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This thesis explores the Danish public discourse about biological reproduction by focusing on how three fertility campaigns, issued by public agencies, produce and reproduce gendered identities and contribute to shape a national identity. The theoretical framework is built on insights from feminist research in international relations, sociology and gender studies and highlights how ideas about femininity and masculinity are central regarding both biological reproduction and national identity. The method used in this thesis is a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. The results show that traditional gendered identities in many ways are reproduced in these campaigns. However, the results also show that the campaigns give masculinity and men more space in the discourse of biological reproduction and the campaigns somewhat challenge traditional notions of masculinity. In the campaigns it is acknowledged that it takes both eggs and sperm to create a baby, but the results show that women still are ascribed the main responsibility for biological reproduction. The results also show that the construction of Denmark as a nation can be connected to the myth of “common origin” which creates a homogenous and exclusionary vision of the nation. Further, since these campaigns in many ways reproduce traditional gendered identities, Denmark is argued to be constructed as a traditional and conventional nation.

This thesis examines how former and current Prime Ministers, Theresa May and Boris Johnson are represented in two British newspapers, The Guardian and The Sun, a broadsheet and a tabloid, during the election time, namely July 2016 for May and July 2019 for Johnson. By applying Critical Discourse Analysis, and especially Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of analysis (1989), as well as studies on gender discourse, this study investigates how constructions of gender stereotypes are created. The thesis is performed to study and compare possible examples of inequity in the representation of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, and to seek an answer to whether these representations are based on gender stereotypes or not. By introducing the discursive representation approach, this study has uncovered how the discourses in the articles surrounding Theresa May have shifted focus a day before and on the day of election, whilst for Boris Johnson, the discourses have stayed the same.

This thesis investigated the reactions to the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) recent lift of the ban against the Islamic headscarf in the Turkish Parliament. The reactions by the oppositional party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), were analysed through Norman Fairclough’s understanding of critical discourse analysis, which aims to illuminate unequal power relations created or recreated by the production of discursive practises, which is believed to ultimately affect social practises. The method of critical discourse analysis was accompanied by the feminist critique of orientalism, intended to assess how headscarved women are stereotyped and homogenised through orientalist ideas. The analysis resulted in an understanding of the complex power relations between the ruling party and the main oppositional party, as well as the effect of using orientalist ideas in discourse, possibility contributing to an increasingly extensive polarisation and, thus, the risk of increased conflicts between the secular groups and the more religiously observant groups in the Turkish society.

Through a combination of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, this paper looks at the hidden ideological discourses surrounding sex offenders in the British media. Corpus linguistics provides an excellent framework to discover such discourse patterns and the critical discourse analysis framework helps contextualise the findings. The specific aim of the paper is to discover and compare the discourse patterns surrounding the specific nominals rapist* and paedophile* in order to see how the representations differ. The analysis uncovered that the representation of both offenders was sensationalised and full of negative and emotionally loaded words. Furthermore, it was discovered that two differing discourses were prominent for each nominal: An animalistic and bodily discourse for rapist* and a discourse of deviance and the mind for peadophile*. Lastly, it is argued that these misrepresentations are problematic as they misinform both the public and the regulation of offenders.

This study focus on Western constructions of two categories of women – the female Kurdish fighters of the YPJ and the Western Muhaajirat – actively engaging in the Syrian conflict at the time of writing. Using Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis in combination with postcolonial feminist theory, I have scrutinized 12 news pieces selected from Swedish, British and North American influential news media houses, in order to provide a deeper understanding of the discourses underpinning these constructions. The outcome of the analysis show that news media tend to reproduce reductionist and orientalist views on these particular women. The YPJ is generally constructed as the liberated woman and the ideal Other, whereas the Western Muhaajirat tend to be understood as the victim and/or conservative and backwards, thus neatly positioning them as opposites so as to promote specific (Western) ways of progression, development and gender equality. Women’s agency is constructed and judged according to Western standards, and results in the continuous reproduction of imperialist discourses and the European gender order where femininity remains less valuable than masculinity.

