Eskilstuna Folkhögskola is located in Munktellstaden in Eskilstuna. The school has two separate buildings with entrances that are difficult to find. By having two separate buildings, and to be in an area where there are rules and guidelines for the area's environment, makes it difficult to guide visitors to the school premises.The purpose of my research was to examine how to guide visitors to the school, and how to increase understanding that the school's various buildings are connected.Through practices such as site analysis, interviews, I found that the guidelines are not adapted to the current situation that is established in the district.Through theory and empirical material I have produced a design proposal to facilitate Wayfinding to Eskilstuna Folkhögskola. This is presented as a landmark and a clarification of the schools entrances and signage..

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reasons a religious minority leader has to convert to a larger religious group and how the leader chooses to communicate this event in certain daily press. In March 2014 the leader and founder of the Christian and charismatic movement ?Livets Ord? (Words of Life), Ulf Ekman, announced his decision converting to the Roman Catholic Church after a 10 year long process of thinking. The communications of Ekman?s linguistic language in the articles are discussed through two discourse analyzing perspective, Laclau & Mouffe?s and Fairclough?s.

Based upon theories founded on social constructionism, and criticism raised against these theories, this study aims to present a more complex perspective on non-heterosexuality from what has earlier been presented in Swedish lesbian, gay, bisexuality and transsexuality research. Fourteen semi-structured interviews with non-heterosexual women were analyzed using a discourse analytic approach. Four discourses about sexuality were described: "definition, preferably as either-or (heterosexual or homo-sexual)", "normality", "sexuality as constant and unchangeable", "sexuality as homogenous". Different ways of relating to and challenging the positions offered through these discourses were discussed. In conclusion, the study discussed which implications these findings have for psychologists working with non-heterosexual women, and how discursive positioning can be understood from within a psychological framework..

This essay examines the theme of blindness in the Gospel of Mark. The two main questions asked are: 1) ?What is Mark?s view on blindness?? and 2) ?How does the Gospel of Mark?s view on blindness inform the current discourse of disability studies and how can we interpret Mark?s view on blindness today?? By the methods of metaphor analysis and character analysis, four passages of the Gospel are studied (Mark 4:10-12; 8:14-21; 22-26; 10:46-52). The analysis concludes that blindness is depicted by the author of the Gospel as a disability which also consist of a lack of cognitive ability and a hopeless state that is in need of healing.  The depiction of blindness in Mark originates out of the authors use of blindness as a metaphor for lack of cognitive ability (Mk 4:12; 8:18) and the lack of characterization of the blind man at Bethsaida (8:22-23). This view on blindness is, in comparison to a modern view, difficult, as it marginalizes persons with blindness as inconsiderate and not fully human.

Social control in different forms has existed in all known societies. This control has taken different shapes and expressions. In older smaller communities there was a collective control among the citizens. In modern societies the state is trying to control the lives of the citizens. These control mechanisms can be seen as both freedom-reducing and freedom inducing depending on which concept of freedom one upholds.

Abstract Heléne Slivka (2013). Kvalitetsarbete ur ett specialpedagogiskt perspektiv ? en fallstudie. (Quality assurance process in the elementary school from a special education perspective ? a case study.) The research This essay investigates the language in the school´s quality assurance documents. An important aspect of this is the way in which language structures and informs how we think about, and work with, students with special needs. Aim The aim of this essay is to problematize how students with special needs are represented in the quality assurance documents of the school. The writer intends to point out how the ways in which the language used to describe students informs governing processes.

This study explores the notion of class and social inequality as expressed in the Swedish election campaign of 2006 and in the reception of the Swedish conservative party as a "worker's party". Inspired by Fairclough's critical discourse analysis I have carried through an investigation of the debate. My sources consists in a collection of articles, mainly leader columns and contributions to the debate, from a selected number of Swedish newspapers.I found that an explicit discussion about class, or use of the concept as such, was largely absent. In cases where the concept occurred it was often used in a purely descriptive sense or dismissed as outdated. Furthermore, I have drawn the conclusion that the traditional understanding of class is being challenged by a discourse which aims at establishing a new understanding of social inequality as lack of paid work.I take my point of departure in the belief that class continues to be one of the most important bases of social inequality.

