In this study, a discourse analysis is performed on the discourse among Muslims in Sweden about the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, its founder and its adherents. Previous research shows that globally, Muslims of all denominations, both Sunni and Shia, consider followers of Ahmadiyya to be non-Muslim. This study shows that the anti-Ahmadiyya discourse is also present amongst Muslims in Sweden, and examines the different types of discourse strategies that are applied. Ahmadiyya played an important role in introducing Islam in Sweden. However, there is a lack of academic research regarding its relationship with other denominations of Islam, even though many researchers have previously referred to it whenever the movement comes under discussion.

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The purpose of this thesis was to uncover the tools of manipulation used within political discourses by governments in their attempt to maintain power in society. It specifically asked, How do Canadian federal governments manipulate security, risk, and threat discourses alongside their presentation and understanding of Canadian identity in throne speeches to justify the direction they intend to take the country in with their mandate? This thesis used Critical Discourse Analysis methods to analyze fourteen federal majority government speeches from the throne during the rise and fall of social welfare in Canada. Findings highlight that governments have relatively consistently used the combination of security, risk, and threat discourses between 1935 and 2015. Canadian identity has also been shown to be malleable to government priorities, being connected to notions of collectivism during the rise of social welfare and individualization and productivity during the implementation of neoliberal principles. The introduction of the promise of job creation within the speeches was found to correlate with the introduction of neoliberal principles in Canada. These findings highlight the importance of critical understanding of dominant discourses in society in order to overcome the power they can impose over non-dominant groups. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

The purpose of this study was to examine the occurrence of student discourse in asynchronous computer-mediated communication and its relation to student learning. From in-depth investigation of teacher design, facilitation and direction for asynchronous discussion, implications for high school online instruction guidelines and the need for evaluation standards of online courses and teacher instructional practice are made. Examining student discourse provides information related to the social construction of knowledge. Teacher presence and its relation to higher levels of student discourse provides information for best practices in online teaching. This information can be used to determine specific standards and guidelines for evaluation of online instruction which can contribute to quality online high school courses. The context of this study was two high school online AP English courses. The multiple case study approach analyzed student discourse within asynchronous discussion forums and the relation to student learning outcomes. Observation of teacher facilitation and course documents were examined in relation to levels of student discourse and student learning outcomes. Triangulation of data sources included discourse analysis, interviews with teachers, and archival documents. Results from comparing and contrasting multiple cases are presented as basis for implications to guide course design, facilitation and evaluation. / Ph. D.

There are critical questions we must engage in before we ever set foot or flag on Mars. Why do we go? How do we convince ourselves it is worth it? In this work, I will analyze the current discourse of Mars. Mars is legitimized as a place through a form of discourse whose roots can be traced back to earlier, colonial forms of discourse. Modernity acts as a normative force by limiting our language to established forms of discourse, like Hegelian notions of progress, while marginalizing other possibilities of narrative. The colonial gaze is only one possible way we have to understand Mars. What is necessary now is to perform the great Foucaultian task of seeking out lost narratives and lost knowledges of our past. I will examine how the power of narrative has been used to convince the public that we should go to Mars. Modernity has phenomenologically shaped Mars and our present discourse of Mars is the result of that metamorphosis. Narratives of science-fiction, science advocacy, special interest groups, and government bureaucracy reflect the modern notions that pervade Areological discourse, thereby promoting a colonial gaze of Mars. Modernity represents a way of seeing Mars that has been pushed upon us by history, eliminating alternate narratives of place through the nonnative practice of modern thinking.

The speech category approach of mainstream narratology does not give an adequate account of the form or the function of presentations by narrators to readers of fictional characters' minds. It: privileges the apparently mimetic categories of direct thought and free indirect thought over the diegetic category of thought report; views characters' minds as consisting only of a private, passive flow of consciousness, because of its overestimation of inner speech; and neglects the thought report of characters' states of mind. I suggest a radical reconceptualization, using the parallel discourses of Russian psycholinguistics and the philosophy of mind to fill the gaps left by narratology. For example, Vygotsky, Luria, Volosinov and Bakhtin show that inner speech is social in origin, dialogic in nature, and directs and regulates our day-to-day behaviour. Also, the philosophy of mind emphasises the importance of dispositions to behave in certain ways. A functional, teleological approach to fictional presentations of the whole mind, both states of mind and inner speech, analyses the purposive nature of characters' thought: their motives, intentions and resulting behaviour and action. It also shows how readers read plots as the interaction of characters' 'embedded narratives': their perceptual and conceptual viewpoints, ideological worldviews, and plans for the future. The embedded narrative approach is a theoretical framework which: considers the whole of a particular fictional mind, thereby avoiding the fragmentation of previous approaches; views characters' minds, not just in terms of passive, private inner speech presented in direct or free indirect thought, but in terms of the narrator's positive linking role in presenting characters' social, engaged mental functioning, particularly in the mode of thought report; and highlights the role of the reader in constructing the plot by means of a series of provisional conjectures and hypotheses about characters' embedded narratives.

This PhD study explores multilingualism in Finnish language youth radio broadcasting, with interactional and ethnographic data from Sweden Finnish and Finnish youth radio broadcasting. The interactional data consist of audio recordings from radio programs, while the ethnographic data consist of observations, logbook notes and interviews. The data were recorded and collected during the summer of 2005 from Radio Sweden’s (SR) Finnish language radio station Sisuradio and its youth program Klubi-Klubben, and simultaneously from Finnish YleX, from its X-Ryhmä and YleX Tänään programs. Multilingualism within radio broadcasting is investigated from a qualitative and sociolinguistic viewpoint. The study consists of four independent empirical research articles, each tackling the research topic from a slightly different perspective (e.g., language alternation, humor, repertoires, rap flows). This approach is what I call revealing the small pictures of this study. Further, this study investigates some overarching implications and pinpoints general threads and themes of a more holistic big picture of what multilingualism sounds like in the youth radio programs. The focus of the analysis is interactional and functional. The study shows that there are many different kinds of multilingualisms: multilingualism in the late modern world differs from scene to scene. However, speakers and groups have varied kinds of multilingual repertoires at their disposal in different scenes. In addition, different multilingual repertoires are used for various functions and genres, such as entertainment, humor and the expressions of different identities, including expressing music expertise or being a rapper. English is used as resourse in all of these repertoires. The study makes visible multilingual life worlds where global and local features intertwine and where objects and discourse practices are constantly on the move. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

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