This PhD thesis concerns language and racism. The aim is to explore how racism is reproduced in interaction in public debates on immigration, integration and refugee policy. From a constructivist pragmatic perspective, language is considered as a practice that composes and makes sense of our social world and all the phenomena and individuals that we perceive in it. Racist discourses discriminate against and privilege people by categorising them according to notions of cultural, ethnical, racial, religious and national differences. The thesis has two main themes: 1) the linguistic reproduction of, and response to, racist discrimination and privileging in interaction, and 2) the role of language in various public arenas, and the norms and conditions for participation in these arenas. The thesis comprises five studies. Study I examines racist discourses and conditions for participation in an online newspaper comments section. Study II examines how the phrase “politically correct” is used and negotiated in the same comments section, and how its usage leads to the reproduction and normalisation of racism. Another comments section is the focus of Study III, in which discriminating and privileging categorisations of Muslims, Islam, Swedes and Sweden are analysed. Study IV examines an anti-racist forum on the social networking site Instagram. In the study, the reproduction of norms of whiteness is analysed, as well as power relations that are evoked, sustained and transformed in interaction. Finally, Study V is an analysis of linguistic, visual and material reproductions of political positions and racist discourses in a debate among party leaders on Swedish television. The thesis demonstrates how normalisation of racism is accomplished in interaction, and how reproduction of hierarchically structured difference and bigoted stereotypes are performed, and challenged, through language. The medium, combined with the user’s speech acts, set up the norms and conditions for participation, and for the discursive processes that reproduce the relations and structures of power.

Allt fler människor använder sig av Youtube och andra öppna internetmiljöer för att lära sig matematik. Enligt tidigare studier finns det en stor spridning när det gäller bostadsort och ålder bland deltagarna i dessa miljöer. Min undersökning visar att ett urval om 10 Youtubevideor om ekvationslösning och deras kommentarsfält också kännetecknas av en stor spridning av matematikdiskurser bland deltagarna. En studie av 85 dialoger i kommentarsfälten visar att i omkring hälften av dialogerna uttrycker sig olika deltagare på sätt som kännetecknar olika matematikdiskurser, medan i den andra hälften alla deltagare uttrycker sig på sätt som kännetecknar samma matematikdiskurs. De förra dialogerna slutar mer sällan med att deltagarna upplever förståelse, medan lärandet i de senare dialogerna begränsas av vad som går att uttrycka inom ramen för den rådande diskursen. Genom att utveckla begrepp och kategorier för att beskriva matematikdiskurserna lägger studien grunden för fortsatt forskning, både kvalitativa med intervjuer av deltagare och kvantitativa med större material. / The use of Youtube and other open internet environments for learning mathematics is becoming increasingly common. According to earlier studies there is a great diversity of ages and nationalities among participants in these environments. My investigation shows that a selection of 10 Youtube videos about equation solving and their comments sections also are characterized by a diversity of mathematics discourses. A study of 85 dialogues in the comments sections shows that in approximately half of the dialogues different participants express themselves in manners characteristic of different mathematics discourses, while in the other half all the participants express themselves in manners characteristic of the same mathematics discourse. The former dialogues more seldom end with experiences of understanding, while learning in the latter group of dialogues is limited by what is possible to express within the dominant discourse. By developing terms and categories for describing the mathematics discourses this study lays the foundation for further research, both qualitative research comprising interviews with participants and quantitative research on greater amounts of data.

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