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Deutschmann, Mats, 1964-
(författare)
Apologising in British English
2003
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The thesis explores the form, function and sociolinguistic distribution of explicit apologies in the spoken part of the British National Corpus. The sub-corpus used for the study comprises a spoken text mass of about five million words and represents dialogue produced by more than 1700 speakers, acting in a number of different conversational settings. More than 3000 examples of apologising are included in the analysis.Primarily, the form and function of the apologies are examined in relation to the type of offence leading up to the speech act. Aspects such as the sincerity of the apologies and the use of additional remedial strategies other than explicit apologising are also considered. Variations in the distributions of the different types of apologies found are subsequently investigated for the two independent variables speaker social identity (gender, social class and age) and conversational setting (genre, formality and group size). The effect of the speaker-addressee relationship on the apology rate and the types of apologies produced is also examined.In this study, the prototypical apology, a speech act used to remedy a real or perceived offence, is only one of a number of uses of the apology form in the corpus. Other common functions of the form include discourse-managing devices such as request cues for repetition and markers of hesitation, as well as disarming devices uttered before expressing disagreement and controversial opinions.Among the speaker social variables investigated, age and social class are particularly important in affecting apologetic behaviour. Young and middle-class speakers favour the use of the apology form. No substantial gender differences in apologising are apparent in the corpus. I have also been able to show that large conversational groups result in frequent use of the form. Finally, analysis of the effects of the speaker-addressee relationship on the use of the speech act shows that, contrary to expectations based on Brown & Levinson’s theory of politeness, it is the powerful who tend to apologise to the powerless rather than vice versa.The study implies that formulaic politeness is an important linguistic marker of social class and that its use often involves control of the addressee.
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Jakobsson, Mats, et al.
(författare)
'Att blifva sin egen' : ungdomars väg in i vuxenlivet i 1700- och 1800-talens övre Norrland
2000
Ingår i: Sociologisk forskning. - Umeå : Umeå universitet. ; 37:3-4, s. 134-141
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The background to this study is that there is no studies on youth and their transition to adulthood in preindustrial Sweden. The main objective of this thesis has therefore been to analyze young peoples transition to adulthood during the late 18th and 19th centuries in a region of the northern part of Sweden. The social context of the region was mainly agrarian during the investigated period despite the fact that in the later part of the 19th and beginning of 20th century, a development of a growing forest industry had started. The main questions is: How and when in life did different social categories of young people establish an independent and adult life? Where there any changes in transitional patterns and was the establishment smoother or more troublesome at different times during the investigated period ? Where there any changes regarding social norms related to the establishment of adult life?The transition to adult life is studied from a life-course approach and four key-transitions; The First Holy communion, leaving home, marriage and parenthood are regarded as significant steps within the process to a independent social position. Individual data related to keytransitions is mainly collected from cathectical examination records and comprised 2206 individuals born in six different cohorts between 1770 and 1900. The selected cohorts represents individuals that had to deal with different social conditions during their youth and transition to adult life.The main results regarding the transition to adult life can be summarized in two words, complexity and variance. Usually it was a "long" transition but the number of accomplished keytransitions and the order between them varied, as well as ages when taking the first Holy Communion, leaving home, marriage and entering parenthood varied. Transitional patterns varied between different categories of youth. A dividing line existed between the sexes, those from households strongly rooted in the agricultural structure and those with background in social categories that didn't own or was in possession of land. Social norms related to keytransitons changed along this dividing line during the investigated period of time, and became less permissive within landowning or land-possessing categories and less prescriptive in other categories.Transitional patterns were also influenced by the social situation at different historical times. The need for labor, war and years of famine directly intervened in timing and sequencing of keytransitions. A long term development was that the transition to adult life became more problematic in the later part of the 19th century, especially among young people who were less integrated in the social context and among socially stigmatized youth. Finally, young people were active and reflexive in seeking social space to make the transition to adult life, actions that sometimes caused tensions and conflicts between generations.
