Though the field of Spanish heritage language (SHL) studies has seen a boom in research, such research has not yet addressed the materials available for SHL classes. This dissertation fills a gap in previous research by addressing the representation of US Latinos and US varieties of Spanish in the SHL context. The current study involves a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the presentation of both culture and language in intermediate level university SHL textbooks, in order to show how such texts present US Spanish-speaking people’s culture and their language varieties. Previous research on both history and Spanish as a foreign language textbooks show that US Latino populations in such texts are frequently reduced to numbers, faceless statistics or stereotypes (Arizpe & Aguirre, 1987; Cruz, 1994; Elissondo, 2001; Ramírez and Hall, 1990; Rodríguez and Ruiz, 2005; and van Dijk, 2004a; 2004b). Additionally, previous analyses of the presentation of Spanish in Spanish foreign language (SFL) textbooks show SFL texts provide “…varying or misleading intuitions about dialects of Spanish” (Wieczorek 1992, p.34; see also Fonseca-Greber & Waugh, 2003). This dissertation corroborates these findings in the SHL context and presents suggestions for improving the quality of materials used in the SHL context. The results of the current study clearly parallel those found by van Dijk (2004b); though the texts present “factual” information, it is the selective presentation of this information that culminates in an overall negative representation of immigrant and minority cultures, which is rooted in a metonymical understanding of what it means to be immigrant. Additionally, all the texts continue to promote a pseudo-Castilian variety of Spanish, while delegating student varieties of the language to appropriate home contexts. This bidialectal treatment of US varieties of Spanish excludes critical based dialect awareness altogether. This dissertation addresses the need to both improve and develop “…pedagogically sound textbooks and new technology materials designed to meet the Hispanic bilingual student’s linguistic needs” (Roca, 1997, pp.37-43). It is only through critical discourse analysis that we can assure that textbooks are indeed presenting a positive image of US Latinos and their language to students enrolled in university SHL classes.

This research paper takes departure from the contradictions of understandings regarding the purpose of operation EUNAVFOR Med, which operates in the Mediterranean aiming at disrupting the business model of human smugglers. The alteration of opinions concerns the question(s) regarding, to what extent the operation should be considered a securitization, and if so, of what? Research has consequently been drawn from the Copenhagen’s School theory of securitization, looking deeper into the involvement of the main actors in the operation, the EU, the human smugglers and the migrants, in order to identify if this operation could indeed be considered a securitization act. By placing the main actors of the operation in the center of the theoretical framework this research has been able to identify how this operation can be understood from a securitization theory and also what has been securitized. The methodological approach is based upon Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, framing both the structure and the analytical apparatus of the research paper, enabling an even broader understanding of the case. The result showed that there are indeed indicators demonstrating that operation EUNAVFOR Med could be considered a successful securitization of human smugglers. Also, in line with this operation, there are several indicators that shows how the EU has managed to pull a securitization move of migration, arguing that the migrants has formed an ‘uncontrolled problem’ for the EU.

This master thesis aims to examine texts of an international tourism promotional magazine Gotland 2016 to figure out whether it will help or on the contrary hinder sustainable development. Though promoters and writers held the beliefs to sustain tourism by prolonging tourism seasons and attracting international tourists, to our bewilderment, they not only failed to stick to its point as such but also expressed the opposite thoughts and notions among the texts. During the process of the analysis, the author found out that in Gotland 2016, the images of Visby, oceans scenes, summer, nature / tourist scenes and exoticism are strengthened while the opposite of these images are inevitably weakened simultaneously, which obstruct the extension of tourism seasons as well as lowering expectations for international tourists. This, in the long run, will hinder continuous development of local area in economic, environment and social sense. Particularly in this master thesis, social sustainability is discussed with priority since it is always likely to be overlooked and seen as less important than other aspects of sustainable tourism. In consequence, it is suggested that the wellbeing of local communities is equally important as environment protection and economic growth when promoting tourism development.

