In recent years a paradigm shift has occurred in second language acquisition and applied linguistics, moving away from a monolingual approach toward a multilingual one that emphasizes the social, political, and historical contexts of languages in contact. Scholarly recognition of multilingualism has led to research studies focusing on multilingual practices such as code-switching in a range of contexts and genres, e.g., film, hip hop, advertising and social networking sites. These studies reflect a shift in research focus from spontaneous speech to scripted texts, and also from the communicative to the symbolic function of code-switching, as seen in studies of Mock Spanish (Hill, 1998) and linguistic fetishism (Kelly-Homes, 2005). The emphasis on the symbolic and ideational is reflected in an increased interest in multimodality and how language interacts with other semiotic codes (e.g., visual imagery, gesture, dress, body ornamentation, and soundtrack) to convey messages of identity and ideology. Recently, several scholars have called for an expanded framework that would incorporate systematic multimodal analysis in studies of multilingualism in popular culture texts (Androutsopoulos, 2012; Stamou, 2014). The present study responds to this call with a genre-based project incorporating a sociolinguistic and multimodal studies approach with critical discourse analysis and genre analysis, which focuses on a comparison of three different types of popular culture texts: 1) a bilingual English-Spanish film from the U.S. (From Prada to Nada), 2) multilingual music videos from Japan (by the artist Mona AKA Sad Girl), and 3) a bilingual television ad from the U.S. (by Taco Bell). The study adapts and extends O'Halloran et al.'s (2011) model of multimodal critical discourse analysis based on social semiotic theory (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001) to examine how semiotic codes work together to either reinforce or challenge racial, linguistic, gender, and age-related stereotypes and dominant discourses. This model draws from Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and intertextuality and Barthes' concept of myth to examine how language and other multimodal features at the micro-level interact with macro-level discourses to create multi-layered meanings. The dissertation also explores how creators of popular culture texts utilize intertextual references to convey meaning through multiple semiotic codes and how texts become re-contextualized as they circulate globally. Taking into account the multiplicity of readings by diverse audiences, which in part depend on viewers' familiarity with intertextual references, this study addresses issues of reception by analyzing re-mediatized discussions about the texts in online comments, reviews, and articles, in order to gain added insights into the variety of ways the texts are interpreted. The findings of this study show how multilingual, multimodal features in popular culture texts cross genre, linguistic, national, and ethnic boundaries by means of global (re)circulation and local (re)contextualization through the agency of re-mediatization, which is made possible because of internet technology. In the process of recirculation these features become "semiotic metaphors" (O'Halloran 1999, 2008), representing discourses of identity and ideology which are in turn re-interpreted, influencing the way language, visual images and auditory modes are used to create new meanings in different contexts. By showing how semiotic metaphors cross many different types of borders, this study helps to account for emerging local-global hybrid identities and linguistic hybridization and supports previous calls for a more localized perspective of transnationalism (Lam & Warriner, 2012). Finally, it substantiates the need to move beyond traditional monolingual and monomodal notions of language and culture toward a more multi-dimensional view that transcends traditional boundaries.

This case study provides empirical evidence of the master and counternarrative described by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and seeks to understand the impact of these narratives in educational policy and practice. In 2010, Arizona passed A.R.S. §15-112, a law that was designed to eliminate the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program in the Tucson Unified School District. Utilizing the literature on culturally-relevant pedagogy and leadership, this case study uses a CRT theoretical framework and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methodology to analyze the narratives of 26 participants. While the program was under investigation by the State for violation of A.R.S. §15-112 all of the teachers involved in MAS participated in qualitative interviews. In addition, this case study analyzes the narratives of two student focus groups, school administrators, and district governing board members well as the written findings of two former State Superintendents of Public Instruction both of whom found the program in violation of the law. By specifically focusing on the styles and genres described in a CDA methodology the findings provide evidence of both the master and counternarrative but also a spectrum of discourse in which other forms of narrative reside. Implications from this research include a more complex theory of discourse beyond the dichotomy of the master and counternarrative, the application of a new methodological tool in CRT, and recommendations for educational leaders and policy makers interested in advocating for a culturally relevant approach.

