The purpose of this thesisis to examine the female body ideal of the Swedish fitness blogs and how it is reproduced. To answer the research question five of the most read female fitness blogs were chosen for a critical discourse analysis. The results show that pictures is an important communication event. The ideal is reproduced by representing bodies with desirable attributes in environments and poses that communicates positive feelings. There is a dialectic relation between picture and text in each published post. To get the text and picture accentuate the ideologies of the fitness blogs, often with strong words that reminiscent infatuation and euphoria. The intertextual chain in the blogs frames training, fitness and the ideal female body as a healthy, happy and successful subject position.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

The purpose of this study was to determine discourse and functional motivation for passive word order variation as shown in three of the major Early Old English prose texts, Orosius, Pastoral Care, and Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The main variation of Early Old English passive word orders are of three types, which this study showed to be distinct in the extent to which passive subjects represent information structure. This study further shows that, while thematicity functions as a main motivating factor for the use of passives, positional variation of passive verbal elements is also an important determinant of the degrees of information structure of passive main clause subjects. / Department of English

The Functions and the Ordering of Conditional `If Clauses' in English---A Genre AnalysisPrevious research studies are in agreement that the canonical order for English if conditionals is sentence-initial rather than final. However, earlier findings regarding the distribution of the ordering between initial and final if-conditionals represent only those patterns specific to the limited number of genres examined. This corpus linguistic study is based on a research approach which includes a larger sampling pool and a selection of representative genres as well as detailed statistical and content analyses. It examines the variations in the distributional patterns between initial and final if-clauses within each individual genre and across different genres. The findings of this study suggest that if-conditionals have significantly different distributional pattern across genres. In contrast to the consensus view in current literature that initial if-clause rather than final is the dominant clause order, in 3 of the genres examined in this study (Letters to the Editor, Recipes and Sports News) final if-clauses occur more frequently than initial. In addition, in 3 other genres (News Reportage, Science Fiction and Romance Fiction) these two clause types are equally distributed. This study thus identifies genre as a significant factor influencing sentential if-conditional placement.The study also argues that in addition to the expression of topic and focus discourse relations, the ordering of the conditional and consequence clauses is often used to convey specific pragmatic effects and to perform functions related to genre-specific needs, including social politeness and showing power deixis, hedging or strengthening a proposition. / Department of English

In recent discourse-oriented studies of grammar, it has been claimed that the information structure of discourse is composed of two levels, foreground and background, and that linguistic categories such as tense and aspect have as their functions the sorting of information into these two levels. However, this study of Korean narrative finds that Korean tense and aspect distinguish not between foreground and background, but between ordinary and significant information within foreground and background. It was found that a total of five levels of information are signalled by the choice of tense and aspect in Korean narrative: ordinary background information, significant background information, ordinary mainline events, significant mainline events, and peak.Ordinary background information is indicated by the imperfective aspects (progressive, resultative, continuative, iterative, and inchoative) with the past tense. Significant background information is indicated by either the progressive the resultative with the historical present tense. The completive or inceptive aspects, both of which are perfective, combine with the past tense to mark ordinary mainline events. These shift to the progressive or resultative with the historical present to indicate significant mainline events. Peak is indicated by the completive aspect as well as tense-shift and other stylistic and linguistic devices such as onomatopoeia, concentration of participants, change of the normal pace of the story, or change from narration to dialogue. Tense and aspect are thus interrelated in signalling function and degree of significance of information.This study demonstrated two major points. First, Korean distinguishes five levels of information in narrative discourse. Second, these are differentiated by the choice of tense and aspect, among other devices. Two methodological consequences are that linguistic categories such as tense and aspect may be fully analyzed only in a discourse-based study and that mode of discourse cannot be analyzed without reference to tense and aspect.

