The purpose of this Master’s Degree is to identify and understand different techniques of argumentation in written texts originating from the religious movement Jehovah's Witnesses. The purpose is also to contribute with a theoretical and methodological framework for other scholars. The focal point of the thesis is sexuality and how the authors of the texts try to convince the members to follow the movements' doctrines in this regard. I use a modified version of the well-established grounded theory method. The material is analyzed partly with concepts introduced by Mooney in 2005 but overall the analysis is made in an unbiased way without theoretical support. Theoretical models and terms are instead used in the final analysis to understand how the different techniques of argumentation are supposed to work. These theoretical models stems from, among others,  Foucault, Meerloo, Ben-Ze'ev, Mooney, Berger och Luckmann, Granström and Rapp Young. In the Master’s Degree a great number of techniques are identified within the following five categories: Guilt, Doubt, To nurture instead of convincing, Seemingly logical arguments and Groupthinking. Within the category of Guilt the techniques play on the reader's feelings of guilt, and within the category of Doubt the techniques focus on the reader's feelings of doubt. To nurture instead of convincing is a collection of techniques with the purpose of nurturing already established notions and preconceptions among the readers. Seemingly logical arguments deals with techniques concerning semantic manipulation and lastly, techniques focused on groupthinking aims to bind the reader closer to the movement and tries to get them to reject the outside world. The goal here is for the members to achieve a state within group psychology known as groupthinking.

Modebranschen präglas av ett ständigt sökande efter billigast möjliga arbetskraft. Som en konsekvens väljer företag som opererar inom denna sektor vanligen att outsourca sin produktionsfunktion till en tredje part bortom hemmamarknaden. Ett sådant beslut kan vidare ge upphov till en komplex försörjningskedja. I förlängningen har detta medfört att granskningen från samhällets alla aktörer blivit allt mer omfattande. Detta då missöden och skandaler gällande den outsourcade produktionen uppdagats. Kritik kring bristande kontroll och insyn i leverantörsledet har därför inneburit att företagen funnit sätt att argumentera för sin verksamhet och de sourcing beslut som tagits. Studiens syfte är att synliggöra de argumentationstekniker som används kring rättfärdigandet av en outsourcad produktion. Detta besvarades genom att i en diskursiv analysmetod undersöka och kategorisera svenskamodeföretags språkanvändning samt de argumentativa kategorier som återfanns i deras hållbarhetsredovisningar. Detta gjordes med hjälp av ett ramverk som modifierades och utvecklades under studiens gång. Resultatet visar att samtliga studieobjekt använder sig av argumentationstekniker som vidare kan härledas till analysmodellens olika huvudkategorier. Dessa verkar i legitimerande syfte och gör att företagen framstår som ansvarstagande kring den outsourcade produktionen. Studien bidrar till att ge läsare av företagens hållbarhetsredovisningar möjligheten att ta till sig informationen utifrån ett mer kritiskt förhållningssätt. / The fashion industry is characterized by a constant search for the cheapest possible labor. As a consequence, companies operating in this sector usually choose to outsource their production function to a third party outside the home market. Furthermore, such decision can give rise to a complex supply chain. As a result, the scrutiny from all actors in society has become more extensive as mishaps and scandals regarding the outsourced production have been discovered. Criticism about lack of control and transparency in the supply chain has therefore meant that companies have found ways to argue for their operations and the sourcing decisions that have been made. The purpose of the study is to highlight the argumentative techniques used to justify outsourced production. This was answered by investigating and categorizing the use of argumentative categories in Swedish fashion companies sustainability reports. The methodology used was a discourse analysis. The analysis was based on a previously designed framework that was modified during the study. The result shows that all study objects use argumentation techniques that can further be linked to different main categories of the analysis model. These arguments are used in order to legitimize the companies CSR-activities connected to the outsourced production. The study helps to give readers of the companies sustainability reports the opportunity to access the information based on a more critical approach. The thesis is written in Swedish.

This essay is about the principles and rules that control persuasive computer games. The term persuasive games mean computer games, video games and other similar artifacts that are produced to shape opinion. The rhetorical scholar Ian Bogost at Georgia Tech claims that this kind of games mainly get their persuasive power by using procedural rhetoric and that games as a medium gives special conditions for procedurality.  By procedural rhetoric Bogost means an argumentation that is based on rules and choices, as opposed to texts, movies and images. (Bogost 2007). Bogost describes these procedures as quite specific for games and claims that they differ qualitatively from “ordinary” rhetorical arguments even if they just as other arguments work by establishing enthymems. However when I in my preliminary study tried this hypothesis, I seemed to distinguish several similarities with argumentation strategies used in political or juridical debate, such as Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca´s associative argumentation techniques. In this essay I examine if and how Perelman and Olbrechs-Tytecas associative argumentation techniques can be used to describe (and understand?) rulebased rhetorical procedures in persuasive games. This analysis is carried out on two recent Swedish persuasive games and proves the hypothesis fruitful. This result also points to the possibility to view rules as something that control all forms of argumentation. Despite this result, the investigation doesn´t contradict the presumption that computer games in many ways, have specific possibilities, beyond procedural rhetoric, such as the opportunity for interaction, receiver adaptation, and the capacity to process big amounts of data.