The purpose of this study is to explore how the relation between gender and humour is maintained and challenged in the Swedish TV show Parlamentet. Using an interactional approach based on Judith Baxter’s theoretical framework for feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis, the study focuses on how communicative strategies are used in negotiating for the ideal position of “the successful comedian”. This position is seen as an ideal position in Parlamentet, where comedians do political parody. In the conversation sequences examined in this study, both verbal and bodily semiotic modes have been analyzed using conversation analysis and multimodal analysis. The study focuses on how different communicative strategies encourage or reject the comedians and how this leads to different possibilities in negotiating for a powerful position, the position of the successful comedian. Humour is culturally seen as a male-coded discourse. The relations between humour and gender that are in focus are the hegemonic notions of women as lacking a sense of humour or being less humorous than men. The notions of gender are based on Judith Butler’s theories and hence seen as something performed through discourse and within a rigid regulatory frame where the subject’s possibilities are not infinite. The results of the study show that the female and male comedians do not have the same possibilities in the negotiation for the position of “the successful comedian”. The male comedians are strongly encouraged to a greater extent than the female comedians. The female comedians are also rejected to a larger extent than the male comedians. The male comedians are mostly rejected by the moderator whereas the female comedians are rejected by the moderator, male comedians and female comedians. The female comedians encourage other comedians to a larger degree than the male comedians. A significant finding of this study is that the relations between humour and gender, where women are seen as less humorous than men, are maintained when female comedians through discourse are made less humorous. However, there are strategies in the interaction that do encourage the female comedians or that lead to female comedian’s resist being rejected. These strategies indicate that the hegemonic cultural notions of women as less humorous than men are also challenged in this public discourse.

Entertainment media, specifically television, plays a big part in the construction of ideas and thoughts within a society. Television is a form of popular culture which can be used as a source of entertainment but can also promote certain ideologies and values to its audience. Sex Education is a Netflix series released in 2019 with a primary focus on knowledge around sexuality. This study aims to investigate how the Netflix-show Sex Education constructs knowledge around sexuality and how it conveys values and ideologies through this construction of knowledge. The study is different from other studies about the show as it focuses explicitly on the knowledge and conversations around sexuality, not how the knowledge is constructed in sex scenes or through other relations and characterizations in the show. The study specifically interests itself with the conversational and articulated elements of sex education. It is important to study how Sex Education portrays knowledge about sexuality as it reflects values and ideologies within a western society, and can be helpful in exploring the discourse around sex education that prevails within this type of society. This construction will have an effect on the audience which consumes it and will showcase the boundaries which sex education presents and articulates itself within. The discourse within the show sets the grounds for how the topic of sex education is spoken about within their given culture. The study uses a poststructuralist discourse analysis to approach the research and finds similar elements within twelve selected scenes from the show to explore how knowledge about sexuality is constructed in the material. Important factors of the analysis are power, ideology, status and values. These are explored in connection to characters' subject positions and the context in which the factors exist: a fictional exaggerated version of western society. The study finds that the selected scenes create a power struggle between a hegemonic, traditional and progressive discourse around sex education. The suggested discourse in their fictional world is the progressive discourse which includes a positive attitude towards diversity and social aspects of sex education. It also highlights a difference in characters' attitudes depending on their subject positions.

The aim of this thesis is to examine and analyze what discourses about women can be found in three Swedish textbooks in social studies, and to identify the different social roles that are being attributed to the woman in these textbooks. The theoretical and methodological background used is Discourse Theory by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Additional theory used is post strucutral feminism, intersectionality, and critical discourse theory as described by Norman Fairclough. Three questions are asked: Which subject positions are assigned to the women in the material examined? What discourse/s can be found in the textbooks? Do the results change over time? Five subject positions are identified: woman as mother and wife, the teenage girl, woman as a public actor, the vulnerable woman and the other woman. Hence – five different discourses are identified: the caring woman, the teenage girl, the active woman, the vulnerable woman and the other woman. The analysis shows that the discourse about the caring women is reproduced over time. Women are attributed characteristics such as caring whose primary focus is to attend to the needs of others. Particularly noticeable is the fact that the language does not rest solely on a heterosexual binary, but also on ethnocentric beliefs where the ‘other women’ is used to strengthen the community of the Western group – a group in which the other woman can never participate.