This study explores how six teachers worked up becoming and being activists in response to education reforms in the southeastern US. The reforms, which involved increasing student testing and implementing high-stakes teacher evaluations, were enacted following the authorization of the Every Student Succeeds Act, federal legislation governing elementary and secondary education. Discourse analysis of interview data demonstrates how engaging in activism was constructed and positioned by teachers in response to these policy changes. We describe two interrelated patterns: (1) characterizing activism as requiring ‘professionalism’ on the part of the teacher-activist; and (2) justifying their actions by contrasting versions of activism in the media with their own activism, which they aligned with commonly accepted category-bound activities tied to ‘doing’ being a teacher. Findings shed light on the nuanced negotiation of educators’ roles as teacher-activists within the current policy context and the complicated nature of framing professionalism and activism for public audiences.

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Yes / Discourse analytic approaches are increasingly used in psychological research. In this chapter, we will briefly introduce the key discourse analytic approaches used within psychological research. Then, using an example from some work carried out by the first author on ‘older motherhood’, we will guide you through the practical steps associated with an approach to discourse analysis called critical discursive psychology and consider how this approach is successfully applied to qualitative data. Finally, we will consider some of the practical applications of the approach.

This is a thesis in marketing concerned with entrepreneurship in established firms and the discursive practices that take place within a perspective of strategic entrepreneurship. The study of discursive practices in this context assumes a concern with how different aspects of entrepreneurship are produced and consumed by people in text and talk. Strategic entrepreneurship can be seen as an organisational form of entrepreneurship. The latest contribution within strategic entrepreneurship tends to focus on opportunities and advantages in organisations as two processes that need to be considered and managed jointly. In this thesis, I have studied the discursive practices of how scholars position strategic entrepreneurship through an enhanced literature review and by means of a close analysis of assumptions made within strategic entrepreneurship, but also by studying two firms and their discursive practices of constructing opportunity and advantage positions. The results have then been analysed with reference to discourse theory and previous research within entrepreneurship based on European traditions that builds on the linguistic turn. By conducting an empirical study of two firms, I have studied discourses in use, and how they are produced by people. In so doing, two main findings emerge in the discussion of the empirical results: 1) Opportunity and advantage positions emerge in social interaction and are co-constructed. 2) Opportunity and advantage positions are constructed by the use of multiple discourses, on different levels of discourse and for different functions. The main purpose of the thesis is to enhance the understanding of entrepreneurship in established firms and the activities labelled as strategic entrepreneurship. In addressing the purpose, seven theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to research emerge in areas of strategic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship and the enterprising self.

In view of the augmenting spatial, socio-economic and ethnic segregation in Sweden over the last 30 years, the purpose of this study is to examine, illustrate and enhance the understanding of mundane segregation processes by studying how social actors collaboratively interact in Swedish online forums regarding in which areas it is “good” or “bad” to live in. The theoretical and methodological framework used to guide the collection, coding and analysis of empirical data is based on ethnomethodology and its applied methods conversation analysis, discursive psychology and membership categorization analysis. This implies a data-driven approach in which the analysis is solely based on the observable-and-reportable understandings of the interactants themselves. The results of the study show that the participants collaboratively orient to and assemble normative spatial categories by connecting these with spatial identities. Simply put, “good places” are treated as inherently linked to “good people”, and vice versa. Because of the way in which interactants treat these spatial-social categories as both inherently and normatively linked, the thesis introduces the concept normative-spatial-identities, in order to facilitate the investigation of how social actors collaboratively make sense of,  orient to and assemble normative spatial boundaries and in this fashion, contribute to enhancing the understanding of everyday inclusion-and-exclusion practices.

Bakgrund: Konstruktioner av ensamkommande barn har undersökts till viss del. Föreställningar om barnen i bland annat medier och policydokument har studerats. Hur barnen konstrueras inom en "vardagskontext", i form av ett öppet diskussionsforum online (Flashback Forum), och hur konstruktioner däri görs trovärdiga, bedöms eftersatt. Syfte: Syftet med föreliggande studie var att identifiera olika inom Flashback Forum förekommande diskurser kring ensamkommande barn, med avseende på deras retoriska organisering. Med diskurs avsågs ett sätt att tala om och förstå världen som konstruerar ett objekt eller företeelse på ett särskilt sätt. Metod: För att besvara syftet användes en diskurspsykologisk ansats vilken fokuserar på hur trovärdighet och sanning skapas i kommunikation. Utifrån en teoretisk modell, innefattande de fyra retoriska teknikerna category entitlement, empirisk repertoar, konsensus och extremfallsformuleringar, undersöktes hur skribenter på forumet skapade sanning och bemötte andras föreställningar om barnen. Resultat: Resultatet visade att ensamkommande barn omges av diskurserna de vuxna, barnen, våldtäktsmännen, de särbehandlade, de sexuellt utsatta samt diskursen om de biologiskt manliga könet. Diskurserna användes parallellt i talen och underbyggde argumenteringar på forumet. Skribenterna använde de studerade retoriska teknikerna för att skapa trovärdighet i uttalanden. Med särskilda uttrycksformer skapades fakta om ensamkommande barn. / Background: Constructions of unaccompanied children have been researched to some extent. Concepts of the children have been studied in media and policy documents amongst others. How the children are constructed within an "everyday context", in form of an open online discussion forum (Flashback Forum), and how the constructions become credible, are regarded as under-researched. Aim: The aim of the present study was to identify different discourses concerning unaccompanied children on the Flashback Forum, with regard to their rhetorical organization. Discourse is meant as a way to talk about and understand the world that constructs an object or phenomenon in a particular way. Method: To answer the aim, a discursive psychological approach was used, which focuses on how credibility and truth are created in communication. Based on a theoretical model, including the four rhetorical techniques category entitlement, empirical repertoire, consensus and extreme case formulations, it was examined how the writers at the forum created truth and responded to others' beliefs about the children. Result: The results showed that unaccompanied children are surrounded by the discourses: the adults, the children, the rapists, the special treated, the sexually vulnerable and the discourse of the biologically male sex. Discourses were used in parallel in the speeches and to back up arguments at the forum. The writers used the studied rhetorical techniques to build credibility in the statements. With specific expression, facts about unaccompanied children were created.

