Board of Examiners:

VALLE MURGA TERESA DEL (Chairperson)
AZURMENDI OTAEGUI JOSE LORENZO (Member)
MAJUELO GIL EMILIO IGNACIO (Member)
TORREALDAI NABEA JOAN MARI (Member)
ZABALETA URKIOLA JOSE IGNACIO (Secretary)

Descriptors:

POLITICAL SCIENCE
SOCIAL CONFLICTS
PUBLIC OPINION
PRESS
POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

Summary:

The PhD thesis by Miren Arantza Gutierrez Paz, "Institutional and pro-independence discourse in Basque patriotism. Discourse about independence, self-determination and autonomy in the daily newspapers Egin and Deia, with regard to the Constitution and the Statute of Gernika" - whose original title in Euskara is "Diskurtso instituzionala eta independista euskal abertzaletasunean. Independentzia, autodeterminazio eta autonomiari buruzko diskurtsoak EGIN eta DEIA egunkarietan, Konstituzioaren eta Gernikako Estatutuaren aurrean" - is a work involving the analysis of articles expressing opinions published in both daily newspapers during the referendum campaigns of the Constitution in 1978 and of the Basque Statute in 1979.  The research method used - qualitative and symptomatic - is both powerful and rigorous, and is also backed up by the theory of the "event" put forward by Alain Badiou, managing to infer the most important features of radical and moderate nationalist discourse during those two periods. It is even noted that those features that were established at the time either persist or have re-emerged in current discourse.