The public discourse surrounding the Danish volunteers in the Commonwealth forces between 1945-1948.
This thesis investigates the official discourse of the Danish volunteers in the Commonwealth forces between the years 1945 and 1948. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the development of the discourse and to investigate how it came to be expressed in the media coverage provided by an array of Danish newspapers, chosen with the intent to represent all the Danish political parties.
The overall approach is to use discourse with the intent to discover the use of language and social constructions. The approach is primarily qualitative as the newspapers will be investigated with the purpose of finding a more extensive meaning in the discursive elements. Furthermore, the approach is deductive as the analysis is divided into predefined categories.
The analysis considers how the deployment of the Danish volunteers were received by looking to the discourse concerning the responsibility and obligations many Danes felt post World War Two, when England had liberated Denmark from Germany. Furthermore, it will look to study the opinions surrounding Denmark’s position as a democracy and allied country. It considers the use of imperial and colonial references in the discourse as well as the expenses the deployment cost the Danish society. Finally, the analysis examines the discourse concerning a murder, of which the soldiers were accused of and comments the homecoming of the volunteers from Palestine.
The newspapers were either independent or affiliated by different political parties, which was one of the important elements in the analysis of the papers. In 1945 the discourse seemingly had an overall positive reaction to the deployment, except few apprehensive actors, in which one accused the agreement between the two countries of being a breach of the Danish constitution. From 1946 to 1948 the discourse underwent a more extensive political disunity because the communist newspaper now moved to support The Soviet Union, while the other newspapers were supporters of The Allied forces. Even though the general discourse in the news coverage was divided in 1946, the murder of a British woman was covered by all papers, but with different rhetorical devices. This coverage could, even though it was not negatively constructed, have affected the discourse in a negative way, as one of the Danish men was accused of the murder. During 1947 the discourse was influenced by discussions concerning colonialism and imperialism, which in the end created a negative discourse that could have affected the Danish volunteers. In 1948 the press coverage was almost non-existent. In the end the coverage was both negative and positive, and the news coverage decreased through
Den offentlige diskurs omkring de Englandsfrivillige, 1945-1948 Line Zahl Larsen
1945 to 1948. This decreasing news coverage influenced the official discourses, which in the end was not primarily affected by the political parties.