| 1. |
- Otterup, Tore, 1947
(author)
-
"Jag känner mej begåvad bara." Om flerspråkighet och identitetskonstruktion bland ungdomar i ett multietniskt förortsområde : "It's simply a gift." Multilingualism and Identity Formation among Young People in a Multiethnic Urban Area
- 2005
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- TITLE: Its simply a gift. Multilingualism and Identity Formation among Young People in a Multiethnic Urban Area. SWEDISH TITLE: Jag känner mig begåvad bara. Om flerspråkighet och identitetskonstruktion bland ungdomar i ett multietniskt förortsområde. LANGUAGE: Swedish. AUTHOR: Tore Otterup Abstract The overall aim of this dissertation is to investigate the nature of multilingualism and its manifestations among young people in a multiethnic urban area of Göteborg. For this purpose two studies have been carried out with partly different foci, a quantitative survey among 179 pupils in a school in a multilingual area, and as a follow-up a qualitative interview study with eight of the young people who took part in the initial survey. The results of the survey show that 94 percent of the pupils of this school had foreign backgrounds, representing 30 different countries and 29 mother tongues. All of these pupils also claimed that they spoke two or more languages on a daily basis. As for their mother tongue, it was maintained mainly through use in the home domain and through mother tongue tuition at school. As for the use and development of Swedish, the pupils second language in most cases, it was the dominant language for a majority of informants because of its frequent use e.g. in school and among friends. The measures taken by the school in terms of support for the development of Swedish could be characterized as compensatory rather than enriching. School reports from grade nine indicate that most of the informants have not been very successful in secondary school. Statistical analyses show very few significant correlations between different background factors and school success.In the follow-up study the interviews with the eight young people were analyzed by means of grounded theory and the results show that multilingualism, in addition to categories such as family, place, school and future plans, are of great importance for identity formation among the individuals investigated. In the final theoretical coding concepts like ambivalence, investment and empowerment were found to adequately describe the conditions for the development of syncretic identities in multilingual settings. The ambiguities of the post-modern society and the many choices it calls for can be frustrating and confusing but can also offer unique opportunities to individuals who are being confirmed and empowered in their affiliation to different languages and cultures. KEY WORDS: Second language acquisition, multilingualism, sociolinguistics, identity formation, ambivalence, investment, empowerment. © Tore Otterup DISTRIBUTION: Institutionen för svenska språket Box 200 405 30 Göteborg ISSN: 1652-3105 ISBN: 91-87850-26-5 SÄTTNING: Janne Saaristo TRYCKNING: Elanders Infologistics Väst AB
|
|
| 2. |
- Adamsson Eryd, Henrietta, 1983
(author)
-
”See there I’m stuck now!” Samtalsdeltagares orientering mot att tala svenska i amerikasvenska dialektintervjuer
- 2019
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis is a qualitative investigation of a communicative project called tala svenska (speak swedish) in American Swedish dialect interviews. The aim of the study is to analyze and describe the communicative project. Based on this aim the study investigates the interviews as activities with accompanying frames, roles and phases. Interactional resources and how those are being used in doing the communicative project, and the activity, are also a part of the analysis. The material consists of audio and video recordings of American Swedish dialect interviews and the analysis is based on 12 recordings with 10 interviewees/participants and 6 interviewers. The participants are of different ages and have different reasons for speaking Swedish. Some of them have visited Sweden and speak Swedish on a regular basis, while some do not have anyone to talk Swedish to and have never visited Sweden. The analysis of the interviews, and the speakers’ usage of the interactional resources, show that in doing the joint communicative project of speaking Swedish, the participants and the interviewers use different strategies. Based on activity roles, the participants orient themselves toward achieving speaking Swedish, while the interviewers act toward the participants’ speaking by using intentional passivity. In the American Swedish dialect interviews the communicative project, i.e. speaking Swedish, is made visible through the participants use of the interactional resources code alternation, repair, meta comments and metalinguistic comments. Through marked and unmarked code alternation and through side sequences made by code alternation the participants orient themselves toward the communicative project of speaking Swedish as a part of the activity American Swedish dialect interviews. Repair and metalinguistic comments are being used to mark code alternation and that makes the communicative project tala svenska visible by speakers focusing on speaking Swedish. Code alternated side sequences that are meta comments or side sequences that do a different activity than the ongoing dialect interview, make the communicative project tala svenska visible by speakers uttering them in another code, i. e. leaving the inner frame and inner activity both by action and code.