English Language Teaching (ELT) can be considered an ideological enterprise especially at a time when the spread of English and the ELT profession are related to post-colonial and capitalist interests (Phillipson, 1992, 1997, 2000, 2006; Pennycook, 1994, 1997a; Canagarajah,1999b). In this context, nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) face particular challenges related to the prevailing ideologies of English, which has consequences in terms of roles, status, power, and access. This dissertation is a critical discourse analysis of the theses written by twenty in-service teachers of English as a Foreign Language in Colombia on completion of a one-year graduate program, during which they were acquainted with theories, approaches, and methodologies in the field of ELT. The objective is, through a close analysis of the language feature of the texts, 1) to identify ideologies of English, teaching and learning, and 2) to describe the identities the teachers construe for themselves in their writing. The analysis is text-driven and it uses categories from different functional approaches. The analysis of the texts shows that the writers engage in ideological discourses regarding the English language, the social and economic consequences of knowing English, and the cultural aims of foreign language teaching. Their discourses convey conceptions of teaching, learning and research that are influenced by acritical interpretations of the literature available to them. This does not seem to contribute to solving their practical problems and is likely to contribute to the maintenance of the students' established roles in their communities. The teacher-authors are faced with the challenge of dealing with the contradicting interests of their own ideals of education, the constraints of the conventions of the discourse community they are trying to enter, the institutional pressures to be updated with newer trends in applied linguistics and obtain visible results, and the needs of the country to find a place in the globalized economy. The study points to the need to encourage more critical interpretations and applications of the theories and approaches emanating from the traditional academic centers which in turn should also take interest in examining the pattern of the unilateral flow of knowledge and its consequences.

This dissertation presents a qualitative study that features in-depth interviews conducted in homes and the application of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to understand the discourses of Hispanic parents. Observing moments of dialogue between parents and children who participated in some interviews served to understand how parents attempted to influence their children's development of beliefs and values about language and identity. The study examined transcripts of narratives produced by Hispanic parents in 12 families in Arizona and Iowa, most of them immigrants from Mexico whose children were attending primary grades in two public schools. The purpose of the study was to understand the ideological dimensions of parental involvement in education and their socialization practices.The theoretical framework can be described as a sociocultural approach to family, identity and ideology, combined with a critical perspective on language socialization. This sociocultural framework is influenced by Vygotsky's (1927/1997) cultural-historical theory, which provided the lens to look at the cognitive aspects involved in the reproduction of ideologies, and by diverse versions of CDA as formulated by other scholars, such as Fairclough (1995), Gee (2004), and van Dijk (1998). CDA was used to analyze conversational storytelling and argumentation about controversial topics such as bilingual education, the maintenance of Spanish as heritage language, identity, English-only instruction, and official English movements in US. This approach (CDA) was particularly useful to examine texts with reported speech to understand the representation of other people's discourses and of the groups they represent.The findings provide insights into experiences that would affect children's motivation to learn and use Spanish and English, paying attention to processes of ideological influence from diverse sources upon parents' and children's beliefs and attitudes toward those languages. This study has implications for language and educational policies because its findings inform educators about parents' experiences and their perspectives on the education of language minority students. The study is useful to understand not only the parents' perspectives on the education of Hispanic children, but also the ideological dimension of parental involvement in education, especially when the latter includes language socialization of their children towards promoting the development of bilingualism and biliteracy.

This study investigates how the relationship between nationalism and language learning is manifested in discourse at an English language classroom facilitated in Nogales Sonora along the Mexico/US border. Employing ethnographically-sensitive critical discourse analysis, this study contributes to the fields of English Language Teaching (ELT), Border Studies, and Nationalism Studies by introducing three analytical terms that provide a means to document the social construction of nation-states (termed herein as imagined national communities of practice). The three terms are (1) nationalist practices, which refers to social practice that presupposes nationalist principles, (2) nationalist border practices, which refers to discerning self/other along nationalist lines, and (3) nationalist standard practices, which refers to the articulation of nationalist standards of language and subjectivity. The students attending the class under analysis comprise a unique population in that they are adults who occupy positions of economic and social privilege in the Nogales Sonora community because of their management-level employment at maquila factories. Reflecting their status, the students are invested in nationalist practices of border and standard in order to align themselves with nation-state institutions and to distance themselves from cultural and linguistic liminality (e.g., Mexican-American, paisano, code-switching, and Spanglish) characteristic of border regions. The classroom under observation upheld nationalist borders and standards, with important consequences. First, nationalist notions of border led classroom participants to disavow the bilingual language use that was clearly necessary for successful classroom operations, despite an English immersion classroom policy. Second, nationalist practices established the local classroom space as indexically linked to an imagined American community of practice, understood by students to be authentically monolingual, monocultural, and distinct from Mexico. Association with--but not full incorporation into--this particular understanding of the American nation-state is advantageous to students for maintaining their elevated social and economic positioning in the local Nogales Sonora community. Thus, this classroom serves as a site of nationalist border reproduction and the reinforcement of hierarchies of privilege. The study encourages teacher reflection on what nationalism can mean to formal language learning contexts and suggests directions for re-aligning classroom practice to approaches that embrace multilingual realities of language learning contexts.

