The purpose of the study is to develop both a descriptive and critical understanding towards the phenomenon of femicide in Turkey. First, the answers to the questions who commits femicide, where it takes place, what the ages of the victims and perpetrators are, in what ways femicide is committed and what are the &#039 / reasons&#039 / of committing femicide will be revealed through news reports of incidents of femicide. Second, the news texts of incidents of femicide will be analyzed based on the framework of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA). The discourse of framing the incidents will be identified. In particular, &#039 / justifying discourse&#039 / in the language of the news reports will be examined.

Intimate Partner Sexual Violence (IPSV) is a global issue that impacts women of all social locations, but it disproportionately impacts racialized immigrant women. While there is a lack of literature on the topic of IPSV in general, there is a particular dearth of research on the prosecution of IPSV cases involving racialized immigrant women in Canada. There is little research on how these women are revictimized within the criminal justice system because of rape myths pertaining to IPSV, race, and citizenship. In this project, I aim to interrogate the legal rhetoric within judicial decisions regarding cases of IPSV involving racialized immigrant women. In so doing, I ask: How do judges conceptualize racialized immigrant women in cases of IPSV? How do these conceptualizations reproduce myths and stereotypes about these women who report IPSV? I use Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) to mobilize law as a gendering and racializing practice in my analysis of eight summaries of judicial decisions of criminal and immigration proceedings pertaining to IPSV. Critical Race Theory (CRT) contributes to my theoretical framework to advance our understanding of law as a gendering and racializing practice. Through an abductive process, I find three discourses that dominate judicial decisions: ‘ideal’ victims resist sexual assault and do not delay in reporting; ‘ideal’ victims do not know or maintain ongoing contact with the accused; and judges excuse defendants of sexual assault due to the beliefs that male sexuality is uncontrollable, and women pursue false allegations. These rape myths normalize violence against women of colour and immigrant women by reinforcing the view that they are ‘non-ideal’ victims.

Four years after the Swedish MeToo-movement, ten women who publicly accused men of sexual violence have been convicted of the crime defamation. Framed as realizing questions of truth, sexual violence and the roles victim and perpetrator, the convictions have caused an extensive and polarized debate in Swedish news media. Based on a data-sample of newspaper articles from four of the major daily newspapers in Sweden, this study uses feminist critical discourse analysis to study the news media coverage of these defamation cases with the aim of investigating if patriarchal structures are reproduced in Swedish news media discourse on defamation in the wake of MeToo. The results show that patriarchal structures are in fact being reproduced – in three main ways. First of all, patriarchal structures are reproduced through the construction of truth as a subjective, internal and individual reality that gives men as a group an interpretative prerogative and privilege in making truth-claims, compared to women. Secondly, patriarchal structures are reproduced through the construction of sexual violence as a subjective experience rather than a fact. Men’s sexual violence towards women is depoliticized and de-gendered, rendering the gendered asymmetry of the violence invisible. Thirdly, patriarchal structures are reproduced through assigned roles of victim and perpetrator. Women who testify about rape are constructed as perpetrators of defamation rather than as victims of rape, while men are constructed as victims of defamation rather than as perpetrators of rape. The credibility of women who testify about rape is questioned as well as their legitimacy as victims of sexual violence. To conclude, the study shows that the news media discourse on defamation in the wake of MeToo reproduce patriarchal structures as it contributes to a systematic privileging of men as a group, and to a systematic disadvantaging of women as a group. / Fyra år efter den svenska MeToo-rörelsen har tio kvinnor som offentligt anklagade män för sexuellt våld blivit dömda för brottet förtal. Förtalsdomarna har fått omfattande medialt utrymme i svensk nyhetsmedia och har väckt en polariserad debatt. Domarna har i nyhetsrapporteringen framställts realisera frågor om sanning och sexuellt våld, samt frågor om vem som egentligen är offer och förövare i fallen. Baserat på ett material av nyhetsartiklar från fyra av de största rikstäckande tidningarna i Sverige studerar denna studie nyhetsrapporteringen om dessa förtalsdomar i syfte att undersöka om patriarkala strukturer reproduceras i den mediala diskursen om förtal i kölvattnet av MeToo. Resultaten visar att patriarkala strukturer reproduceras på tre olika sätt. För det första genom att sanning konstrueras diskursivt som en subjektiv och inre individuell verklighet, vilket ger män som grupp ett tolkningsföreträde och privilegium i att leverera sannings-utsagor jämfört med kvinnor. För det andra så reproduceras patriarkala strukturer genom att sexuellt våld konstrueras diskursivt som en subjektiv upplevelse snarare än en sanning. Mäns sexuella våld mot kvinnor avpolitiseras och avkönas vilket gör att den könsasymmetriska aspekten av våldet osynliggörs. För det tredje så reproduceras patriarkala strukturer genom hur rollerna offer och förövare tillskrivs. Kvinnor som vittnar om våldtäkt framställs som förövare av förtal snarare än som våldtäktsoffer, medan män konstrueras som offer för förtal snarare än som våldtäktsmän och förövare. Trovärdigheten hos kvinnor som vittnar om våldtäkt ifrågasätts liksom deras legitimitet som offer för sexuellt våld. Sammanfattningsvis visar studien att mediediskursen om förtal reproducerar patriarkala strukturer genom att den bidrar till ett systematiskt gynnande av män som grupp och missgynnande av kvinnor som grupp.

The Swedish Food Agency is responsible for giving guidelines and recommendations for businesses producing, importing, selling, and serving agricultural products in Sweden. The general discourse of these guidelines and recommendations are based on the notion of safeguarding the consumer from potential risks and harms. The discourse is further based on the European Union legislation of good governance which dictates the terms and conditions for businesses operating withing the EU market. In this explorative feminist decolonial discourse analysis I am analyzing the guidelines and recommendations for businesses dealing with agricultural products in Sweden communicated on the Swedish Food Agency’s website. The analysis is investigating the colonial epistemic and ontological assumptions underpinning the discourse. The analysis concludes that the discourse is based on modern/colonial assumptions about whom is to be kept safe and from what, and which products, countries, and territories are not safe to consume from. The discourse assumes humans as a homogenous group separate from animals and plants, and assumes that modern-scientific knowledge production will safekeep all humans and animals, and that food, supplements, and medicines should be understood as separate categories of foods. It is within and through these assumptions that the coloniality is being produced and reproduced in the discourse of the Swedish Food Agency. The discourse allows little to no room for other ontological and epistemic ways of relation to production, distribution and consumption of agricultural products. The discourse is limiting Swedish businesses in their ability to explore decolonial and unconventional business practices through border thinking, being, and doing at the colonial difference by engaging with other ways of relating to the world and the production, distribution, and consumption of food of the land.

The underrepresentation of sportswomen in all forms of news coverage has been widely acknowledged by feminist media scholars. However, some researchers claim that there is a shift towards greater gender equality of sports media coverage, especially during the Olympic Games. In light of such studies, the present study examined the quantitative and qualitative media representations of male and female athletes in six German news media outlets during the Olympic Games 2016. The empirical analysis focused on the coverage of the German men’s and women’s hockey team. In contrast to previous studies, the chosen example represents a special case, since on the factual level, hockey can be seen as a gender equal sport, because hockey is played by men and women equally in Germany and both teams won the bronze medal at the Olympics 2016. Content analysis and feminist critical discourse analyses were used to examine in what ways the media portrays male and female hockey players differently and thereby plays a part in the ideological construction of gender. The study found that, although the selected German media outlets gave more coverage to the hockey women than sportswomen usually receive, the coverage was filled with narratives based on hegemonic masculinity that produces striking contrasts between the female and male hockey players. Results show that the media was more likely to minimize the athleticism of the hockey women, by comparing them to the men’s team, including non-sport relevant information or emphasizing their traditional gender roles as wives and mothers. Moreover, the coverage of the female hockey players typically employed expressions which imitate femininity, whereas the language used to report on the male athletes contained power descriptors, conforming to the hegemonic notions of masculinity. Thus, the media reporting produces gender differences and naturalizes a gender hierarchy in which sportswomen are represented as inferior.

