published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Curriculum and Educational Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

While the importance of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in business and the media is well-studied, little attention has been paid to ELF in tourism. This study analyzes postings on websites such as TripAdvisor (http://www.tripadvisor.com/), which feature non-professional reviews of international travel destinations and services, in order to evaluate the effects of cultural capital, stereotypes and relative power on: expectations of English availability in non-English speaking countries, evaluation of the language spoken by EFL speakers (e.g. hotel clerks, shop owners), and attitudes towards speaking the local language.This study explores the issue of speech accommodation between the tourists and the local hospitality industry workers and other residents (Giles, Taylor, and Bourhis, 1973; Giles, Coupland, and Coupland, 1991; Giles and Powesland, 1997) and the likely factors leading to convergence/divergence as indicated by attitudes towards language choices. Website excerpts will show the circumstances in which travelers expect the locals (who deal with tourists) to speak English as well as how much of the local language the travelers are willing to learn and use.Findings indicate that the tourists' willingness to take responsibility for linguistic accommodation, tolerance for restricted English proficiency levels, and attitudes towards being exposed to the local culture and language differ according to the presumed cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986, 1991; Hanks, 2005) - often governed by stereotypes - and relative power of the interlocutors, the visited location and the local language. The role of ELF in the tourism sector and attitudes toward the local residents and language(s) are highly relativized, such that the specificity of the local context must be taken into account. Proficiency in the English language itself is, in some locations, the source of presumed higher status and symbolic of luxury. The second important dynamic demonstrated to affect the levels and type of language expectation is the degree to which the traveler desires interaction with and exposure to the local culture, or wants to stay with familiar experiences in an "environmental bubble" (Cohen and Cooper, 1986). The differences in expectation of ELF demonstrate that traveler attitudes towards specific locations are key to determining linguistic needs.

This study quantitatively and qualitatively examines honorific usage in casual first-encounter conversations between two relatively young people from similar backgrounds. The issues of concern are the frequency of use of addressee and referent honorifics, different types and forms of referent honorifics, reasons behind speech style shifts between honorific and non-honorific forms, and gender differences in honorific usage.Overall, addressee honorifics were predominantly used compared to plain forms, while the use of referent honorifics was limited in the data. The rate of honorific usage ranged greatly depending on the speaker and the conversation. Using too few addressee honorifics, however, has a possibility of offending the addressee in this speech context.Additionally, it was found that female speakers did not necessarily speak more politely (i.e., use more honorifics) than male speakers. The addressee's gender seemed to influence the rate of use of honorifics. Female speakers' use of addressee honorifics was higher in mixed-sex conversations than in single-sex conversations while the opposite was true with male speakers. As for referent honorifics, both genders tended to use more of them in single-sex conversations.As for speech style shifts between honorific forms and non-honorific forms, several contexts in which these were observed are reported. Self-directed questions and expression of feelings, thoughts, and opinions were the two most likely contexts for speech style shifts between addressee honorifics and plain forms. It appears that such style shifts occur to separate the utterances from the main course of conversation to signal that the utterance is not deliberately addressed to the addressee, that the focus is on meaning, or that the utterance constitutes a subspace embedded in the main floor rather than the main floor itself. Additionally, utterance type, increased familiarity with the addressee, speech style adjustment, and the introduction of new topics are suggested as possible contexts for speech style shifts between referent honorifics and non-honorific forms.

Abstract Title: Cancer in media from a gender perspective Number of pages: 33 (49 including enclosures) Author: Emma Kreü Tutor: Amelie Hössjer Course: Media- and Communication science D Period: Spring 2007 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University Purpose/Aim: The aim of this thesis is to investigate if there are differences between the picture given in media of women with cancer and of men with cancer. The result is aimed to give a deeper picture of how gender is represented in media. Material/Method: The method used in this thesis is discourse analysis, applied on twenty articles which contained personal interviews with women and men who have or have had breast or prostate cancer. Ten of the articles contain interviews with women and ten interviews with men. The articles were selected from criteria based on where and when they were published. They were picked from the two largest papers in Sweden, Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Aftonbladet (AF), ten from each paper, of which five were interviews with women and five with men. The articles were found through two search engines, Presstext (where DN is filed) and Mediearkivet (where AF is filed) and the articles which were published most recently were picked. Main results: The main result is that there is a difference between the representation of men and the representation of women in media, to a certain point. The image of women and men who have survived the cancer is different from each other. In the representation of women there is focus on parenthood and the women’s relations to her surroundings and how the disease has effected that. In the representation of men there is more focus on sexuality and impotence and how that has effected their self-confidence. The images of women and men who still are critically ill or even dying are more similar to each other, the focus here is on the fear of dying and the wish to stay alive. Keywords: media, gender, discourse analysis

