The 32- hour documentary series <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i> was aired in 2000-2001 and has been widely disseminated: it is now available as video and DVD sets and has been aired in at least nine languages. In this thesis I examine the packaging of the series, that is, the images and promotional blurbs on the boxed DVD set and the introductory and concluding segments of the series, and I intensively examine Episode 10 Taking the West (1873-1896). Through Critical Discourse Analysis, I closely examine the language and other semiotic material used in <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i> to analyse power relationships in the series. As well as paying attention to the overall structure of the verbal and visual text, I am attentive to the way in which grammar and words are used, and the representation that is portrayed through these elements. In this thesis, I find that while the series does include women and Aboriginal people, <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i>s use of language and images portrays a Canadian identity that privileges Whiteness and masculinity and that presents current power imbalances in society as natural and inevitable. By devaluing women and Aboriginal people in its representation, <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i> lends legitimacy to the systemic discrimination against women and Aboriginal people in Canadian society. I find that the series presents past events as inevitable, over which people had no control or influence, and I argue that this presentation encourages people to accept the current situation, rather than challenging it and seeking alternatives.

Since early after its discovery in 1981, AIDS has often been framed as a sexual disease spread through deviant and hypersexualized populations, perhaps nowhere more so than in Africa. Much has been written about the pandemic in Africa, with the majority of recent attention placed on the sexual transmission of the virus. Omitted from the discourse are other possible avenues of transmission. My thesis hopes to highlight this problem by identifying key works contributing to the sexual discourse, and drawing attention to other possible areas of research which could broaden the scope of research on AIDS in Africa. In this thesis, Edward Saids idea of Orientalism is used as a framework through which to understand the creation of the sexual discourse, arguing that it has become dominant and therefore obstructing alternate avenues of scholarship and investigation. Due to this focus on promiscuity and sex, the literature on the transmission through medical injections was omitted. The focus on sexual transmission as the basis of the pandemic has excluded much discussion on other contributing factors, such as poverty. Arguments for the role of poverty in HIV transmission often centre on sex. For example, women forced into transactional sexual relations or sex work, or movements to urbanization that weaken cultural mores and norms and result in promiscuous sexual relations. The emphasis on the sexual transmission of AIDS in Africa, at the expense of thorough analysis of the non-sexual transmission, has stunted the understanding AIDS, placing blame for the transmission onto Africans themselves, turning AIDS into an African problem.

This thesis is a qualitative study of a new law that was applied in December 2010. The law is called Lagen om etableringsinsatser för vissa nyanlända invandrare, and is meant to help newly arrived immigrants that come to Sweden to establish themselves in the Swedish society. The aim of the study is to see what discourses the Swedish government produces as a result of this new law. Interesting for the study is to see what happens in the implementation stage at a local level, in this case in the municipality of Örnsköldsvik. Theoretically and methodologically I emanate from critical discourse theory and institutional theory. Previous research about the production of knowledge and power that originate from a post colonial theory is central throughout the study. The key findings are that the discourses that are being produced as a result of this new law build much on previous discourses within the field of integration policy. The main discourses that are being produced and reproduced are a care providing discourse, a market discourse and a state controlling discourse. A momentous problem is however the presumption of “Us and Them” which is connected to institutional structures and leads to an unequal power relationship. / Maria Strandberg

This essay has identified and analysed rhetorical devices in Gordon Brown’s speech delivered at the Labour Party conference on September 25, 2006. The aim of the study was to identify specific rhetorical devices which are described as interactional resources, analyse their uses and discuss possible effects that they may have when included in a political speech. The results are based on my own interpretations but are supported by information provided in current literature by analysts and researchers of rhetoric use. The result findings could probably serve as evidence of the need for better understanding of the devices used by politicians in their relentless endeavours to influence audience decisions.

This study analyzes the news texts of Typhoon Morakot, applying news discourse analysis and post-colonial concepts to discuss the specific types of aboriginal representation in the media, and the media also shape some specific discourse for aboriginal people. After analyzing the news texts, it shows that mainstream media represent aboriginal as the negative other, while alternative media represent them as the subjects who can acclaim their own rights. These two different discourses imply that there are some complex power relations behind the news texts, the mainstream media reinforce the power from central government and the charity organization. They build a strong and powerful discourse to rationalize their dominance over aboriginals, which excludes aboriginals¡¦ opinions from the public policy. However, this study also shows there is an alternative direction of power; alternative media try to subvert the mainstream discourse. They point out the central government is the trouble maker, aboriginals shouldn¡¦t be scapegoats. Hence, we can find that aboriginals are on the way to establish their own subjects.

Home-school relations are critical in determining how the educational process interacts with and is shaped by various social, cultural, political, and economic institutions. I focus my research on the educational involvement of mothers who volunteer at the elementary level in both the U.S. and Taiwan to seek a cross-cultural perspective on the structural inequalities embedded within home-school relations through the examination of mothers¡¦ roles on the one hand and the school¡¦s expectations on the other hand. By interviewing volunteering mothers and school administrators at one elementary school in each country, I discovered differences as well as similarities, reflected in the dominant mothering and educational discourses in the two countries. This qualitative cross-cultural study suggests a need to incorporate cultural and institutional variables currently outside of social and cultural capital-based frameworks in understanding the dynamics of home-school relations.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 295-311). Also available in print.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 2003. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-200).