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Wide, Sverre, 1973-
(författare)
Människans mått : Om statistik, sociologi och världen som socialt vara
2005
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation should be understood as an effort to provide a kind of critique of statistical reason. “A kind”, since it has another focus as well: the question of sociality. It is argued that these two topics are closely interrelated, not only, as the short exploration into the prehistory of statistics shows, for historical, but also and mainly for systematic reasons.The first part of this thesis is concerned with methods; not, in fact, so much with different methods as with the idea of methods in general. The second part deals with statistics, its prehistory and structure. It is argued that statistics is inherently causal and always and only understands the world as means (for our power), as it is. The third part explores a socio-logic, a concept meant to capture both the essence of sociality and our understanding of this sociality. And sociality, in the last analysis understood as play or game, turns out to be what cannot be controlled or dealt with in a methodical manner; it can never be reduced to what it is. The fourth and final part discusses and tries to overcome the proposed antithetical relation between statistics (methods) and sociality, and discusses possible consequences of the analysis for the fields of sociology and social thinking.In sum: The dissertation contributes to our understanding of methods, statistics and sociality and their interrelations.
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Liedgren Dobronravoff, Pernilla
(författare)
Att bli, att vara och att ha varit : Om ingångar i och utgångar ur Jehovas vittnen
2007
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation seeks to describe and investigate the entering and leaving of a highly structured and hierarchical religious community, exemplified in this case by the Jehovah's Witnesses. The respondents in this study were chosen from both active members of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Sweden and those who have left the organisation for personal reasons. Repeated interviews with ten active members of the organisation have been conducted in the course of the study and compared to equal numbers of former members. The interviews have been semi-structured to deal with questions of how a person has come into contact with the organisation; how they retrospectively experienced the process of entry; the reasons for becoming a member. Questions have also been asked about life in the organisation. The group of "exiters" have also been asked about the experience of leaving, why they wanted to leave, and how this process was started and carried out. In addition to this I have analysed a four-year diary describing the time inside and the process of leaving the organisation. This has given me an extra psychological insight into the inner experience of someone who has gone through the whole process. The analysis has been done by categorising the content of the transcribed interviews. The analysis of the diary has involved thorough reading, resulting in a division of it into four different parts, where each part has been given a certain key-word, signifying the author's emotional state when writing it. A person converting as an adult has to pass six phases before being considered a Jehovah's Witness by the organisation. These are: Contact with the Jehovah's Witnesses, studying the bible with members of the organisation, questioning, accepting, being active as publisher (spreading the belief), being baptised. For a person brought up in the organisation, the process to full membership is much shorter: Upbringing in the organisation, taking a stand on the belief, being baptised. The exit process contains of seven phases: Different levels of doubts, testing of doubts, turning points, different kinds of decisions, different steps in executing the decisions, floating, a period of emotional and cognitive consideration of membership and its experiences, relative neutrality.
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Alkvist, Lars-Erik
(författare)
Max Weber och kroppens sociologi
2004
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis is about the social body in sociology, represented by the classical sociologist Max Weber. Traditional sociology has not taken the body into account. The body has been considered to belong to the realm of the natural sciences. Sociology has seen the body merely as an instrument or a tool for social action. The mind/body dichotomy, homo duplex, prevails in sociology. The purpose of this investigation is to show that Weber does not totally neglect the social body. I claim that the body is “absent but present” in Weber’s texts. The above-mentioned view that the body is ignored by sociology must, in other words, be modified. I claim that Weber’s texts imply a conception, although rudimentary, of the social body. This conception co-exists, however, with Weber’s tendency to see the body as a natural object. This is in accordance with the general picture of the way sociology treats the body. To examine the question of the social body I turn to philosophy. I believe that some philosophers have been interested in viewing the body as a social rather than a natural object. Plato, René Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant and finally Maurice Merleau-Ponty have all tried to come to terms with the relationship between the mind and the body. The above-mentioned philosophers, with the exception of Kant, are all therefore concerned with the body as more than simply a biological organism. They try to reconcile the dualistic difference between body and mind. They are, however, mainly concerned with finding a philosophical answer to how mankind can attain knowledge about the object. They are concerned with epistemology and ontology. Sociology, on the other hand, is more concrete and its corresponding concepts are “subject” and “structure”. Sociology fills these concepts with a more non-epistemological and ontological content. He has been described as a subjective sociologist or a micro sociologist, but I claim that this does not give the whole picture. Weber also sees individual intentions and purposes as determined by objective and structural constraints. I divide the works of Weber into two parts. I have named the subjectivist approach “the empowered individual”. Here Weber works at the level of the individual subject. He focuses on the subject’s own experience. The ethically shaped, and therefore systematically self-controlled, body becomes a vehicle for being in the world. The body is subjected to the governing ascetic ethic. The feelings and desires of the body become rationalised into a method and a system. In this way a far-reaching rational discipline is created, a so called “ethical conduct of life is created”. In the writings of Weber the “conduct in life” is described by the concept “habitus”. However, Weber is classical in the sense that he considers habitus as a mental attitude. Other works by Weber include a discussion of the constraining structural surroundings, but Weber prefers to use the concept “life orders” rather than “structures”. Weber describes a number of different life orders which he says form the specific cultural habits adopted by individuals in society.