The issue of the Mapuches conflict has received different reactions from stakeholders and most important, government in the countries where they exist. This issue has gained much attention in Chile, where the Mapuche form the largest ratio of the indigenous group. The issue started more than seven centuries ago when neighboring groups started to invade the mapuches land, the aggressors where mainly Inka. And the reason for invading was that the mapuche land had dense forests and were rich in minerals. The fight for the mapuches rights on these resources culminated with the entry of the Spanish. The Mapuche were involved in a war with the Spanish for about three and a half decades. When the Spanish eventually took over the territory, they divided it between Chile and Argentina to facilitate smooth governance. The Spaniards who succeeded in overcoming the Mapuche had seceded from Spain and had become permanent residents of South America under the new name “Chile”. This meant that they laid claim on the resources and territory in the mapuches land. While the Argentine Mapuche have experienced relative peace, except for the Argentine war of extermination in the 19th Century, their counterparts in Chile have had a poor relationship with most government. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relations between the Mapuche and the Chilean government over four decades. The study will examine the presidential discourse on the issue of the Mapuche conflict under six governments, during the periods between 1970 and 2010. I am interested in understanding the factors that led to the change of narrative from referring to the Mapuche as peasants/farmers entitled to resources as part of their cultural heritage to finally being labeled as terrorists by the Chilean Government. In meeting the research aims, I will examine the historical development of the Mapuche and the factors that have defined their attitude and perception of various laws, policies and government actions on them. The study will employ Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis method where I will carry out text analysis, processing analysis and eventually the social analysis of the discourse simultaneously.

This study focuses on how minorities are stigmatized in the French media. It limits itself to the case of the proposal of the denaturalization law and the consequent discourse about it. The subject is introduced through a short background on the law and its relevance to the possible racist nature of the debate, followed by some background on racism in France, an overview of the theory on new racism and how it can explain stigmatizating discourses. Critical Discourse Analysis is used as the method to uncover said discourses as it is a method related to the in-depth analysis of implicit dominant ideologies and power-structures. The study analyzes twenty articles from two French newspapers in order to determine how stigmatizing discourses are expressed. The results in the discussion show recurrent racist narratives that systematically denigrate and stereotype Muslims and immigrants. They also show a pattern of the dominant culture negating space to minorities.

A growing number of companies, both multinationals and local firms, have begun to adopt the idea of sustainability development, and develop and market their green products/services with green advertising in developing countries. However, in the context of China where the idea of commercial environmentalism or green consumption is emerging and transported from the West, it is not clear that how the green consumption is advocated and how consumption practices are connected to environmental protection, and how the meaning of green consumption is constructed by firms operating in China. This study explores the Internet as a rich text for environmental marketing by analyzing the ways firms showcase details of their green products/services, production methods, business philosophy and other facets of their environmental practices and values. The online promotional information can be seen as corporate green advertising. Focused on the advertisings from corporate websites, and through the analytical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (e.g., Faircloug, 1992; 1995(a) (b); Wodak and Chilton, 2005), this study presents how a number of environmental conscious firms in China are portraying and promoting their environmental responsible image and green products/services, and aims to examine what firms are really telling and how they are discursively constructing corporate “greenness”. Based on the analyses of green advertisements from websites of four case companies (two MNCs in China: General Electric in China, Unilever in China, and two Chinese local firms: BYD automobile, and Landsea Real Estate), the study suggests that corporate green advertising discourse plays an active role in defining “reality” of greenness and imbuing meanings of consumption into environmentalism, as well as in achieving the hegemonic construction of corporate greenness. In addition, the corporate greenness is anthropocentric and embraces consumerist and post-materialist values. Instead of endorsing the environmentalism which appeals for a change of the current over-consumption lifestyle in capitalist development, the corporate green advertising strategically integrates lineages from green discourse of ecological modernization and political discourse of neoliberalism. In addition to similarities, dissimilarities existing between discourses from MNCs’ and Chinese local firms are identified in two aspects: greenness integration and greenness level. The differences in advertising discourses derive from both organizational resources and firms’ embedded economic, historical, and social-cultural contexts. Such differences prove the mutual constitutive or dialectical relationship between language and society and develop the argument that although firms play active role in constructing discourse, and green advertising discourse can be seen as corporations’ discursive approach to achieve environmental governance, their discourse is nevertheless constrained by both organizational internal and external influences.

