Media constructions of the (un)motivated LESLLA learner a critical discourse analysis of the Swedish daily press

Municipal adult education in Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) has been a frequent subject of debate in the Swedish daily press for a number of years. Building on the proposition that societal discourses affect immigrants’ educational and learning conditions, this study investigates conceptions about the motivation to learn among LESLLA learners in media texts from the Swedish daily press between the years 2003 and 2024. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study examines recurring linguistic patterns in the media texts, aiming not only to gain knowledge about the different conceptions of motivation but also to bring attention to how ideologies and power relations in contemporary Swedish society are reflected and perpetuated in the texts through lexical choices. The current study reveals contradicting conceptualizations of the learners’ motivation. However, the learners are predominantly positioned as unmotivated, and motivation, in turn, is often conceptualized as something that can be controlled by extrinsic factors such as money or limitation of study time. Consequently, many of the media texts implicitly articulate a problematic behavioristic logic. Critical linguistic analysis focusing on figurative language, nominalizations and antonyms, furthermore, reveal several underlying ideologies in the media texts, such as neoliberalism, graphocentrism and a deficiency perspective on the learners’ abilities. In conclusion, the ideologies and power structures that manifest in the media texts marginalize the learners, thereby potentially affecting their literacy, and language development, as well as the ways in which the SFI education is organized and governed.