This essay explores the hierarchy amongst the characters in J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter novels with a theoretical focus on Critical Race Theory. The representation of the house-elves will be examined in relation to racism and slavery, which will be compared to values that have been influential in the past and that still shape society today. The result reveals that racism and slavery is presented throughout the novels and has a distinct connection with the British Empire as well as with Great Britain today. Counter narratives exhibit a new truth that is unveiled through the stories of the house-elves and create better understanding regarding discrimination. A pedagogical analysis has in addition been conducted on the novels to enhance the counter narratives through empathy. The student will with the novels, receive different perspectives that can help them to develop their empathic abilities.

The literature on J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter is prolific. People have written on various topics dealing with issues such as translation, etymology and diverse areas concerning the language. In this essay, I examine whether linguistic features such as reporting verbs, adverbs of manner and adjectives contribute to the depiction of heroic and villainous characters. Before conducting this research, my assumptions were that there would be a great difference in the value of the words depending on the character they were associated with. I wanted to see if the heroic characters used verbs and adverbs with positive connotations, and the villainous characters verbs and adverbs with negative connotations. I also wanted to know if the adjectives describing the characters could, in themselves, clearly indicate whether a character was a hero or a villain. The results of my research suggested that the choice of particular verbs and adverbs contributed only indirectly to the depiction of the characters. Without context, it was not possible to know if the character was a hero or a villain simply by identifying the verbs and adverbs used to describe their speech. By contrast, the choice of particular adjectives did appear to indicate more clearly whether a character was hero or villain. Finally, the results of my research indicated that context, rather than the use of particular linguistic features was often the most important factor in contributing to the portrayal of characters in the novel.

In this essay I have studied the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling from an ecocritical point of view. The main theorist is Timothy Morton and his concepts of the Mesh and Strange Strangers. The analysis shows that the books are anthropocentric, and that Culture has a higher status than Nature in the magic world. The analysis also shows that the witches and wizards of the books have a similar way of looking at nature as the real world has, which can be used to open up discussions about nature. The books are anthropocentric when it comes to animals and how they can be used. The analysis also focuses on coexisting, and how the magic world deals with Strange Strangers. The Strange Strangers that the analysis deals with are both humans and other entities.

Berättelsen om Harry Potter har lästs av miljontals människor världen över. Bokseriens sociala och kulturella genomslag har haft stor påverkan på generationen som föddes under 1990-talet. Böckernas popularitet var tilltalade för många, men vissa läsare blev mer engagerade än andra och började engagera sig i fan-grupper och använde sig av internet för att kunna diskutera Harry Potter med andra fans. I den här uppsatsen undersöks det hur det kan vara att vara ett Harry Potter-fan och vad det har för betydelse för en individ. För att kunna gå in på djupet kring fenomenet ligger fokus på fandomet kring Harry Potter. Med fandom menas den typ av subkultur fans agerar inom. Syftet med studien är att genom kvalitativa intervjuer, bildanalyser och observationer, kunna förstå och kartlägga hur fandomet kring Harry Potter är uppbyggt, samt den inverkan det har på människorna inom det. För att ta reda på det analyserades resultaten med hjälp av deltagande kultur, Social Identity Theory och habitus. Resultatet vittnade om ett aktivt fandom med dedikerade medlemmar, fyllt av gemenskap med delad passion och nostalgi till barndomen.

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.

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".

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,...

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.

Studies shows that youths today read books less frequently than before. This is, in my opinion problematic. This study aims towards an understanding in how the Harry Potter novels can enrich the teaching in upper secondary school in Sweden in the education of religions and ethics, for students to reflect, and discuss different topics of value. The novels are incorporated with lots of good options for values, including the equal value of people, feminism and masculism and cultural racism. The study is made with help of narrative analysis. The results show that this book offers a lot of value in teaching situations and therefore the conclusion is that fantasy novels can be used to discuss problematic issues in society by using the different examples in the books as allegories.