This thesis investigates the word formation processes of the neologisms in the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling. The aim is to find the frequencies of these processes and then discuss why the frequency looks this way. By collecting and analysing the neologisms with the help of the classification of Plag (2003) and Ljung (2003), the frequencies of the different formation processes is established. The reasons why the distribution of word formation processes looks this way is then discussed and compared to the background information about the author. The conclusion is that compound is the most frequent word formation of this sample. The arguments why the distribution looks this way could be that the semantic meaning of the Harry Potter words is important and that many of the neologisms are based on humour, mythology and folklore.

This thesis is a study of the first four books of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It accounts for the widespread success of the novels by examining their publication and marketing histories, and their literary achievement as narratives including a sophisticated mix of generic traditions. Chapter One looks at the popularity of the novels, comparing their material production and marketing by Rowling’s English language publishers: Bloomsbury in Britain and Scholastic in the United States of America. The publisher’s influence on the public perception of each book is demonstrated by comparative study of its mode of illustration and layout. Further, the design of the books is linked to their strategic marketing and branding within the literary world. The second chapter considers Rowling’s debt to the school story. It concentrates first on the history of this relatively short-lived genre, briefly discussing its stereotypical features and values. Traditional elements of setting and characterisation are then examined to show how the Harry Potter novels present a value system which, though apparently old-fashioned, still has an ethical standpoint designed to appeal to the modern reader. Chapter Three focuses on the characterisation of Harry as a hero-figure, especially on how the influence of classical and medieval texts infuses Rowling’s portrayal of Harry as a hero in the chivalric mode. The episodes of “quest” and “test” in each book illustrate specifically how he learns the values of selflessness, loyalty, mercy and fairness. Chapter Four surveys the contribution of modern fantasy writing to the series. It shows how Rowling creates a secondary world that allows us to perceive magic as a metaphorical representation of power. This focus on the relationship between magic and power in turn has a bearing on our assessment of the author’s moral stance. The thesis concludes by suggesting that Rowling’s unusual mix of genres is justified by the values they share, and which are inscribed in her work: the generic combination forms a workable, new and exciting mode of writing that helps to account for the phenomenal popularity of the series.

Syftet med denna studie är att ta reda på om flickor och pojkar i böckerna skildras enligt stereotypiska könsroller. Genom en enkät fick vi fram de fyra mest populära böckerna enligt några flickor och pojkar i årskurs 4. En intervju genomfördes även för att få en bakgrund till bokvalet. De böcker som var populärast och som vi har analyserat är Rum 213, Harry Potter och hemligheternas kammare, Dagbok för alla mina fans – Gregs bravader och Pax 2 – Grimmen. Samtliga böcker visar på karaktärer med både kvinnliga och manliga egenskaper. Gemensamt för de böcker som pojkarna valde, Gregs bravader och Grimmen, är att det är manliga huvudroller med mestadels manliga egenskaper. Böckerna valdes för att pojkarna blivit rekommenderade dessa böcker av sina kompisar. Böckerna som flickorna valde, Rum 213 och Harry Potter och hemligheternas kammare, hade både kvinnliga och manliga huvudroller och karaktärerna i böckerna var till största del inte stereotypiska. Vår tolkning av detta är att, precis som Hirdman (1988) säger, män och pojkar har svårare att ta sig ur normer då de representerar en och därför väljer "typiska pojkböcker".

Using a number of structurally innovative novels from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as a basis for study, this dissertation examines the representation of communities in postmodernist American fiction. While novels have often been critically studied from the standpoint of the individual and society, here the often neglected category of community is put under scrutiny. Yet rather than considering it from a sociological point of view, which can potentially favour historical, economic or political grounds for community, this study focuses on the ontological binds formed between individual and community. On one level this study connects formal qualities of postmodernist novels to a representation of community – especially literary conventions from the past that are foregrounded in the present texts. On another level it interrogates the limits of the individual in relation to others – how we emerge from others, how we are discrete from others, how much we can actually share with others, at what cost we stay or break with the others who have most influenced us. The primary novels studied here, each of which is deeply invested in the community as a locus for ontological interrogation, are Robert Coover’s "Gerald’s Party" (1985) and "John’s Wife" (1996), Gilbert Sorrentino’s "Crystal Vision" (1981) and "Odd Number" (1985), Harry Mathews’s "Cigarettes" (1987), Joseph McElroy’s "Women and Men" (1987), and Toni Morrison’s "Paradise" (1997). Despite their varied representations of and attitudes toward the individual in community, these texts share a common spectre of American Romanticism that inflects how we read the possibility of community in the postmodernist period.

The graduation thesis deals with known creditworthy and bankruptcy models originated in Czech republic and abroad and also with two non-financial models. The methods are first described in a theoretical part with the aim of understanding their principles, advantages and disadvantages. In a practical part the methods are applied on a machinery company which was seriously affected by global economic crisis. The main aim of this thesis is to evaluate the development through years of the company's general financial health, reveal strong and weak points of the firm and compare results of the methods.