The objective of this study is to investigate the picture book as a form of communication. The investigation comprises both a theoretical and a practical approach. An extensive literature survey was undertaken, publishers interviewed and visits undertaken to process and printing houses to establish the methods and approaches that are currently employed to produce a picture book. The theoretical formulation forms the background and motivation to the practical aspect of the study. The practical component entails the actual conceptualization, design, illustration and publication of a picture book. The possibilities and constraints imposed on the illustrator, comprising all the elements that influence and shape the communication process, are presented and discussed - firstly in theory and then in direct reference to the picture book which is bei:1g illustrated. The theoretical and practical components of this study combine to show up the picture book as a unique art and literary form. The manner in which successful communication is achieved through the effective utilization of all the processes and elements that combine to form the picture book is demonstrated. This study emphasizes that the illustrator should get to know and use all possibilities and restrictions to their full advantage to create an effective, unique interpretation and expression in picture book form. / Thesis (MA (Beeldende Kunste))--PU for CHE

The objective of this study is to investigate the picture book as a form of communication. The investigation comprises both a theoretical and a practical approach. An extensive literature survey was undertaken, publishers interviewed and visits undertaken to process and printing houses to establish the methods and approaches that are currently employed to produce a picture book. The theoretical formulation forms the background and motivation to the practical aspect of the study. The practical component entails the actual conceptualization, design, illustration and publication of a picture book. The possibilities and constraints imposed on the illustrator, comprising all the elements that influence and shape the communication process, are presented and discussed - firstly in theory and then in direct reference to the picture book which is bei:1g illustrated. The theoretical and practical components of this study combine to show up the picture book as a unique art and literary form. The manner in which successful communication is achieved through the effective utilization of all the processes and elements that combine to form the picture book is demonstrated. This study emphasizes that the illustrator should get to know and use all possibilities and restrictions to their full advantage to create an effective, unique interpretation and expression in picture book form. / Thesis (MA (Beeldende Kunste))--PU for CHE

This thesis studies sustainable tourism and climate change with discourse analysis by addressing two special issues of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, published in 2006 and 2010. Based on social constructionism assumptions, discourse theory assumes knowledge as “power-constructed reality” with the usage of language, that is, discourses. The formation of discourse thereby can be analyzed based on the texts presented. Likewise, the knowledge presented in the papers, namely the content of the special issues, is treated as empirical data containing discourses worthy of identifying and discussing. With the analytical elements proposed by Dryzek (1997), the discourse identified by the thesis suggests that the nature of sustainable tourism and climate change is that of sustaining the tourism industry with concerns for climatic resources change and GHG emission reduction. Moreover, the discourse identified is claimed to contain the features of some mainstream thinking such as neoclassical economics. Lastly, the change of the discourse identified is interpreted as a result of social practices.

Through six months of ethnographic and autoethnographic fieldwork, which included participant observation and ten individual semi-structured interviews, I sought to determine how dominant discourses in dance, especially those pertaining to professionalism, ability, validity, and legitimacy, are circulated in and through training, and how we as dancers responded to these discourses. Following the stand alone thesis format, this thesis is comprised of two publishable papers. The first is an ethnography of one integrated dance company’s members’ experience with negotiating space for alternative forms of dance in contemporary dance. The second is an autoethnographic piece of writing where I show the challenges of resisting dominant discourses of validity and legitimacy in both qualitative research as well as contemporary dance. Together, these papers form a thesis that strengthens our scholarly understanding of the discourses and associated tensions at work in participating in and writing about integrated dance.

Climate change is an issue that is increasingly being adopted into various NGO campaigns. Drawing on a theoretical framework that is grounded in post-colonialism and subaltern studies, this thesis investigates representations of agency in the climate change discourse of Oxfam International. The central research question guiding the study is: To what extent do developing world people and countries have agency in Oxfam International’s 2009 climate change campaign? The methodological approach used to address this question combines content analysis and critical discourse to analyze 105 documents published by Oxfam in the lead up to the 2009 U.N. Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The findings reveal that that developing world subjects tend to possess less speaking space and to be represented with less agency than their developed world counterparts.