| 1. |
- Wallsten, Barbara, 1979-
(författare)
-
Pädagogische Bildtexte : Kontrastive Analysen von Bild-Text-Beziehungen in deutschen und schwedischen Geschichtslehrbüchern
- 2018
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis examines captions in history textbooks. Captions can be described as short texts connected to images. They have a complex function involving highlighting information, and can be comments, interpretations or questions directly addressing the reader in terms of their nature. Captions in textbooks have a more or less enunciated didactic or educational aim. I call them educational captions. By using a triangulation of methods and theories, such as multimodal text analysis, linguistic comparative discourse analysis and systemic-functional grammar, this thesis explores how meaning and knowledge are discursively represented and conveyed by captions in history textbooks. The corpus consists of German and Swedish history textbooks for upper secondary school pupils. A total of 26 examples have been selected, taking into account various considerations regarding qualitative research, and have been analysed in detail. For the detailed analyses, a flowchart for processing the categories has been designed: presentation of the caption with its image, location within the textbook, image description, image-text-arrangement, processes, agency and grammatical metaphor, construction of subjects, recontextualization and (re)presentation of the historical event. The examples represent three historical events: The Berlin Blockade, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.The analyses show that the length of captions can differ a lot – they can consist of a name or be a longer text with a narrative character. The uses of history differ in German and Swedish textbooks. German captions treat the associated pictures like documents by using letters and numbers to describe them; moreover they provide information about time and place. In contrast, the Swedish ones are more narrative in nature. Subjects are constructed differently in the multimodal representations of the events, the most significant of which is the positive (re)presentation of the USA during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Berlin Blockade. First and foremost, meaning and knowledge are discursively represented and expressed by the selection of the image. This choice influences how the captions are formed and meanings conveyed. Iconic pictures representing a celebrating crowd on the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate serve to construct national identity, together with national symbols, in German textbooks, and captions reinforce this meaning potential. The captions demonstrate that their meaning potential lies within their function of being an interface in the multimodal composition of the textbook, and captions also indicate the different uses of history in the two different educational systems. Finally, their potential in constructing and transforming discursive knowledge and meanings is demonstrated.
|
|
| 2. |
- Hultin Morger, Fabia, 1991-
(författare)
-
«Und denn hemmer eifach e Burka bracht» : Sprachwissenschaftliche Studien zu Memes im politischen Diskurs in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz
- 2023
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this compilation thesis I examine Internet memes within the political discourse of the three major German-speaking countries Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The analysis incorporates several theoretical and methodological approaches, including politolinguistics and discourse studies, text linguistics, multimodality theory and media linguistics. The central driving questions of this research are as follows:How does political language manifest visually and textually in memes? What role do the Internet, social network platforms, and their affordances play in the creation and dissemination of memes? How do memes contribute to diverse political discourses? Three distinct studies examine memes within different contexts to address these questions:Study 1 investigates memes as satirical texts, analyzing a collection of memes published by two German TV news parodies on their Facebook platform. These memes focus on the 2017 G-20 summit held in Hamburg. The dataset comprises 27 memes, along with public Facebook comments accompanying these memes. Applying medialinguistic approaches and concepts from discourse analysis, this study explores how memes employ satire and interact with the Internet as a medium, particularly on the Facebook platform.Study 2 concentrates on memes within political campaigns. For this purpose, a collection of 64 memes published on the Swiss political group Operation Libero's Facebook page during referendum campaigns was gathered. A close reading, drawing from both multimodality theory and the discourse historical approach, addresses questions about how arguments are constructed within internet memes in terms of both image and text, as well as how memes interact with the broader political discourse.Study 3 examines memes from Austria, Germany and Switzerland as populist texts, applying Moffitt's conceptualization of populist style (2016). A data-based investigation rooted in the discourse historical approach and multimodality theory analyzes memes with varying political alignments. The study assesses how these memes express features of populist style, such as the appeal to the people vs. the elite, the use of bad manners, and the performance of crisis. Special focus is given to the political context and the semiotic resources used to convey populist themes.The introductory chapter provides insights into various definitions of memes and their historical development, culminating in the identification of eight prototypical characteristics. These characteristics serve as the foundation for subsequent analyses.In summary, this research underscores the significance of memes as a mode of political expression in the digital age. Analyzing political memes provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of political language and discourse in an increasingly online political environment.