This essay’s aim is to investigate how Rowling uses her novel Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to criticize racism in her magical world and ours. A secondary aim concerns how Rowling’s critical stance creates ways to resist racism for readers in the EFL classroom. Therefore, a comparison from a Critical Race Theory (CRT) perspective is made with focus on certain sequence comparisons between the novel and the film. Teachers need to highlight problems like racism in classrooms and fantasy novels and movies are exceptional tools to raise awareness and teach critical thinking to students.

This thesis explores how the presence of authors on social media sites influences the way that fans perceive their work. The main goal of the analytical part was to determine, whether and primarily how the presence of an author on social media sites changes the relationships of readers with a complete (and therefore no longer open) text, as put forth by Roland Barthes in his The Death of the Author essay. The theoretical part of the thesis starts out by exploring the historical evolution of what an author is, differentiating between time periods and dominant theoretical approaches, with focus on postmodern authors such as Roland Barthes or Michel Foucault. The theory then focuses on the digital revolution, technological determinism and the rise of social media influence, including its impact on literary marketing and the concept of the celebrity author. Lastly, the theory summarizes studies that analyze the relationship between fan communities and current authors, specifically when it comes to the authors and their social media presence, focusing on the Harry Potter fan community and J. K. Rowling. The analysis itself is done through looking at semi-structured interviews conducted with fans of the Harry Potter saga. The analysis begins with focusing on the early relationships of fans with the saga,...

On May 9, 1950, President Truman declared that “all our international policies, taken together, form a program designed to strengthen and unite the free world.” My dissertation is the first history of the “free world,” a crucial concept that identified the object of U.S. leadership, drove the country to seek global preeminence, and shaped the American understanding of the Cold War. For much of the nineteenth century, American policymakers had envisioned a globe divided into a “new world” of freedom and an “old world” of tyranny. In 1917, Woodrow Wilson proposed a new global dichotomy, arguing for the creation of a trans-Atlantic coalition of democracies against aggressive autocracies whose very existence threatened the survival of freedom everywhere. A revised version of this logic prevailed during the Second World War. But it was only after the start of the Cold War in the late 1940s that American policymakers embraced the concept of an enduring and extra-hemispheric “free world.” Their efforts to lead, unite and strengthen this spatially defined “free world” prompted a massive expansion of American foreign policy and fundamentally transformed the country’s position in the international arena.

The book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, written by the prolific author J.K.Rowling, is a popular piece of fiction that has been adapted into a film as well as severalvideogames. The book has also been translated from its original English into dozens oflanguages, including Japanese. Translations can differ from their original counterparts,especially when the languages in question differ in their syntax and cultural norms. Thesedifferences can potentially alter the original author’s intended character portrayals.This project aimed to evaluate the effect of gendered language and yakuwarigo on charactervoices in the Japanese translation of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Fourcharacters – Hermione, Hagrid, Dumbledore, and McGonagall – were evaluated bymeans of their spoken dialogue in the book. The English lines of dialogue and their Japanesecounterparts were extracted from the book and analysed.The results of the dialogue-analysis show that the dialogue in the Japanese version of thebook was more gendered, and exhibited typical signs of role language. These findingswere corroborated through the use of separate questionnaires for Japanese and Englishparticipants. The questionnaires asked participants to determine the gender and role ofcharacters purely on the basis of certain lines in the book, with no external contextprovided. Japanese participants managed to identify both the gender and role of charactersmore accurately.

Den reklam vi ser idag är oftast uppbyggd på stereotyper som leder till ensidiga representationer av genus och blir därför problematiskt i skapandet av reklam. I den här uppsatsen undersöks Guccis reklamfilm för deras parfym Mémoire d’une Odeur (2019) där Harry Styles är frontperson, genom en film semiotisk analys där maskulinitet utifrån representation av kropp och aktivitet är i fokus. Resultatet av den film semiotiska analysen av reklamfilmen visar hur Gucci skapar unisex representation av maskulinitet genom att leka med feminina och maskulina koder där den visualiserade manligheten tar avstamp i en mansbild från 1970-talets hippie stereotyp. Guccis representation av maskulinitet bryter därför mot den stereotypa maskuliniteten som brukar gestaltas i reklam. Avslutningsvis diskuteras framtiden för maskulina representationer. / The advertising we see today is usually based on stereotypes that lead to one-sided representations of gender and therefore becomes problematic in the creation of advertising. This essay examines Gucci's perfume commercial Mémoire d'une Odeur (2019) in which Harry Styles is the face out for. Through a film semiotic analysis, focusing on masculinity based on representation of body and activity, the result of the film semiotic analysis of the commercial shows how Gucci creates a unisex representation of masculinity by mixing feminine and masculine codes. The visualized masculinity takes off in a masculinity from the 1970s hippie stereotype. Gucci's representation of masculinity therefore violates the stereotypical masculinity that is usually embodied in advertising. In the ending of the essay, the future of masculine representations in commercials are discussed.