymistapa (cross-reading), joka korostaa kulttuurisen ja historiallisen taustatiedon sekä oman ja vieraan kulttuurin vertailun merkitystä vierasperäisiä tekstejä luettaessa. Tutkielman ensimmäisessä osassa vertailen Reynard the Fox –nimistä veijarihahmoa (suom. Kettu Repolainen) ja Pohjois-Amerikan alkuperäiskansojen veijarijumaluutta kojoottia kirjallisten näytteiden pohjalta. Analyysi perustuu William Hynesin veijarihahmojen arviointiin kehittämiin kriteereihin. Aineisto pohjautuu Pohjois-Amerikan alkuperäiskansojen suullisen perimätiedon pohjalta kirjoitettuihin tarinoihin Kojootista, sekä William Caxtonin vuoden 1481 käännöksen modernisoituun versioon Reynard-ketun seikkailuista eläinten hovissa. Tutkielman toisessa osassa käsittelen luokkahuonetutkimustani veijaritekstien käytöstä englannin vieraan kielen opetuksessa. Luokkahuonetutkimus toteutettiin kolmella eri luokka-asteella: alakoulun kuudennella luokka-asteella, yläkoulun yhdeksännellä luokka-asteella ja lukion ensimmäisellä vuosikurssilla. Analysoitava aineisto perustuu opettajan osallistuvasta tarkkailusta saatuihin muistiinpanoihin ja reflektioon, sekä oppilailta kerättyyn palautteeseen. Aineistoa analysoidaan ankkuroidun teorian (grounded theory) mukaisesti, eli teoria on muodostettu aineiston pohjalta. Analyysi keskittyy oppilaiden suhtautumiseen opetusta ja aihealuetta kohtaan. Tutkielma osoittaa, että veijarihahmoja käsittelevät tekstit viihdyttävät myös nykypäivän lukijaa ja että ne soveltuvat suomalaiseen englanninkielen opetukseen.