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Elsrud, Torun
(författare)
Taking Time and Making Journeys : Narratives on Self and the Other among Backpackers
2004
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This work addresses the phenomenon of long-term, so-called ‘independent’ travelling, or backpacking, often to destinations described as the ‘third world’. It regards backpacker journeys as arenas for identity work, for expressing individuality and a ‘strong character’. Rather than merely being a parenthetic detour in time and space a backpacker’s trip to the tropics can be understood as a creative effort by the individual to regain the control over time and space thought to be lost in places travellers call home. Yet, at the same time, backpacking reproduces structures of power, through (re)constructing the image of a ‘primitive other’ upon which much of a successful ‘western identity’ rests. The success is, however, not only dependent upon inventing and encountering ‘primitive’ others but also upon the gender of the traveller as well as the competence in mastering manifestations of adventure and risk. The work argues, for instance, that stereotype expectations of femininity (and masculinity) make female ‘adventurism’ into a challenge beyond the actual (or faked) ordeals encountered on the road. Adventurous women are forced to negotiate and balance between expectations placed upon them as (non-adventurous) females and as adventurous travellers. The arguments rest upon the ontological and epistemological conviction that individuals are creative, making the most out of the tools for identity work which society supplies them with. However, in the process of individual self-articulation, structures are both maintained and altered. Consequently, it is through studying individuals and their products/expressions (such as media texts or choice of clothing, food or ‘proper’ transport) that information can be gathered concerning individual thoughts and actions and the structures within which these are manifested. Such an undertaking has been accomplished within this project by means of a qualitative, ethnographically influenced approach, including interviews with backpackers, observations in backpacker areas and analysis of travel media.
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Lundberg, Anders P
(författare)
Om gemenskap : En sociologisk betraktelse
2005
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Various reports have stated that the traditional Swedish popular movements (e.g. the Workers movement and the Free church movement) are loosing ground. Instead of joining a political party or a church, politically or religiously active individuals are said to seek out new and individualized ways of being involved. This thesis studies a number of men and women that persist in being communally involved within the traditional movements (as above). It asks questions such as "What does their involvement look like?" "How important is a sense of belonging for being involved?" "To what extent is it possible to be an autonomous individual while being communally active?" "What difficulties do they encounter, as related to the problem of individualism and community?" "How do they solve these problems?" To aid in an understanding of the conditions for communal involvement in a post- or late modern era, the thesis employs two different (partially opposed) theoretical schools: post modernism and communitarianism. Drawing from these schools, while at the same time presuming an intimate knowledge of the traditional Swedish popular movements (folkrörelserna), the writer constructs two ideal typical concepts: stable community (resembling the communitarian vision) and casual community (resembling the post modernist vision). These ideal types are employed to create an understanding of the conditions for community and communal involvement today. Empirically, a number of strategies are found among the interviewees in order to keep up their involvement. These include: a privatization of ideology; an effort to make a professional career within the movement; the phenomenon of nonprofit professionals; an effort to view involvement as a gain for the personal life project; to view life as a series of stages where it is possible to step in and out of involvement at different times during a life course; to keep organizational structures at the back, letting them promote affinity and affection among individuals rather than being in focus themselves. Also empirically, this thesis shows how involvement among the interviewees resembles what the author labels stable community. It shows the perceived importance of relations of trust, emanating from stable community. It also shows though, a tendency (primarily among those active within the Free church) to expect too much of the relations within a community: rather, it would be necessary to realize the importance of other types of relations (i.e. elective affinity, a relation typically emanating from casual community; but also what the author labels friendship) for keeping the fire burning. Also, there is a tendency (primarily within the Workers movement) to invite too many new individuals too fast into the group of active individuals. Trust (stable community) takes time to create: when rushed, a sense of belonging may be missing, possibly leaving members embittered and disillusioned.