The aim of this thesis is to describe some central conceptual ideas expressed in the language of six computer interested boys. The starting-point is the philosophy of language of Ludwig Wittgenstein, where language is seen as something deeply integrated in our practices, traditions and culture. The use of our language shows its meaning. The material consists of 18 months of observations in the computer room of a secondary school and a series of three deep-interviews with each one of the boys over a period of three years. The computer has a central function in their identity work. Within our culture, this object - with its structure and its ways of operating - has become a metaphor for human thinking. It offers freedom and control. The discussions involved in this work and its form of representation problemize some of the fundamental assumptions of linguistics and the humanities. The three portraits (chapters 3-5) are to be understood as meaningful examples, while the persons portrayed are to be seen as symbols, inviting the reader to reflect over our culture and our practices. The fostering into the computer world and the ways of looking at the world are shown through the "personal voice", each followed by an interpretation linked to the theories and results of other researchers. In the boys' ways of using language there are differences and similarities. Learning, growing, creating, signifying 'freedom', can be seen as central notions in the identity work of one of them. With another of the boys there is a strong resemblance in his talking of computers and of his personal God; he "fixes" the world through dividing-lines, strong recommendations, further emphasized through the frequent use of the verb ska (shall, should). In the third portrait it is evident that the boy's abundance of words and narrative-making is a strategy of preventing nearness and to be able both to control the interview situation and to intensify the here and now. "Going deep" into computers make certain assumptions about the world more essential than others. Central concepts explicit in their common language game are logic, power and control (chapter 7). There is a common tendency to hierarchize and dichotomize the world; upper/under world, outer/inner world, logic/feeling, we/they, right/wrong. Stability can be seen as a summarizing notion. The deeper significance of their feeling of safety and control in the computer world is a fostering both into male dominance and into a dominant way of thinking about knowledge as something primarily logical, controllable and possible to account for. This masculinist language game is confirmed in different ways: individually, in the group and at a more subtle and symbolic level. / <p>Diss. Umeå : Univ., 1992</p> / digitalisering@umu

This essay intends to interpret the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (CETS No. 210) using discourse analysis and theories of the sexual contract (Pateman 1988) and the male protective logic (Young 2003). The purpose is to find out which feminist discourses can be made visible in the convention, which subject positions are constructed within the framework of those discourses and how re- sponsibilities are distributed in contemporary policy documents. In summary the results show that the central subject positions within the convention consist of the protector, the victim and the perpetrator, which in turn include the majority of underlying subjects that both overlap each other and sometimes oppose each other's positions. The same subject who holds the po- sition of protector can also be the perpetrator and in this paradox are found, among others, the state and the violent man. A feminist discourse that underlies the convention's presentation is that unequal structures between binary gender categories, which is described as a fundamental problem when it comes to violence against women. Pointing out these structures risks of re- producing stereotypical notions of women and men as generalizable groups, but the convention also contributes through these representations to an international recognition of patriarchal structures and to shift the problem of men's violence against women and domestic violence from being a private matter to a problem for which the state should take responsibility.