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The fashion industry's enormous environmental impact has received a lot of attention, but despite this it continues to grow, partly due to the emergence of the fast fashion segment. This fashion segment mass produces cheap, poor quality, disposable clothing at a high speed with major environmental and social impact. Due to an increased consumer awareness of sustainability most companies communicate their corporate social responsibility (CSR) to legitimize their business. The purpose of this essay is to study what linguistic and semiotic elements that the fast fashion companies H&M and NA-KD use to frame the sustainability discourse. The theoretical framework includes theories of CSR, Fairclough's perspective on critical discourse analysis (CDA) and Barthes's take on semiology. Fairclough's CDA and Barthes’s semiology were applied to the study methodologically as well. The analysis showed that the communication is perceived to be used primarily for the purpose of creating increased sales by building an attractive green(washed) image, and secondarily acting as a reporting of actual sustainability work. The two companies generally had a low interdiscursivity, which revealed the discursive practice’s aim to reproduce the prevailing discors order. In conclusion, the study shows that above all, the companies aim to maintain the hegemonic structures that shape the industry’s ideology and continue to capitalize on the commercial system Keywords: Fast Fashion, Corporate Social Responsibility, Greenwashing, Critical Discourse Analysis, Semiotic Analysis.

Ce travail explore les modalités de l’intégration de motifs mythologiques antiques et bibliques dans la poésie de RDA. Dans un premier temps sont explicitées les notions de mythe, de mythème et d’« héritage culturel » socialiste. Ensuite sont étudiées les théories de Marx sur le rapport à la culture des siècles passés, qui mettent en valeur une pensée dialectique d’intégration puis de dépassement de l’héritage culturel, sans en rechercher la pure abolition. En témoignant un mépris certain envers les mythes, les autorités culturelles est-allemandes procèdent donc à une surinterprétation des positions de Marx. Si la politique culturelle fait montre d’une attitude schizophrène en instrumentalisant les mythes pour consolider le pouvoir, tout en les dépréciant du fait de leur caractère non rationnel, dans les faits on observe un succès considérable de la matière mythologique dans la littérature de RDA, et en premier lieu dans la poésie. L’étude des motifs mythologiques dans les œuvres de Günter Kunert, Sarah Kirsch et Uwe Kolbe permet de souligner que le recours à cette tradition ouvre la voie, en poésie, à la modernité, puis à la postmodernité. L’emploi des mythes s’articule autour des notions de liberté et de contrainte, que nous mettons en relation avec les concepts du sémiotique et du thétique de Julia Kristeva, afin de montrer que, lorsqu’elle utilise les mythes, la poésie est-allemande développe une esthétique de résistance à la doxa sous toutes ses formes. La reprise de mythes dans la poésie de RDA situe souvent cette dernière dans l’esthétique postmoderne, mais il s’agit d’une postmodernité contrainte, négative, car elle atteste à la fois la difficulté de comprendre le monde contemporain, soumis à l’éclatement du sens, et l’absurdité autodestructrice du régime est-allemand. Finalement, la quasi-disparition des mythes dans la poésie des années quatre-vingt peut se lire comme l’échec de l’idée utopique d’un monde amendable. / This work explores how antique and biblical mythological motives are integrated into GDR poetry. First, the notions of myth, mytheme and socialist “cultural heritage” are clarified. After that are studied Marx’s theories on how we relate to the culture of the past centuries. The latter focuses on how to integrate dialectically and then surpass the cultural heritage, but with no intention to abolish it. By showing outward contempt for the myths, the East German cultural authorities overinterpret Marx’s positions. If the cultural policy shows a schizophrenic attitude by manipulating the myths to consolidate the power, while depreciating them because of their non rational nature, in fact one can observe the great success of the mythological material in GDR literature, especially in poetry. The study of the mythological motives in the work of Günter Kunert, Sarah Kirsch and Uwe Kolbe highlights the fact that resorting to this tradition in poetry has paved the way for modernity, then for postmodernism. The reference to myths implies the notions of liberty and restraint, that we relate to Julia Kristeva’s concepts of semiotic and thetic. Indeed, the aim is to show that, when referring to the myths, GDR poetry develops an aesthetics of resistance to doxa in every way. The recourse to myths in GDR poetry places it in a postmodern aesthetics, but a constrained, negative one, for it attests both the difficulty to understand the contemporary world, exposed to the splitting of sense, and the self-destroying absurdity of the East German regime. Finally, the fact that myths in GDR poetry from the eighties have almost disappeared can be read as the failure of the utopian idea of an improvable world.

My intentions with this work are to clarify the author's the main characters' and the reader's role in and outside a poem and also to explain what a semiotic analysis consists in. Furthermore, I will perform such an anylis on the chapter Vedremo domenica in Milo De Angelis poetry collection Tema dell'addio. I will also discuss difficulties I have met in the course of translating the poems. Finally, I want to stress the importance of translating.

