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The concept of open development presupposes a greatly increased supply of information available to citizens on the issues, products, and services that shape their lives. It means that governments should make information on budgets accessible and intelligible, local authorities should provide access to information about the provision of services that citizens can expect, and donors should be transparent about what they are spending, specifying for what and why, and doing so in forms that beneficiaries can use.

Rethinking ethical, legal, and societal frameworks for assessing and governing nanomaterials / Angela Kallhoff, Claudia Schwarz-Plaschg, and Elias Moser -- Ecocentric evaluation of nano-release risk, precaution and imagination / Angela Kallhoff and Elias Moser -- Standardising responsibility? The significance of interstitial spaces / Fern Wickson And Ellen-Marie Forsberg (reprint) -- Standardisation and patenting in nanotechnology : better balancing for a necessary nuisance / Thomas Jaeger -- Standardisation enabler for nanotechnology innovation / Henk de Vries -- Science - democracy - industry : Who is in charge of regulating nanomaterials? / Diana M. Bowman and Lucille M. Tournas -- Pros and cons of nano-regulation and ways towards a sustainable use / Juliane Filser -- Nanotechnology and fundamental rights : how to regulate dual use research? / Iris Eisenberger and Franziska Bereuter -- Monitoring the value of responsible research and innovation in industrial nanotechnology innovation projects / Emad Yaghmaei, Andrea Porcari, Elivio Mantovani and Steven M. Flipse -- The politics and public imagination of nano-labelling in Europe / Claudia Schwarz-Plaschg -- Emerging technologies and the problem of representation / Lotte Krabbenborg -- Nanotechnology : democratising a hyped-up technology? / Franz Seifert

The article examines the ideological content of the concept of "civic consciousness" used in the public discourse of modern Russia. The main research method is a qualitative analysis of official publications aimed at identifying the main meanings of this concept. The article is dedicated to the analysis of civic consciousness as an ideological construct and a rhetorical strategy, substantiating the close historical and actual connection between ideology and civic consciousness, and considering the mutual determination of the functions of these phenomena. The main characteristics of sources that embody Russia's state model of civic consciousness are presented. The author shows the importance of historical dynamics of models of civic consciousness, their dependence on the phase of the evolution of each particular ideology. The author reveals that the model of civic consciousness is a value regulator of the political behavior of the population. The article concludes that the post-Soviet model of civic consciousness is an ideological mechanism for imposing duties and responsibilities on an individual, forming a mobilizing attitude to military or civil service to the state, that is, the ruling Corporation. This model cannot be effective for the development of social and human capital and political modernization of Russian society, since it preserves archaic political practices.

This thesis analyzes the public discourse on foreigners and Muslims in Switzerland between 2000 and 2009. In Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe, the debate on immigration, cultural identity and citizenship seems to focus more and more on the Muslim minority. While the Muslim population belonged to the generic group of foreigners in the public debate until recently, it seems that Muslims have become the main problem for integration in Switzerland. In the past decade, two direct democratic campaigns targeted Muslims, raising the question about the compatibility of Swiss and Muslim cultures. What makes Muslims a special group? How does the public discourse on Muslims differ from the portrayal of foreigners in general? Are Muslims perceived as the main threat to Swiss culture and gender equality? To answer these questions empirically, a quantitative content analysis of four major Swiss newspapers was conducted covering three direct democratic campaigns in the last decade. The aim of the analysis was to inductively grasp the discourse of institutional actors on Muslims and on foreigners in general and to discover the main similarities and differences between how these two categories are depicted. While the demographic composition of the Muslim minority has not changed much in the last decade, the way Muslims are perceived in public discourse did. While certain ethnic groups were still categorized as foreigners in 2000, they are more often assigned to the Muslim minority in 2009. The latter, even though of heterogeneous composition, is seen as a more and more homogeneous group causing problems in other fields than foreigners do. This change in discourse should lead to question the current academic and political debate on integration in Switzerland.

In public political discourse, figurative expressions used by one participant are often followed up and 'countered' by other participants through ironical and/or sarcastic allusions or quotations, which are aimed at denouncing the preceding version and/or deriving a new, contrarian conclusion from it. What is the relationship between the figurative template expression and its ironical or sarcastic variants? Using data from a corpus documenting 25 years of debate in Britain about the nation's place at the heart of Europe, this paper investigates the interplay of metaphor, irony and sarcasm in public discourse. We show that the 'discourse career' of this metaphorical slogan bifurcates into two strands, i.e. an affirmative, optimistic use vs deriding and ridiculing uses that depict the heart of Europe as diseased, dead, non-existent or rotten. It is argued that discourse participants need to retain the optimistic template version as a reference point in discourse memory to achieve the intended ironical and/or sarcastic effects, and that the latter are essential to keep the metaphoricity of the slogan 'alive'.

