The aim of this thesis is to clarify different ideas about cultural relations expressed in the Swedish curriculum, and the potential consequences they may have for children and young people to participate as peers in social and public life. Located at the intersection of a (neo)pragmatic curriculum theory tradition and cultural studies/critical pedagogy, the ambition with the study is two-folded: (1) to clarify the theoretical conditions for cultural relations from an ethnocentric, global, and multicultural perspective and (2) to elucidate and describe the curriculum historical preconditions for cultural relations. In relation to perspectives and analytical tools developed in paper I-III, the investigations show that the cultural thinking in education rests on a liberal and humanistic view with a polite response and a neutral approach that never seems to exceed the comfort zone. A central finding is that there is a need to examine the priviliged position further. The study also demonstrates how the nature of cultural thinking has changed over time. Based on the dominant conceptions four discourses during 1962-2008 are distinguished: A National Discourse in the 60's, a Rational Discourse in the 70's, a Cultural Discourse in the 80-90's and a Pluralistic Neo-national Discourse in the 90-00's. The main conclusion is that despite different rationality the thinking never goes beyond a non-defined and unarticulated "we" and a designated, labelled and well-defined "them". The Swedish curriculum is a curriculum of othering that hardly provides the basis for relations where children and young people can participate as peers. To achieve a more reciprocal relationship, over-recognition of "the others" needs to be toned down, and the special status of the privileged position has to be analyzed in greater extent.

This study ”What’s does the local news contain? - an analysis of a week’s local journalism on the web in Västerbotten, Sweden” examines the different discourses in the local journalism of newspapers and public service media. The aim is to find what makes the local news with the use of a quantitative content analysis combined with a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).The study uses a theoretical framework that includes theories surrounding agenda setting, the power of the media, local journalism, news values and web based journalism. For the quantitative content analysis the online text tool Textometrica was used.The analysis found that the local news mainly consisted of news regarding sports and negative news such as crime, accidents and court cases. It also found that the local news mainly focused on a small part of the municipality of Västerbotten in its news coverage, where the biggest city in the region was of the most interest. When other parts were covered it was mostly for sport events or negative news. The qualitative analysis also found that there was a high frequency of updates on the websites and non-local news that made it into the local news due to being sensational. A difference between the newspapers and the public service media was also found where the papers focused more on local debates and public service media wasn’t as tied to earlier theories regarding news values.The study could also state that the content of the local media during the week differed from what is said to be good journalism and also what is said to be the journalistic responsibility that citizens rely on to make democratic decisions.

Syftet med denna uppsats var att studera de språkliga skillnaderna mellan anonyma och offentliga professionella matrecensenter, samt undersöka hur restaurangrecensioner påverkar restaurangägare. De tre frågeställningarna som har undersökt syftet var: Hur skiljer sig språket i de anonyma recensionerna gentemot de offentliga och påverkas språket i en recension av anonymiteten? Hur upplevs recensionen av restaurangägaren och har det någon betydelse om recensionen är skriven av en anonym eller offentlig kritiker? Hur skiljer sig språket beroende på om recensionen är positiv eller negativ? Undersökningen har utförts genom en kvantitativ metod med textanalys som redskap för undersökningen. Analyserna har gjorts på sex olika matkritikers recensioner. Textanalyserna gjordes på totalt 60 recensioner skrivna av tre anonyma kritiker respektive tre offentliga kritiker. Studiens andra syfte var att undersöka recensionernas inverkan på restauranger. Denna del av undersökningen har varit kvalitativ där intervjuer har gjorts med två restaurangägare. Resultatet av den kvantitativa undersökningen har visat på att det finns språkliga skillnader mellan anonyma och offentliga recensenters texter. Studien visade i den kvalitativa delen att genomslagskraften från restaurangrecensioner är hög. Restauranger påverkas följaktligen av recensioner publicerade angående deras restauranger. Slutsatsen var att restaurangrecensioner skiljer sig åt i språket mellan anonyma och offentliga skribenter samt att restauranger blir påverkade av båda negativa och positiva recensioner. Detta öppnar upp en debatt för att förändra kulturen av att ha anonyma recensenter i Sverige. / The aim of this study was to examine the grammatical and linguistic differences between anonymous and public food critics and to study how restaurant reviews affect restaurant owners. The three questions that have examined the aim was: How does the language differ in the anonymous reviews in comparison to the public and is the language in a review affected by the anonymity? How is a review perceived by a restaurant owner and does it matter if the review is written by an anonymous or public critic? How does the language differ depending on if the review is positive or negative? The study has used a quantitative method where text analysis as a tool for the examination was chosen. The analyses have been conducted on 60 reviews in total, written by three anonymous critics and three public critics.  The second aim was to investigate what influence food reviews have on restaurants. This part of the study was qualitative where interviews have been conducted with two restaurant owners. The outcome of this study shows that there were linguistical differences between anonymous and public food critics reviews. It also demonstrated in its qualitative section that food reviews have major impact on restaurants. Consequently, restaurants are greatly affected by reviews published regarding their restaurants. The conclusion of the study was that restaurant reviews differentiate between anonymous and public writers and that restaurants are affected by both negative and positive reviews. This opens a debate regarding the culture about having anonymous critics in Sweden.

Mapas de documentos são representações visuais que permitem analisar de forma eficiente diversas relações entre documentos de uma coleção. Técnicas de projeção multidimensional podem ser empregadas para criar mapas que refletem a similaridade de conteúdo, favorecendo a identificação de agrupamentos com conteúdo similar. Este trabalho aborda uma evolução do arcabouço genérico oferecido pelas projeções multidimensionais para apoiar a análise interativa de documentos textuais, implementado na plataforma PEx. Foram propostas e implementadas técnicas que permitem ao usuário interagir com o mapa de documentos utilizando tópicos extraídos do próprio corpus. Assim a representação visual pode gradualmente evoluir para refletir melhor os interesses do usuário, e apoiá-lo de maneira mais efetiva em tarefas exploratórias. A interação foi avaliada utilizando uma técnica de inspeção de usabilidade, que visa identificar os principais problemas enfrentados pelos usuários ao interagir com as funcionalidades desenvolvidas. Adicionalmente, a utilidade das funcionalidades foi avaliada pela condução de dois estudos de caso, em que foram definidas tarefas a serem conduzidas pelo usuário sobre os mapas de documentos. Os resultados mostram que com o auxílio das visualizações foi possível conduzir as tarefas satisfatoriamente, permitindo manipular de forma eficiente milhares de documentos sem a necessidade de ler individualmente cada texto / Content-based document maps are visualizations that help users to identify and explore relationships among documents in a collection. Multidimensional projection techniques have been employed to create similaritybased maps that can help identifying documents of similar content. This work aims to enhance the generic framework offered by the multidimensional projection techniques in the PEx visualization platform to support interactive analysis of textual data. Several interaction functions and visual representations have been proposed and implemented that allow users to interact with document maps aided by topics automatically extracted from the corpus. By exploring the topics and maps in an integrated manner, users can refine and evolve the visual representations gradually to better reflect their needs and interests, enhancing support to exploratory tasks. The proposed interaction functions were evaluated employing a usability inspection technique, seeking to detect interface problems. Moreover, two illustrative case studies were conducted to evaluate the usefulness of the proposed interactions, based on typical user tasks defined over different document collections. They illustrate how the developed visualizations can assist the proposed tasks, allowing users to interactively explore large document corpora and refine document maps

