REPRESENTATION OF CARE LEAVING AND CARE LEAVERS IN MEDIA DISCOURSE. A POLISH STUDY

Abstract

The presented analyses aim at depicting social discourse concerning the process of care leaving. They are of a preliminary nature and are intended to prepare methodological, and theoretical grounds for a larger research project devoted to this issue. The analyses are conducted in the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The analyses facilitated the identification of major linguistic forms (tokens), as well as their broader clusters (genres), constituting the content of the investigated discourse. Moreover, the reconstruction of a discursively created subject of the transition from foster care to independent life (i.e., the care leaver) was performed in the context of these analyses, together with characteristics assigned to the subject.