On the third of August 2002, in the middle of the ongoing Swedish election campaign, Lars Leijonborg beeing the leader of Folkpartiet (the Peoples Party) presented the partys new intergration programme for foreign nationals. One of the proposals was to instigate a language test for all immigrants seeking to obtain Swedish citizenship. This thesis addresses the medial debate that followed the proposal in the daily press. Using discourse analysis and postcolonial theory this thesis looks into the fact that there were not unity in the wake that followed the language test proposal resulting in one medial and one popular discourse. The newspapers investigated were largely negative in their tone, whereas on the opinion pages, the view of the people seemed much more positively inclined.

The purpose with this essay has been to describe and understand why youth community service became a penalty in Sweden. The political discourse in which youth community service was established has been analyzed with Laclau & Mouffe´s discourse theory. A social constructivist onset and a discourse analysis were the methodological tools of the essay. The result is two folded. Youth community service was created to strengthen the constitutional state, combined with high beliefs of the social services competence.

This thesis discusses the attitudes versus methadone assisted rehabilitation ad modum Dole Nyswander in Sweden during the period 1972-2004. This is done by means of a Foucault inspired discourse analysis applied on the directions issued by the Board of Health and Social Affairs. The context in which these directions were created is also described, in which scientific achievements on methadone treatments during the period, and the main actors struggling to establish and define the discourse on narcotics and narcomania, are juxtaposed to the effects of the work of the Board. It is stated that the directions were largely affected not by scientific results and knowledge on methadone, but by the symbolic connotations of narcotics in Sweden established in the discourse already in the mid 1960´s. Also during the end of the studied period, after the occurence of AIDS had begun making methadone more broadly accepted, the findings of this thesis showed that the legacy of the 1970´s symtomtheory and its severe antagonism against methadone, was still present, in effect, in the discourse around methadone and subutex assisted rehabilitation, and so in the directions issued by the Board of Health and Social Affairs..

This paper examines the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladets conception of the phenomenon ADHD. The essay regards the language that is used (and the values reflected in it) as a sort of mirror where the public opinion is expressed, established and put forward. Being such a constructive factor in the creation of the phenomenon, the language is considered of big importance and therefore this essay is using a discourse-analytic approach to the problem.The aim of the essay is to achieve a discourse-analytic understanding of Aftonbladets ADHD publications. This paper reaches the conclusion that in Aftonbladet, ADHD is put forward as something extraordinary, not normal and unusual, which results in the subject-positions ?Unwanted?, ?Disabled? and ?Function beneficial?.

Purpose/Aim: To examine whether or not there is such a thing as bloggbullying, and if so, how this manifests itself among female bloggers.Material/Method: To analyze the material, which consists of comments made on a total of 75 posts made on three different blogs, a quantitative method as well as a qualitative critical discourse analysis was used.Main result: Several similarities between Anatol Pikas definition of bullying and the results were found, and the conclusion is that there is such a thing as bloggbullying..

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 present Equality Project in the Swedish preschool has been studied according to its view on sex and equality. The purpose was to find out how the Equality Project is described, interpreted and implemented.The research questions focused the central concepts sex (gender identity, gender roles and gender patterns) and equality in the political level, the educational level and the executing level of the Equality Project. From each level some central texts were chosen and analysed.The results indicated that equality is interpreted as connected to an absence of gender patterns and gender roles. The concept of gender identity is differently understood in the different texts. The normative focus and the lack of psychology in the Equality Project are discussed..

The purpose of this study was to do a narrative survey of the discussion about violence in partner relationships that is held in research literature. The question at issue was: How do research literature discuss violence in partner relationships, with focus on heterosexual relationships? The eight primary documents that have been chosen are written by researchers, professional therapists, National Counsil for Women's protection (Nationellt Råd för Kvinnofrid, NRK) and Swedish Government Official Report (Statens Offentliga Utredningar, SOU). To investigate the theories, discover the similarities and differences between them and how they can complement each other, the documents statements has been analyzed with a dialectic-hermeneutic approach and social constructionism and discourse theory.The research findings showed that the gender perspective theory, the psychodynamic theory and the social psychology theory have a few things in common, but that they on the whole are different and contradict each other. The gender perspective theory dominates the discussion but needs to be combined with the other theories to give a more all-embracing understanding.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate and analyse how the concept of lifelong learning is expressed in political documents concerning public libraries and education and how it can be related to earlier concepts of education within the discourse of public libraries. Focus is the official approach to the concept of lifelong learning and public library. The documents examined contain the political aims for education and culture policy on a national and local level. The theories used in the study concern the background and meaning of the concept of lifelong learning, they describe public libraries and their earlier perspectives of education and they also give a picture of practices of governing within the framework of public libraries. The purpose is to see how the speech in the documents is reflected in discourses of society and public library.