Talk of violent crime in South Africa abounds, with criminal violence as a topic of discussion on many social platforms - from the President‟s State of the Nation address to conversations between people on the street. This study aims to explore the discourses that South Africans use in their accounts of violent crime, what presentation of violent crime is constructed through the use of these discourses, and the effects of such constructions. Using Wetherell and Potter‟s (1992) approach to discourse analysis, the transcripts from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with fifteen participants were analysed to identify and examine the discourses that participants drew on to construct an account of violent crime. Seven central themes were identified in the transcripts. These pertained to the causes of violent crime, the effects of violent crime, prevention and deterrence, victims, responsibility, perpetrators and categorisation of „good‟ and „bad‟ criminals. In the study each of the themes is examined in turn to explore the discourses that are drawn on in the construction of each theme and the presentation of violent crime that is constructed through the use of these discourses. Analysis of the discourses shows that the construction of crime, criminals and victims is complex and that this is often done in such a way as to manage the threat of violent crime. It also shows that race „colours‟ the way we see, understand and construct violent crime. Yet this is not only about the identification of others as particular kinds of people but also about self-identifying, as people actively construct their own identity when constructing violent crime. The way in which we construct violent crime therefore has important implications for the way in which we experience others as well as ourselves. It also has important implications for the interventions that are used and proposed for managing violent crime. An understanding of these discourses and constructions of violent crime will allow us to more effectively evaluate the assumptions on which these interventions are based and thus improve the interventions themselves. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sci.)-Univesity of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

This research study reviewed several disciplinary fields and their conceptualizations of conflict. The primary guiding question was, what is the best conflict education that is required for youth and adults to live in the world of a "culture of violence" in the list century? The general purpose of the study was to provide a critique that would initiate an expanded conflict imaginary, as educators and lifelong learners face a world of growing complex social and cultural conflicts. The "case" under specific critical analysis was identified as conflict management education (CME). CME provided the primary subject (text) for a critical discourse analysis of its conceptualizations of conflict. The main purpose of the study was to determine the hegemony of discourse in the text of a "representative" sample of 22 contemporary CME handbooks and manuals for youth and adults. CME was found to be a new social movement with a powerful "social technology" to change attitudes and behaviors, in order to diminish or eliminate violence. This study found there are virtually no systematic critiques of CME and no significant critiques that focus on the conceptualization of conflict itself. The discourse of CME's conceptualizations of conflict tended toward an ideological bias of consensus, unity, cooperation, 'peace and harmony;' and located within a politically conservative, pragmatist, social psychological discourse. The entire domain of conflict knowledge from critical pedagogies and the sociological conflict theory tradition was largely ignored in CME text. This has significant political and sociocultural implications in the biased shaping of conflict knowledge and the concomitant power relations of teaching, learning, and the constructing of 'democracy' itself. Without a critique of its own discourses, CME has limited means, as a discipline of knowledge, to establish how it may be perpetuating the very violence it is attempting to eliminate. 'Conflict' pedagogy is offered as an alternative to constructing a critical conflict education as counterhegemonic to CME. This report closes with a discussion of reflections on the study and recommendations for further research.

Between 2006 and 2008 the German television series “Türkisch für Anfänger“ (Turkish for Beginners) about the life of a multiculturally blended family in Berlin was aired on the television network ARD. This thesis analyzes the gender construction of the six main characters in order to find out which concepts of gender they mirror, and how they perform their gender identities. This analysis of gender is carried out in close interaction with other categories of identity such as ethnicity or age. The theoretical foundation for the study is feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis (FPDA), which is interested in the multiple power relations in which individuals are embedded in their social interactions. These structures of power are reflected in their gender constructions. The approach assumes that in each situation several competing discourses are available for individuals within which they need to position themselves. With the help of the FPDA this master’s thesis investigates these discoursive structures subjects adopt to negotiate their relationships and identities. In addition, the thesis relies on Erving Goffman’s concept of face-work and his metaphor of playing a role in social interaction which is meant to be a theatrical stage. His work is applied to the gender construction of the subjects mainly to underline that gender also needs to be performed. The gender construction of the six characters is analyzed on three different levels: their language use, their nonverbal behaviour, and camera editing. Therefore the analysis focuses on verbal communication, nonverbal behaviour and paralinguistic features, and the media components. The analysis of eleven selected scenes shows that the gender constructions of the characters and the performance of those constructions are not stable, but rather fluid. They continuously shift between different gender identities, sometimes positioning themselves at the same time as powerful and powerless within and towards varying discourses. Thus each character constructs a number of different gender identities during the course of the series, as well as within particular scenes.

