The purpose of this study was to deconstruct the communication that occurs in the post-observation conference in music teacher evaluation. If music teachers and evaluators are to communicate effectively, demonstrate and assess various dimensions of music teaching, accurately judge the professional qualities and pedagogical actions of music teachers, and apply such judgements in measuring music teacher effectiveness, then the beliefs, thoughts, words, actions, habits, and values of those music teachers and evaluators must be appropriately and deeply understood. This study utilized aspects of ethnography and critical discourse analysis in examining the dialogue between sets of ensemble directors and their evaluators in the context of music teacher evaluation. The primary theoretical foundation of this study flows from James Paul Gee’s writings on the theory and practice of discourse analysis. Thus, I examined the attributes of discourse among evaluators and music teacher dyads and the means by which significance, social goods, and relationships shaped the music teacher evaluation process. The results indicated the language-in-use during the post-observation conferences in the music teacher evaluation process shaped the nature and quality of communication between music teachers and their evaluators. Music teachers and evaluators used language to indicate significance through repetition of and/or direct statements of importance. The results did not indicate any discrepancies on the situated meanings of terms associated with interpretation of the rubric when applied to the band rehearsal. Social goods, such as growth in band enrollment, teacher rating, and pay, were exchanged within the verbal and written discourse, or implied within the communication process itself. Relationships were more difficult to detect through the verbal language of the evaluative conferences. However, nonverbal clues during post-observation conferences offered insight into the type of relationship that had been built or was in place, and it was noted that the nonverbal language, such as eye contact and posture, reflected the quality of communication in these music teacher evaluation conferences. The importance of this study rests within the context of understanding the role of communication in music teacher evaluations

This study explores how victims of violent crime construct meaning around crime, justice and reconciliation. It further aims to gain insight into how victims of crime construct expectations of which actions should ensue after the crime and whether their constructions encompass elements of reconciliation and restorative justice. The study is conducted from a social constructionist position and uses a critical discourse analysis framework in analysing the data. In-depth interviews were conducted with nine victims of serious crimes such as armed robbery, hi-jacking, attempted murder and rape. From the analysis it appears that participants have a need to experience justice and have a high demand for vengeance. This however may itself have grown out of a lack of a more positive experience of justice. Participants’ constructions of their experience of being a victim of crime center on notions of power, equality, prejudice and dominance. They draw on socially constructed differences based on race and gender to define both their identity as a victim of crime as well as the identity of their offender. These distinctions, based on categories of identity, serve to create an oppositional construction of “us” against “them” and also serve to dehumanise the offender. The analysis further indicates that participants draw on multiple constructions of restorative justice and despite strong support for punitive beliefs it appears that a discourse of restorative justice is also present in participants’ discussions. A key theme running through the data is the loss of personal power as a result of victimization. Instead of returning a sense of power to participants by allowing them to participate in the justice process, the legal system becomes the holder of the power and compounds the injury against the victim. The study has implications for how victims of crime are positioned in the justice system and how notions of restorative justice can be advanced in South African discourses. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Psychology / unrestricted

The purpose of this study is to see how gender is produced in one music video, chosen by a stratified, purposive sampling. This is done partly by studying the visual and linguistic dimensions of the text, partly by defining its discourse. The analysis is conducted by using MCDA (Multimodal critical discourse analysis). To study the material, the video was segmented into smaller sections based on the parts of the song (chours, verse etcetera). The semiotic resources that is considered in this analysis is participants, gaze and poses. The result of this study shows that, in this particular music video, gender is portrayed in similar ways through the resources. The gender of the dominant and strong woman is mostly portrayed through hands placed in the waist, legs placed wide and a neutral face combined with eye contact or hidden eyes/gaze. The innocent, emotional woman is portrayed through a including gaze towards the viewer. The gender man on the other hand is portrayed as dominant and strong through a intense, observing gaze and a relaxed body in combination with a broad-legged position. It also became clear that women were more sexualized that men in the video, even though they both established dominance through the same use of the resources in the bigger part of the video. The discourse for the material was connotated to be mostly a sexual discourse with a hint of and emotionaland/ or love discourse.

