This Master’s thesis explored the British national identity in the early phases of the Brexit process in the years 2017–2018. The aim of the study was to examine whether a new non-EU British identity which could be detected in the speeches by Prime Minister Theresa May and what kinds of linguistic devices were employed in the construction of such identity. I approached these questions with a triangulating method which finds its home in Critical Discourse Analysis. The data consisted of transcriptions of May’s three speeches: the first one was given in London in January 2017, the second one in Florence, Italy in September in 2017 and the third one again in London in March 2018, as a storm prevented May from traveling to Manchester. I attempted to observe the respective temporal and spatial contexts, as well as the imagined audience in my analysis. I first conducted a quantitative analysis of the data by employing the Appraisal Framework developed by Martin and White. This framework is designed to recognise value positions encased in a text. It is based on Systemic Functional Linguistics and Bakhtin’s ideas on dialogic language. I.e. it views language as a semiotic system of inter-referential signs which is constructed in interaction. I applied the framework to the extent of Engagement. This category of the framework is specifically concerned with dialogic utterances. In the qualitative analysis, I applied several social scientific approaches and concepts related to questions of nation and national identity. In terms of dialogic language, the results displayed that over time May’s speeches began to contain less contractive utterances in which one would exclude other positions from the discourse. At the same time, there was an increase of expansive utterances in which one would allow other positions to seem plausible or neutral. In other words, May seemed to opt for a more conciliatory tone as Brexit visibly decelerated. When it comes to national identity, it would seem like a crucial concept for a state looking for less integrated international co-operation especially if pursuit of national sovereignty is presented as the main reason behind the endeavour. However, this study implies that May’s speeches did not offer elements which a new national identity could have been built upon. In the light of previous research on national identity, they would have evidently needed to contain more emotion-laden language.

According to Ulrich Beck's theory of reflexive modernisation people today suffer from insecurity and constant risks in all aspects of their life. A major factor dictating their individual biographies is their work. Work in today's world has become an essential ingredient in defining personal identities and relationships. For Beck as a consequence of the modern work environment new insecurities and inequalities in comparison to the industrial epoch have emerged; a development of risk biographies. This thesis examines how international professionals in the Greater Helsinki Region construct and negotiate the meaning of their work and the organisation of their work. Specifically, through the critical discourse analytic method of Norman Fairclough the focus of the research is on the impact of power and ideology of new capitalism on individual discourses. This is studied by exploring whether a shift emerges in the participants' discourses of their work during interviews pertaining to the new financial crises of the late 2000s as well as the impact of the effects of the information age. The data is supported by the method of reflexive social processes of participant observation. The analysis of the interviews shows that the individuals, in contrast to the theory of reflexive modernity, did not present themselves as insecure nor facing constant risk in their individual discourse of work; even during discussions of the new financial crisis. Instead, it was discovered that the participants constructed themselves as in control of their biographies, both disciplined and self-managed, in contrast to the volatility of the market forces. The observed feelings of self-management are in accordance with Fairclough's original thesis and demonstrate that the participants have internalised new capitalism's ideology of neo-liberalism, further propelling the cause of the capitalist market forces in their work places. By internalising this ideology the participants were found to be experiencing alienation, predicted by Karl Marx, struggling with the loss of meaning towards their work, as described by Max Weber and at risk of anomie discussed by Emile Durkheim.

With much contemporary discussion on social media and the ethics and transparency of the way they operate, this article examines the discursive processes of user engagement as Baudrillardian solicitation. The concept of solicitation allows us to conceptualize social media use as a transactional process whereby the user is enticed by a promise of a 'Gift' and thus lured into using a service or a product. Simultaneously, the very act of participation implicates the user, albeit unwittingly, in the sanctioning and legitimizing of the operational logic behind social media. Adopting a CDS perspective, we explore the ways in which Facebook entices users through discursive processes of solicitation. We analyse, making use of corpus linguistic tools, both Facebook corporate communication and user reactions. Our findings show that the user is enticed by foregrounding the value of participation for the user and promising four types of Gift: protection, freedom of expression, personal connection, and a general altruism on the part of the corporation. Thus, this study sheds light on how users are enticed discursively by the social media company and the ways in which they either accept the discourse or resist it.

