This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..

Through a discourse theoretical apparatus, this study examines Sweden's national curriculum, which is constructed for primary schools, pre-school class and leisure time classes. The study also examines the syllabus in physical education and the supplied comment material to the syllabus, the above mentioned material all valid from 1 July 2011. Using cultural researcher Marianne Winther Jørgensen's and communication researcher Louise Phillips interpretation of the political theorists Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's discourse theory, the study identifies several discourses in the new curriculums. The analysis shows that the curriculums writers construct their expectations through a rhetoric that is perceived as instructional and descriptive. The analysis identified eight discourses, woven into three "orders of discourse", the body, health and physical education.

"Race" is often used as a marker to exclude people from a society. What is interesting is not so much what terms that are used to describe people, but by what meaning they are associated with. For this thesis articles published in daily magazines have been the material used. An argument driven in the essay is that identity and oppression is not constituted from one subject position, but from several, such as class, sexuality and gender. The first question posed is how "race" is constituted through discourses throughout the subject positions class, sexuality and gender.

This study treats cultural policy, it´s view of the value of literature, and how this view varies within different fields of cultural policy. The aim of the essay is to find different competing approaches through an investigation of texts from three different fields within cultural policy. The fields investigated are: The publishing subsidy of the National Council for Cultural Affairs, which values above all quality literature. En bok för alla, concentrates on spreading quality literature to new groups in society. Centrum för lättläst, which values that the contents of a text are successfully delivered to, and understood by, the reader.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate changes within four discourses identified in the curriculum material of the Swedish library education in Borås Bibliotekarielinjen dating from 1977 and 1985 and its successor Library and Information Science Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap dating from 1995, 1999. My method used is a text analytic method primarily derived from the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, yet with addition of tools from the critical discourse analysis of Fairclough. By identifying three floating signifiers within the material, i.e information, library, and librarian, and thereafter identifying their fixation, a pattern of resemblance and diversity in the fixating signs appeared between different courses of the curriculum dating from 1999. Hence I could establish an order of discourse consisting of four library discourses, a knowledge organisation discourse, a user discourse, a society discourse and a management discourse. Using this discursive order as a pattern, I could trace these four discourses back in time within the material dating from 1995, 1985 and 1977.

In august 2006 the Swedish government official report (SOU) about the structural discrimination was published and caused a lot of debate in the media. This paper is about the report as such, as much as the academic quarrel it caused in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. My aim is to explore why the report is so provocative and what the debate actually is about. I use discourse analysis both as a method and theoretical framework, inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Using this methodology I explore which discourses that are articulated.

Given the possibility that the world, as we know it, is a consequence of human interaction and verbal communication our understanding of the world can be seen as contingent rather than essentially given. Conceptions such as "entrepreneur", "woman" and "man" can then be understood as socially constructed subjects. Departing from poststructural and social constructionist perspectives I will examine medial representation of women and men as entrepreneurs. My main purpose is to examine how the entrepreneur is constructed as a discursive subject in the journal Eget Företag. Drawing upon Ernesto Laclau´s and Chantal Mouffe´s Discourse Theory and the poststructuralist feminist theoretical perspective of Judith Butler I will discuss both the construction of the entrepreneur as well as the more explicit question; is gender significant for the construction of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship in Eget Företag? In this study I come to the conclusion that the discourse of entrepreneurship, as well as the journalistic discourse, draws upon discourses of femininity and masculinity but also upon discourses of ethnicity.

The bachelor thesis examines conceptions behind the Swedish public librarian?s opinions of the public library as a meeting place. The study uses the critical discourse analysis, developed by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, to analyze a focus group interview. The discourse analysis identifies four themes in the empirical material: the imagined arena of the meeting place, the behaviour in the meeting place, the meeting place?s librarian and the polemic against the meeting place.