The Internet is increasingly becoming a key medium through which people establish social contacts and form interpersonal relationships. In particular, online dating websites are gaining popularity and rapidly expanding around the world. This study explores the discourse that constitutes the practices of the deai-kee-saito 'encounter-oriented sites' in Japanese, as observed in three major personal ad websites, namely 1) Ekisaito furenzu 'Excite Friends', 2) Match.com, and 3) Yahoo!Japan paasonaruzu 'Yahoo!Japan Personals'. It focuses on the ways that self-advertisers express their socio-sexual desires and describe their ideal partners and relationships, and analyzes them with respect to the reproduction of social asymmetries.More specifically, it examines the discursive construction of the kinds of personae (personality characteristics) and bodies (physical features) that advertisers aged 20-29 wish in their future partners, as well as the kinds of practices (activities and actions) they wish to engage in with their partners, what they wish to do for their partners, and/or wish the partners to do for them in their envisioned interactions. Out of the 1200 ads collected from these websites, a total of 463 ads are identified as target-gender-explicit and analyzed at lexical, morphosyntactic, phrasal, clausal, sentential and discourse levels. It pays close attention to the linguistic resources utilized in the articulation of socio-sexual desires and desirability, and the textual formation of the addresser(advertiser)-addressee(ad reader) relationships, including adjectives, nouns, verbal phrases, person references, desideratives, conditionals, and the formula yoroshiku/o-negai shimasu 'Thank you in advance'. It also analyzes para-linguistic resources, such as emoticons, symbols, and unique use of hiragana/katakana syllabaries. These discursive processes involve prioritization, or hierarchization, of personal attributes and consequently of the owners of those attributes. It argues that socio-sexual desirability is reflective of the hegemonic ideologies of gender and sexuality in today's Japanese-speaking communities.In addition, it examines explicit and implicit language related to race, class, and similar constructs. It also investigates the functions of style-shift that advertisers use in expressing desire. This study shows that individuals' 'innocuous' expression of socio-sexual desires through personal ads is a locus for the reproduction and contestation of the hegemonic order of gender, sexuality, race and class.

Syftet med detta arbete är att försöka få en bild av vad det var som gjorde att kursen Estetisk verksamhet ansågs viktig nog att bli ett kärnämne 1994, och varför den inte längre ansågs viktig och togs bort 2011. Med hjälp av kritisk diskursanalys undersöks argument för och emot kursen som de förs fram i texter från regering, riksdag och media vid dessa tidpunkter, med betoning på vad dessa säger om kursens status och position i gymnasiet och i den skolpolitiska debatten.  Studien visar att när Estetisk verksamhet infördes 1994 var det för att låta eleverna uppleva och själva skapa, baserat i en humanistisk diskurs. När kursen togs bort 2011 var det för att andra ämnen ansågs behöva mer utrymme för att ge eleverna en tydligare yrkes- eller högskoleförberedande utbildning, baserat i en marknadsekonomisk diskurs. Fokus för vad som var viktigt i gymnasieskolan skiftade under de sjutton år som gått däremellan, och i den nya läroplanens inriktning på nyttobaserad utbildning fick inte Estetisk verksamhet plats. Den skolpolistiska synen på kunskap förändrades från en demokratisk tanke om att ge alla samma möjligheter, till ett differentierat ideal där individens kunskap ska vara mätbar och samhällsnyttig. / The purpose of this study is to gain insight into how come the course Artistic Activites was considered important enough to be introduced as a core subject in the Swedish upper secondary school in 1994, and how come it was no longer considered important and thus removed in 2011. Through critical discourse analysis the study investigates arguments for and against the course as presented in texts from government, parliament and media sources at these points in time, with emphasis on the status of the course in the Swedish upper secondary school, as well as in the political debate on education. The study shows that when Artistic Activities was introduced in 1994 the purpose was to allow students to experience and create art, based in a humanist discourse. When the course was dropped in 2011 it was to give room for other subjects considered more essential in preparing the students for university studies or their chosen profession, based in a free market economy discourse. The focus on what was considered important in the upper secondary school shifted during the intervening seventeen years, and the new curriculum’s orientation towards utilitarian education allowed no space for Artistic Activities. The political approach to knowledge changed from a democratic idea where everyone was to be given the same opportunities, to a differentiated ideal where individual knowledge must be measurable and useful to society.