The main purpose of this thesis was to describe rape myth prevalence in tabloid news online discussion; to describe the most common types of rape myths, rapes, rapists (e.g. ‘them’ and ‘us’) and victims (e.g. the naughty victim/ ideal/ innocent victim). Also, specific types of talking was analysed in order to identify meanings in talk that blames the victim (e.g. “questioning talk”) – also, talk that opposes mythical rape talk was analysed (“Against the myth”). As the main material, were comments (or texts) retrieved from articles discussing rape cases, as the source was a UK based tabloid news site The Daily Mail Online. Through establishing themes and categories for rape myths, rapes, rapists and victims, the material (user comments) was organized and analyzed – with help from tools ’borrowed’ from Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Linguistics. Theories by Barthes, Fairclough, Butler and Halliday were applied for theoretical explanations. The following rape myths by Brownmiller and the Schwendingers’ were used as themes for categorization: “No woman can be raped without her will/ Rape is impossible”, “Rape is about sex/ Rape is caused by uncontrollable male sexuality/ imbalance in sex ratio causes rape”, “She was asking for it”, “If you’re going to be raped, you might as well relax and enjoy it”, “Rape in marriage is not that serious” and “Crying rape as an instrument of vengeance aka the ‘rape lie’”. The victim types were categorized as so; “the raped wife” (this victim type was not discussed as a separate victim type, but instead in relation to the myth of “rape in marriage is not that serious”), “the underage victim/ victim traveling alone” and “a victim traveling with a boyfriend/ a victim out alone and drinking”. Whereas the rapist types were grouped to themes of “the husband”, “the stranger”, and “the police officer”. The main conclusion summed up to a notion that mythical rape talk does prevail regarding certain victim types, especially “the raped wife”, “the underage victim”, “victim traveling alone” and “victim out alone and drinking”. Rape myths were identified in almost all article discussions, however only few victim types were considered as ‘innocent victims’ - the partly paralyzed woman in a hospital bed and a young girl raped during daytime. The innocence of these victims is reliant on the fact that no commenting was found that indicated to a use of a rape myth. In addition, rape as a form of structural violence was debated and gender norm associations with sexuality and with rape myth evolvement was in the center of this discussion, for example while discussing the habits in teaching girls how to ‘not get raped’. The notion of rape being a gendered social construct was found to be in the core of rape myth use, for example as a habit of encouraging towards a better internalization of so-called ‘rape avoidance strategies’.

The thesis provided an analysis of online media coverage of terrorist bombings in London in 2005. As the consequence of the attacks, the controversy over the link between Islam and Islamist terrorism loomed large in the mass media, effectively creating a number of media discourses. It was argued that media discourses have effects on socio-cultural and discourse practices of the readership. Thus, the discourse practice of media text production was the primary focus of analysis in the thesis. The data for the research was sourced from the online versions of Telegraph and The Guardian. The keywords for the search were Al-Qaeda. Each of the texts was published in the last three weeks of July 2005. The texts selected for the analysis included extensive reference to Islam and war, as the themes of religion and war were followed in the analysis. The research was carried out in the form of critical discourse analysis (CDA), with the focus on the concept of ideology as common sense, the majority-minority relations, the abuse of social power, manipulation, discrimination, inequality and cultural racism. The proponents of CDA state as their aim the uncovering of the connections between the use of language and the exercise of power, or how language works in the socio-cultural and discourse practices. The work of Norman Fairclough provided the main methodological and theoretical tenets for the thesis. In the data analysis, one of the primary aims was in the identification of the ‘ideational’, ‘interpersonal’ and ‘textual’ functions of the text: how the world and events were represented, how social subjects and the relationships between them were constructed and the sequential structure of the texts. The attention was also given to the presence of traces of ideological “common sense” assumptions, the employment of manipulative discourses, the intertextual use of other texts whereby a shared knowledge between the text producer and the text consumer was presupposed in the construction of the intertextual context. The results of the analysis pointed out to a sharp distinction between the texts from The Guardian and those from Telegraph. The Telegraph texts featured discursive strategies whereby the problem of terrorism was constructed chiefly in the domain of religion and the responsibility for the attacks was seemingly allocated to wider Muslim communities. The discursive subjects and the inter-subject relationships were also constructed along the lines of religion. The subject relationships suggested high degrees of demonization of the Other. The ‘war on terrorism’ was generally viewed as preventive against terrorism. The discursive strategies of the Telegraph authors also contained attempts at ideological common sense construction and suggestions of unequal power relations on the ethnic majority-minority level. The texts sourced from The Guardian generally constructed terrorism in the domain of religious extremism, effectively allocating the responsibility for the attacks to the smaller groups of extremists within the Muslim world. The ‘war o terror’ was generally constructed as the motivating factor for the Islamist terrorist groups. The construction of subjects and inter-group relations in the texts tended to be made mainly along the lines of citizenship and did not suggest demonization of the Other or any support for differential treatment of minorities.