Despite being a strong advocate for children’s rights in the international community, Sweden has received critique from the Committee on the Rights of the Child regarding the high number of children who have been removed from their families and that are currently living in foster homes. Previous research has not dealt with the issue of children’s rights in foster care placement processes in Sweden, nor has it included Sweden in discourse analyses on children’s rights, or sufficiently explored the relationship between discourse and implementation of the UNCRC. I use theories on discourse and translation in order to provide a comparative analysis of the articulations of children’s rights relevant for foster care placement processes in the UNCRC, and on the national and local level in Sweden. The analysis points to both similarities and differences in the discourses and identifies six aspects of the Swedish discourse that make certain activities in foster care placement processes possible, desirable and inevitable.

Sexual violence remains a pervasive and persistent social problem. In 1996, Congress enacted Megan’s Law, dictating mandatory community notification and potential civil commitment for those deemed by the State to be “dangerous sexual offenders.” In 2013, Megan’s law continues to influence the treatment of sexual offenders under law and the social construction of a highly publicized, yet statistically rare, sexual crime—the rape and murder of a young female child by a depraved male stranger. This influence highlights the extent to which this personalized crime bill shapes the social construction of sexual violence in terms of sex and gender systems. This project examines how sex and gender shape media discourses of the sexual offender and victim that are mobilized in the legislative debate on Megan’s Law. Drawing on theoretical ideas from cultural studies and feminist legal scholarship, I employ discourse analysis to analyze the legislative debate on Megan’s Law.

This compilation thesis examines parents' and teachers' approaches to curriculum objectives that involve shared responsibility between home and school regarding the children's upbringing and education. On the basis of four articles, the meanings of good teachers, good parents, and a good cooperation practice along with the meaning of gender in home-school relationships were examined. Questions were asked from both a teacher and a parent perspective about concrete practices and constructs with respect to this cooperation. The overall aim was to conduct an exploratory study on the importance of gender in the home-school relationship. The first article explores the use of gender and diversity in research on home and school relationships. In the second article, access to the research field of “home and school relationships” was problematized. Article 3 analyzes teachers´ and parents´ experiences regarding parents’ being resources in the primary school setting. The article focuses on what teachers expect from "ideal" mothers and fathers as well as what parents expect from "ideal" teachers. Article 4 analyzes the experiences that teachers and parents have with regard to the practical consequences of home and school cooperation. The theoretical starting point includes feminist poststructuralist theories and discourse analysis. Inductive qualitative interviews were executed in a mainstream district in Sweden with an increasing immigrant population; the interviewees included 25 parents and the eight teachers who taught their children. In order to interpret and to understand the meanings of the interviews, two context analyses were conducted. One involved the mapping of the local context and preconditions that surrounded the study's informants with respect to the socio-economic context, local school plans, action plans, and management of the educational activities. The second involved analyzing the rhetoric of governance and policy in the longer term, regarding the importance of gender in the home-school relationship with respect to the former Swedish elementary school and the current nine-year compulsory school. The thesis’ main results show that gender has great importance in homeschool relationships: Women/mothers bear the overall responsibility for engaging in cooperation, while this responsibility is largely made invisible in the research. In concrete home and school practices, the responsibility is also mostly not problematized. The study analyzes the construction of a cooperation practice that operates in two versions and affects performative practices at both home and school. Through a “mother responsibility” discourse in regard to home and school practices, mothers are expected to become teachers´ servants based on teachers´demands. The result indicates that both parents and teachers express attitudes that may raise questions regarding whether they, despite the curriculum mission to counteract traditional gender patterns, are truly dependent and reliant on a cooperation practice in which mothers are made particularly responsible and thus contribute to asymmetric gender patterns. The study’s results are surprising, given all government interventions in the Swedish compulsory school, which, since the 1960s, have focused on gender equality through education, training, and research. Both parents and teachers viewed the cooperation practice as a practical aid in their efforts to manage their own professional roles. The conditions for cooperation are based on the fact that the dominant discourse that emphasizes female care and responsibility is never challenged. Instead, the cooperation practice focuses on supporting those processes in which women are key leaders and where male teachers and fathers have only a limited responsibility for specific activities. In order to change this gendered situation, both the structural factors on the outside as well as the gender-blind approaches on the inside must be challenged in parallel so that sufficient strength can be mobilized to counter a normalization process that is reinforced by intersecting effects.