This study investigates the potential of a rhetorical theory of knowledge to expand beyond its own domain and into political theory, specifically theories of deliberative democracy. Despite the increasing interest in communication in democratic theory in the last decades, the majority of theorists have not turned their interest towards rhetorical science. On the contrary, theorists often regard rhetoric as dangerous and incompatible with the deliberative ideal of reason. The aim of this study is therefore to defend rhetorical science by investigating how the rhetorical theory of knowledge ? as it is presented by Chaïm Perelman and Oldbrecht Tyteca, and further developed by Mats Rosengren and Maria Wolrath Söderberg ? can contribute to the understanding of deliberative democracy.

In this Master's Thesis a Rhetorical analysis is applied to reading suggestions in the database Boktips.net. Boktips.net utilize the Internet for readers advisory by offering public libraries in Sweden to use and participate to its contents. The aim is to examine how library staff writes about literature in Boktips.net. The empirical material is delimited to reading suggestions on fiction for adults. Areas in focus of the analysis are rhetorical context, disposition, style and components from the point of view of content: summary, evaluation on portrayal of characters and setting, narrative, language use, genre and themes, entertainment, insights and external information.

The first ad was published in Sweden 1645. Advertising itself is not a new phenomenon, it's just the conditions that has been changed. Today, advertising is a matter of course in our daily lives, every day we are exposed to thousands of messages that wants to persuade and convince us to consume. In this paper, we have looked into the semiotic and rhetorical tricks that are used for this particular persuasion, and we have investigated whether they have changed in the last 60 years or if the same tricks are still being used today. Our two hypotheses is: A) the rhetorical and semiotic basis of an ad looks the same today as 60 years ago.

This essay is about exploring the rhetorical business negotiation process. The aim has been to find out how skilled salespeople stand out, and what rhetorical means they use to convince the other party. For this study, a qualitative research interview was applied and altogether five vendors in three different industries were interviewed. The fundamental theory of the essay is based on classical rhetoric. From that I have chosen the specific parts that I have found useful to discuss negotiation and sales processes.The results show that there is not a one single rhetorical approach that is essential to convince the other party.

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.

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.

This thesis explores how verbal and nonverbal signs communicate attitudes and the rhetorical functions of such attitudinal signs. Attitudes are regarded as rationalized evaluations of attitudinal objects, and through their manifestation in signs an attitudinal gestalt is communicated. This gestalt is regarded as the audiences perception of the rhetors attitude. It is shown that the attitudinal signs function as ethical, logical and pathetic proofs and that they can create identification between the audience and the rhetor. The signs can have effects on the audiences perception of the attitudinal objects, their perception of the rhetor and influence the social dynamic of the discourse.

Modern societies are generally becoming increasingly capitalist in nature and economies of these societies are thus likely to become more focused on consumer consumption. Advertising plays a vital role in contemporary society where we, as consumers and citizens, are surrounded by it everywhere we look and everywhere we go. This puts pressure on advertisers to become more creative and to explore new ways of marketing their products and services in an already saturated environment. We believe that the added pressure and the already established role of marketing in society make advertisements an interesting and telling object for analysis. This is particularly the case with regards to the concept of selling and marketing products that have qualities that are known to be less than beneficial for our health.This paper analyzes four commercial advertisements marketing beer; a product that we argue has qualities that can be seen as potentially bad for the health of individuals and for societies.

When is it acceptable to make fun of religion, and when does it become disrespectful? On January 7, 2015, the headquarters of the French satirical news paper Charlie Hebdo was subjected to a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 12 staff members, due to the publishing of caricatures picturing the prophet Muhammed. The reactions that followed the attack circled around two perspectives; the importance of freedom of expression and the obligation to show respect for certain institutions and traditions in society. How come the caricatures can elicit such completely different reactions? This is the question that this thesis uses as a starting point for the examination of the subject caricatures and satire.

In this study the book talk is examined as a communicative act with a purpose to convince according to an under-lying intention to promote reading. I follow the book talk?s way from an idea of the book talker (and the library) to the reception of the audience, with the aim to understand how to talk about books in an engaging manner. More specifically, the rhetorical situation and the purpose of a book talk, the performance and the means to arouse and retain interest in the book talk as a speech and in the books themselves are examined and the impact of the book talk on the audience.The empirical material consists of observations of two different book talks (both directed to children) and interviews with the two different book talking librarians and a few of the children from the audiences to both book talks. The theoretical framework consists of rhetorical theories from both antique and modern times and I perform a Rhetorical analysis of both book talks.

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.

This paper examines dialect as a rhetorical means of persuasion. A survey containing inquires about four different Swedish dialects have been handed out mainly in Södertörn University and Stockholm University, in order to research the values and connotations of theese dialects. The four chosen dialects are as following: Göteborgska, Stockholmska, Norrländska and Skånska. The results of the survey are processed and compiled to see which attitudes these values and connotations may indicate to each dialect. These attitudes and values are then discussed in correlation with five rhetorical theories: Attitude as a means of persuation, Ethos, Persona, Rhetorical Agency and Pierre Bourdieu?s theory of Field and Habitus.

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.

This paper examines dialect as a rhetorical means of persuasion. A survey containing inquires about four different Swedish dialects have been handed out mainly in Södertörn University and Stockholm University, in order to research the values and connotations of theese dialects. The four chosen dialects are as following: Göteborgska, Stockholmska, Norrländska and Skånska. The results of the survey are processed and compiled to see which attitudes these values and connotations may indicate to each dialect. These attitudes and values are then discussed in correlation with five rhetorical theories: Attitude as a means of persuation, Ethos, Persona, Rhetorical Agency and Pierre Bourdieu?s theory of Field and Habitus.

Although Social Democratic Memoirs comprise an extensive material, these texts have not attracted any systematic analysis as a distinct and yet varied form of textual genre. The focus in this MA-paper is the Swedish Social Democratic Memoir as a rhetoric genre. The main primary material is memoirs of the pioneer August Palm (1849?1922), the father of the nation Tage Erlander (1901?1985) and the political leader Göran Persson (1949?), published 1905, 1972?82 and 2007, respectively.The general aim is to find out what is the driving power of the memoirs and, more specifically, to shed light on the images of the party history and the history of the welfare state. The method is a comparative analysis of these texts.