The aim of this study is to identify and analyze the discourse within a gothic online community and examine how they use significant symbols to create themselves as goths and being part of a community. In order to achive this aim, eleven different forum threads were examined to amalyze how the goths created their significant symbols within the online community and through interaction with each other. The results implies that the discourse within the community describes the goths as either true or false goths and that it is important to maintain this boundary.

The so called democratic deficit and the lack of legitimacy have been at the core of the EU-debate in the last decades. Low turnouts in the elections for the European parliament and disapproval in the ratification processes of the latest changes of the treaties are examples of the citizens lack of confidence for the EU and continuous integration. In Nice 2000 the heads of the member states governments agreed to try to improve the democratic legitimacy in the EU and initiated a public debate aiming at proposals for changes in the decision making processes in the EU. In July 2001 the commission published a white paper with their view. A fundamental presumption in discourse theory is that language and language usage not just is a way to deliver information about ideas and behaviours.

I started this project with the understandning that European hisory has become more important in government documents as a part in a larger European discourse, and that this fact is likely to be reflected in the chools textbooks. Therefore this essay deals with the task of comparing history textbooks over time trying to find changes. Firstly to find out how much space European history is afforded in the textbooks, and secondly how Europe is described and used in the textbooks. In my first task I will use a content analysis and in my second a conceptual analysis. My material consists of eight books and I have three pieces of older educational materials from the years 1949, 1954 and 1962.

This thesis examines the Swedish Democrats relationship to an islamophobic worldview. The party developed from the racist party Bevara Sverige Svenskt (Keep Sweden Swedish) and is today the third largest party in Sweden, which gives them a powerful position in the society. It is therefore important to investigate their view on minorities, and in this case Muslims. In this thesis I examine the Swedish Democrat?s material during the election campaign the years of 2006, 2010 and 2014 using Ernesto Laclau?s and Chantal Mouffe?s discourse theory.

This paper aims to describe and elaborate on a recent discursive change within the new-age movement. Since the seventies and the publishing of speculative popular science books like The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The self-aware universe by Amit Goswami, the idea that quantum physics resonates with spirituality has become the topic of hundreds of books and movies.The quantum-spiritual discourse has three distinct ways to approach quantum physics in its discussion on spirituality: The parallelistic approach which emphasizes the similarities between eastern philosophies and modern physics, the monistic-idealistic approach which tells us that mind is the foundation of matter and the scientific spiritual approach which tries to explain spiritual claims scientifically. In the quantum-spiritual discourse, quantum physical phenomena (e.g. non-locality and entanglement) are being called upon to validate metaphysical statements. The primary assumption of the discourse is that the shift of paradigm due to the establishment of modern physics also is a shift of paradigm of spirituality.With the object to examine the common claims made in the discourse, cross-references between spiritual arguments and facts of quantum physics are being made.

Reaching shared understanding during court hearings is a prerequisite to ensure a fair trial and maintaining legal certainty. Every month between 2,000 and 3,000 court hearings in Sweden make use of interpreters. Interpreter-mediated conversations involve an extra discourse compared to monolingual conversations which increases the risk of misunderstandings.Using methodology of conversation analysis the study explores how bilingualism is expressed during interpreter-mediated court hearings, at which occasions the Spanish-speaking laymen switch to Swedish and what function the codeswitching fulfills. The study identifies patterns in codeswitching and categorizes them into six different types. Furthermore the ideology of monolingualism in court is challenged and the advantages and disadvantages of codeswitching is discussed.The analysis concludes that even though certain types of codeswitching lead to delays in the conversation, the interaction is mostly favored by the Spanish-speaking party understanding some Swedish.

This masters thesis looks at the reception of the beat generation in six given American magazines spanning through the years 1957-1961. The study is basically one of literaty reception. The aim is to see how and if the institution of literature handed the beat generation an identity to go along with their arts. With the use of discourse analysis we have pointed out certain characteristics in the six articles that have been a part of building up an image of the beat generation as a whole. By dividing the result into the two categories social and literary practice we can clearer see what significants were used to create the beat generation.

In 2014, the Swedish leisure-time centres after school became widely criticized on several occasions by school authorities. The cause for its criticism was a reflection of leisure time-centres with lots of untrained staff and a lack of pedagogical aspirations. The conclusion of the criticism was that these leisure-time centres do not fulfil their potential. However, these assessments has only to a limited extent become a part of the public educational discourse in Sweden. This discourse has mainly focused on the decreasing results in the Swedish school, which has caught the attention in the media and ended up on the political agenda.