|
|
| 3. |
- Agebjörn, Anders, 1984
(author)
-
Learning of Definiteness by Belarusian Students of Swedish as a Foreign Language : Inlärning av bestämdhet hos svenskstuderande i Belarus
- 2021
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Through a series of studies, this thesis investigates the learning of definiteness in Russian-speaking students of Swedish. A communicative, oral-production task elicited modified and non-modified noun phrases in indefinite and definite contexts. Study I describes the development of the morphosyntactic structure through which Swedish encodes definiteness, the association between this structure and its meaning, and the relationship between those two tasks over time. Using an English version of the elicitation task and a test of metalinguistic knowledge, Study II examines the relationship between the learners’ explicit knowledge of article semantics and their actual use of English articles. Adding a test of language-learning aptitude, Study III then explores both the influence of second-language English and that of aptitude on the development of Swedish. Finally, Study IV discusses the role of complexity and input frequency. The main findings include that, at the onset of Swedish study, the learners had minimal knowledge of the morphosyntactic structure but were generally sensitive to the meaning of definiteness. However, knowledge of form developed over time while knowledge of meaning did not, and the two learning tasks did not appear to be directly related to each other. In addition, the learners were seldom aware that choosing between indefinite and definite articles require the speaker to take the hearer’s perspective, but this lack of metalinguistic understanding did not seem to affect their use of articles. Further, previous knowledge of English appeared to facilitate the development of a Swedish morpheme that is structurally similar to its English counterpart, while aptitude was associated with the development of a morpheme whose English counterpart is structurally different. Finally, the learners used high-frequency morphemes more consistently than low-frequency ones, and morphemes were more likely to be supplied in frequent constructions than in infrequent ones. These findings are discussed in relation to a modular, cognitive framework for language learning and use.
|
|
| 4. |
- Agebjörn, Anders, 1984-
(author)
-
Learning of definiteness in Belarusian students of Swedish as a foreign language
- 2021
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Through a series of studies, this thesis investigates the learning of definiteness in Russian-speaking students of Swedish. A communicative oral-production task elicited modified and non-modified noun phrases in indefinite and definite contexts. Study I describes the development of the morphosyntactic structure through which Swedish encodes definiteness, the association between this structure and its meaning, and the relationship between those two tasks over time. Using an English version of the elicitation task and a test of metalinguistic knowledge, Study II examines the relationship between the learners’ explicit knowledge of article semantics and their actual use of English articles. Adding a test of language-learning aptitude, Study III then explores both the influence of second-language English and that of aptitude on the development of Swedish. Finally, Study IV discusses the role of complexity and input frequency. The main findings include that, at the onset of Swedish study, the learners had minimal knowledge of the morphosyntactic structure but were generally sensitive to the meaning of definiteness. However, knowledge of form developed over time while knowledge of meaning did not, and the two learning tasks did not appear to be directly related to each other. In addition, the learners were seldom aware that choosing between indefinite and definite articles requires the speaker to take the hearer’s perspective, but this lack of metalinguistic understanding did not seem to affect their use of articles. Further, previous knowledge of English appeared to facilitate the development of a Swedish morpheme that is structurally similar to its English counterpart, while aptitude was associated with the development of a morpheme whose English counterpart is structurally different. Finally, the learners used high-frequency morphemes more consistently than low-frequency ones, and morphemes were more likely to be supplied in frequent constructions than in infrequent ones. These findings are discussed in relation to a modular, cognitive framework for language learning and use.
|
|
| 5. |
- Andersson, Peter
(author)
-
Modalitet och förändring : En studie av må och kunna i fornsvenska
- 2007
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis investigates the development of root and non-root meanings of modal verbs through an empirical study of the verbs må and kunna in Old Swedish. Modality is taken to refer domains in which possibility contrasts with necessity. In Old Swedish, må (magha) and kunna 'may' and kunna 'can' have the potential to express most of the meanings relating to possibility and necessity, as well as lexical meanings. The two verbs are investigated in an Old Swedish corpus consisting of legal and religious texts. Certain default correlations between type of modal and semantic and syntatic enviroments, which have been proposed in the litterature, are investigated. The result shows that må frequently expresses participant-internal possibility, 'ability' and deonic possibility, 'permission', whereas kunna is mainly associated with participant-internal and general external possibility. Of particular interest is the use of må in conditions, which provides evidence that this construction type may have played a bridging role in the development on non-root modality. Using the framework of force dynamics, the development of modal meaning is analysed as a metamorphical transfer of one consistent image-schema between different conceptual domains. the schematic components are described in terms of forces and barriers. The proposed transfer from a physical to a social domain and further on to a mental and a conversional domain provides a good account of the diachronic development.
