Through the history have the women been subordinated to the men, structures that still are present in these days even though feminist movements have tried work against them. One platform that is quite common to use for drawing attention to a certain subject is popular culture. Here the author can disguise their thoughts or highlight them through another context. This brought my attention to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale where religious symbols are commonly used through the book at the same time as women’s rights are neglected. I wanted to know how these religious symbols are connected to this kind of structures, how they are motivating them. To answer that question I used a text analysis with the focus to find the underlying factors to this kind of use of religious symbols and how the gender roles are built up. I used two kinds of theories, one is Stig Hjarvard’s mediatization theory with the focus on banal religion, and the other is Yvonne Hirdman’s gender theory that are focusing on the view of women through the history. What I found was that Atwood is using religion as a theme to criticize the patriarchal structures in her time and to comment on the use of religious symbols uncontextualized to debate on questions that affects a majority of people, like questions about sexuality, abortion and sexual abuse.

Uppsatsens syfte har varit att studera uttryck för banal nationalism i svenska dagstidningar under världsmästerskapen i fotboll för herrar i USA 1994. Dels för att vidga begreppet nationalism, dels bidra med exempel på hur den kan synliggöras i vardagliga sammanhang och därigenom riskerar reproducera nationella föreställningar. Uppsatsens teoretiska ramverk har varit Michael Billigs diskursteori banal nationalism med understöd av Marianne Winther Jørgensens och Louise Phillips begreppsmetaforer för nationella diskurser. För att kunna genomföra en fördjupad analys har uppsatsen haft kompletterande forskningsfrågor om hur Sveriges spelare och tränare samt hur Sveriges motståndarspelare och motståndartränare framställs i materialet. Empirin har bestått utav 157 publiceringar inklusive tidningarnas omslag fördelat över 26 utgåvor av Aftonbladet (9), Expressen (9) samt Dagens Nyheter (8). Analysen visar att banal nationalism i hög utsträckning, på ett till synes omedvetet sätt, varit del i utgåvornas publiceringar kring världsmästerskapen. De uttryck för banal nationalism som förekommer kan ses som försök till att skapa engagemang och intresse hos läsare, men dessa språkliga val bidrar likväl till att producera och reproducera en närmast självklar nationell gemenskap. Därtill är skildringar av Sveriges spelare och tränare likartad mellan tidningar och utgåvor, samt står i kontrast till skildringar av motståndare. De förstnämnda ges egenskaper såsom ödmjuka och lojala, kloka och beslutsamma. Motståndare porträtteras inte sällan som irrationella och oberäkneliga. Styrdokument och historiedidaktisk forskning föreskriver att en elevcentrerad undervisning bör bedrivas, vilket ställer krav på historielärare att vara förtrogen med begrepp som nationalism. Uppsatsen visar att nationella föreställningar på ett oreflekterat sätt kan produceras och reproduceras i till synes vardagliga sammanhang. Resultatet kan således anses bidra med ett angeläget perspektiv för blivande historielärare att reflektera över. / The purpose of this essay has been to study expressions of banal nationalism in Swedish media during the World Cup in the United States 1994. It is meant to expand the knowledge of nationalism in day-to-day life, and how nationalistic ideas might be reproduced and reinforced. The theoretic framework of this essay relies on Michael Billigs discourse theory of banal nationalism, supplemented by Marianne Winther Jørgensens and Louise Phillips theories on metaphors in relation to national discourse. The investigated material consists of 157 different kinds of publications including first pages spread over 26 issues of Aftonbladet (9), Expressen (9) and Dagens Nyheter (8). The analysis shows that banal nationalism is prominent in the issue’s printed materials during the World Cup. The portrayals of Swedish’s players and coach are similar between newspapers and issues and stand in stark contrast to portrayals of the opponents. First mentioned are characterized as humble, loyal, wise and determined. Opponents are often characterized as unpredictable and inconstant. These expressions can be seen as attempts to create engagement and involvement, but nevertheless they´re also a part of producing and reproducing an almost self-explanatory national community. Ruling school documents and history didactic research shows that student-centered learning is preferrable, which demands a history teacher who is confidant with terms like nationalism. This essay shows that national conceptions can be produced and reproduced in ordinary life situations, in a seemingly unreflected way. The results can therefore be considered a meaningful perspective for soon-to-be history teachers to reflect upon.

