Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of African Languages in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2003. / Storytelling plays a very significant role in the daily activities of human beings. With regard to the significance of storytelling, Compton's Encyclopedia (1994:636) explains: Storytelling is as old as man. People were telling stories to one another, around campfires and waterholes long before written language developed. Like many nations around the world, Zulus are renowned for their storytelling abilities that date back to time immemorial. A look at their folktales, riddles, praises, songs, etc, reveals a rich heritage of unsurpassed storytelling techniques. In this chapter we are going to illustrate why we feel that there is need for an evaluation of how Zulu artists use music and poetry as a platform for communicating messages through stories. We are going to define some concepts that will be used in this study and indicate their relevance in elucidating the storytelling aspect of Zulu music and poetry. We are also going to look at some studies that have been undertaken in Zulu music and poetry and clarify how we intend to tackle this study.

Upon being announced as one of the winners of the 1973 National Book Award, John Williams’ novel Augustus (1972) was classified as a book of a supposedly more traditional form compared to John Barth’s experimental work Chimera (1972) that Augustus shared the prize with that year. This essay will examine John Williams’ novel Augustus, with the purpose of analysing two of the novel’s main characters, Augustus and his daughter Julia. To define both of the characters, this essay will be looking in-depth into how Williams showcases the various ways both characters go about using the power that is bestowed upon them. This essay will be employing Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) to establish the environment of nihilism present in the Roman Empire that nears the “waning of affect” and exhaustion Jameson states occurs with the coming of postmodernism. Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916) will be placed in dialogue with Luce Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman (1974) to showcase the varying masculine and feminine practices of language both characters employ and the consequences these forms of expression bring with the duplicitous ways of the Roman Empire looming in the background behind both Augustus and Julia.

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De AI-drivna språkmodellernas ökade tillgänglighet innebär nya utmaningar och möjligheter inom svenskundervisningen. Med hjälp av verktyg som ChatGPT kan elever generera högkvalitativa texter inom loppet av bara sekunder, vilket har ändrat förutsättningarna för hur uppgifter kan konstrueras i ämnet. Syftet med detta arbete var att utforma och utvärdera en didaktisk design där ChatGPT var den primära resursen för undervisning i berättarteknik och stilistik i svenska. Designen testades genom en intervention där en gymnasieklass fick agera skrivcoacher till ChatGPT och bearbeta noveller med hjälp av litteraturvetenskapliga begrepp. Arbetsmomentet avslutades med muntliga redovisningar där eleverna reflekterade över sina arbeten. En analys av de muntliga redovisningarna visade att ChatGPT verkar ha underlättat för eleverna att göra litteraturvetenskapliga och lingvistiska analyser. Detta främst genom att verktygets interaktiva funktioner gav eleverna agens i arbetet och kunde användas för att visa hur litteraturvetenskapliga begrepp påverkar en skönlitterär text. Undervisningsmetoden medförde även en processorienterad syn på skönlitterärt skrivande och gav insikter om generativ AI som medium. Eleverna upplevde undervisningsmetoden som rolig och betydelsefull, men de ansåg inte att den avsevärt ökade deras arbetsmotivation. Därutöver förekom det att eleverna kopierade tolkningar som hade gjorts av ChatGPT i stället för att utföra egna analyser. Det uppstod även svårigheter med bedömningen då det stundtals var svårt att skilja på elevernas och ChatGPT:s analyser. / The increased availability of the AI-driven language models has resulted in new challenges and opportunities for teaching Swedish. With the help of tools like ChatGPT, students can generate high-quality texts in a matter of seconds, which has changed the conditions for how assignments can be constructed in the subject. The purpose of this work was to design and evaluate a didactic design where ChatGPT was the primary resource for teaching storytelling techniques and stylistics in Swedish. The design was tested through an intervention in upper secondary school, where the students acted as writing coaches for ChatGPT and produced short stories using literary concepts. The work phase ended with oral presentations in which the students reflected on their work. An analysis of the oral presentations showed that ChatGPT seems to have made it easier for the students to make literary and linguistic analyses. This is primarily because the tool's interactive functions gave the students agency in the work and could be used to show how literary concepts affect a fictional text. The teaching method gave the students a process-oriented view on writing fiction and provided insights into generative AI as a medium. The students viewed the teaching method as fun and meaningful, but they did not feel that it significantly increased their work motivation. In addition, some students copied interpretations made by ChatGPT instead of performing their own analyses. There were also difficulties with the assessment as it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between the students' and ChatGPT's analyses.