According to law all Swedish authorities must express themselves using correct, plain and comprehensible language whenever they communicate with the citizens in order to make it easy to understand what needs to be known to participate in the Swedish democratic society. I would like to explore if there are more tools than the language that could be used to make their communication easier to comprehend, in this case images and stories. In this essay I will investigate the relationship between the written words and the visual components – images and illustrations – in brochures from Swedish authorities. I will also try to identify possible narratives in the brochures, and examine the functions of these narratives. To do this study I use a semiotic analysis including denotation and connotation and narrative analysis according to Burke and Greimas. The result showed that most of the images are used to anchor, confirm, the written text while some seek to guide our interpretations of the text or to add a new dimension to it. Only one of my three analyzed brochures contains a clear example of a narrative, while the others contain narrative element. My most important finding is that the narratives are mostly hidden within the images and therefore get dual functions– both as anchors of the text and as a narrative

This thesis examines the intellectual foundation of the London Corresponding Society’s (LCS) efforts to reform Britain's Parliamentary democracy in the 1790s. The LCS was a working population group fighting for universal male suffrage and annual parliaments in a decade that was wrought with internal social and governmental tension. Many Britons, especially the aristocracy and those in the government, feared the spread of ideas of republicanism and equality from revolutionary France and responded accordingly by oppressing the freedom of speech and association. At first glance, the LCS appears contradictory: it supported the hierarchical status quo but fought for the voice and representation of the people; and it believed that the foundation for rights was natural but also argued its demands for equal rights were drawn from Britain’s ancient unwritten constitution. This thesis contextualizes these ideas using a contemporary debate, the Burke-Paine controversy, as Edmund Burke was the epitome of eighteenth century conservative constitutionalism in Reflections on the Revolution in France while Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man represented a Lockean interpretation of natural rights and equality. Thus using Reflections and Rights of Man as a framework, this thesis demonstrates that the LCS thoroughly understood its demands for parliamentary reform and uniformly applied its interpretation of natural rights and equality to British constitutionalism and the social and governmental hierarchies.

Voluntary service is experiencing transition. This transition is marked by social, symbolic and policy changes that have transformed the relationship between paid and unpaid work, and is reordering the connection between voluntary practice and professional expertise. Giddens (1998) identified this as the third way. Rose (2000) sees this transformation as a strategy embodying a tacit regime around the economic transactions that implicate the agent in self-governance based on normative moral possibilities, thus ordering the moral subject. Research has not yet established the fundamental elements of this transforming logic, or the mechanisms by which oppositions such as paid and unpaid are being resolved by voluntary organisations. The thesis argues that third way commentators’ view of the bureaucratic transformation of voluntary service that examines “historical and social conditions, professional strategies, and disciplinary stakes and constraints…” (Shusterman, 1999: 10) does not account for the nature of service, or the practice and logic of that service. Therefore this study interrogates the notion and logic of service for the nature of the discourse and experience of service at the time of the move toward the third way, the point that voluntary values and practices meeting economic action. This logic is examined and extrapolated by empirical examination of the case service in Rotary and Zonta, organisations whose members are professional and act in voluntary positions. Bourdieu’s (for example 1984[1979], 1998, 2002[1977]) work on the logic of practice (featuring field, habitus and practice) frames the theoretical exploration of the embeddedness and logic of a particular social object in the context of practice. Exploring the field, habitus and practice for aspects of service suggests a multidimensional approach that investigates the discourse, experience, dispositions and contextual practice of service. Thus the study of service is conducted by collecting data from codes of professional conduct and objectives of Rotary and Zonta (the discursive level of interpretation); professionals’ experience and interpretation of volunteering (where the habitus of volunteers is made visible); and observations of practice and order at Rotary and Zonta meetings. The data was collected and analysed using Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical analysis (1969a, 1969b, 1989), Erving Goffman’s footing (Burns, 1992; Goffman, 1981), and Harvey Sacks’ indexicality and membership categorisation analysis (Lepper, 2000; Sacks, 2000[1992]). This study examines and reports on elements and relationships in the service discourse such as expertise, judgment and discretion; aspects of the logic of service exhibited in professional agent’s experience of voluntary service, including agency and professional ethics; and the rituals practiced by professionals in the voluntary context. Many of these elements are contextual components of the opposition between economic and symbolic values in the voluntary setting. Empirical evidence presented in this study suggests that voluntary service when practiced within the new frame of economic rationales and bureaucratic structures does not amalgamate opposing sectors so much as expose a common logic of service.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 343-374). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

FLAT! immerses us into the life and mindset of a Flat-earther who eagerly evangelizes the discoveries he and other Flat-earthers claim to have made. With his car clad in flat-earth messages, he travels around the country provoking discussions with curious bystanders and debating scientists. While he thrives in this pursuit, it is not without its costs.

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The purpose of this study is: (1) to examine her use of Burke’s concept of identification; (2) to explicate the strategies she employs in order to reach her desired ends; (3) to apply Burke’s dramatic Pentad (Act, Scene, Agent, Agency and Purpose) to selected speeches of Bella Abzug; (4) to examine whether or not her strategies change depending on the topic of her address and the socio-psychological stratification of her audiences; (5) to ascertain that given a certain situation, what kind of strategies will she likely employ; (6) to determine that given certain strategies, what kind of situation does it appear she believed she faced; and (7) to evaluate the general effectiveness of her rhetorical style during this period.

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Donald Trump's rhetoric of winners and losers has prompted dangerous division in the United States. It is well understood that Trump's divisive discourse appealed to white, blue-collar Americans who had become disillusioned with the political establishment. This study explores how Trump persuaded this audience by transitioning business communication principles, highlighted by his signature 'winners and losers' theme, into politics. Trump's use of the reality television show, The Apprentice, as a branding platform had the rhetorical effect that catapulted Trump's unique 'winning' brand back into the public's consciousness. While the principles of business rhetoric Trump used in The Apprentice were clearly transitioned to Twitter during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, his tweets were unique in how they foregrounded the 'losers' he faced during the campaign. To illuminate Trump's branding strategy as both TV personality and political candidate, this analysis of Trump draws on Kenneth Burke's concept of consubstantiation and contemporary theories of business rhetoric, namely the idea of narrative-processing and its influence on consumers' connection with a brand. Because Trump constructs his brand with language that aims at restructuring America's social hierarchy, this study also uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to understand the implications of power for both his audience and his opponents. This study concludes that while Trump's winning brand identity contributed to him winning the presidency, it also promotes male dominance and exacerbates political division in the United States.

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