This study has its background in the debate about religion and the existence of God, which has been an ongoing issue throughout the Western cultural tradition. Today´s information society has been an impact on the increasing interest for this subject. The essay?s main task is to accomplish a rhetorical analysis of two books, Illusionen om Gud (2008) by atheist Richard Dawkins and Guds dödgrävare (2010) by Christian John Lennox, in order to investigate the authors? use of rhetorical strategies to influence their audience. The texts are studied using a qualitative approach with the theoretical basis of some well-defined rhetorical variables: ethical, logical and pathetic means of persuasion, propaganda, and the important factor that a message always is presented in a certain context in which the recipients both have their own values and subjects to general truths and common frames of reference.

Based on the concept of rhetorical situation, the purpose of this study is to compare and describe the three Socialist leader's May Day speech from the years 1954, 1978 and 2011. The results of the analysis showed that there is a big difference in how the leaders chooses to appeal to the rhetorical audience. Erlander, 1954, never appealed directly to his audience which Palme, 1978, did both initially as repeatedly throughout his speech. Juholt, 2011, has a personal and frequent appeal which is repeated throughout his speech, which is interpreted as a sign of the intimization of the public language. It proved difficult to discuss the Socialist rhetoric as one unified form.

This essay examines the epideictic genre by using qualitative method to analyze acceptance speeches from the Swedish Grammy awards. These speeches and their speakers are often described as rhetorically mediocre and there seems to be a notion within the music community that an acceptance speech is personal and without deeper meaning. From a functionalistic perspective on genre, these speeches can be seen as working together with other genres that carry information about the winners. Why would skilled performers who know how to entertain an audience choose to repeat rhetorical mistakes? This essay uses different perspectives on rhetorical situation and genre as well as multimodal analysis of verbal- and nonverbal communication, to argue that these particular speeches in this particular situation come with their own set of expectations and values that the speakers have to acknowledge if they are to meet the epideictic purpose: To unite the audience around common values and create an enjoyable collective memory.

In order to be able to change, to maintain competitiveness as a company in a world where rapid changes is part of the daily life, it is crucial to have knowledge and methods in how to change. One method, originally developed in Finland, is the Change Laboratory. This method is said to be efficient, not only concerning change aspects but also learning, since change and learning in this method is intertwined. This Master Thesis (20p.) tells about the process of conducting a Change Laboratory with a Swedish high-tech company and analyses factors in the process that makes change possible..

Aim: The nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, raised global criticism against nuclear power. In Sweden, the criticism has not been very visible and the government now allows a renewal of the nuclear power plants. The purpose with the study is to have a closer look on how Swedes in position of power motivate their positive attitude to nuclear power and how they conduct themselves to each other and to their opponents. The rhetorical perspective will be in focus for the analysing.Method: Four different artifacts represented by Swedes in position of power having a positiveattitude to nuclear power were chosen. Three rhetorical theories (the rhetorical arena, stasis andethos, pathos and logos) were used with the research question in focus.Result & Conclusions: The analyses resulted in conclusions about the strategies used by the participants such as: the importance of contexts, meaning for example that the greenhouse effect legitimizes nuclear power as a source of energy with important benefits.

Aim: The aim of this study is to describe which messages and by which rhetorical means were communicated in political TV-advertisement in Finland and Sweden. The study also aims to analyze how the rhetorical choices were influenced by the political and social context in these countries.Material: Two TV-commercials from the latest parliamentary elections in each country were chosen. The leading left-wing and right-wing parties were chosen from each country.Theoretical perspective: This study is based on theories on political parties? vote maximization and the development of the modern electoral campaign.Methodology: The method used in this study is rhetorical analysis.Results: All commercials had similar themes and were characterized by a low level of conflict. This is related to the common Nordic context in the two countries.

Aim: The purpose of this paper is to see if there has been a change over time in the performance and in the spoken word of the Swedish cooking programs. By testing the theory of intimization on the cooking programs I get the opportunity to see if the border between the private and the public have become clearer or more difficult to notice, and if the new language, the informal language as intimization entails, has been used in Swedish cooking programs since the 70s until today, or if there´s ever been a formal language in Swedish programs? Method/Material: I'm using a rhetorical approach that includes a three-step analysis. Analysing the context, means to persuade and performance. The empirical material I intend to analyze is Swedish cooking programs from the 70s until today, 2010.