The objective of this study is to observe how women and their bodies are being objectified and sexualized through famous designer companies’ Instagram accounts. More specifically, this study is interested in defining which certain aspects of an image contribute to a dehumanizing and degrading view of the female sex, but also how women are being cognitively affected by this. To be able to specify which parts of an image confirm this specific viewpoint the study used a multimodal critical discourse analysis (MDCA) in combination with elements of a feminist critical discourse analysis. The two methods are considered useful for these types of studies due to their semiotic and feministic approaches that focus on depicting which connotative characteristics are present in images. In order to confirm the problematic aspects of the material in this study, results from previous scientific articles and theories were used in order to confirm or contradict this study’s research questions. In the end the analytical results confirm that the women present in the images that were selected for this study were being objectified and sexualized. The women in the pictures often wore tightly fitting clothes, underwear or were naked, which presented their bodies in a way which made them easily objectified by the observer and/or the male gaze, which means that the observer in fact could gain a sexual satisfaction through watching the women that were being portrayed. The results of this demonstrates the problematic aspects of female portrayal in media and why it could potentially be harmful

During the year before the 2022 Swedish parliament election, law and order is one of the most debated topics. To discuss their views on the subject, the leaders of the eight parliament parties participate in a broadcasted debate hosted by the Swedish TV channel TV4. The party leader debates are viewed as one of the most important platforms for the party leaders' communication with the voters, and the participating journalists have an important role in deciding what will be discussed, and which questions are asked.  This thesis examines how the topic of law and order is constructed by the partaking party leaders and moderating journalists during the debate. This by the use of Norman Fairclough's model for critical discourse analysis, and with the theoretical approaches of Wodak, Giddens and ‘agenda setting theory’ to examine the debate on different analytical levels. The study finds that the topic of ‘law and order’ is constructed by including the debate of immigration, which makes immigrants the group most clearly connected to the debate. We could also derive that a certain amount of ‘rhetoric of fear’ was being used during the debate, where party leaders exemplified how the viewer could be subject to crime. Lastly, a recurring construction of the topic that could be found is that tougher penalties is described as a necessary measure to fight the criminality in Sweden from both the opposition parties and the government.

Since 2015, Greece has been in an unprecedented position. The Syrian civil war triggered the movement of more than 850,000 arrivals into Greece during 2015 (UNHCR, 2015). Being geographically situated as the closest European country to the east of Syria, Greece had to deal with a large increase in the number of migrating peoples to the country and by proxy, the European Union. This research seeks to understand how power relations between the island’s local population and its asylum seeker population are represented through an analysis of the discourse produced by the local daily press. In particular, the research reviews the discourse surrounding the island’s main square occupation by asylum seekers in April 2018. The theory of the established and outsiders is the framework used for the analysis, while Critical Discourse Analysis and General Inductive Approach constitutes the methodological ground of the thesis. The analysis showcases that Lesvos’ local daily press reproduces a discourse in line with the established and outsiders theory, attributing the local population as being established and the asylum seekers as being outsiders.

This paper seeks to unravel the existing discourses within the Swedish football supporter movement, and their criticism towards the Swedish police authority and the implementation of a new strategy known as"Villkorstrappan". The strategy faced heavy criticism from the supporters’ clubs, calling it counterproductive and harmful. The Swedish football supporters’ union soon launched an initiative called "Rädda svensk fotboll!". Almost every supporters’ club affiliated with football clubs in the Swedish top flight, joined the initiative leading to nationwide protests both online, and in the stadiums. The theoretical framework consists of Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model of CDA. In addition the paper seeks to examine the creation of collective identity in the movement, this by using Melucci's theory and Burke's rhetorical identification theory. The research material has consisted of texts produced by Swedish supporters’ clubs and of pictures of message-banners presented in the stands during games. The results revealed three main discourses within the supporters’ movement and the criticism towards Villkorstrappan: “The police is a threat towards Swedish football”; "Football as democratic, and belonging to the people''; and “The importance of the supporterculture”. Regarding collective identity, various findings indicated an increasing unity within the Swedish football supporter movement, when uniting against a common enemy. Overall the results emphasize the importance of the swedish football supporters’movement, as a democratic actor, as a social movement and as crucial to swedish football in general.

