”Det verkar som att det inte går över, för hon har ju blivit större nu. Det var ju en sak när hon var liten” : En diskursanalys av hur det högkänsliga barnet konstrueras i förskolepedagogers tal

The purpose of this study is to make preschool teachers discursive speech about the highly sensitive children visible. Knowledge governs human beings’ way of speaking, affecting how we name and then respond to the highly sensitive children. In order to address the discourses that govern our actions and change them, we must first make them visible. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how the highly sensitive child is constructed in the preschool teachers’ speech.The study is qualitative and based on interviews with six preschool teachers who work in Stockholm. The interviews were recorded and transcribed before analysis. The theoretical framework chosen for this study is the post-structuralist discourse analysis. I was inspired by Foucaults, Laclau and Mouffes methods of discourse analysis. This framework allowed me to analyze how language contributes to construct and maintain discourses regarding the highly sensitive children.I have in this study noticed two local discourses; the highly sensitive child as problematically deviant and the highly sensitive child as competent and positively deviant. Within the framework of this study I also analyze the discourses created in research about the highly sensitive child. The result of this study shows that these discourses challenge each other. The variation in how the preschool teachers used these two different ways of speaking indicate a collision between the two current discourses