|
|
| 3. |
- Savola, Kristiina, 1989-
(författare)
-
Rajanvetoja ja vastakkainasetteluja : Diskursiiviset strategiat suomalaisten poliitikkojen blogiteksteissä vaalivuonna 2015
- 2024
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this monograph thesis, I examine political confrontations, their actors, conflict lines, discursive strategies, linguistic means, and related topics in Finnish politicians’ blog texts. Additionally, I analyse the occurrences of populist communication styles within these politicians’ blog discourses.The data consists of blog texts from nine ideologically diverse politicians from the Finnish parliamentary election year of 2015. The study is grounded in Critical Discourse Studies (Reisigl & Wodak 2016) and employs methods of rhetorical-performative discourse analysis (Palonen & Saresma 2017), along with political theories of politics and populism (Laclau 2005; Moffitt 2016; Mouffe 2005, 2013; Palonen 2020).The first part of the analysis explores the core topics in the data: economic politics and immigration politics, along with their related discourses. Discourses on economic politics in the blogs of government politicians include defending the welfare state, and advocating for citizens’ equalisation, viewing citizens as a socio-economically homogeneous group. Additionally, they address confrontation as a political obstacle and the necessity of economic measures. Opposition politicians' blogs, on the other hand, feature a discourse defending citizens against the government’s planned and implemented economic cuts.Discourses on immigration politics in government politicians’ blogs frame asylum seekers as a threat and migration as a cause of societal polarisation in Finland, while also opening up a human right discourse that views asylum seekers from a humanitarian perspective. In opposition politicians’ blogs, the predominant discourse defends asylum seekers.These topics are linked to ongoing global crises, such as the so-called refugee crisis and the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. Government politicians focus on their impacts on Finland and Europe, while opposition politicians emphasise Finland’s role as a responsible actor and mediator in international politics.The second part of the analysis examines conflict lines, discursive strategies, and linguistic means involved in confrontations. Strategic dimensions of the confrontations include a populist division between ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’, as well as between ‘the people’ and media and researchers. Strategies also involve affective defence of socially vulnerable groups, ideological opposition, equalisation of citizens, consensus-seeking, holding citizens accountable, and community building.Confrontations occur at the level of discursive strategies, lexical, metaphorical, rhetorical, and structural choices in the blog texts, and in the intertextual relations between the texts. Linguistically, these confrontations are produced through negative labelling of opponents, actor-distancing generic constructions (passive verbs, and the Finnish zero person), metaphors like water, war, sport, and the nation as a body, as well as empty and floating signifiers, euphemisms, antitheses, and irony.In summary, confrontation is a political positioning strategy used to legitimise politicians’ positions and agendas, create and maintain in-groups and out-groups, and defend them from hypothetically threatening actors and forces, who in turn are delegitimised. Additionally, confrontations are utilised to shape perceptions of political reality, criticise, and highlight other actors’ responsibilities.
|
|
| 4. |
- Wojahn, Daniel
(författare)
-
Språkaktivism : Diskussioner om feministiska språkförändringar i Sverige från 1960-talet till 2015
- 2015
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Målet med språkaktivism är att förändra samhället genom att förändra språket. Språkaktivism bedrivs ”underifrån” i syfte att utmana och på lång sikt upphäva diskriminerande samhällsstrukturer.I den här avhandlingen undersöks diskussioner om feministisk språkaktivism som förts i Sverige från 1960-talet till 2015. Under denna period har kvinnorörelsen, homo- och bisexuella, trans*aktivister och queera personer skapat en mängd nya ord för att ifrågasätta och förändra rådande normer kring kön och sexualitet; ombudskvinna, hen, hoan, h@n, kvinniskor, intergender, cisperson och pansexuell är bara några av dem.Aktivistiska språkförändringar ger upphov till re_aktioner av olika slag. Dessa är inte sällan uttryck för ett försvar av rådande sociala och samhälleliga könsnormer. När det till exempel gäller det omdiskuterade pronomenet hen så är det inte kombinationen av bokstäverna h, e och n i sig som upprör, utan det är de normkritiska intentionerna bakom bruket av ordet som skapar debatt. Att vissa grupper aktivt förändrar språket och att andra re_agerar så starkt på dessa förändringar visar att språket tillskrivs betydelse för upprätthållandet av samhälleliga normer och maktstrukturer.I avhandlingen analyseras, utifrån en diskursanalytisk ansats, diskussioner om feministisk språkförändring som har förts i tre kontexter: inom aktivistiska grupper, i kommentarsfält på nätet och inom den institutionaliserade språkvården. Avhandlingens centrala forskningsintresse är inriktat på relationen mellan språk och kön och relationen mellan språkförändringar och förändringar i den utomspråkliga, sociala världen och hur dessa relationer förstås i de tre kontexterna.
|
|
| 5. |
- Westberg, Gustav, 1984-
(författare)
-
Legitimerade föräldraskap 1870–2010 : En diskurshistorisk undersökning
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to historize discourses of parenthood by analyzing how they are negotiated and legitimized in Swedish non-literary and wide spread texts published in the 1870s, 1940s and 2010s. The analyzed corpus consists of the following: family and women’s movement magazines from the 1870s; a public counseling brochure and weekly magazines from the 1940s; blog texts; online health counseling; parent magazines; and public welfare information from the 2010s. The study moreover aims to make an inventory of which visual and lexico-grammatical resources realize legitimating strategies in the texts.Theoretically, the thesis draws on constructivist and feminist discourse theories and social semiotics. There is an emphasis on subject positions and power relations. The thesis investigates which parental subject positions are legitimized in the corpus, what power relations they reproduce, and furthermore how different positions are transformed as discontinuities of each other and over time.The results are presented in four analytical chapters. In the first of these, findings derived from the legitimation analysis of the 1870s are presented. The following two chapters present the results derived from the analysis of the 1940s and 2010s. The fourth research chapter presents an inventory of semiotic resources with the potential to realize legitimating strategies.One crucial discourse-historical result regards how the position of the mother as primary caretaker predominates in the research data. However, the position is mainly legitimized during the 1870s and transformed into legitimacy during the 1940s and 2010s. The analysis furthermore captures how the same position is legitimized during the 1870s with reference to a discourse concerning a divine order of things. Although this divine discourse is muted during the 1940s and 2010s, it continues to imprint the representations. Moreover, the analysis captures how discourses of legitimate parenthood constitute discourses of manhood, Swedishness, expert knowledge, responsiveness to children, consumption and risk management throughout the investigated periods, yet in discontinuous ways.The overall conclusion drawn is that legitimized discourses from one historical setting can constitute silent foundations for representations in later historical contexts. By unraveling history from past to present, the thesis shows how it is possible to identify presupposed lineages of today’s ideas and discourses, and thereby to deconstruct hegemonic truths and the power relations they reproduce.
|
|