Following the development of effective vaccines against COVID-19, a global access gap has emerged, with wealthier countries receiving the vast majority of vaccines and therapeutics. The governments of several lower-income countries have since identified a major cause of this gap to be intellectual property arrangements governing the development of pharmaceutical products. In response, these countries submitted a proposal within the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Council to waive specific elements of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights in relation to COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. Since then, a small number of wealthy countries where most major vaccine producers are located have resisted calls to pass the Waiver, thus maintaining intellectual property restrictions and limiting access to vaccines. This thesis explores the discursive nature of the arguments put forward against the Waiver within the institutional context of the WTO TRIPS Council from October 2020 to December 2021. It applies the Critical Discourse Analysis approach to identify several discourses that characterise the nature of opposition to the TRIPS Waiver, to explain how these shape political outcomes and delimit courses of effective action and resistance. These discourses are interpreted through the theoretical lens of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, which posits that sovereign power is increasingly based on the ability to decide who is worthy of life and who can be subjected to death, with racism and neoliberal market logics being the twin technologies of necropolitical violence. The thesis relies on primary material sourced from hundreds of pages of meeting minutes from the TRIPS Council, where opponents to the Waiver lay out their arguments and discursively construct their opposition in ways that are consistent with the necropolitical reading of global politics and structural violence. This thesis analyses this primary material in conjunction with secondary material from the pharmaceutical industry, uncovering discursive parallels that unveil the neoliberal logics that fuel opposition to the TRIPS Waiver. This thesis concludes that opposition to the TRIPS Waiver is both a driver and a symptom of a planetary renewal of colonial relations, in which neoliberal discourses around health have served to keep lifesaving treatments out of reach to those who cannot afford them during a deadly pandemic. The implications of necropolitical discourses around healthcare access for both democracy and for the future of the pandemic are fatal.

This pro gradu thesis discusses the information war during the Ukraine conflict in 2014. In particular, it examines the production of enemy images in the Finnish and Russian online media articles. The role and significance of communication in national defense has increased significantly in recent years. In many aspects, information warfare has in fact returned to the core of modern warfare. The importance of conquering territory has lost its significance to operating in cyberspace. The term information war as understood in this thesis is characterized by the battle over information and the minds of people. The winner is therefore the one who creates the best narrative to support themselves and justify their action. After the escalation of the events in The Maidan demonstration in the center of the Ukrainian capital Kiev in November 2013, it soon became evident how Russia and the Western media both covered the conflict from remarkably different perspectives, all building their own narrative behind the events. This thesis focuses on two particular epochs in year 2014: the annexation of Crimea in March and the Russian aid convoy crossing the Ukraine border in August. The data consist of 64 randomly selected editorial articles from four media: Finnish public broadcasting company Yleisradio, Finnish tabloid newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, the Russian news channel Russia Today and the Russian news agency Sputnik International. This research focuses especially on the hidden power of media discourse (Norman Fairclough) and the main objective is the de-neutralization of the discourses of “the other” used in these media texts to represent “the other”. The method used for this study is the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), concentrating on role of language as being shaped by the society and shaping the society. CDA aims particularly at revealing the power relations behind discursive conventions. The main discourses found in this study were the discourses of military threat (1), truth (2), externality (3) and megalomania (4). The discourse of hypocrisy (5) solely appeared in the Russian media, whereas the discourse of despotism (6) was only used by the Finnish media. The prevalence of the four main discourses in the four media analyzed was surprisingly equal. However, there was more difference on a national level, as Ilta-Sanomat and Russia Today represented ”the other” clearly more actively with the help of these discourses compared to Yle and Sputnik. All in all, the representations of “the Other” in all the four media analyzed can be described as extremely negative.