The current thesis explores conditions for participation in interview interaction. Drawing on the ethnomethodological idea that knowledge is central to participation in social situations, it examines how interview participants navigate knowledge and competence claims and the institutional and moral implications of these claims. The data consists of, in total, 97 audio-recorded interviews conducted as part of a national Swedish evaluation of support interventions for children exposed to violence. In three studies, I use discursive psychology and conversation analysis to explicate how interview participants in interaction (1) contribute to and negotiate institutional constraints and (2) manage rights and responsibilities related to knowledge. The findings of study I and study II show that child interviewees actively cooperate with as well as resist the constraints of interview questions. However, the children’s opportunities for participation in this institutional context are limited by two factors: (1) recordability; that is, the focus on generating recordable responses and (2) problematic assumptions underpinning questions and the interpretation of interview answers. Apart from restricting children’s rights to formulate their experiences, these factors can lead interviewers to miss opportunities to gain important information. Also related to institutional constraints, study III shows how the ideal of model consistency is prioritized over service-user participation. Thus, the three studies show how different practices relevant to institutional agendas may hinder participation. Moreover, the findings contribute to an understanding of how issues of knowledge are managed in the interviews. Study II suggests the importance of the concept of believability to refer to people’s rights and responsibilities to draw conclusions about others’ thoughts. And the findings of study III demonstrate how, in evaluation interviews with social workers, children’s access to their own thoughts and feelings are based on a notion of predetermined participation; that is, constructed as contingent on wanting what the institutional setting offers. Thus, child service users’ low epistemic status, compared to the social workers, trumps their epistemic access to their own minds. These conclusions, about recordability, believability, and predetermined participation, are based on interaction with or about children. However, I argue that the findings relate to interviewees and service users in general. By demonstrating the structuring power of interactive practices, the thesis extends our understanding of conditions for participation in the institutional setting of social research interviews.

This study analyzed the process of subject formation in South African underground hip hoppers. The main focus of the study was to explore how resistance is constructed and achieved through embodied discursive practices and discourse in underground Hip Hop music. The study analyzed how the terms, 'Representing', 'Keeping it real' and 'Hustling', were used by hip hoppers in their construction of a hip hop subject. These terms were used by the hip hoppers as the standard against which all hip hoppers are compared if they are to be considered authentic hip hoppers. It was found that resistance was framed in the form of a heroic narrative that made use of these vernacular terms. The word 'Hustling' was used to denote the difficulties that face the hero in a heroic narrative. This heroic narrative was a strategy in which the hip hoppers repositioned themselves as heroes fighting in a hard world, one full of inopportunity against people like themselves. Overcoming this space was important to the hip hoppers but retaining connections to it was also seen as equally important. Because of the history of opposition surrounding the emergence of hip hop, claiming and retaining marginalization remain important to hip hoppers in accounts of themselves. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

This thesis is a study of bullying narratives, mainly co-produced in a process of ongoing interaction. The focus is on how narrators rhetorically organize their storytelling and identity work by using discursive resources. The empirical material consists of 12 interviews with, and 12 written stories by people who have been exposed to workplace bullying plus information from three websites about bullying, and previous research. The overarching aim of the study is to identify how a bullying discourse is produced, reproduced, challenged and negotiated in bullied persons’ narratives. Specific aims are to determine how bullying is portrayed publicly, how narrators with experience of being bullied build their stories, how the narratives stand in relation to victimization, what makes it possible to talk about vulnerability and what are its limits, and finally to develop a narrative approach.Theoretically and methodologically, the study has its basis in narrative analysis, discursive psychology, conversation analysis, and metaphor analysis. The study shows how the narrators categorize themselves as active, competent, and consensus seeking. They resist being victimized, but by their use of the interpretative repertoire and a standard story of bullying, they nevertheless become indirectly victimized. What’s at stake, in the narratives, is the question of guilt, which they rhetorically evade by the use of different metaphors. These metaphors depict bullying as a mystery, a lifelong source of suffering, a transformation, a learning experience, a battle, a contagious virus, and a trap. The narrators are constrained by the narrative conditions, the interpretative repertoire, standard story, and narrative form and content – a story of good and evil when creating their own story. The narrative conditions at the same time set the limit for expressing oneself in the identity work. This also means we are part of the production and reproduction of the bullying discourse when I, as a researcher, and the narrators use the repertoire and the standard story in mutual understanding. / <p>Helena Blomberg är verksam som universitetsadjunkt i sociologi vid Mälardalens högskola sedan 2001och vid Örebro universitet sedan 2003. Hennes huvudsakliga verksamhetsområde rör metodologiska frågeställningar kopplat till den kvalitativa forskningstraditionen, främst diskurs- och narrativ analys. Hon ingår även i Diskursgruppen vid Stockholms universitet, en tvärvetenskaplig forskargrupp som arbetar med olika diskursanalytiska ansatser.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 288-310.