Conteúdo Gerado por Usuário (CGU) é a denominação dada ao conteúdo criado de forma espontânea por indivíduos comuns, sem vínculos com meios de comunicação. Esse tipo de conteúdo carrega informações valiosas e pode ser explorado por diversas áreas do conhecimento. Muito do CGU é disponibilizado em forma de textos avaliações de produtos, comentários em fóruns sobre filmes e discussões em redes sociais são exemplos. No entanto, a linguagem utilizada em textos de CGU diverge, de várias maneiras, da norma culta da língua, dificultando seu processamento por técnicas de PLN. A linguagem de CGU é fortemente ligada à língua utilizada no cotidiano, contendo, assim, uma grande quantidade de ruídos. Erros ortográficos, abreviações, gírias, ausência ou mau uso de pontuação e de capitalização são alguns ruídos que dificultam o processamento desses textos. Diversos trabalhos relatam perda considerável de desempenho ao testar ferramentas do estado-daarte de PLN em textos de CGU. A Normalização Textual é o processo de transformar palavras ruidosas em palavras consideradas corretas e pode ser utilizada para melhorar a qualidade de textos de CGU. Este trabalho relata o desenvolvimento de métodos e sistemas que visam a (a) identificar palavras ruidosas em textos de CGU, (b) encontrar palavras candidatas a sua substituição, e (c) ranquear os candidatos para realizar a normalização. Para a identificação de ruídos, foram propostos métodos baseados em léxicos e em aprendizado de máquina, com redes neurais profundas. A identificação automática apresentou resultados comparáveis ao uso de léxicos, comprovando que este processo pode ser feito com baixa dependência de recursos. Para a geração e ranqueamento de candidatos, foram investigadas técnicas baseadas em similaridade lexical e word embeddings. Concluiu-se que o uso de word embeddings é altamente adequado para normalização, tendo atingido os melhores resultados. Todos os métodos propostos foram avaliados com base em um córpus de CGU anotado no decorrer do projeto, contendo textos de diferentes origens: fóruns de discussão, reviews de produtos e publicações no Twitter. Um sistema, Enelvo, combinando todos os métodos foi implementado e comparado a um outro sistema normalizador existente, o UGCNormal. Os resultados obtidos pelo sistema Enelvo foram consideravelmente superiores, com taxa de correção entre 67% e 97% para diferentes tipos de ruído, com menos dependência de recursos e maior flexibilidade na normalização. / User Generated Content (UGC) is the name given to content created spontaneously by ordinary individuals, without connections to the media. This type of content carries valuable information and can be exploited by several areas of knowledge. Much of the UGC is provided in the form of texts product reviews, comments on forums about movies, and discussions on social networks are examples. However, the language used in UGC texts differs, in many ways, from the cultured norm of the language, making it difficult for NLP techniques to handle them. UGC language is strongly linked to the language used in daily life, containing a large amount of noise. Spelling mistakes, abbreviations, slang, absence or misuse of punctuation and capitalization are some noises that make it difficult to process these texts. Several works report considerable loss of performance when testing NLP state-of-the-art tools in UGC texts. Textual Normalization is the process of turning noisy words into words considered correct and can be used to improve the quality of UGC texts. This work reports the development of methods and systems that aim to (a) identify noisy words in UGC, (b) find candidate words for substitution, and (c) rank candidates for normalization. For the identification of noisy words, lexical-based methods and machine learning ones using deep neural networks were proposed. The automatic identification presented results comparable to the use of lexicons, proving that this process can be done with low dependence of resources. For the generation and ranking of candidates, techniques based on lexical similarity and word embeddings were investigated. It was concluded that the use of embeddings is highly suitable for normalization, having achieved the best results. All proposed methods were evaluated based on a UGC corpus annotated throughout the project, containing texts from different sources: discussion forums, product reviews and tweets. A system, Enelvo, combining all methods was implemented and compared to another existing normalizing system, UGCNormal. The results obtained by the Enelvo system were considerably higher, with a correction rate between 67 % and 97 % for different types of noise, with less dependence on resources and greater flexibility in normalization.

The objective of this study was to explore the authentic knowledge that evolved from a spontaneously written personal diary and other texts of a person who committed a crime of passion. I attempted to demonstrate how spontaneous linguistic forms could be used to gain a better understanding of the dynamics underlying and precipitating a crime of passion. A crime of passion represents a part of reality where both the suffering individual and the therapeutic or researching community seem to be either out of control or very vague understanding and explaining this seemingly paradoxical phenomenon. The main question is: why is the knowing (loving a person) in such cases not revealed in their way of being (killing that person)? An existential-phenomenological approach was adopted to explicate the apparently paradoxical phenomenon of a crime of passion. I explored the complicated hidden meanings (knowledge) in the diary of a person who murdered his fiancée, to unravel these assumed paradoxes, and found that the knowledge (epistemology) in the subject spontaneous self-expression provided a key for a better understanding of his way of existence or being (ontology) within a specific context, time and part of his life. Exploratory, descriptive, conceptual and semantic questions were explored by adopting an existential-hermeneutical orientation that allowed me to explicate the paradoxes both at primary and secondary levels. Working from a qualitative research perspective and phenomenological methodology, an in-depth analysis of meaning units and conceptual categories clarified underlying and hidden meanings in the texts. Theoretical linkages between different conceptual categories were explicated, highlighting the gaps in our previous understanding and theorising about crimes of passion. In this I could reveal how the person s existence gradually changed from inauthentic (insincere) and pretending to a more authentic (sincere) life of caring and responsibility after the crime. The main contribution of this project can thus be described as providing new insights to the therapeutic and research community concerning the complexity of the paradoxical existence of a person who committed a crime of passion. / Thesis (PhD (Psychotherapy))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Psychology / unrestricted