There is no one clear concept of peace in peace education. A large part of peace education recognizes and discusses different forms of violence and how they affect peace. Peace education is a broad field and finds connections to critical peace education, feminism, sustainability, the United Nations, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Using transnational feminist theory and a transnational feminist critical discourse analysis, this thesis problematizes the peace discourse that is created in peace educational material from World’s Largest Lesson. In order to problematize the overall peace discourse, this thesis critically explores the knowledge that is produced through discussions of different forms of violence. The peace education materials were selected based on their relevance to peace education occurring in relation to education for the Sustainable Development Goals.  The materials were also selected based on their aim to produce knowledge specifically related to concepts of peace and violence. The thesis finds that overall, the knowledge produced in the materials deemphasizes the interconnectedness of different forms of violence and, therefore, creates a peace discourse that is decontextualized, dehistoricized, depoliticized, privileges individuals, and maintains the status quo. The thesis also discusses pedagogical implications in relation to Mohanty’s (2003) discussion of different pedagogical strategies. It is argued that the peace discourse in World’s Largest Lesson contributes to a peace as tourist pedagogical model. The thesis also offers insights into a peace as solidarity pedagogical model before calling for change

In 2011 the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) published the Regulations on Hyperandrogenism, a health policy banning female athletes from track and field competition if their natural levels of testosterone were found to be higher than those of most female athletes. In 2014, Dutee Chand, a sprinter from India, was banned from competition based on these regulations. She appealed her ban in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and as a result the 2011 IAAF Hyperandrogenism Regulations were suspended for two years. The issues at stake in the suspension of these regulations are, at their core, rhetorical issues related to health and medical technical communication: how information about health and medicine is communicated to stakeholders, the ethics of such communication, and the implications of such communication. They are also issues related to the medical regulation of sex and gender: Chand’s case is the latest in a history of sex verification testing of elite female athletes that began well before 2011. In this study I use feminist critical discourse analysis methods within the computer assisted qualitative analysis software program NVivo to analyze the 2011 IAAF Hyperandrogenism Regulations and the transcript of the CAS Award that suspended them. I argue that the 2011 IAAF Regulations and the CAS Award are an example of what I describe as a closed, Foucauldian system, which is not open to outside voices, stakeholders, expertise, or evidence. I also argue for the use of a heuristic alongside a feminist technical communication perspective on health and medical rhetorics that technical communicators might use to insert themselves into closed Foucauldian systems such as this one in order to enact positive change.

Despite the increasing numbers of criminalized women in Canada, the use of the Institutional Mother-Child Program (MCP) remains low (Brennan, 2014). It is well known in fields of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Indigenous Studies, that Indigenous Peoples are overrepresented in Canadian prisons; they represent about five percent of the overall Canadian population, however Indigenous women make up forty percent of all incarcerated women (Miller, 2017). Incarcerated Indigenous women are often mothers of young children, come from poor backgrounds, have little education, and suffered abuse at some point during their lives (Monchalin, 2016). In this thesis, using Indigenous Feminisms (IF) (Suzack, 2010, 2015) and Penal Moderation (Loader, 2010; Snacken, 2015), I address the following research questions: How has the MCP policy evolved over time? How have the policy changes represented a (de)colonial approach to criminal justice policy? To answer these questions, I conducted a feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) of all the final versions of the Correctional Service of Canada’s MCP policy (CD 768).