AbstractOne aim of this thesis, has been to explore how discursive frames are constructed, frames to relate to, compare with, and therefore be part in shaping political subjects. The other aim has been connected with a more empirical platform, where I wanted to discover how these frames are established and structured discursively within a political organization, among its members; in this case with a foucs on the Swedish social democracy and its former leader Olof Palme. The thesis starts with a theoretical presentation and discussion, where focus is on the concepts of ideology, discourse theory in the form of Laclau and Mouffe, and narrative theory. The concepts will be presented and discussed, and also related to the other concepts to see their theoretical potential, both ontologically and epistemologically. Finally the theoretical rudiment is linked and analyzed with the empirical material.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to identify discourses within the school library field and to analyse which professional identities the discourses result in for school librarians. The empirical data consist of 71 articles from Swedish journals concerning school libraries and school librarians, between the years 2000-2003. The theory and method used is a discourse analysis which is inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. This form of discourse analysis was chosen since it was useful when identity was the focus of study. The analysis is accomplished in three steps.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine and analyze what discourses about children that can be found in three Swedish culture publications, and also to identify the different social roles that are attributed to children in these publications. The theoretical and methodological background is discourse theory, as described by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Additional theory used is social constructionism and Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse theory. Three questions are asked: What discourse/s can be found in these publications? What do these discourses tell us about the view on children within the library domain? What social roles are attributed to the children in the texts and what consequences do these have for the power configuration between children and adults? Furthermore there is a discussion concerning what effects these discourses might have on the direct and indirect reception of children in the library.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to deepen the understandingof how discourses on reading are manifested in Swedishdaily press 2007-2010. The empirical material is based on76 articles from four national newspapers. The questionsasked are: what categorizations emerge on reading; whatpossible themes can be discerned; which discourses onreading appear in newspapers and how are these defined;and what consequences may the discourses have?The study examines how reading is described and how perceptionsand images of reading emerge and the factors affectingthis, through critical Discourse Analyse according toErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.

Should libraries first and foremost be a source of free informationwhere the citizens can find whatever information they want, or dothe librarians have a responsibility for what kind of works theypresent to people on their shelves? A wild debate broke out inSwedish media in September 2012, after the artistic leader ofKulturhuset in Stockholm; Behrang Miri decided to weed out allthe Tintin albums from the children´s library Tiotretton. Hewanted to start a debate on stereotypes in children´s fiction, andwhat damage they do to children who face them. The purpose ofthe thesis is to carry out a discourse analysis of this media debate,and to identify the different views that are expressed on thedemocratic mission of the libraries, what media they shouldpresent. The method and theory is based on the discourse theory ofErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and their concepts are used toarrange the analysis around certain themes that build up twodifferent discourses; ?Freedom of information discourse? and the?Weeding out discourse?.The two main questions are: What views of the public librariesselection of works are expressed in the Tintin debate in Tiotretton,and how do the views relate to each other? What concepts arespecific for the debate, and what meanings do they get in thesedifferent views?In the concluding chapter I discuss which consequences theseopposing opinions can have for the future selection processes ofthe library..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how librarians talk about users in social media. Using a method of discourse analysis based on Ernesto Laclau?s and Chantal Mouffe?s theoretical concepts it seeks to answer the following questions: How do librarians describe and comment on users in social media? In which contexts do librarians talk about users in social media? Which ideas of the relationship between the librarians and the users do the user discourses present?The study focuses on a Facebook page called ?Arga Bibliotekstanten? (The Angry Library Lady) and all its posts and comments during the period of January to June 2013. This is an ?open? page available for anyone to follow; at the time of the study it had approximately 1800 ?followers? and 4000 ?friends?, both librarians and users.The results show that librarians talk about the users in a variety of ways, but mainly concerning money, behavior and task.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the discourses aboutthe future of Malmö City Library expressed by the chief librariansSven Nilsson and Elsebeth Tank. Furthermore, our intention is tostudy the relation between the two. The questions posed in thestudy are: how does chief librarian Sven Nilsson express the futureof Malmö public library between 1989-1997? How does chieflibrarian Elsebeth Tank express the future of Malmö City Librarybetween 2008-2010? How does Sven Nilsson?s and ElsebethTank?s thoughts and visions of the future correlate?Our theoretical and methodical building ground is in the discourseanalytical field, with Ernesto Laclau?s and Chantal Mouffe?stheories about discourse and society, as startingpoint.