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Recent social theories related to academic literacies suggest that academic writing is not a mere text production but also an identity performance; hence, the notion of ‘authorial identity’ which involves two dimensions: the identity as academic authors (personal dimension) and the identity in writing (textual dimension). This thesis presents a study into the development of authorial identity among senior academic scholars on the trajectory of professorship through interviews and textual analysis of their published papers sampled across their early and later career. Three full professors from a UK university participated in this study, which was conducted in three phases. In the first phase, the professor participants’ accounts of their personal dimension of authorial identity through interviews signal common themes regarding the influence of the recent academic climate on their personal experience of growth in relation to their endeavour to improve the quality of their academic scholarship. In the second phase, the metadiscourse-based textual analysis of their sampled academic papers indicates several features of their identity performance in writing over time, which form the basis for the professor participants’ reflection on their textual dimension of authorial identity in the third phase in order to explore how their papers are embedded in and related to the social contexts of academic publication, especially the peer review process and the research assessment framework. The research findings from this study not only shed light on the developmental pathway in academic writing from the same academic scholars over time but also provide an illuminating account of how they have developed themselves as well as their writing on the trajectory of professorship. Further, the findings from all three research phases are discussed together in relation to relevant social theories to offer a theoretical contribution to the research area of academic literacies, writing, identity and scholarship.

The primary aim of this thesis is to explore negative representations of Arabs and Muslims through an analysis of Hollywood films released pre- and post-9/11 in the context of contemporary theories and concepts, such as neo-Orientalism, postcolonialism and Islamophobia. Pre- and post-9/11 Hollywood films are analysed in relation to their sociohistorical contexts and the argument that Islamophobia could be generated from the latest transformation of Orientalism or as a response to multiculturalism and transnationalism. The approach employs textual methods to study the use of language and power in the form of social practice. This includes employing context, critical discourse, and thematic and semiotic methodologies. This thesis is guided by a discourse on theoretical approaches in performing a cultural analysis of the films selected. Moreover, this analysis is interpreted through a critical theoretical framework within a sociological and historical context. Through an examination of past research papers, the researcher identified several aspects of specific films that had a major effect on the presentation of Arabs and Muslims in Hollywood, including the emergence of new discourses about self-identity and negative representations of Arabs and Muslims, the re-emergence of Orientalism and the portrayal of Islamic fundamentalism in Egyptian cinema. Furthermore, the researcher identified that these films link Muslims to the issue of terrorism and portray them in a negative light, especially in U.S., Europe and the Middle East. Additionally, the study investigates how Islamophobia said to be promoted in Hollywood and Egyptian cinema and explores discourses related to broader social processes. The study analyses a selection of films that represent Arabs and Muslims in terms of their cinematic, structure, philosophy, and conceptual framework.

This thesis explores how ideas of sustainable food consumption are conceptualised and rhetorically contextualised by UK stakeholders such as businesses and NGOs. Drawing on discourse studies, sustainable consumption is considered as a contested field, pertaining to a variety of issues and is instantiated, institutionalised and expressed through varied descriptive, normative and instrumental framings of sustainability and the consumer. Social science studies that hold a critical stance towards consumer agency and the responsibilisation of the consumer are crucial to the underlying theoretical framework of this thesis. However, existing studies concerned with such issues, including those drawing on practice theory, are limited with respect to the rhetorical mobilisation of both the consumer as an agent and consumer agency as a concept. This research is concerned with how the notion of consumer agency is utilised discursively and how the consumer is mobilised as a rhetorical figure in the context of contested framings of sustainability. The thesis empirically explores notions of sustainability and the consumer in expert debates on sustainable food consumption in the UK and investigates their constitution in different temporal and contextual settings. Discourses within the time period 2005-2017 were analysed using three types of data: articles published in The Grocer, the major trade magazine of the UK food industry; interviews with key representatives of retailers, non-profit organisations and consultancies; and policy papers. Firstly, the thesis addresses how notions of food sustainability and related ideas of consumption and production are conceptualised within expert discourses and how those conceptualisations change over time in relation to markets and innovation. Three external discursive strands (premium produce, healthy diets and efficiency) are identified as influencing discursive changes in the period studied. Secondly, it is suggested that three interpretative frames (consumer sovereignty, economic rationality and stewardship) constitute a discursive framework of expert discourses on sustainable food consumption. This framework restricts the ways in which issues can be interpreted and addressed in order to become established as themes within discourses. Thirdly, the findings are positioned with reference to social science debates on consumer agency for sustainability. It is argued that through the interpretative frame of consumer sovereignty, choice constitutes an all-encompassing concept in expert discourse on sustainable consumption. Although consumer choice is attributed little potential for social change, the consumer nevertheless constitutes a central figure of reference in arguments, explanations and legitimisations of other agents' conduct. Even where institutional actions could be understood as contrary to consumer choice, for example, choice editing by retailers, such activity is framed as a response to consumer demand for sustainable consumption.

