<p>Storytelling serves many purposes. People often tell stories as a coping mechanism, as a way of self-representation, and as a means for self-reflection. Through stories, narrators construct identities and gain perspective on events in their lives. This thesis is a discourse analysis of a single narrative told by a young man staying at a children&rsquo / s home in Cape Town. The study explores how life events are presented and evaluated in narrative and analyses the construction of identities. The objectives of the study are threefold. Firstly it aims to explore how the narrator draws on different social discourses in the telling of his narrative. Secondly, it analyses how, through the telling of these events, identities are constructed. Finally, the study assesses how the participant builds evaluation into his narrative. The study&rsquo / s overall purpose is to gain an understanding of narrative identities. The analysis reveals that Lucas develops three Master Narratives relating to the themes of family, education and drugs. His attitudes towards all three are ambivalent and he weaves competing discourses into his narrative in relation to each. He seeks, through his story, to construct himself as a wise young man who &ndash / having experimented with drugs and dropped out of school &ndash / makes the decision to redeem himself by going back to school, rejecting drugs, and mending his ties with his family. In this sense, his narrative is like an archetypal Bildungsroman. The study takes a qualitative approach and is situated within the fields of Discourse Analysis, more specifically, narrative analysis. The main theoretical influences in the study include Tannen (1989/2007 / 2008) and Labov (1972). The analysis of this study focuses on identifying the Master Narratives that shape Lucas&rsquo / s story as well as the discourses and competing ideologies which support these Master Narratives.</p>

Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this essay is to see how the media, through the newspaper, "Vi föräldrar”, produces family and parental roles, and to investigate how the image changed over time. Material/Method: The material consists of a number of selected texts from the years 1968, 1988 and 2008. The method used is a discourse analysis based on the three level model by Norman Fairclough. The three levels are the text, the discourse practise and the sociocultural practise. In this study two of the levels, text and sociocultural practise, are used in analysing the texts. Main results: Family and parenting in the texts from 1968 can be linked to the structural functionalist theory in which the core family is central and women and men are assigned to specific roles. I have chosen to call the contents of the texts of 1968 a "core family discourse." The feminist approach has influenced the content in the texts from 1988 which I call a “gender discourse”. The individualization of the late modern period has resulted in freedom for the individual without specific gender roles or traditional family frameworks, which are evident in the texts from 2008. I have therefore chosen to refer to the 2008 texts as a "lifestyle discourse".

Title: Television in the Service of the Public - a Study of the Public Service Concept (Television i allmänhetens tjänst - en studie av public service-begreppet). Author: Daniel Färnstrand Aim: To describe the ideals, or principles, that the Public Service Ideology or concept of Pub­lic Service is based upon. The two main questions the paper aims to answer are thus: · Which principles should, according to the theoretical norm, guide Public Service activity? · Which principles guide Public Service television in Sweden today, according to the actual guidelines for the Public Service organization SVT? Method / Material: A study of relevant literature is carried out. Further, the actual guidelines for SVT are summarized. The normative guidelines are then also summarized, and a compari­son is made between this summary and the actual guidelines for SVT. Main results: Although a comprehensive definition is hard to find within the theoretical frame­work, a summary of the theoretical ideal is carried out. Hereby, a broad definition of the theoretical, normative ideal for Public Service activity is created. A comparison between the actual guidelines for SVT and the theoretical ideal of Public Service activity, revealed that these show almost exact coherence. The ideal seems to have been fulfilled, at least when one analyses the guidelines for SVT. Whether these guidelines are then followed by the actual ac­tivity of SVT is a question outside the range of this paper. Number of pages: 41 Course: Media and Communication Studies C. University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University. Period: Spring 2000 Tutor: Lowe Hedman Keywords: Broadcasting, Public Service, Public Service Concept, Public Service Ideology.

Bakgrunden till den här uppsatsen finns att hitta i min något idealistiska bild av nyhetspressens eviga sökande efter och uppdagande av sanningen. Den bilden, i kombination med den senaste tidens skriverier om bland annat Hagamannen och dennes offer, fick mig att fundera kring nyhetspressens eventuella konstruerande eller reproducerande av våldsbrottsofferdiskursen. Jag använde mig av Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys då jag analyserade 36 nyhetsartiklar och nyhetsnotiser från Aftonbladet, Expressen, Svenska dagbladet och Dagens Nyheter, vilka alla hade publicerats under 2005/2006. Fokuseringen i undersökningen låg på den lingvistiska nivån i texten, det vill säga på ord, styckekombinationer och meningsuppbyggnader men även på de diskursiva praktikerna som fanns att finna i texterna. Det huvudsakliga som kom fram i undersökningen var att det inte finns en våldsbrottsofferdiskurs värd att tala om i svensk nyhetspress, den är alltid underordnad könsdiskursen och åldersdiskursen. Det finns inga våldsbrottsoffer i svensk nyhetspress, bara män och kvinnor i olika åldrar som blir utsatta för brott

This paper used the constant comparative method to examine the 12 animated features released by Disney between 2000 and 2010 for: (1) their representation of nonhuman animals (NHAs) and the portrayal of race, class, gender, and speciesism within this representation, (2) the ways they describe the relationship between humans and NHAs, and (3) whether they promote an animal rights perspective. Three major themes were identified: NHAs as stereotypes, family, and human/NHA dichotomy. Analysis of these themes revealed that Disney’s animated features promote speciesism and celebrate humanity’s superiority by justifying the subordination of NHAs to human agency. Furthermore, while Disney’s representation of NHAs remains largely anthropocentric, most of its animated features do not reflect the tenets of animal rights.