The focus of this thesis is upon how conceptions of globalization is created by the labour-organizations Lands-organisationen (LO) and Svenskt Näringsliv. It is possible to discern two arguments for globalization in the texts, economy and democracy, and it is around these that the discourses of globalization are being constructed. Economy turns into a basic logic in the discourses of globalization. How to perceive the role of economy, as positive or negative, differs. Still, there is an agreement of the influence of economy.

The purpose of this study has been to examine how the image of the gambler is described by studying a report published by Folkhälsoinstituet [FHI] and a number of chosen articles from the Swedish Evening Press. Discourse theory has been used both as theory, together with social constructionism, and as a research method. The main conclusions of the study are that three different discourses can be identified: the normal gambler, the professional gambler and the problem gambler. The image of the problem gambler is described as a deviant and problematic minority characterized by loss of control, irrational thoughts and dissociative behaviour. The construction of the problem gambler fills three possible purposes for the state: As a solvable problem to handle criticism against negative consequences of gambling, as an argument to avoid competition on the market and as an individual characterized by loss of control in order to legitimize and make the construction of the normal gambler possible..

Thesis purpose: The purpose of the master thesis is to analyse the battle of meaning creation regarding the notion of smoking and to reveal the production of unequal power relations. The battle is fought by different stakeholders through means of language and the study focuses on the tobacco industry in Germany. Methodology: A critical discourse analysis is applied with a qualitative research strategy. Our data collection was inspired by grounded theory and is limited in scope through a relevant case within the context of smoking in Germany. Empirical data is collected by means of an internet based document study of publicly available texts.

This thesis analyzes the media debates generated by the election of Omar Mustafa to the board of the social democratic party, and the appointment of the conservative Minister of Labour, Elisabeth Svantesson. More specifically, the aim is to analyze newspaper material through a discourse analyze, to see if and how religious affiliation effects the possibilities to act as a political representative. Theories of othering and intersectionality serve as theoretical points of departure. Further, chains of equivalence from Laclau and Mouffe?s discourse theory are used to study how categories as ?us? and ?the other? are constructed in the material, and how these processes of categorization relate to the intersection of religion, gender and ethnicity.

This is a qualitative study designed to investigate how professional support group leaders talk about their role as supervisor of support groups for children and adolescents with problematic home situations. We also examine how these supervisors talk about the method they use and how they talk about the individual child. We have chosen critical discourse analysis to help us explore if there are different ways to talk about these territories. Our questions are:How does the support group leader talk about his role?How does the support group leader talk about the method?How does the support group leader talk about the individual child?The theories we have chosen to use in the analysis of our material is Aaron Antonovsky's Sense of Coherence and social constructivism.

A possible "discursive turn" is believed to have been observed within Swedish political science in later years. The purpose of this study is to examine whether or not such a turn has actually taken place, in order to further determine if a resulting theoretical homogeneity poses a risk to the ability of Swedish political science to identify and respond to its full width of possible research problems, and to determine its perspectives on both these problems and the results that are later communicated to the general society. To do so, the study poses the following primary research question:"Has a discursive turn occurred within Swedish political science?"This question is then broken down into two specified research questions."Has discourse analysis become a more common approach for doctoral dissertations in political science during the period of 2000-2013?""Have ideas corresponding with discourse theory become more common within doctoral dissertations in political science that are not pure discourse analyses during the period of 2000-2013?"These questions are then answered by examining all known 406 doctoral dissertations in political science published in Sweden during the 21st century up until (and including) the year of 2013, using two forms of content analysis, one manual and one computer-assisted. The study finds no clear evidence of a discursive turn in Swedish political science since the turn of the century.