This thesis concludes that the discourse surrounding the Arctic in the Norwegian press has a prevailing focus on resource extraction and resource demands, and that the term “sustainable development” is rarely being employed. At the same time, there is an increase in the amount of times the topics climate change and environment are discussed in the same articles that discuss oil, gas and resource extraction. This indicates that in the post-petroleum and “green shift” era that Norway has entered, these discourses now demand a joint discussion, rather than two separate discourses and topics. Looking at how Norway might act in the Arctic in the future, this can indicate that these focus areas will lay the foundation for possible action in the region as well. The background of the study was to obtain an understanding of how Norway deals with its conundrum of contradictory roles as an advocate for sustainable development and as an oil and gas producer. This was done through an investigation of how the Arctic, and especially sustainable development in the Arctic, is framed in the Norwegian press. By looking at the media discourse surrounding the topic, it is possible to get an understanding of how the region is framed in Norway, and subsequently how Norway as an Arctic actor will act in the future. Social constructionism, critical discourse analysis, mediatisation and framing theory make up the theoretical underpinnings of the thesis, and content analysis with a sequential process of three steps is employed to analyse the material from a bird’s-eye view to a very specific analysis.

Based upon anthropological fieldwork and contemporary literature as well as an analysis of media reports and statements by government officials such as current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, this thesis explores the interrelations between political discourses, lifestyle, and identity construction in contemporary Turkey. In the thesis, it is depicted how certain lifestyle choices are legally limited or (drawing on moral, religious, and nationalist discourses) labeled as 'bad' or 'wrong' by the current AKP government and certain parts of society. The informants interviewed for this thesis, mostly well-educated, young Turkish urbanites, feel like these restrictions of lifestyle choices limit their possibilities to freely construct and express their identities, which leads to feelings of resentment, unhappiness, and discomfort. By analyzing political developments in the 20th and 21st century, it is furthermore illustrated that authoritarianism has been a substantial part of the Turkish state project ever since the founding of the Turkish Republic. The current political events and conflicts about lifestyle and identity construction, it is argued, have to be understood in this context rather than depicting them as based upon a strict dividing line between 'secular' and 'religious' parts of society, as it is often depicted in Western media.