This project explores banal nationalism from a perspective where the visibility and usage of the US flag as decoration on everyday products in Sweden is problematized. In comparison with the Swedish flag which has a history of being “unwaved” because open nationalism for a long time has been thought of as vulgar in Sweden, the frequent reproduction of the US flag seems to elude a critical discussion on national expressions. The effects of using a national symbol for commercial purposes is therefore theoretically and practically researched. / <p>The full thesis contains copyrighted material which has been removed in the published version. </p>

Den här uppsatsen belyser den svenska nationalismens uttrycksformer, så som de framgår av Stockholmstidningarna Dagligt Allehanda, Inrikes Tidningar och Stockholms Posten i mars 1805. Nationalismen undersöks huvudsakligen utifrån Michael Billigs teorier om banal nationalism, vilket syftar till oreflekterade, vardagliga attityder som skiljer mellan ”oss” och ”dem” och formar en nationell gemenskap. Undersökningens sidospår är att reda ut vilket förhållningssätt till Finland som förekom i de tre tidningarna. Finlandsfrågans relevans är tydlig inte minst med tanke på den bristfälliga militära viljan att försvara det svenska rikets östra rikshalva under finska kriget 1808–1809. Undersökningen visar att flera tecken på banal nationalism förekommer, trots att nationerna som politisk-juridisk samhällsform etablerades i Europa först långt senare. De mest framträdande dragen är (1) upprepandet av epitetet ”kongl.” i samband med platser, institutioner och titlar, (2) ett särskiljande gentemot Finland, som trots att det officiellt sett är en del av riket vid den här tiden, ställvis betraktas som ett främmande land, (3) adjektivet ”swensk” som är synonymt med inhemsk, och ur ett merkantilistiskt perspektiv får en positiv innebörd, (4) stereotypisering av ”dem” (i synnerhet fransmän) i förhållande till ”oss” (svenskar), och (5) deiktiska uttryck som refererar till och tar för givet att läsaren känner till att kontexten för annonser är Stockholm, vilket här betraktas som en föregångare till nationell deixis. Av resultaten dras slutsatsen att nationalismen antar banala uttrycksformer redan innan nationalstaten är formerad. Michael Billigs tes är att nationalismen i ett första stadium är hård, för att sedan bli banal och alldaglig, medan min uppsats söker visa på att den hårda nationalismen likväl föregås av banal nationalism. Beträffande Finland är slutsatsen att det redan 1805 betraktades som en egen nation i kraft av språklig och geografisk gemenskap, trots att det hörde till Sverige.

The purpose in this paper is to examine in which extent students in the Swedish gymnasium use film and tv (with a special focus on the Norwegian youth series SKAM) as a resource to create religious meaning and interpretation of life in the aspects of their view on e.g. knowledge, society, cosmology and theology. To examine this I have used a web survey which were completed by 139 pupils from different programs in the grades 1 to 3. As goes for theory I have used Stig Hjarvards thoughts about meditiazation and banal religion. This study has shown that students, whatever they are male, female, “traditional” believers or non-believers, uses film and tv in a high degree when it comes to create religious meaning and interpretation of life. I have also been able to prove that popular culture in the form of film and television has a much greater presence in the students’ life than many kinds of “traditional” religious practices. Quite interesting is that both women and believers seems to rely on film and tv in a higher frequency than the other two groups when it comes to these kinds of questions. This is interesting because the result is somewhat different from earlier research. All in all, the result of this study confirms e.g. Mia Lövheim’s thoughts that young people are not less religious today than they were before, but instead have developed a more “detraditionalized” form of religiosity. And also that “traditional” religious authorities today have lost its monopoly on the religious minds of the youth through mediatization and that media and popular culture now must be seen as a religious authority by itself.

In times of crisis people tend to gather around a leader – the so called “rally’round the flag effect”. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be no exception. Studies of Denmark and Sweden show that a “rally’round the flag”-effect occurred in both countries during the spring of 2020. Because the two countries used different strategies to combat the virus at the time, the cause of the quickly increased support for the national leaders is unclear. This essay examines one possible contributory reason: nationalist rhetoric. By analyzing Danish and Swedish national leaders’ framing of the pandemic, using banal nationalism to highlight the prosaic and implied aspects of nationalism, I show that nationalist rhetoric is present, both in the definition of the problem and as the proposed solutions. In both cases an emphasis on the typical national qualities is shown. In conclusion, the findings in this essay point to the fact that further studies in this yet to be fully explored field of studies are of interest, especially from a perspective of democracy.