In this thesis I have conducted a critical discourse analysis of foureditorial texts, published in the newspapers Aftonbladet, DagensNyheter, Expressen and Svenska Dagbladet. Drawing on theoriesabout media discourses (Fairclough 1995), agenda-setting(McCombs & Shaw 1972) and framing (Goffman 1974), I haveexamined how the findings of Bolin et al (2016) correlate with discursivelyframed representations in these texts, in regards to negative,positive or neutral framing of border controls, immigrationand the connection made to political parties during the first weekof January 2016, when the Swedish temporary border controlswere introduced.The results showed both consistencies and inconsistencies in regardsto framing, where the liberal newspapers Dagens Nyheterand Expressen’s editorials were less negative towards the bordercontrols and expressed more negative and stereotypical framingson refugees and migration than expected, whereas the independentsocial democratic Aftonbladet expressed the assumed negativeframing on border controls and the Social Democrates, and positiveframing on migration. The most unexpected findings wasSvenska Dagbladet that contrary to the previous findings in Bolinet al’s study framed migration positively and took the most explicitstand against the border controls. The findings may indicate a politicaland cultural change due to the change in directions in theSocial Democrats migration politics.

<p>Immigration is a complex process that involves multiple social, economic and political challenges. Immigrants face numerous structural barriers throughout the settlement process including “stress, underemployment, downward mobility, discrimination, poor housing, lack of access to services, and inadequate social support” (Simich, Beiser, Stewart and Mwakarimba, 2010, p. 260) that contribute to their status as a marginalized social group. The discourse of ‘culture’ is a prevalent paradigm to explain the integration outcomes of immigrants in our society. From a critical perspective, the discourse of acculturation can be used to perpetuate social power imbalances by universalizing dominant culture, obscuring the effects of social power imbalances and essentializing immigrant identities.</p> <p>This research examines the social justice implications of the public discourse on immigrant families through a critical discourse analysis of three popular culture films with the central theme of immigrant family conflict. Analysis of the films reveals that the discourse of immigrant family pathology is present in the narrative structure of all three films. At the same time, all of the films also represent counter narratives that highlight the complexity and fluidity of contemporary immigrant identities. It is argued that the films represent the protagonists engaging in the process of challenging both mainstream and traditional essentialized cultural identities. This process, termed ‘the third space’ by Bhabha (1990), is argued to have emancipatory potential for immigrant communities and for the pursuit of social justice.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

The present dissertation examines social stratification, as well as social inequality and its reproduction through government textual representations in a community in the outskirts of Mexico City: Ciudad Satélite. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis approach and interdisciplinary methodological tools, this study defines the type(s) and salient features of discourse used in government written communication in Cd. Satélite, as well as how some discursive strategies operate. The objective of the analysis is to illuminate how citizens interpret government communication in the subject community, and to illustrate how the Plain Language campaign has impacted such community. Chapter I demarcates the analytical background and guidelines, and it reviews several studies that focus on oral and written discourse in order to establish the basis of the communicative relationship between citizen and government. It also explains the relation of the subject community to the structure of the Mexican government. Chapter II provides a detailed description of Ciudad Satélite, the corpus and the surveyed citizens, and it also establishes the relation to the analytical guidelines. It also explains the methods used for the collection of linguistic and graphic data, and it demarcates how data was sorted and coded. The data analyses are in Chapters III and IV. Chapter III broaches linguistic accessibility of government written communication through a quantitative analysis of readability indexes as a way to shed light on accessibility of government documents. It explains the terminology, significant markers of readability and how they relate to each other. It then explores readability levels of documents, tasks, and government offices, and how and which particular social groups interact with texts using variables such as gender, age, education, occupation and identity. Chapter IV takes a multimodal approach of salient identified modes through qualitative and quantitative approaches. It considers citizens’ reaction to semiotic data and incorporates their responses in the analysis, which aim to describe the political representations in the linguistic landscape of the subject community and how citizens perceive such representations. This chapter also explores the type of persuasion used by government in the subject community through specific graphic images. Chapter V provides a discussion of all relevant data that aims towards explaining how certain meanings are perceived and thus created and maintained in the government-citizen text interaction. It explores accessibility of government linguistic resources considering readability indexes, modal representations and symbolic power, in order to show the unequal access to institutionally controlled linguistic resources. / Spanish