Electronic supplement analysis of multiple texts: Exploring discourses of UK poverty in Below the Line comments

This paper adapts O’Halloran’s (2010) electronic supplement analysis (ESA) to investigate debates about UK poverty in online newspaper articles and reader responses to those articles. While O’Halloran’s method was originally conceived to facilitate close reading, this paper modifies ESA for corpus-based discourse analysis by scaling it up to include multiple texts. I analyse (key-)keywords and concordances to compare seven articles from the Mail Online (2010-2015) with their 2354 reader responses generated using the newspapers’ Below the Line (BTL) comments feature. The analysis provides a snapshot of the discourses BTL commenters draw upon when writing about UK poverty. Unemployment, benefits receipt, and single parenthood were repeatedly referred to in the newspaper articles and their comments, but BTL commenters also drew on personal narratives and (fictional) anecdotes to index notions of flawed consumerism, scroungers, and the deserving and undeserving poor

The Institutional Relations and Relationships of the United Kingdom Final Court of Appeal; An empirical analysis of the UK's top courts 2007-2011

This thesis conducts a systematic, empirical examination of each of the judgments that arose in the UK final court of appeal in the sessions 2007-2011, covering the transitional period between the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords and the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The aim of the thesis was to establish whether the institutional independence of the court, following the enactment of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, resulted in a more powerful court within the UK constitution. The relative power of the court was gauged by empirically reviewing each of the court's legal and political institutional relationships, together with the administrative efficiency of the court, across the transitional period. The study concludes that the Supreme Court appeared to be a more powerful and assertive institution than its predecessor. The conclusion also highlights the significant effect that the influence of the European Convention of Human Rights and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights appeared to have on the court's institutional relationships and its administrative efficiency in the time period

Trauma-Related Voices: Understanding Mechanisms of Maintenance and Change

Following a systematic review of the literature, a novel theory was developed to explain the relationship between trauma and hearing voices. The theoretical model was tested using cross-sectional, prospective, and qualitative research methods with clinical and non-clinical samples. This thesis concludes with a comprehensive research agenda to guide future research that may lead to the development of more effective treatments for trauma-affected voice hearers

Mapping Austerity: Geographical Text Analysis of UK Place-Names in <i>The Guardian</i> and <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>

By analysing corpora of newspaper articles from The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph this chapter uses a modified form of geographical text analysis (GTA) to investigate whether (and in what form) mass media texts express a relationship between austerity and UK places. Concordance geoparsing is used to detect the use of place-names occurring within a set span of key terms, such as austerity, policy, crisis, measures and spending. The geoparsing process generates Place-Name Co-occurrences (PNCs), which are comprised of a search term, a place-name, its coordinates, and its surrounding co-text. The coordinates of PNCs can be plotted on maps using GIS (Geographical Information Systems) software, to show patterns in place-name mentions, while the co-text is well-suited to linguistic analysis. Ultimately, GTA facilitates the visualisation of corpora and adds the consideration of physical space to language analysis. The results of GTA show that coverage of UK austerity focuses overwhelmingly on England and that both newspapers are London-centric

Z-selective dimerization of aromatic terminal alkynes catalyzed by an iridium(I) n-heterocyclic carbene-phosphine system

The development of an iridium-catalyzed regio- and stereoselective dimerization process has enabled the formation of (Z)-enyne products. More specifically, low catalyst loadings of an iridium(I) complex, featuring a bulky N-heterocyclic carbene-phosphine ligand combination, has been successfully employed in this selective head-to-head dimerization of terminal alkynes via C-H activation

Does Money Talk Equate to Class Talk? Audience Responses to Poverty Porn in Relation to Money and Debt

This chapter focuses on transcripts collected for the Benefits Street project at Sheffield Hallam University, which elicited audience responses to clips of poverty porn programming. We conducted four focus groups with members of the public from different social backgrounds across the north and Midlands of England and asked our participants what they thought of the representations of the working class that were shown on screen. Using techniques from corpus linguistics (specifically the use of semantic tagging software) and discourse analysis, we focus here on how our participants used terms associated with money and debt. Our analysis aims to ascertain whether talk of money in relation to benefits claimants actually equates to talk about their social class

Creating ownership: Strengths and tensions in co-production with children, young people, and adults across contexts

The inclusion of young people in conducting research leads to the creation of shared knowledge, honest communication, and increases the legitimacy of the research, allowing it to be an effective base for policy creation. This paper looks at the role of horizontal co-production with young people, as we reflect together on the process of collaboration in peace-building research