This thesis aims to describe and analyze the politicians who belong the right-wing political conservative traditions in Turkey by the mediation of their understanding and mentality. In this framework, the study primarily intends to investigate and analyze their perceptions of political and ideological imaginations. Turkish right seems to have a quite heterogeneous structure. While the recognition of the heterogeneity embodied around the political-institutional structuring is crucial to understand the Turkish right-conservatism, focusing merely on the heterogeneity and differences is inadequate to understand the right-conservative tradition. This study aims to analyze the aforesaid diversity and heterogeneity in the axes of politics and ideology. In spite of its heterogeneous qualifications, there are some attributions which made the Turkish right-wing conservative tradition homogeneous on certain economic, social and cultural issues. In this context, the study aims to analyze and understand the differentiations and affinities among the politicians who belong to the mainstream right-wing conservative political parties by focusing on the politicians discourses.

This study deals with students' notions of the function in society of their future professions. The overall aim is to study what notions are actually represented by the students and to describe the content of these notions. Another aim is to study how the students' notions change during their period of training. Slightly more than 100 students, distributed equally among the higher education programmes of economics, medicine, psychology and engineering, were interviewed when entering these programmes and after a period of approximately three years. The result of the analysis of notions was that five qualitatively different categories of notions could be discerned among students of economics, psychology and engineering, whereas three could be found among students of medicine. The categories run on a dimension from the profession being regarded as manifestations of and subordinate to an economic-political system, to the profession being regarded as manifestations of and subordinate to individual differences. The various categories of notions have been given names intended to, somewhat incisively, summarize their content. The students of economics and engineering changed during their period of training so that a larger number of them conceptualized the profession as a manifestation of individual differences. The students of psychology changed in the opposite direction and the students of medicine remained in the middle position. An analysis of the students' reflections on notions and the conceptualization per se, has also been carried out. This analysis is an attempt at problemizing the relation between notions and actions. It showed that, at the end of their training period, the students of psychology and, to a certain extent, the students of engineering more often than students of economics and medicine, considered the possibilities of acting in accordance to their notions of the ideal function of the professions. Attempts are also made at relating certain changes of the students' notions to specific characteristics of the educational programmes. The importance of students' initial notions for how they change is, however, also analysed and emphasized. The answer to the question of students' change of notions during their period of training can, in other words, be found in the dynamics and in the opposition between students' initial notions and the notions of the professions conveyed by the education. In relation to the goal of higher education to encourage critical thinking in students, the results of this study indicate that the educational programmes, rather than conveying one specific critical notion, should convey an awareness of the fact that there are different notions of the function of the profession. The students would then be stimulated, on the basis of their own initial notions of the profession, to make critical examinations of, to decide on, and to make their own choices of alternative notions. / digitalisering@umu

The purpose of this research was to determine if there is a model of ideal femininity communicated through advertising in girls’ and women’s magazines. To assess the representations of women in magazine advertisements, a content analysis of advertisements appearing in three top-selling, demographically-defined women’s magazines (Girls’ Life, Seventeen, and Cosmopolitan) was conducted. Using feminist theory and hegemony theory as critical lenses, advertisements were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Each advertisement was assessed using five criteria: physical characteristics, social context, personality and attitude, and subtext. Using this data to establish the dominant representations of women, it was determined that there is a model of ideal femininity which is developed through establishing common ideals shared by all three magazines and by gradually introducing new ideals which correspond to shifts in real-world interests and experiences of women. It was concluded that a model of ideal femininity is developed through advertising in girls’ and women’s magazines, this model is used as a guide to direct girls and women towards specific ideal preferences, attitudes and behaviours, and this model continues to emphasise traditional cultural values and gender ideals which are not necessarily reflective of the range of roles women assume in today’s society.

Why do ordinary individuals participate in mass violence perpetrated against civilians? That is the question I will attempt to answer in the following paper. I consider these men ordinary to the extent that the majority was not socially deviant. Looking at the case of Nazi Germany, two groups stand out as good case studies: the SS Einsatzgruppen and the SS cadres in the Death camps. The following analysis will focus on the motivations of these men to commit mass murder. I argue for a causal sequence of action, beginning with the onset of Nazi ideology, further followed by the dehumanization of the victim and the brutalization of the perpetrator. I will demonstrate how the ideology present during German interwar society influenced these men into participation. Dehumanization and brutalization are complimentary factors that push these men into action.

This essay will show how conservatism and liberalism is established and maintained in American presidential rhetoric, by analyzing the speeches held by George W. Bush in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2008 at their respective party’s national convention, at the time when they accepted their party’s nomination for the presidency for the first time. By conducting an ideology analysis by examining the language used in the two speeches, and connect that to the metaphors of morality in George Lakoff’s (2002) theory of the Nation-as-Family, the essay will show examples of how the two presidential candidates establish themselves as bearers and protectors of their party’s ideological base and how this can be related to the view on moral in American politics. The Republican Party connects to conservative ideology and the Democratic Party to liberal ideology. The Nation-as-Family theory involves looking at the relationship between the government and its citizens as that between parents and their children. Connected to conservative ideology is the Strict Father who proclaims authority, obedience and character and connected to liberal ideology is the Nurturant Parent who proclaims nurturing, empathy and equal distribution of opportunities. Connected to Strict Father and Nurturant Parent there exists a number of metaphors of morality that helps organize the language being used. Although notions of the ‘wrong’ moralities appear in the ‘wrong’ speeches, the results from the analysis clearly indicates that the Nation-as-Family theory is highly valid in displaying the connections between political speeches and the ideological bases to which the speakers adhere.