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.

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.

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.

Den här uppsatsen är en diskursteoretisk analys av debattören Johan Norbergs författarskap, med ett i stora drag enbart deskriptivt syfte som ämnar på ett strukturerat vis presentera det bakomliggande meningarna i Norbergs författarskap som ett uttryck för en politisk diskurs och beskriva dem i enighet med de teorier för diskursers formerande av Laclau och Mouffe som presenteras i uppsatsens teori och metodkapitel. Uppsatsens frågeställningar handlar om att identifiera de nodalpunkter och ekvivalenskedjor som utför centrala delar av Norbergs diskurs, vilket också görs i resultatdelen. I den mån uppsatsen går utöver en deskriptiv ansats så handlar det om att utifrån en ytlig analys av tidigare forskning kring John Lockes tyckande, jämföra Norberg med detta för att se i vilken mån Norbergs påstående om sig själv som en klassisk liberal överensstämmer med resultaten av analysen. De nodalpunkter som identifieras under analysen är frihet, kapitalism, globalisering och välstånd tillsammans med förklarande ekvivalenser. Resultaten tyder också på att Norbergs beskrivning av sig själv som en klassisk liberal är riktig även om det framkommer en del ganska stora avvikelser från Lockes synsätt..

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.

Youth unemployement in Sweden is at an all-time high, a fifth of all university and college students live in poverty and the number of young on welfare is increasing. This study attempts to answer the question of how youth deprivation has been made possible as a consequence of political action, focusing on youth unemployment.I critically examine the role of the Swedish government, the Swedish Labour Organisation (LO), and the various government departments through text analysis, in order to answer the question of how the current discourse on youth position in the labor market. Because youth unemployment is not an isolated phenomena the analysis covers several policy areas, such as education policy, labor market regulation and housing policy. I use discourse theories drawn from Laclau and Mouffe to expose how language is used as an instrument of political power.I conclude that the current situation is a result of policy choices where the young have fallen behind due to lack of political organization. Their situation is not problematized to the required degree and is often explained on an individual level rather than on a structural level..

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 environmental situation is becoming increasingly critical. The energy sector and other industries have a big impact on our climate and the public is raising their voice for companies to admit their responsibility towards the environment and society. Companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and happily disclose their responsible performance in annual reports. But what messages are they conveying in their CSR-reporting, and what attitudes towards CSR can be found underneath the explicit content? The aim of this study is to discover which discourses exist in CSR-reports from Swedish energy companies, and how these discourses operate.

Denna studie fokuserar på yrkeskunnandet på Barn - och fritidsprogrammet, ett av gymnasieskolansyrkesprogram. Programmet utbildar till yrken inom pedagogiska och sociala yrkesområden samtinom fritids- och friskvårdssektorn och har yrkesutgångar som väktare, personlig assistent,elevassistent, personlig tränare, barnskötare och personal inom boende för personer medfunktionsnedsättning. Eleverna uppmanas att skaffa sig både en yrkesexamen ochhögskolebehörighet.Inom en socialkonstruktionistisk ram och med en diskursteoretisk ansats studeras huryrkeskunnande konstrueras. Studiens empiri utgörs av styrdokument, informationsmaterial ochgymnasieskolors hemsidor. Syftet med studien är att öka förståelsen för yrkeskunnandet på nyaBarn - och fritidsprogrammet.

The purpose with this work is to describe the language that is built around the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in Sweden. Our questions are: What does the professional field look like; who writes, about what and for which kind of readers? How do they describe the expressions and the upcoming of CFS? For which reasons can CFS be considered as a medical diagnosis/illness? How can CFS be understood from a social perspective? Our theoretical starting point is a social constructive theory and also Karin Johannisson's theory about medicalization and Foucault?s theory about power. We have from a literature-exposition of Swedish articles from 1989 to 2006, done a social constructive discourse analysis with help from Laclau & Mouffe's discourse theory, and Fairclough's model of social practices. In our textual analysis we found three dominating discourses: A medical discourse, a social/cultural discourse and a general/popular discourse.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka och belysa de normer kring femininitet som modemagasinet ELLE förmedlar genom text och bild. Genom kritisk diskursanalys av text och semiotisk bildanalys av annonser ämnar vi belysa hur tidningen konstruerar kön ur ett genusperspektiv. Vi har använt oss av tre metoder för att studera detta, kvantitativ innehållsanalys, kritisk diskursanalys och semiotisk bildanalys. För att analysera vårt resultat har vi använd oss av fyra olika teorier; Laclau och Mouffe?s diskursteori, Yvonne Hirdmans genussystem, Elwin-Nowak & Thomsson?s Att göra kön samt Judith Butlers modell om den heterosexuella matrisen.

The focus of this study is the ways in which the discourses of the three largest right-wing populist parties in Scandinavia ? Danish Dansk Folkeparti, Norwegian Fremskrittspartiet and Swedish Sverigedemokraterna ? are articulated and on defining which individuals they include and exclude. The discourses of the three parties are compared and analyzed to determine whether they constitute specific nationalist and culturally racist discourses. The problem is addressed by applying a social constructivist theory of nationalism and cultural racism, and specifically the binary opposition ?we? and ?them?, on a material consisting of the respective parties? member magazines from 2007.

I denna studie analyseras den ryska officiella diskursen om Tjetjenienkonflikten under perioden efter Beslandådet 2004. Det ena syftet med studien är att undersöka hur de tjetjenska separatisterna framställs i diskursen. Det andra syftet är att analysera vilken roll framställningen av separatisterna samt begreppet "kriget mot terrorismen" spelar i den ryska politiken och i agerandet i Tjetjenienfrågan efter Beslandådet. I analysen används Laclaus och Mouffes diskursteori samt teorin om den Andra. Resultaten visar att de tjetjenska separatisterna framställs som "internationella terrorister" i diskursen och konstrueras som de Andra i förhållande till det ryska folket.

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..