This project exposes the problems with the dominant conception of agency in secular liberal discourse. The main critique is that the dominant conception of agency tends to attribute value to certain aspects of action that are not necessarily the most telling or valuable in terms of what constitutes agency. I use Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety to aid in this critique. Her project uses the Muslim rituals performed by women of the mosque movement in Egypt to demonstrate the need for a more nuanced conception of agency in academics. I use CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary to support the approach offered by Mahmood and demonstrate the applicability of such an approach outside of typical considerations of “ritual”. In this case, the approach is applied to cricket.

Very few women hold top corporate positions in Sweden, and women are underrepresented as managers in all work sectors. The present thesis examined stereotypes, perceptions and presuppositions about women, men and management with a combination of perspectives from social and organizational psychology, discourse analysis and gender in organization research. Study 1 of Paper I was a content analysis of management attributes and cultural stereotypes of female and male managers. In Study 2, an inventory of these attributes was formed, and participants’ stereotype endorsements tested. Stereotypes of female managers resembled good management more than male managers, and they were rated more positively, but a masculine norm was implied. Paper II aimed to study and compare gender-related management stereotypes and evaluations of actual managers, and examine perceived gender bias. Men evaluated the female manager stereotype more positively on communal attributes, and, contrary to women, judged the male manager stereotype more positively on agentic attributes. This may help explain the scarcity of women in top management. Women perceived more gender bias favoring male managers than men. Actual male and female managers were rated similarly. Still, the Euclidian distances showed that ratings of actual managers and stereotypes were linked. Paper III examined the discourse on the lack of women in top corporate positions, explanations and links to proposed measures in a project to counter the gender imbalance. A liberal discourse with contradictions and textual silences was exposed. Gender had to be construed in line with traditional gender norms and division of labor to make sense of the proposed explanations. To conclude, one can be reassured by the largely communal portrayal of good management and positive evaluations of female managers, but also apprehensive about the masculine norm of management, perceived gender bias in favor of men, and traditional gender constructions.

Nosso objetivo, nesta dissertação, é analisar a partir de uma metodologia empírico-indutiva com foco na descrição e na interpretação de dados linguísticos rumo a uma crítica sociodiscursiva a polêmica travada nas mídias online entre conservadores e liberais acerca da imigração Sul-Sul, motivada por uma declaração do deputado federal Jair Bolsonaro (2015), que qualificava esse conjunto de imigrantes como a escória do mundo. Tal polêmica se estendeu ao longo de dez textos, em um corpus composto por uma variedade de gêneros dentre os quais destacamos reportagens, artigos, editoriais e vídeos na plataforma YouTube. O arcabouço teórico central da pesquisa consiste nos Estudos Críticos do Discurso (Fairclough, 2003; Melo, 2012; van Dijk, 2014; Gonçalves-Segundo, 2018a), uma abordagem multidisciplinar voltada ao exame da dimensão semiótica de problemas sociais. Em termos de convergência teórica, procedeu-se a um diálogo com os estudos sociais, históricos e antropológicos sobre a imigração, com a Linguística Cognitiva e, especialmente, com a Teoria da Argumentação. Em termos da prática analítica, partimos, inicialmente, do modelo de argumentação epistêmica de Toulmin (2006[1958]) e de argumentação prática de Fairclough e Fairclough (2012) para descrever os movimentos argumentativos de cada texto e entender de que forma liberais e conservadores sustentavam suas posições favorável e desfavorável à imigração na cadeia textual. Finda essa etapa, valemo-nos das categorias linguístico-cognitivas de analogia, metáfora e posicionamento epistêmico para verificar de que forma tais representações eram conceptualmente perspectivadas, processo que está diretamente relacionado com o grau de convencimento e de persuasão da argumentação em análise. Com base nesse procedimento, pudemos constatar que conservadores tendem a conceber os imigrantes Sul-Sul como potencialmente criminosos, como um fardo para a economia do país e como fundamentalistas e, portanto, resistentes à assimilação cultural, de modo que a sua entrada no país deva ser controlada e bloqueada. O principal valor mobilizado por esse grupo é a segurança, sustentada na crença de que o Estado é capaz de fiscalizar o contingente imigratório e que as Forças Armadas são um aliado nesse processo. Predomina, nesse discurso, o uso de recursos evidenciais perceptivos e analogias associadas à construção do imigrante como criminoso e como fardo. Já no que se refere ao discurso liberal, pudemos depreender que não se tende a conceber os imigrantes Sul-Sul como criminosos, e sim, como um instrumento para o progresso do país, dotado de capacidade de assimilação cultural; seu peso para o Estado não deriva do seu estatuto de imigrante em si, mas do grau de implementação do Estado de Bem-Estar Social do país receptor. Os principais valores que sustentam esse discurso são o mérito e a liberdade, especialmente, a livre circulação. É relevante, nesse discurso, o uso de recursos evidenciais comunicativos e analogias associadas à desconstrução do imigrante como fardo e criminoso, equiparando-os aos imigrantes que vieram ao Brasil no fim do século XIX e no início do século XX. / Our objective in this dissertation is to analyze from an empirical-inductive methodology with a focus on the description and interpretation of linguistic data towards a sociodiscursive critique the polemics caught in the online media between conservatives and liberals about South-South migration towards Brasil, motivated by a statement by Congressman Jair Bolsonaro (2015), who called this group of immigrants \"the scoria of the world.\" This polemics has spread over ten texts, in a corpus composed of a variety of genres, among which we highlight reports, articles, editorials and videos on the YouTube platform. The central theoretical framework of the research consists of the Critical Discourse Studies (Fairclough, 2003; Melo, 2012; van Dijk, 2014; Gonçalves-Segundo, 2018a), a multidisciplinary approach aimed at examining the semiotic dimension of social problems. In terms of theoretical convergence, a dialogue was held with social, historical and anthropological studies on immigration, with Cognitive Linguistics and, especially, with Argumentation Theory. In terms of analytical practice, we start with Toulmin\'s (2006[1958]) epistemic reasoning model and Fairclough & Faircloughs (2012) practical reasoning model to describe the argumentative movements of each text and to understand how liberals and conservatives supported their positions favorable and unfavorable to immigration in the textual chain. After this stage, we use the cognitive- linguistic categories of analogy, metaphor and epistemic positioning to verify how these representations were construed, a process that is directly related to ones ability to convince and persuade in the argumentation under analysis. Based on this procedure, we could see that conservatives tend to conceive South-South immigrants as potentially criminal, as a burden to the country\'s economy, and as fundamentalists and therefore resistant to cultural assimilation, so that their entry into the country should be controlled and blocked. The main value mobilized by this group is security, based on the belief that the State is capable of supervising the immigration contingent and that the Armed Forces are an ally in this process. In this discourse, the use of perceptual evidential resources and analogies associated with the construction of the immigrant as a criminal and as a burden prevails. As far as liberal discourse is concerned, we could deduce that they do not tend to conceive South-South immigrants as criminals, but rather as an instrument for the country\'s progress, with a capacity for cultural assimilation; its weight to the state is not derived from its status as an immigrant per se, but from the degree of implementation of the welfare state of the receiving country. The main values that support this discourse are merit and freedom, especially free movement of people. It is relevant, in this discourse, the use of communicative evidential resources and analogies associated with the deconstruction of the immigrant as a burden and criminal, equating them with the immigrants who came to Brazil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.