The aim of this study was to investigate the introduction of a Swedish cultural and literarycanon and how it can come to affect education in Swedish upper secondary school. In thestudy, the directives on the introduction of canon are studied from a linguistic perspective toidentify discourses and possible didactic potential with the introduction.

The study has been divided in to two main questions and a discussion questionto answer the aim. The main questions of the study were: Which discourses about Swedishidentity, culture and community are made visible in political statements? Which discoursesabout Swedish identity, culture and community are made visible in statements about canonfrom teachers? The discussion question was: based on the conclusion on the questions above:what is the didactic potential with a Swedish cultural and literary canon in relation to theschool’s governing documents? The primary material consisted of three articles with politicalstatements and two articles with statements made by teachers. The material was examinedwith a critical discourse analysis and a systemic functional grammatic-analysis.

The result of the study is that discourses about Swedish identity, culture andcommunity are made visible in the political statements, and they can be summed as thatSwedish identity is not compatible with Muslim identity, left-wing politics or canonresistance. In teachers’ statements, discourses are also made visible, but not about Swedishidentity or culture, but rather about canon. Furthermore, it is not possible to identify anydidactic potential with the introduction of a canon based on the position in the process theintroduction is in now.