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Article published In:
Branding Political Entities in a Globalised World
Edited by Bessie Mitsikopoulou
[Journal of Language and Politics 7:3] 2008
► pp. 391–412

Sweden - the world’s most feminist society

An analysis of current Swedish media debates and person appellation forms as a tool within CDA

| Humboldt University

The article investigates the actual usage of the term feminist in current Swedish public debates and analyses it as a strategy of political branding. The following questions are considered in particular: How and when are resisting political attitudes integrated into the political mainstream? To what degree can this be traced in verbal actions? Furthermore, the article introduces the concept ofcritical occidentalism as a starting point for analysis. In this way, the investigation focuses on the self-construction of hegemonic European identities. The analytical focal point is therefore transferred from the construction of others – as is very often the case in CDA studies of the mechanisms of racism and sexism – to the construction of selves. The hegemonic and interdependent ‘nature’ of linguistic collective identity constructions is then discussed in this context.

Keywords: Feminism, resignification, critical occidentalism, hegemonic elf-construction, political branding, Sweden, critical discourse analysis
Published online: 1 April 2009
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.7.3.03hor
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