The purpose of this study is to critically examine discourses in YouTube videos and comments about sexual content on OnlyFans. It focuses on how these discourses reflect gender and power inequalities and potentially contribute to the normalization of selling sexual content. Using feminist critical discourse analysis, we identify three discourses concerning sexual content: the discourse of prostitution, the discourse of the anti-social female influencer and a dominant neoliberal discourse that runs throughout the material. Our findings highlight that women who sell sexual content are stigmatized and blamed, which can contribute to the normalization of gender inequality. The study indicates that commentators value traditional gender roles, thus perpetuating unequal relations of power. By separating sexual content on OnlyFans from prostitution, the discourses contribute to normalization of selling one's body on OnlyFans. Rather than acknowledging structural causes of the phenomenon, the blame and responsibility is placed upon the individual. / Studiens syfte är att kritiskt undersöka diskurser i YouTube videor och kommentarer om att sälja sexuellt material på OnlyFans. Studien fokuserar på hur dessa diskurser återspeglar ojämlika genus- och maktförhållanden och eventuellt bidrar till en normalisering av att sälja sin kropp. Genom att använda feministisk kritisk diskursanalys har tre diskurser om försäljning av sexuellt material på OnlyFans identifierats: diskursen om prostitution, diskursen om normbrytande kvinna och den nyliberala diskursen som är den mest framträdande i materialet. Våra resultat understryker att kvinnorna som säljer sexuellt material stigmatiseras och skuldbeläggs, vilket kan bidra till normalisering av ojämlikhet mellan könen. Studien visar att personer i kommentarsfälten värderar traditionella könsroller och därigenom upprätthåller ojämlika maktrelationer. Genom att skilja på försäljning av sexuellt material på OnlyFans från prostitution bidrar diskurserna till normalisering av att sälja sin kropp på OnlyFans. I stället för att erkänna de strukturella orsakerna till fenomenet, läggs skulden och ansvaret på individen.

This study analyses the legitimation of violence against women in Colombia, using critical discourse analysis to explore attitudes related to violence, gender, and power. Internet forums from the website of the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo provide everyday examples of talk about two incidents of violence against women (VAW), a sexual assault and a wife-beating, both of which triggered a large scale reaction from the Colombian public. Colombia is a unique context to study the normalisation of VAW. This nation has been characterised by high levels of violence over the last sixty years, suffering through evolving stages of armed conflict. Militarisation has been shown to increase the occurrence of VAW (Kelly, 2000), and the normalisation of VAW may intensify as well in militarily violent contexts (Hume, 2004; McWilliams, 1998). Critical discourse analysis offers theory and methodology to examine an aspect of life in terms of social justice and power (Fairclough, 2003; Resende, 2009), denaturalising the discursive practices which help to produce and reproduce power relations between social groups (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; van Dijk, 1993). This study examines legitimation, a social action realised in discourse, which has the goal of setting and reinforcing a certain social order. The project also explores how legitimation in these forums is tied to Colombian culture and the topic of VAW. Drawing on the methods of van Dijk (1988, 1998, 2001) ,Wood and Kroger (2000), and grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008), multiple readings of the forums elicited salient themes as well as discursive strategies used to carry out legitimation of VAW. These were analysed in terms of underlying social beliefs prevailing in Colombian society. Dominant themes emerging from analysis of the sexual assault forums include: ‘“real” violence is more important’; ‘this incident was not a big deal’; ‘it’s her fault anyway’; and ‘she should have appreciated it’. These manifest the dominant strategies and structures of contrasts, minimisation, victim blaming, and romanticisation/sexualisation, respectively. Analysis of the wife-beating forums reveals the following themes: ‘this is not related to me’; ‘wife-beating is a private issue’; ‘domestic violence is normal and even important’; ‘it is the victim’s responsibility to change’; and ‘the victim deserves this violence’. Dominant strategies included respectively: distancing explanations and solutions, discourses of privacy, normalising violence, focusing on the victim, and victim blaming. The forum analyses illustrate how legitimation relates to Colombian culture and the topic of VAW. Numerous elements of culture and topic are used to criticise women’s agency and suggest that women ought to be passive and silent. In one culture-related example, the Colombian reiteration of violent events works to silence women’s stories about their experiences of VAW. Another strong element of culture is found in Colombian sayings and proverbs presenting a common knowledge discourse normalising VAW as romantic, sexual and necessary. Discourses used more universally to justify VAW include the idea that women belong in the private sphere and the psychopathologisation of women as attention-seeking and slutty. These elements work together to suggest that women are strong, sexual, and dangerous, needing violence from an authority to keep them uncomplaining and submissive. This work can inform future studies about discourse concerning VAW in Hispanic contexts, sketching in a little-studied disciplinary intersection. As this research participates in the aims of feminist critical discourse analysis, it is hoped that the present study will also be used for critical campaigns aimed at media specialists and educators so that they may create greater awareness and promote change, pointing out and discouraging these discourses legitimating violence against women in Colombia.