The topic of the thesis is the analysis of the use of concealing euphemisms (Luchtenberg 1985: 24) in English and Serbian public discourse. Concealing euphemisms reduce the negative expressive force of the utterance/sentence, avoid dispreferred and impose preferred constructions of reality. The thesis shows that it is possible to expose a concealing euphemism by identifying a non-euphemistic alternative that can be used in the same context. In relation to this, the main aim of thesis is to show that the recognition of concealing euphemisms includes both the structural (lexico-semantic) and the interpersonal (lexico-pragmatic, epistemic and discursive) levels of analysis. The theoretical background that unifies all the levels of analysis is relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995 et al.). We use the corpus-assisted qualitative analysis; the corpus is based on American, British and Serbian concealing euphemisms taken from political speeches and newspaper articles. The analysis includes the lexicosemantic analysis, the lexico-pragmatic analysis and the analysis of discursive strategies. The results of the lexico-semantic analysis show that, in political speeches, rhetorical effects are preferred, and newspaper articles strive for more precision. The lexico-pragmatic analysis is based on the proposed pragmatic algorithm which shows that an epistemically vigilant hearer can identify a concealing euphemism by analyzing interpretive hypotheses in accordance with the information given in a specific context and type of discourse. Concealing euphemisms are also viewed as discursive strategies (Van Leeuwen 2008: 23–74). The examples of the analyzed strategies were found in all corpora; they show that the issue of responsibility and even the issue of morality of actions can be ignored. The thesis integrates cognitive, communicative, epistemic and social aspects of verbal manipulation, by means of which we provide an account of meaning construction that can be used in the interpretative stage of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1989 et al.), which studies representations of the world taken as common knowledge, which are actually socially instilled beliefs reproduced and perpetuated in language.

Through an analysis of two highly mediatised recent events in Australia this article seeks to interrogate the intersections of gender, ethnicity and culture in the construction of Australian national identity. A series of gang rapes in the early 2000s attracted widespread public outrage and the harshest ever condemnation of acts of sexual violence in Australian history. Linked to these events, in December 2005 a series of riots at the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla led to further questioning of ethnic relations and the state of Australian multiculturalism within media and political discourses. While many of the responses to the gang rapes and the Cronulla riots have drawn on the language of 'women's rights', a closer look at the discourses suggests a different story. Responses to the gang rapes have often characterised the attacks as being against the Australian community, rather than against individual women. It is also interesting to contrast the outrage surrounding the gang rapes with the general silence regarding the increased racist violence committed against Muslim women in recent times. Furthermore, the linking of the gang rapes with a particular religious/ethnic community can be contrasted with the discourses on the alleged gang rapes involving Australian sporting teams, such as the Bulldogs and more recently the Wests Tigers. Finally the manner in which the events of Cronulla have been recast and linked back to the 'threat' posed by young Muslim/Lebanese/Middle Eastern men to Australian women suggests that ethnicity and gender both play an important and mutually reinforcing role in the construction of Australian national identity.

Purpose – the purpose of this article was to present the main features of classical rhetoric and to reveal their transformations, focusing, in particular, on Aristotle's theory of categories of persuasion, an important technique of rhetoric applied in modern public discourse. Design/methodology/approach – the paper is based on scientific literature analysis and comparative analysis of different types of public speeches from ancient times to the present day. Findings – the final thesis of this article states that, although the requirements for public speech have been modified throughout history, the ability to reach rhetorical persuasion depends on the capacity to speak under the canons of classical rhetoric. Moreover, the most effective communication strategy is based on the synthesis of logos, ethos and pathos categories and their application in modern public discourse. Practical implications – the paper reveals several practical implications important for leadership development. Ethical and effective eloquence is the key to leadership, encouraging young members of contemporary society to be equally responsible for preserving common values and overcoming global issues. The modern public discourse demonstrates an obvious tendency towards opposition in speaking and acting processes. This situation is conditioned by an obvious lack of synthesis of the logos, ethos and pathos categories in daily rhetoric activities. Although it is common to speak eloquently and convincingly, spoken words do not always match the actions taken, particularly in political discourse. Therefore, rhetoric values, such as res non verba taken from Antiquity, the cradle of European culture, ought to be included in the education and development system of future leaders. Research limitations/implications – the speakers selected for the scope of this review differ in terms of their intentions, purposes, and types of speeches, i.e. some are informative, while others are emotional or appealing. The difference in structure and type of public speeches limits the scope of the analysis. Moreover, an additional factor of distinct variables has to be taken in consideration analyzing modern public discourse, namely historical period, culture, age, religion, gender and occupation, and, last but not least, the circumstances of a public speech which can all have a negative impact on the evaluation of paper making the analysis superficial and incomplete. Originality/Value – within the great variety of rhetoric theories and conventions, some have been modified over time, although the fundamental ones remain unchanged to this day. This has not, however, reduced the significance of public speaking quite on the contrary public speaking has become a daily activity in everyone's life. Therefore, Aristotle's theory of rhetorical categories is an important approach to every public speaker and the most effective strategy leading to rhetorical persuasion. Moreover, the dissemination of rhetoric is promoted by a significant growth of communication throughout the world. Furthermore, stylistics, structural poetics, text linguistics, logic, advertising theory, pedagogy, psychology and other sciences are also based on the research of classical rhetorical traditions and transformations. By comparison, in the context of cultural integration, eloquence and the ability to communicate has become particularly important in social, political, educational or entrepreneurship activities.