“Wasn’t it supposed to be about literature?” : An idea analysis of values expressed towards Augustpriset in the Swedish press

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to examine values expressed towards the Swedish literary award Augustpriset in a selection of articles from Swedish newspapers published between the years 2000-2007. The questions posed in the study are: What types of values concerning Augustpriset are expressed in a selection of cultural journalistic articles? How is the relationship between intellectual culture and commercial culture reflected in the articles? How are positive and negative standpoints justified? How can Augustpriset and the journalists be understood as parts of intraconversion on the literary field? The study’s qualitative textual analysis is theoretically based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the literary field. The method used for analysing the articles is idea analysis using dimensions constructed from Bourdieu’s description of two polarities, the intellectual and the commercial, of the literary field. Also used as a theoretical tool is John F. English’s term intraconversion. The results of the study indicate that a majority of the journalists express scepticism towards the commercial aspects of Augustpriset, and that commercial interests are sometimes perceived to be affecting the process of nomination, voting and awarding of the award. The results also indicate that intellectual culture is given higher value that commercial culture, hence the values expressed can be assigned to the dimension constructed from the intellectual pole.Uppsatsnivå: