<p>Författaren har bytt namn till Jakob Starlander.</p>

The aim of this study was to take a closer look at attitudes concerning education using oral presentations as the main activity in Swedish language studies in a Swedish secondary school. To accomplish this, the study aimed to answer the following questions: • In what way do four groups of secondary school students talk about oral presentations in Swedish language studies? • Which preconceptions and attitudes to oral presentations do the student express? • Which discourses are actualized in the discussions and how are these constructed? Secondary school pupils were used as a primary source of knowledge here through the use of four semi-structured focus group discussions. Students were asked questions about their understanding of what the essence of oral presentations is, as well as their experiences, feelings and what expectations they felt were placed on them by their teachers. The material shows a discourse composed of a mixture of excitement and fear. The pupils attribute to the creative side to planning presentations and using esthetic or even electronic media to excitement but also express anxiousness regarding the permanence of spoken word and the stress of potentially making a fool of oneself in front of their peers.

In recent years the political situation in the Baltic sea region has deteriorated. This can mainly be referred to a change in Russia’s threat posture, which has caused Sweden to refocus military strategic doctrine from international peace operations towards national defence. The new doctrine involves elements of deterrence through what is called a “threshold effect” which is aimed at discouraging a potential aggressor from taking military action towards Sweden. The doctrine is implemented despite obvious lack of military power and that recent research questions the usefulness of deterrence strategies. This essay examines to what extent the discourse in political security policy is implemented in development of new doctrine. This is done by examining two cases of doctrine development in conjunction with different discourses in Swedish security policy. The implementation of security policy is viewed as a framing process, where the security policy frame is projected at the Swedish armed forces through a defence bill. The result of the examination show that the discourse in political security policy have a high degree of resonance in the military doctrine but that there are some areas connected to the defence forces narrative and culture where the frame lacks resonance. The adaptation of a deterring threshold affect can be connected to these circumstances.

The thesis aims to investigate the influence of situational parameters on the choice of lexicogrammatical units of language producers. The main focus is placed on the register of language and individual aspects of it are introduced. The phenomenon of human language use is approached specifically from the point of view of sociolinguistics in order to prove the importance of the role of language in social interaction. The practical part of the diploma thesis is dedicated to the multiaspectual analysis of three authentic discourse samples, which differ from one another in the contexts they take place in. Based on the proportion of individual parts of speech in each of these samples, a scale of formality is finally designed in order to determine the most and the least formal of them.

The issue of underrepresentation of women in male-dominated or so called non-traditional occupations is common in both military organisations and society in general. An example of this is the low number of female pilots in the Swedish Armed Forces. Previous studies have shown that the issue of underrepresentation of women, amongst other things, lies within women’s willingness to apply. Similar studies focusing on recruitment material suggest that military organisations employ different forms of masculinity in their recruiting strategies. However, what previous studies have not explored is the connection between masculine recruitment material and the will to apply. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to study this connection through a discourse analysis of the Swedish Armed Forces’ recruitment material for pilots from a gender perspective. The analysis reveals that the material implicitly conveys a masculine discourse with focus on challenges, missions and progress, almost exclusively within a flying context. This discourse in relation to feminine traits and values may therefore be a reason why many women do not apply to become pilots.

Torture in the past is the subject of this dissertation. The aim of the study is to discuss one of the grand narratives of Swedish history. In an evolutionary frame Sweden has been put forward as a country which early developed judicial security for citizens. This dissertation contains a critique against an objectivistic view of the concept of knowledge. It proposes instead an evolutionary concept. In the discussion of sources I argue that although historians have been skilful in their evaluation of sources important problems still remains. The phenomenon of torture is here investigated at three different levels, as discourse, as norm and as practice. A point of departure is an overview of the discourse of torture and the use of torture in the past, from ancient times to the beginning of the early modern period in Europe. The purpose of that study is to gain some general insight concerning torture to which the main study, with focus on the phenomenon of torture in Sweden, could be related. The presentation of the history of torture starts in ancient Greece. The ability to use torture was regulated in Greek society. An important element in the discourse concerns a social regulation of torture; another is the connection with different concepts of truth. The conditions for the use of torture have changed over time. In early Middle Ages the practice of ordeals was common in Europe. In difficult cases tribes decided guilt with help from God. When the Christian church during the High Middle Ages rose to power it prohibited the use of ordeals. The obvious consequence of this act was that people had to make decisions by themselves, when they no longer could turn to God’s will when making decisions in severe judicial cases. In this context torture became important and was put into use. The existence of ordeals has been an obstacle to the use of torture. Torture had a strong position at the end of the medieval era, and this dissertation discusses whether the legislation is to be understood as implementation of torture or as regulation of an already existing practice. The first study of torture in a Swedish context deals with the discourse concerning the concept of torture. It is found that accusations of use of torture were used in propaganda and that torture in this context was understood as something unswedish and shameful. Next part focuses on the Old Swedish legislation prior to 1614. It is found that there is a prohibition against torture in the legislation from the fourteenth century, which must be regarded as a first attempt in Swedish law to regulate the use of torture. The study also focuses on the fact that the plaintiff had such extensive rights, that these could enable use of torture. The last part of the dissertation deals with the legal practice in Stockholm between 1474 and 1614. It identifies places for torture, actors and the judicial context in which the use of torture was practised.

