Magda Serwadczak

• Doctoral defence: 17 January 2025, 1 p.m.
  
• VUB Campus Etterbeek, I.0.01
• Supervisors: Rik Vosters (VUB) and Mieke Vandenbroucke (UAntwerp)
• ​ Register by emailing magda.serwadczak@vub.be
  

Abstract

The transcription of spoken language into written records is a common practice in institutional record-keeping. In criminal cases, spoken statements delivered by witnesses and suspects are committed to paper by law enforcement officers and courtroom officials, and are subsequently used as part of bureaucratic routines. However, a growing body of scholarly examinations highlights that this transcription process substantialy alters the original oral narratives, raising questions about the accuracy of written institutional records in reflecting prior spoken communication.

This dissertation examines the relationship between speech and writing in 18th- and 19th-century criminal records from Bruges, Belgium. These sources are particularly promising to historical, socially oriented linguistic research, as they could potentially offer novel insights into linguistic behavior of a wide cross-section of the Early Modern and Late Modern Flemish society. Employing an integrative methodological paradigm grounded in historical sociolinguistics and historical pragmatics, the study combines large-scale quantitative corpus analysis with more fine-grained, discourse-analytic approaches. Four focus areas, corresponding to four empirical case studies, address key challenges in the transcription of speech into writing within the formalized context of criminal procedures. The first case study uses the linguistic markers of orality and literacy to determine how (conceptually) spoken or written the texts in the corpus are, and if linguistic features associated with spoken language are entirely filtered out by the transcription process. In the second case study, the processes of entextualization are examined, by comparing multiple depositions delivered by the same speaker at different stages of the case’s proceedings. The findings shed more light on the transformations occurring in deponents’ narratives as they travel across the legal procedure. The third case study focuses on the different strategies of speech reporting, exploring the role of the scribe in committing spoken narratives to paper. Finally, the fourth case study delves into the discursive construction of a criminal case in writing, focusing specifically on the role of legal and socio-cultural paradigms in translating what happened in the court into a piece of institutional documentation.

Findings indicate that historical criminal records are fundamentally shaped by the institutional context in which they were produced, reflecting contemporaneous bureaucratic practices more than actual speech events. Nevertheless, they offer critical insights into past institutional communication and the processes that shaped administrative record-keeping. This research underscores the utility of such documents for historical sociolinguistic and pragmatic studies, despite their inherent limitations in capturing spoken interactions.

Emilio Pedro Vivó Capdevila

• Doctoral defence: 3 February 2025, 4 p.m.
  
• W. Elsschotzaal, Hof van Liere
• Supervisors: Diana Arbaiza and Rocío Ortuño
• ​Register: emilio.vivocapdevila@uantwerpen.be

Abstract

This thesis analyzes ten literary works about Equatorial Guinea and the Philippines from the early Francoist period (1939–1959). These works span six literary genres: travel novels, missionary novels, essays, novels inspired by the colonial wars around 1898, plantation novels, and biographies. Each chapter compares two works per genre, analyzing one work from each region. The study highlights shared themes, contrasting yet complementary elements in the representations of both territories, and examines the colonial ideologies conveyed in relation to gender, race, and nation.

The thesis argues that the representation of both Equatorial Guinea and the Philippines in contemporary Spanish literature shows notable similarities despite the differing relationships between the Francoist regime and each territory (while Equatorial Guinea remained a Spanish colony, the Philippines gained independence from the U.S. in 1946). The analysis suggests that Francoism revived 19th-century racial ideologies and employed an idealized portrayal of the Spanish colonial past in the Philippines as evidence of Spain’s benevolent civilizing mission in Africa and the necessary unity between Church and State in the metropole. The thesis contends that Spain’s historical relationship with the Philippines and the cultural legacies of its Spanish colonization deeply influenced both Francoist policy in Equatorial Guinea and the broader framework of Spanish colonial discourse.

Although the Francoist regime avoided overtly racist rhetoric toward the Philippines and portrayed it as a more civilized, model Hispanic nation, stereotypes and literary genres from the colonial period were still reproduced, particularly in discussions of non-Catholic inhabitants of the archipelago or the Philippine War of Independence. In contrast, the population of Equatorial Guinea was depicted as racially inferior and reliant on “elevation” through Spanish colonialism. This “elevation” was presented as similar to what had supposedly occurred with Spanish-speaking Filipinos, but the possibility and timing of this acculturation—and how the metropole should respond to it—remained subjects of debate.

The thesis concludes that, despite its claims of exceptionalism, the Francoist regime heavily relied on European colonial ideologies, adapting them to its symbolic vision of Spain’s imperial past. This resulted in a Eurocentric civilizational hierarchy, with fascist and Catholic Spaniards at the top and Africans and “unacculturated” Filipinos at the bottom. Furthermore, this thesis shows that, by allowing mimetic subjects (colonized elites) to occupy higher positions within this hierarchy, Francoist Spain created an ambivalent narrative that legitimized both its colonization of Africa and its diplomatic and cultural ties with former Spanish colonies.