Despite the accessibility of online news and availability of sophisticated methods for analyzing news content, no previous study has focused on the simultaneous examination of news coverage on human trafficking and audiences' interpretations of this coverage. In my research, I have examined both journalists' and commenters' topic choices in coverage and discussion of human trafficking from the online platforms of three British newspapers covering the period 2009–2015. I used latent semantic analysis (LSA) to identify emergent topics in my corpus of newspaper articles and readers' comments, and I then quantitatively investigated topic preferences to identify convergence and divergence on the topics discussed by journalists and their readers. I addressed my research questions in two distinctive studies. The first case study implemented topic modelling techniques and further quantitative analyses on article and comment paragraphs from The Guardian. The second extensive study included article and comment paragraphs from the online platforms of three British newspapers: The Guardian, The Times and the Daily Mail. The findings indicate that the theories of "agenda setting" and of "active audience" are not mutually exclusive, and the scope of explanation of each depends partly on the specific topic or subtopic that is analyzed. Taking into account further theoretical concepts related to agenda setting, four more additional research questions were addressed. Topic convergence and divergence was further identified when taking into account the newspapers' political orientation and the articles' and comments' year of publication.

Syftet med föreliggande studie är att genom en komparativ funktionell textanalys jämföra textuella och språkliga drag i en skriftlig respektive talsyntetiserad version av svensklärares uppgiftsinstruktioner. Studiens teoretiska ramverk grundar sig på J.Ongs (1991) beskrivning av muntliga och skriftliga uttrycksformer där särskild vikt läggs på begreppet sekundär talspråklighet. Vidare grundas studien på en induktiv ansats.Studien bygger på kvalitativa data där empirin bestod av uppgiftsinstruktioner som är skrivna av verksamma svensklärare på gymnasial nivå. Samtliga uppgiftsinstruktioner blev upplästa och analyserade genom talsyntesprogrammet Oribi Speak. Resultatet visar att talsyntesen brister i läsflyt och beror främst på en avsaknad av punkt som finalt skiljetecken. Studiens slutsats är att talsyntesen kan ses göra anspråk på andra skrivregler än de som anses vara allmänt vedertagna. Höga krav ställs således på textförfattaren och förutsätter en medvetenhet kring hur en text bör utformas för att vara kompatibel med talsyntes. / The aim of this study has been to through a comparative functional text analysis comparing textual and linguistic features in a written and synthesized version of assignment instructions made by Swedish native teachers. Furthermore, the study is permeated by J. Ongs (1991) description of oral and written forms of expressions whereas the concept of secondary orality is of special importance.The study is based on a qualitative method, where the empirical data was collected by assignment instructions made by high school teachers educating in the subject Swedish. The empirical data consisted of assignment instructions where all were read and analyzed through the text-to-speech program Oribi Speak. The result shows that Text-To-Speech (TTS) presents deficiencies regarding reading flow and is mainly due to a lack of point and final punctuation. The study's conclusion is thereby that the TTS can be seen inferring to claim writing rules other than those considered to be generally valid. High demands are placed on the author of the text and requires an awareness of how a text should be designed to be compatible with text-to-speech programs.

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The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare the connection between pictures and text in three textbooks, in english, in the expectation to reach a didactic perspective that can facilitate in working with texts with students, in fourth grade.  How well do pictures and text correspond with each other in three textbooks that have been chosen for the fourth grade, in english?  What are the differences and similarities between the three textbooks seen from a multimodal perspecive? The result showed that there was an interaction between the different types of text types and the images, in all three textbooks. The heading of each chapter is a clue to what the content of the text will be about. The images are well connected to the text and they also reenforce the content of the text. This connection between the pictures used in the chapter and the text can help readers better understand the content of the text.