Comedy is an inherently pleasurable phenomenon with beneficial psychological functions, but its potential to bring on undesirable and socially destabilizing consequences is less intuitively obvious. In this essay, I argue that one of the hitherto under-recognized features of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is its covert problematization of the phenomenon of comedy itself, and that the play invites its audience to become more aware of in what situations laughter is constructive and appropriate. I apply psychological and cultural-historical theories of humor— specifically, Freudian relief theory and Bakhtinian thought on laughter and festivity—as a framework for interpreting the play, with a particular emphasis on the secondary protagonist called Gratiano. I argue that Gratiano serves as a personification of comedy, whose function is to problematize it and demonstrate its positive as well as negative attributes in relation to seriousness and restraint. Gratiano’s laughter-inducing antics compel audience members to sympathize with him in the dialectic which Shakespeare sets up between him and other characters, but the play also portrays his jovial behavior as concomitant with less desirable traits which his comedy successfully obscures. While the character presents comedy as attractive and instinctively preferable to propriety and decorum, he also shows how the allure of laughter and comedy may be used by disingenuous actors to provide an attractive veneer for immoral or abhorrent behavior.

The humor of Mark Twain has long fascinated his readers. Critics such as Messent (2007), Budd (2005), Gerber (1988) and Camfield (2005) have all analyzed Mark Twain’s humor to reveal nuances and to help further the understanding of what makes Twain’s writing humorous. However, there is a distinct gap in the research so far conducted investigating Twain’s humor in relation to young readers, which this paper will begin to address. Twain’s novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2007) poses a relevant subject for this research as Twain explicitly (in the preface to the novel) professes to write both for children and adults simultaneously. Writing in such a way can be categorized as either “double address” or “dual address”, understanding these terms according to the definitions of Barbara Wall (1991). In this paper I will argue that Mark Twain manages to create “dual address” in Tom Sawyer by using what Greg Camfield (2005) calls “amiable humor” and constructing scenes out of childhood in order to produce delight and nostalgia. By reading closely excerpts of the book and analyzing Twain’s specific use of humor through three prominent theories—superiority theory, relief theory and incongruity— it becomes possible to identify what the implied reader is meant to find humorous, and therefore if Twain manages to establish a “dual address”. An understanding of Twain’s humor from the perspective of both young and adult reader furthers our understanding of the novel by revealing Twain’s implementation of complex “dual address” narration and its implications.

The number of displaced people around the world today is unprecedented in world history, with a third of those displaced below the age of 18. These children often undergo traumatic experiences which can cause serious mental health issues before and during their flight as well as afterwards when resettling in a new country. In Sweden, they are offered psychological aid in order to better deal with these issues and hence recover. However, due to the cultural stigma attached to mental health problems, psychosocial aid is often ruled out by the child themselves. In addition, up to 30% of these unaccompanied children have been reported to suffer from PTSD, where merely speaking about one's issue can trigger a relapse of the trauma. There is therefore a shortage of pragmatic approaches to help tackle the challenges that these children faces. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how creative programs such as the organisation Clowns without Borders works with unaccompanied refugees and how their methods affect the wellbeing of these children. This thesis explores the effects that laughter and playing has on a child’s well-being using a qualitative field research approach. The research is a contribution to the field of development since it offers new grounds on how to work towards increasing the living standards of resettled displaced persons.

This thesis aims to describe one educational sequence in religious education.  The study shows articulations and negotiations in the religious education classroom, as well as on digital discussion forums. Two questions are the core of the explorative case study. What is communicated between teachers and students in a Re-classroom in Sweden? How does the content of the communication contribute to constructing the Re-subject in two different discussion forums: digital and analogue? The case study follows an upper secondary school class, with 18 years old students, during one teaching sequence. The theoretical foundation is based in a social-cultural perspective. Data is produced by ethnographic methods and consist of classroom observations and interviews with teachers and students. For the interpretation of speech Even’s relief theory is used concerning what is said and Michel Bakhtin’s thoughts on speech genre concerning how it is expressed and negotiated in the teaching sequence. The analysis of the different forums show that in all of them, teachers and students tend to focus on what religious persons do, their appearance, and how they are limited by their faith. The religious persons are compared to a way of living according to a secular norm that the students find more relevant and up-to-date. When speaking of religious persons the students tend to express it in a derisive and disparaging way. Negotiations on content and framework factors interrupt the actual teaching in the classroom environment whilst digital forums are self-regulating and discussions quickly return to the topic after irrelevant digressions. In the discussion part of the thesis the various discussion forums are evaluated didactically. The impact of gender and framework factors on the student-teacher discussions is also raised. An additional question that is problematized is the tension between the curriculum of the subject and the teacher’s desire to get students interested in religion as a subject, described as ‘the teacher’s dilemma’. It is discussed whether this dilemma controls the teacher’s choice of subject. / Vad talar lärare och elever om i religionskunskapsundervisningen och vilket religionskunskapsämne konstrueras i två olika samtalsmiljöer? Detta undersöker denna fallstudie, som följer en gymnasieklass i åk 3, under ett undervisningsmoment. Syftet är att beskriva och jämföra hur ämneskonstruktioner i religionskunskap artikuleras och förhandlas, av elever och lärare, i en klassrumsmiljö respektive i ett digitalt diskussionsforum. Empirin utgörs av klassrumsobservationer, digitala diskussionsinlägg och kvalitativa intervjuer med lärare och elever. Analysen visar bland annat att i alla diskussionsmiljöerna fokuserar både lärare och elever på vad troende människor gör, hur de ser ut och hur de upplevs begränsas av sin tro. Förhandlingar om innehåll, ramfaktorer och annat stoppar upp undervisningen i klassrumsmiljön medan de digitala miljöerna är självreglerande och diskussionerna återvänder snabbt till ämnesstoffet igen efter ovidkommande utvikningar. I diskussionen lyfts frågor om genus och ramfaktorers inverkan på diskussionerna. Det som undersökningen kallar lärarens dilemma lyfts och beskrivs som spänningen mellan läroplanens ämnesstoff och känslan att som lärare få eleverna intresserade av religionskunskapsundervisningen. Huruvida lärarens val av ämnesstoff styrs av det sistnämnda diskuteras och de olika diskussionsmiljöerna värderas didaktiskt. / <p>Examinator: Stolare, Martin, Docent</p><p>Centrum för de samhällsvetenskapliga ämnenas didaktik</p><p>martin.stolare@kau.se</p>

Abstract The aim of the study was to investigate the quality of pupils’ narrative texts written either by hand or on a tablet. The questions concern which structures are characteristic of the texts as a whole and what is distinctive about hand-written texts and those written on a tablet. To investigate this, 46 pupil texts from grade 2 were analysed. Each pupil in the class wrote two texts, one with each writing tool. The overall theoretical approach in the study is dialogism, which views all utterances as being related to each other. In this study that means that the pupils received teaching about how to write a story, and then wrote stories of their own. Relief theory, which has its foundation in dialogism, was used as analytical framework. With this model, analyses are made of the text as a whole. The overall structure and focus of the text are regarded as the foreground and the additions and expanded details supporting these are viewed as the background text. This interaction between foreground and background gives the relief perspective. Proceeding from relief theory, the structures of the texts in their entirety were analysed. At the intermediate and local level of the texts, dialogues and connectives were analysed, along with the number of unique words and the total number of words. The relief of the texts was analysed in terms of quality at global, intermediate and local text level. The relief analysis revealed that three different categories of relief could be identified in these texts. The result shows that the difference in quality concerns how the backgrounds are expanded. The results of the study show that there are differences between the pupils’ handwritten texts and texts written on a tablet, but the differences are small. The biggest differences concern the number of unique words and the total number of words. The texts written on a tablet contain both more unique words and more words in total than texts written by hand.   Keywords relief theory, tablet, writing tools, early school years, student text, narrative text

This is about how pupils in years 4 to 6 of compulsory school and their teachers make meaning in teaching activities and texts. The aim of the study is to investigate the teaching and learning of writing and the pupils’ discursive texts. Another aim is to use linguistic theories and develop methods and analytical concepts for studying teaching practices. Sources for the material are the teaching practices in two classes, the teachers and the pupils. The field studies lasted for two years, consisting of observations and interviews. Twelve pupils’ texts and four writing projects are studied in depth. The theoretical framework is linked to systemic functional linguis­tics, critical discourse analysis, dialogical conception of language and new literacy studies. Analytical tools are also derived from rhetorical structure theory, relief theory and theory of text sequences. These tools have been adap­ted and are also applied in the analysis of the teaching practice. To analyse pupils’ meaning making in their texts, a theory of mobility in texts is used. The analyses show two different categories of texts and teaching practices. The hierarchically composed texts are characterized by hierarchies concerning the entire text. The sequentially coupled texts are charac­terized by many vague relations between text entities. One conclusion is that the students in the hierarchically composed texts develop knowledge during writing. They make meaning recursively when writing and they seem to grasp the text as a whole in a way they do not in the sequentially coupled ones. In the sequentially coupled texts, pupils seem to develop knowledge mostly before they write the text, rather than during the writing. In the hierarchically composed practice the pupils deepen their knowledge about text. The result can be interpreted as showing that pupils primarily need education about global text levels in order to develop text knowledge and subject knowledge. Teaching practice seems to promote all pupils’ meaning making if the practice is characterized by many interpersonal relations in the chains of spoken and written texts and if pupils learn to write texts that can structure their meaning making in a functional way.