The focus of this study is the formation of legal professional identity and the manner and extent to which representations of legal professionals in classroom talk could feature in and be studied as part of this process. Eclipsed for many years by the need to teach students to ‘think like lawyers’, professional identify formation is increasingly acknowledged as a legitimate concern of legal educationalists. This entails expanding the sphere of legal education beyond the cognitive aspects of the discipline of law to encompass inculcation of the purposes and values of the profession but also, more broadly, an appreciation of the forms of power legal professionals exercise, the forms of work they undertake, the relationships they establish and maintain, and the social profile of the profession they advocate for or accept. The study assumes an understanding of legal professional identity formation as a pervasive and implicit process of socialization that occurs irrespective of whether professional identity has been posited as a particular pedagogical object or not. It puts forward the thesis that representations of legal professionals in classroom talk constitute part of the socialization process. It presents a theoretical model for understanding the significance of such representations in processes of identity formation, linking them to an understanding of ‘identity regulation’ that revolves around the concepts ‘role’ and ‘discourse’. It further invokes the resources of critical discourse analysis and, in particular, the work of Van Leeuwen, to develop a set of appropriate analytical codes modeled on key elements of social practice for analyzing representational meanings relating to legal professionals in classroom talk. The development of the codes is undertaken through an iterative process that engages with a complete, verbatim transcription of classroom talk in an introductory six-­‐month course on law at a tertiary institution. The study concludes that a discursive, analytical approach to studying representational meanings relating to legal professionals in classroom talk and, in particular, a micro-­‐discursive point of entry modeled on key elements of social practice, is useful and appropriate for apprehending the richness of the representational meanings. Such an approach allows for a grounded identification of themes that can then be compared to claims made in the literature on legal professionalism and the teaching of legal ethics. It also concludes that because the representation of legal professionals in classroom talk overlaps with the power relations of the classroom, they should be regarded as a significant source of identity regulation and thus used in a manner that is both reflective and constructive.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / English is the official language in Zambia and a compulsory subject from grade 1 to the final year of secondary education. Communicative competence in English is therefore critical to mobility in education and is also central to one’s job opportunities in the country. This implies that the teaching of English in schools is of paramount importance. Eclecticism is the recommended approach to teaching of English in Zambian secondary schools. However, no study had been done in Zambia on eclecticism in general, and on teachers’ understanding and application of the eclectic approach to English grammar teaching in particular. Hence, this study was a critical reflection on Eclecticism in the teaching of English language grammar to Grade 11 learners in selected secondary schools in Zambia. The aim of the study was to establish how Eclecticism in English language teaching was understood and applied by Zambian teachers of English. The study employed a mixed research study design employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches. In this regard, questionnaires, classroom observations, interviews (one-on-one and focus groups) and document analysis were the main data sources. Purposeful sampling was used to delineate the primary population and to come up with teachers and lecturers. In total, 90 teachers and 18 lecturers participated in this study. The documentary analysis involved documents such as the senior secondary school English language syllabus and Teacher training institutions’ English teaching methods course outlines. These documents were analysed to establish to what extent they supported or inhibited Eclecticism as an approach to English language teaching. Data was analysed using qualitative data analysis techniques looking for naturally occurring units and reducing them to natural meaning units to check for regular patterns of themes. Data from quantitative questionnaires were analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) to generate frequencies and percentages. The documents provided information on the efficacy of using Eclecticism as an approach to English language teaching in the multilingual contexts of Zambia. Theoretically, the study drew on Bernstein’s Code Theory and Pedagogic Discourse with its notion of Recontextualisation. The Code theory was used to examine power relations in education while recontextualisation was used to explore the transfer of knowledge from one site to another. The study also used the constructivist theory which views teachers and learners as co-participants in the process of teaching and learning and treats learners’ backgrounds as crucial to effective teaching. Considering recent developments in technology, the study also explored the extent of the use of multimodal tools in the teaching of English grammar, and the contestations around the ‘grammars’ arising from the dialogicality between the so-called ‘British English Grammar’ and home grown Zambian English grammar. The idea here was to explore how English was taught in the context of other English varieties and Zambian languages present in Zambian secondary school classrooms. The findings showed that while course outlines from teacher training institutions and the senior secondary school English language syllabus showed that teacher training was aimed at producing an eclectic teacher, teacher training was facing a lot of challenges such as inadequate peer teaching, short teaching practice and poor quality of student teachers. These were found to negatively affect the effective training of teachers into eclecticism. Further, while some teachers demonstrated understanding of the eclectic approach and held positive attitudes, others did not leading to poor application and sometimes non application of the approach. In terms of classroom application, of the five teachers whose lessons have been presented in this thesis, four of them used the eclectic approach while one did not, implying that while the policy was accepted by some, others contested it. In addition, teachers stated that grammar meant language rules and they further stated that they taught formal ‘Standard’ English while holding negative attitudes towards Zambian languages and other varieties of English. The study observed that teachers held monolingual ideologies in which they used English exclusively during classroom interaction. Finally, teachers reported that they faced a number of challenges when using the eclectic approach such as limited time, lack of teaching materials and poor low English proficiency among some learners leading to limited to non use of communicative activities in the classroom. The study concludes that while the eclectic approach is practicable in Zambia, a lot has be to done especially in teacher training in order to equip teachers with necessary knowledge and skills to use the eclectic approach. Among other recommendations, the study recommends that there is need for teacher training institutions to improve the quality of teacher training and ensure that student teachers acquire skills of resemiotisation, semiotic remediation and translanguaging as a pedagogical practice. The study also recommends refresher courses to already serving teachers to acquaint them with how the eclectic approach can be recontextualised in different teaching contexts. The study contributes to the body of knowledge in the theoretical and practical understanding of the eclectic approach and how it is used in the Zambian context. The study also adds to literature on the eclectic approach. In addition, the findings act as a diagnostic tool among government education officials, teacher educators and teachers of English in Zambia in particular as they can now see where things are done right and where improvement is needed. Other countries where English is taught as a second language can also learn from the Zambian situation as they search for better ways of training eclectic teachers of English and how to teach English in their own respective contexts.