Konstruktionen av ett socialt problem : en diskursanalytisk fallstudie av hur hedersrelaterat våld återges i dagspress och fackpress mellan åren 1997 – 2007

The purpose of this paper was to describe how a phenomenon is constructed into being a social problem, by studying articles on honour killing in the Swedish daily press and in the technical journal Socionomen. The main questions were: can different discourses on honour killing be identified, and if so, have they changed over time, and are there differences between the discourses identified in the daily press and in Socionomen? The method used was a qualitative analysis of discourse influenced by Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis. The main conclusion was that honour killing has been textually constructed as a social problem in the studied media. There was one main discourse which clearly pointed out groups as bearers and victims of the social problem. This discourse has provided causality to society by indicating culture, religion and ethnicity as the reasons for the honour killing. Adding to this, our interpretation is that there was only a slight difference between how the social problem had been textually constructed in the Swedish daily press and in Socionomen, and that honour killing has been textually constructed as a social problem almost without contribution from social workers