Traditional Chinese woodblock New Year pictures face the danger of being marginalized and disappearing in the context of industrialization and technological development. It is, therefore, imperative to conduct research on traditional New Year pictures to address this challenge. This thesis analyses the content of New Year pictures from four representative bases (Yangliuqing, Taohuawu, Wuqiang, and Mianzhu) in China. The semiotic perspective is selected as a theoretical framework. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of representative New Year pictures, this study identifies commonly used signs in New Year pictures and explores their meanings from the perspectives of connotation and myth. The study also examines the construction relationship between the signifier and the signified of the signs. These findings preliminarily construct the semiotic system for Chinese woodblock New Year pictures. Furthermore, the analytical framework provides an innovative quantitative research approach to the study of traditional New Year picture signs, contributing to the current research on the New Year pictures’ semiotic system. In previous studies, quantitative methods have never been applied to the study of New Year pictures, nor have they been widely used in other similar folk art forms. Distant reading methods from the field of digital humanities open new frontiers in the study of folk art. While visual art may be better suited for traditional close-up reading, computational methods can help capture the overall characteristics of art from a macroscopic perspective.

This study aimed to highlight the practice of rhetoric and semiotics used in crisis communication during the Russian-Ukrainian war. On the 24th of February 2022, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine which resulted in the Ukrainian president, Zelensky, giving numerous speeches. In light of Zelensky's background as an actor, several discussions arose concerning his execution of delivery. The analyzed material in this study consisted of three speeches that Zelensky performed regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war, and these were collected from Youtube where the speeches were uploaded. The aim of this study was to investigate how Zelensky utilized rhetorical and semiotic tools in his communication. The investigation was carried out by qualitative content analysis, rhetorical analysis, and semiotic analysis, and the study was based on the theories of semiotics, rhetoric, and crisis communication. These literary tools and vocal speeches helped to answer the research question.The research showed that Zelensky was skilled in delivering his speeches in many ways. From a semiotic perspective, important elements, such as his looks and dress wear, as well as objects shown in the background, were analyzed during his speeches. This resulted in advantages such as a strengthened message and worldwide acceptance. Zelensky used influential rhetoric and distinct crisis communication to establish arguments and messages that awakened emotions in the audience to promote action.

Fitness is considered as a diverse spectrum and the society surrounding it is considered to be in constant flux. There are few male fitness influencers on Instagram acting as mass mediums communicating their daily lives in front of a mass of followers. This study investigates how five Swedish male fitness influencers communicate male body ideal by gathering 15 similar Instagram posts while qualitatively analysing five of them. Methodology-wise, multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) is used to analyse Instagram posts made by Swedish fitness influencers that are communicating something explicitly referred to fitness. Structure of the analysis relies on semiotic denotation and connotation while Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) theory is operationalised on linguistic and semiotic elements. The analytical results argue that they were following three sorts of discourses for communicating their daily lives. Additionally, the identified three discourses are argued to be constructed under certain ideologies.

By use of qualitative, semiotic analysis of screenshots taken from Part I of the three-part anthologyfilm The House (2022), an adult stop-motion animation using puppets, the clothing of the charactersis analysed to examine how they convey class and power based on theory by Stuart Hall, PierreBourdieu, Beverly Skeggs and Marita Sturken & Lisa Cartwright. The text further uses fashionhistory to contextualise and interpret visual references to British monarchs Elizabeth I and Henry VIII. The study finds Part I of The House portrays the anxiety and exploitation of the working-classcharacters through the colour, number of layers, fabrics, references and changes in the characters’costumes in a way that lines up with the arguments presented by Bourdieu and Skeggs about culturalcapital and popular representation of the working class. Part I’s construction of class may not reflectthe diversity of class experiences found in the real world, but through further analysis including thetwo other parts of The House this reading may differ as those include other characters and settings.

History and heritage can have a considerable impact when designing a visual identity for a brand. This study aims to analyse the visual identity of The Swedish Handicraft Association, Hemslöjden, an organisation with a long and sometimes conflict-ridden past. Using a semiotic analysis method and theories of cultural branding, heritage branding and myth-building, the study seeks to examine how heritage, history and future relevance is tackled visually. The study shows that even though Hemslöjden could be considered a cultural and heritage brand, there is an ambivalent use of history and heritage in the organisation’s visual identity. The study theorises that the ambivalence and avoidance of history is partially due to a fear of being irrelevant for younger audiences but also to avoid acknowledging problematic aspects of the organisation's history. The latter could suggest a stewardship of the brand to avoid negative use from external, nationalist groups but could also via mythbuilding purify a conflicted history.

In today's society, a trend has started to emerge where companies integrate retro elements into their logos. The purpose of this study is to investigate what characterizes retro logotypes, as well as what the retro trend can be an expression of. Through a semiotic analysis of Pepsi's and Burger King's recently updated logos that follow this trend, design elements such as color, typography and shape in the logos are examined with an aim to understand how the companies takes inspiration from their previous logos, as well as investigate in how the new redesigns of the logos correlates to them. Further the study discusses the causes of this emerging retro trend, where nostalgia plays a pivotal role in connecting the brands with the past. In the case of Pepsi and Burger King, the use of retro elements in their logos can be seen as a form of commercial nostalgia, capitalizing on consumers' longing for the past.