Owing to the ever increasing information deluge, it is becoming increasingly difficult to locate relevant information through traditional term-based search methods. Event–based text mining provides a more promising approach, as it also takes into account the semantic relationships between terms. Typical event representations only focus on identifying the type of the event, its par-ticipants and their types. However, additional information, which is essential for correct interpretation of the event, is often present in the text. This includes infor-mation about the polarity, certainty level, intensity/rate/frequency, type and source of the knowledge conveyed by the event. We refer to this additional information as meta-knowledge. This thesis focusses on our work involving the enrichment of events with meta-knowledge information. In this thesis we: • describe the annotation scheme designed specifically to capture meta-knowledge information at the event level• report on the corpora that have been enriched through deployment of the meta-knowledge annotation scheme• describe the work on automated identification of meta-knowledge including: - a broad-ranging study on analysis and identification of polarity of bio-events using three different bio-event corpora - a detailed study on analysis and identification of knowledge source in bio-events found in abstracts as well as in full papers - a first study on analysis and identification of bio-event manner• describe the initial work on a new approach to discourse analysis based on me-ta-knowledge annotations at the event level

China has seen tremendous economic growth in the past three decades, and in the order of eight to ten per cent since 2000. This development has come with ever increasing energy consumption, and thus emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). This trend has been an important topic in the international climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; China is under constant pressure from other large economies to contribute to reversing the GHG emissions trend in order to avoid dangerous climate change. At the same time, the Chinese government has pursued an environmental and energy security agenda focussed at increasing the energy efficiency of its economy and the supply of energy from renewable sources. Alongside, a domestic climate change discourse has developed, and changed over time. This thesis examines elements of the country-specific political ecology in the area of greenhouse gas mitigation in China, looking closely at what climate change means in China, and discussing how this influences the development and institutionalisation of mitigation mechanisms. I take a political ecology approach to scrutinize the nature and evolution of a climate change discourse in China, and the influences and implications of existing governance structures and institutions that affect greenhouse gas mitigation in the country. Adopting mixed empirical methods comprising semi-structured interviewing, media and numerical data analyses, and participant observation in research processes close to the government, data was collected between 2008 and 2011. In five academic papers with distinctive angles, I show the importance of engaging deeply with the formative, distinctly Chinese political, economic and ecological environment when discussing mitigation in China. The Chinese climate change discourse has changed significantly in recent years, for example resulting in different discursively acceptable ways for the country to engage in mitigation. These meanings of climate change in China have developed through specific interactions of the political and academic spheres, based on Chinese understandings of nature and history (and China’s place in it), as well as with limited involvement of the media compared to western developed country cases. The notion of historical responsibility is a major component of what climate change means in China; in this thesis I therefore illuminate the numerical and conceptual ramifications of this part of the discourse, noting that the re-active nature of this frame, with China positioned against the developed countries, has not lend itself to support new mitigation action. Low carbon economy is another newer and now very important element of the discourse, a frame that locates China in an active, entrepreneurial subject position. My study on two cases – mitigation in the Beijing transportation sector and the introduction of seven local emission trading systems through a approach of governance through pilots – shows how this part of the discourse allows for the development of new mitigation approaches when they follow established institutions and governance mechanisms in a path-dependent manner. This thesis contributes to the research of global environmental change by advancing theoretical and practical ways of engaging with climate change in general, and mitigation in particular in China. It stresses the importance of considering the country-specific political ecology when formulating global climate change policy.