As consumers we want to know from whom we buy, what we buy and the impact the company has on our planet. In recent years there been an increasing number of scandals concerning child labour, dangerous chemicals and falsely labelled meat. A good way for companies to communicate their environmental efforts is to establish a sustainability report, where they describe their work and their impact on our environment. By concentrating on H&M?s sustainability report, as well as conducting a rhetorical analysis, we have been able to focus on the following research questions:  ? Why do companies establish CSR reports? ? How do companies gain legitimacy through their rhetorical choices? ? How do companies try to influence recipients? attitudes to the company? We begin by studying the context, which is of importance when using a rhetorical method and thereby attempt to understand in what situation the text is created.

A politician on the peak of his career suddenly sees himself in the middle of not one or two, but five different crisis, that demand a fitting response and a well planned crisis management strategy. While focusing on ethos and its development, the following paper analyses the communicative strategies used by Germany's ex-minister of defense, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Within his one and a half year tenure he had to handle continuing accusations against policy and character. Guttenberg, who in many eyes was seen as Germany's most popular politician and whose ethos, therefore, prior to the first crisis could be described as strong, is loosing his trustworthiness among the military and other politicians the longer each crisis continues.The purpose of this study is to identify the communicative pattern of Mr. Guttenberg, which in the end lead to his resignation, while his popularity continues to be strong.

The purpose of this essay is to study how feminists portray themselves and their opinions about gender issues and other political matters in popular feminist blogs. The blogs that are studied are Lady Dahmer, Fanny Åström, Hanapee and Genusfolket. The overall essay questions are: How does the feminist bloggers present themselves? Which subjects are discussed in the feminist blogs? Which rhetorical devices does the feminist bloggers use? The theories that are used to answer the essay questions are the four spheres where there are inequality between the sexes, theories about third wave feminism, the rhetorical concepts ethos, logos and pathos and the SPADER-model for writing good argumentation. A descriptive method is used to study how the bloggers present themselves, a quantitative content analysis is used to count which subjects the bloggers write about and a qualitative rhetorical text analysis is used to study the rhetorical devices the bloggers use.The result shows that the two bloggers Lady Dahmer and Fanny Åström describe themselves with provocative words while the other blogs have more neutral descriptions.

Changes are occurring in most organizations today and due to the fact that changes often are harder to implement than they seem, it often takes much longer time to implement them than the management have planned. During an organizational change theorist claim that communication between managers and employees is one of the most important things to consider. Therefore, in this essay, our aim is to closer investigate which needs of information and communication co-workers have during a planned organizational change. To collect data, we interviewed five co-workers and one manager who works in an organization which has gone through a major change. Our theoretical framework comprises former research of organizational communication, employee?s needs of communication, change communication and theories of uncertainty during organizational change.

The aim of this paper is to describe the position of the Swedish welfare state within the shaping of a Swedish national identity. This is done through the study of Mångkulturåret 2006, and its rhetorical context. The point of departure is that history is formed continuously in current speech and a text analytical method has been used. Mångkulturåret was issued by the Department of Culture as an extended perspective of Cultural politics. The rhetoric used in the official document Agenda för Mångkultur is analyzed through a comparison with earlier official documents on the field of multiculturalism and integration.

Several theoretical models of change exist concerning attachment, but an integrated view and knowledge of the role separate factors of change play for the individual is lacking. This phenomenon is hereby studied by semi-structured interviews of 20 persons. Change and factors of change are examined statistically with affectregulation as measure of attachment. The results show that these individuals´ changes are small and mostly towards secure attachment. Metacognition is related to greater change towards secure attachment.

In order to convince, one must know which arguments are most suitable for the specific situation. But even if you think you know how others will react to your arguments, you may be wrong. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to find out a way of examining to what extent informative text take account to the subjective views of their addressees. The theoretical framework is Blitzer's theory of the rhetorical situation, pragmatic theory of speech acts and their presuppositions, Burk´s theory of consubstantiality and phenomenographic theory of subjective perceptions. Methodologically, phenomenography has also been used as a guideline for selecting informants, collecting data and processing the interviews.

Dag Wellander: Meaning ? memory: oblivion. A reading of Birgitta Trotzig?s The mud kings daughter. Master of Arts paper.