This critical study examines how TikTok content from body positive trends may influence power relations and reinforce female body negative discourses. The study takes its departure primarily in Michel Foucault. However, additional researchers were brought in to expand on Foucault’s ideas by e.g., introducing gender to Foucauldian theory. 30 TikTok videos belonging to two different body positive trends have been collected and undergone a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis according to Foucauldian principals. Findings from the analysis illustrated how users acknowledged and heavily depended on societal body negative discourses to create body positive content. More specifically, this was illustrated when users self-categorised as plus size and pointed out body parts e.g., stomach rolls, that are seen as less desirable in society. Users furthermore directly engaged in behaviour, which was found to be body negative e.g., implying the existence of abnormal and imperfect bodies. Effectively, this behaviour was identified as performative and rooted in a fear of being seen as non-progressive and body negativeThe conclusive results of this thesis thus suggest that users inevitably produce and reproduce body negative discourses by relying heavily on the very same discourses in their TikTok communication. Essentially, the users are then contributing to the social and feminist problem of weight-based discrimination and marginalisation.

Sammanfattning/Abstract Cederholm, Åsa (2022). Specialpedagogisk kvalitet – specialpedagogers syn på vad som kan känneteckna specialpedagogisk kvalitet. Specialpedagogprogrammet, Institutionen för skolutveckling och ledarskap, Lärande och samhälle, Malmö Universitet, 90 hp. Förväntat kunskapsbidrag: Studien bidrar med kunskap om vad som kan känneteckna specialpedagogisk kvalitet i förskolan. Studien bidrar även med kunskap om hur diskurser kan påverka vad som kan sägas och inte om specialpedagogisk kvalitet, vilket i sin tur kan påverka vilka utvecklingsområden som blir möjliga att ”se” i en förskolas systematiska kvalitetsarbete. Syfte och frågeställningar: Syftet med studien är att belysa vad som kan känneteckna specialpedagogisk kvalitet i förskolan och att synliggöra de diskurser som framträder i specialpedagogernas samtal om begreppet. Syftet är också att bidra till en diskussion om hur dessa diskurser, genom att reproduceras eller ifrågasättas, påverkar vad som kan känneteckna specialpedagogisk kvalitet i förskolan. • På vilka olika sätt beskrivs specialpedagogisk kvalitet av specialpedagogerna? • Vilka aktörer (vem eller vad) beskrivs av specialpedagogerna som viktiga för specialpedagogisk kvalitet? Teori: Studien tar sin utgångspunkt i socialkonstruktionism, professionsteori och kritisk diskursanalys. Kritisk diskursanalys har använts som både teori och analysmodell. MetodDet empiriska materialet har samlats in genom två fokusgruppsintervjuer med sju specialpedagoger. Därefter har en kritisk diskursanalys av texterna från samtalen genomförts. Resultat: Resultatet visar att specialpedagogisk kvalitet berör alla nivåer i en förskoleorganisation. Resultatet visar också att specialpedagogiska kvalitetsdiskurser samverkar med diskurser från andra diskursordningar och att dessa hakas i om det anses betydelsefullt för den egna professionen och kvalitetsarbetet. I samtalen blir dominerande diskurser synliga, men även diskurser som möter motstånd och ifrågasätts. Resultatet presenteras utifrån fyra teman: Dokument(ation) och kvalitet, Samverkan, samsyn och kvalitet, Experter, grundsyn och kvalitet, samt Relationer och kvalitet. Dessa fyra teman framträder som kännetecknande för specialpedagogisk kvalitet i specialpedagogernas samtal. Specialpedagogiska implikationer: Studien kan bidra till en fördjupad diskussion om vad som bör känneteckna specialpedagogisk kvalitet på olika nivåer i förskolans organisation och hur dessa kan samverka. Dessa diskussioner leder förhoppningsvis till att strukturer, normer och diskurser som hindrar verksamma i förskolan från att se vad som behöver förändras i barnens lärmiljö synliggörs.

In 2014, Sweden became the first country in the world to explicitly adopt a feminist foreign policy. Since then many countries have followed their example by putting gender equality, feminism and the rights of women on their agenda for foreign policy. The application of a Westernised perception of feminism on states within a culturally different context has however faced some critique. Taking into account the troubled relationship that Western First world feminism has had with colonialism, alongside the criticism that contemporary international development has faced, there is an academic relevance to the contribution and exploration of the nascent field of feminist foreign policy. This study takes a critical approach towards the Eurocentric Westernized perception of development and feminism, with the objective to see how current development policies could potentially reinforce and reproduce colonial structures through the discourse of Western feminism. By taking a feminist postcolonial approach to deconstructive discourse analysis, this study unveils the reproduction of unequal power structures through the development discourse, Western feminist discourse and neoliberal discourse.