Reading and analyzing literature has a long tradition of being an essential part of the teaching of English in Sweden. As the offers of entertainment have increased in popular culture with the introduction of computer games, internet and other media, interest in reading novels has decreased. Literature is still a compulsory part of English teaching and the question is how teachers of today use literature and what kind of literary instruction they use. The aim of this study is to explore and discuss the literary instruction discourse in pedagogical texts, lessons, created by and for English teachers of Swedish Upper Secondary Schools. The lessons have been collected from the site lektion.se, where teachers are able to share knowledge and lessons. The study uses an analytical method based on Norman Fairclough´s Critical Discourse Analysis in order to analyze the lessons. In the analysis aspects of language, intertextuality and assumptions are discussed. As a theoretical base, Louise M. Rosenblatt´s and Judith Langer´s ideas of reader centered literary instruction is used as well as Design Theory. The result of the study shows that the overall discourse is text orientated and, with few exceptions, there is little room for students to contribute to a creative, personal experience of literature. Furthermore, it is shown that literary texts are often used as an exercise of reading comprehension and specific literary reading is scarce. The study postulates that more effort should be put into involving the students in the reading, and less effort on literary terminology.

The use of coaching is fairly up to date in the business world although it’s relatively new. Despite this, there’s a lack of clarity about what coaching is and what it signifies. Our point is however not to define coaching. Based on the normative coaching literature, the purpose is, from a critical discourse analysis to explore the power relations that affect the coach and coached in their relation to each other, so as to be able to criticize managerial coaching relationship as presented in the literature. This will contribute to enabling for a more open discourse. The theoretical image of managerial coaching described by the literature as a democratic exercised leadership by a certain type of behavior and attitudes, will lead to improved organizational performance. For this to be possible, the relationship between coach/manager and coached/co-workers need to be characterized by safety, trust and equality. This is considered to be complex, given the power and dependency relationship prevailed between manager and employee. The empirical data on which the analysis is partly based on, have been collected through semi-structured interviews with a group within the National Insurance Office in Karlskoga, consisting of managers and employees where a coaching leadership is applied. Coaching relationship has been explored with the aid of Faircloughs analytical model and therefore conclusions could be obtained, which is that the coaching relationship is characterized by a variety of power conditions affecting coach and coached in their relation to each other. Among other things, it has emerged that the coach is governing the coached thoughts and thus indirectly also the coached acting. Managerial coaching is therefore considered according to us not to be a democratic exercised leadership but may instead implying to be more controlling in comparison with the “traditional” leadership.

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a medicalized condition that exists on a continuum of postpartum mood disorders. PPD is reported to be experienced by 10-15% of mothers and 10% of fathers during pregnancy or after the birth of a baby. PPD, as experienced by either parent, is considered a serious condition because of its potential short- and long-term negative impacts on the developing child. In this thesis I explore how motherhood and fatherhood are constructed in the context of articles on maternal and paternal PPD in Canadian and American newspapers. Specifically, I focus on how references to the opposite partner were used to position each parent, and how each parent was positioned with respect to the new baby. In the articles on maternal PPD, husbands were either inconsequential to the story, positioned as being absent, or constructed as supporting the mother through instrumental and action-oriented behaviours. In addition, mothers were constructed as lonely and isolated because of self-imposed limitations (e.g., feeling ashamed for not being happy). In the articles on paternal PPD, the mother-father relationship was based on differences and competition. Fathers were constructed as isolated, lonely and misunderstood, most often through mother-blaming, such as by positioning the mother as responsible for the father’s well-being (e.g., causing his PPD), and by labelling PPD “a woman’s domain.” Fathers’ loneliness was presented as being due to imposed limitations of others (e.g., others did not properly prepare fathers for fatherhood). Mothering was constructed as being instinctually skilled, tolerant, and self-sacrificing, with the inherent capability to manage multiple roles and changes. The mother-baby relationship was constructed as naturally joyful, all-important and –consuming. Fathers were not expected to be as skilled or instinctively prepared and tolerant, to engage in chores/childcare, or to be explicitly overjoyed with the baby. Mothers were blamed for their distress in the role, while others were blamed for fathers’ distresses. Gendered stereotypes in the parenting role were perpetuated in these newspaper articles. Parenthood was not constructed as a collaboration, but rather motherhood and fatherhood stood in isolation from each other, with motherhood positioned as the primary role. These constructions continue to maintain fathers in the background of parenthood as an “other,” and to position mothers as responsible for the well-being of her partner, child(ren) and herself.