This study has three aims. The first one is to review which Buddhist symbols are used in Rituals commercial “The Ritual of Laughing Buddha”, where Rituals is a cosmetic company, with a main focus on skin care. The second aim with my study is to examine how semiotic resources are used to depict Buddhist symbols based on multimodal critical discourse analysis, and the third aim is to examine how the concept of banal religion in the theory of mediatization can contribute to the understanding of the representation of Buddhist symbols. This paper will use a multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine the commercial and then analyze the material in relation to the theory of mediatization as described by Hjarvard. The semiotic resources made the Buddhist symbols appear explicitly and since several Buddhist symbols were found in the material, the concept of banal religion could be used as a theoretical focus and contribute to an understandning of how Buddhist symbols are used in the commercial. The results show that the commercial is not intended to convey a religious message, but was mainly used to connote emotions such as happiness, warmth and extravagance. Representation of religion is thus found in the commercial, but the Buddhist symbols are used in a different way, and are in a new context than from institutionalized religion.

This PhD thesis concerns language and racism. The aim is to explore how racism is reproduced in interaction in public debates on immigration, integration and refugee policy. From a constructivist pragmatic perspective, language is considered as a practice that composes and makes sense of our social world and all the phenomena and individuals that we perceive in it. Racist discourses discriminate against and privilege people by categorising them according to notions of cultural, ethnical, racial, religious and national differences. The thesis has two main themes: 1) the linguistic reproduction of, and response to, racist discrimination and privileging in interaction, and 2) the role of language in various public arenas, and the norms and conditions for participation in these arenas. The thesis comprises five studies. Study I examines racist discourses and conditions for participation in an online newspaper comments section. Study II examines how the phrase “politically correct” is used and negotiated in the same comments section, and how its usage leads to the reproduction and normalisation of racism. Another comments section is the focus of Study III, in which discriminating and privileging categorisations of Muslims, Islam, Swedes and Sweden are analysed. Study IV examines an anti-racist forum on the social networking site Instagram. In the study, the reproduction of norms of whiteness is analysed, as well as power relations that are evoked, sustained and transformed in interaction. Finally, Study V is an analysis of linguistic, visual and material reproductions of political positions and racist discourses in a debate among party leaders on Swedish television. The thesis demonstrates how normalisation of racism is accomplished in interaction, and how reproduction of hierarchically structured difference and bigoted stereotypes are performed, and challenged, through language. The medium, combined with the user’s speech acts, set up the norms and conditions for participation, and for the discursive processes that reproduce the relations and structures of power.

Jessica Langley's work examines animals and nature through various media and form, including watercolor and oil painting, digitally manipulated photography, both large and small scale drawing, and various combinations of each. The work has explored narrative and emotional aspects to more mystical and ecological interpretations. The current body of work settles into banal and familiar interactions with animals, or more specifically the house cat and its accoutrements. Each element of the body of work engages specific concepts that developed out of the American landscape tradition and assimilates the banal subjects into a formal framework. The subjects are monumentalized and romanticized in order to question, not the importance of the objects, but the relevance of the sublime.

Idag blir det allt vanligare att marknadsföra produkter – inte minst mat – som genom idéer, värden och identiteter kopplade till nationalism. Föreliggande studie undersöker hur reklamfilmer från det svenska "mjölkkriget" – ett reklamkrig mellan mjölkproducenten Arla Foods och havredrycksföretaget Oatly – reproducerar en nationalistisk diskurs. Genom en multimodal kritisk diskursanalys (MCDA) av en reklamfilm från respektive företag visar studien hur Arla Foods och Oatly genom valen och kombinationen av olika visuella, audiella och språkliga resurser på ett humoristiskt sätt ger uttryck för idéer, värden och identiteter med koppling till en nationalistisk diskurs. Reklamfilmerna leker med motsättningar och ifrågasätter mjölkens – respektive mjölksubstitutets – plats inom den nationella kulturen, samtidigt som idéer, värden och identiteter kopplade till en nationalistisk diskurs reproduceras utan att utmanas. Reklamfilmerna agerar vidare banalt nationalistiskt genom att på ett vardagligt sätt påminna mottagaren om dess nationella identitet och framställer denna – utifrån en nyliberal logik – som beroende av konsumtion av "svenska" varor: mjölk respektive havredryck.