The choice of studying motherhood was born out of our own self- perceived experiences as mothers, and in the sense of having a “book of rules” constantly present in the motherly role. Throughout times the motherly discourses surrounding motherhood have included aspects such as caring for and nurturing children, to take care of the household chores and to overall have an all seeing eye over the logistics of the home. In contrast, the men´s primary task is to provide the family with economic capital. ”The good mother”- this pure madonna figure, is often linked to a naturalness discourse which points towards women as created to bear children, giving birth and then finding themselves instinctively knowing how to take care of the newborn. This idea of motherhood as the women´s primary task is traditional in the sense of being rooted in historical contexts. Through a qualitative study, we wish to contribute to a wider understanding of the complex ways in which discourses work and affect the individual lives of women adulging in motherhood, focusing on their own experiences of motherhood. We have chosen to interview nine women from three different families, in each family three generations. Previous research points at two big discourses in western society- the naturalness discourse and the discourse surrounding gender equality. With a focus on these two discourses the study also is carried out with a lifecourse perspective as a way of capture the very important aspect of time. Time is a central part in our attempt to understand the ways in which discourses work, travels and modifies over time. Our findings, watching three generations of mothers reinforces the picture of the work towards equality is both complex and far from done. The motherly discourses are, even today, often characterized by a traditional thinking motivated by and linked to a perception of the natural when it comes to the different roles men and women are attributed. This, in turn, causes a collision with a “modern” discourse surrounding equality. Nowadays the roles embedded in the gender contract is overall more equal than before. Thus you could expect women to, in greater occurence, be freed of the discursive fetters. Despite this, this study points at the opposite direction, leaving us with a feeling of failure when it comes to gender equality. A traditional discourse of “the good mother” is still present in a modified “modern” version. Women in western society therefor are free when it comes to a lot of aspects, but not fully free in the sense of being themselves in the motherly role.

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus in Sweden on the library as a “public room” - a public space open to all. In light of this, the aim of this thesis were to explore existing discourses in the Swedish library-field surrounding users who use the libraries primarily in this capacity, i.e. users who use the libraries public open spaces without necessarily accessing in the library's other functions. The following research questions was formulated: How are users of the libraries public room categorised? What notions of the users are expressed in these categorizations? What discourses can be linked to these notions? How do the discourses relate to each other? To answer the research questions sixty-seven articles in three publications aimed at library professionals (Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i samhället and Framsidan) were analyzed. Using Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory and Hedemark and Hedman's (2002) four-step analytical model for discourse analysis, four discourses were identified: (1) educational, (2) democratic, (3) norm-critical, (4) market economy. The discourses, except the market-economy discourse, outlined democratic aims for the user's stay in the public room. The educational discourse aimed at fostering the user's ability to reason and function in society, the democratic discourse aimed at empowering the user while the norm-critical discourse aimed at enhance the user's ability to improve societal equality. The thesis concludes that there might exist disparities between how the library-field and the user attributes meaning to the concept “public room” and that further research is needed to define the concept.

The thesis deals with one of the international relations theories - realism. It examines the presence of realism in discussions about the German foreign policy on the ground of the parliament of Germany. Key concepts of realism and liberalism are defined in the introduction. The aim is to evaluate the presence of the realistic rhethoric used by particular political parties. The situation is described on three cases of the German foreign policy - discussions about China, Georgia and Turkey. The thesis is based on stenographic protocols of parliamentary debates covering the proper period.

A part of academic work inspired by Nye's concept of "soft power" has adopted his conceptualisation without much reservation, while another part has contested it. Some authors describe Nye's conceptualisation of power as biased towards democracies, or otherwise challenge the concept as category of analysis. On the case study of the partial democracy of Singapore, through analysis of official discourse, the thesis explores whether Singapore's government acknowledges the idea and if so, how it interprets it. Secondly, the thesis aims to provide more insight into the use of soft power as category of analysis with the help of the selected case study.