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
| 7. |
- Blensenius, Kristian, 1980
(author)
-
Progressive constructions in Swedish
- 2015
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis aims to provide new insights into the semantic properties of some progressive constructions in Swedish and to provide better understanding of aspect in Swedish. The five included studies present analyses of previously understudied as well as more familiar progressive constructions, based on authentic language data. Constructions with a verb followed by a verbal present participle, e.g. försvinna skrikande ‘disappear screaming’, are analyzed in the first study, and they are labeled progressive participial. It is shown that the verb and the participle, taken together as a construction in a construction-grammar sense, yield progressive reading. More familiar constructions, standardly considered progressive in the literature, are studied in the remaining papers, primarily from a two-componential theory of aspect. The second study analyzes the constructions hålla på att ‘hold on to’ + infinitive verb and hålla på och ‘hold on and’ + finite verb. While the difference between them is usually taken to be primarily stylistic, it is shown that only hålla på att is a progressive marker in a canonical sense. Posture-verb pseudocoordinations, e.g. sitta ‘sit’/stå ‘stand’/ligga ‘lie’ + och ‘and’ + finite verb, are analyzed in the third study. It is shown that posture-verb pseudocoordinations are not progressive like e.g. hålla på att but instead locative and, in some cases, episodic. The fourth study returns to the hålla på construction, primarily assessing the pseudocoordinative hålla på och variant in detail, noting its restrictions in terms of compatibility with certain types of VP. It is shown that hålla på och does not combine with VPs with homogeneous internal structure, and a pluractional analysis is proposed instead. Finally, as a way to find out the nature of hålla på att constructions, the fifth study investigates constructions of the type from the perspectives of e.g. finiteness and aspect.
|
|
| 8. |
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
| 10. |
|
|
| 11. |
- Grahn, Inga-Lill, 1964
(author)
-
Tala om att tänka. Om processer och projekt vid användning av orden 'tänka' och 'tanke' i tre samtal
- 2012
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis is a qualitative investigation of how the Swedish verb tänka and the noun tanke are used in three radio phone-in counseling conversations (the words are comparable with, but not equivalent to, the English verb think and the noun thought). The aim of the study is to explore in detail what the participants talk about when they use these two words. The investigation focuses on two roles, referred to as the thinker and the thought, representing someone who is thinking and something that is thought. A systemic-functional analysis of the processes containing the words tänka and tanke shows that the thinker and the thought are engaged in an emergent interplay which can be described as a pattern of material, verbal and relational processes, rather than the expected mental processes. Furthermore, an activity analysis of these processes in terms of communicative projects shows that talking about the thinker and the thought contributes in a critical way to a successful outcome of the ongoing counseling activity. Following Harvey Sacks’ seminal article On doing “being ordinary” (1984), the study proposes that the uses of the words tänka and tanke support, grammatically and interactionally, an interpretation in which the speakers cooperatively are doing “being thinking”. The combined description of process types and communicative projects in languaging turns out to be a fruitful method for exploring the dialogical and dynamic aspects of human sense-making.
|
|
| 12. |
-
Grammatik, kritik, didaktik. Nordiska studier i systemisk-funktionell lingvistik och socialsemiotik
- 2018
-
Editorial proceedings (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Systemisk-funktionell lingvistik (SFL) och socialsemiotik är teoretiska och metodologiska program och perspektiv som kan tillämpas på ett vitt fält av språkvetenskapligt arbete. I den här volymen presenteras utvalda bidrag från Trettonde nordiska konferensen för systemisk-funktionell lingvistik och socialsemiotik (NSFL 13), som hölls vid Göteborgs universitet 11–12 oktober 2017. I enlighet med volymens titel, Grammatik, kritik, didaktik, som också var konferensens, visar bidragen på SFL:s och socialsemiotikens tillämpbarhet i och relevans för i huvudsak tre områden: grammatisk forskning, språkvetenskaplig analys med en kritisk ansats och didaktisk forskning. De sju publicerade artiklarna täcker in en lång rad av undersökningsobjekt och rör sig i rummet mellan flera olika språk och länder, från lärargrupper på svenskspråkiga Facebook via texter om Gud på norska till återvunna föremål i Sydafrika. Volymen visar på bredden och djupet i systemisk-funktionell och socialsemiotisk språkanalys.
|
|
| 13. |
- Helgesson, Karin, 1967
(author)
-
Platsannonsen i tiden. Den orubricerade platsannonsen 1955 - 2005
- 2011
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to analyse potential changes in the genre of recruitment advertisement during the period 1955 to 2005, and investigate if changes in society can explain these changes in the genre. The study shows that some conventions regarding content, laoyut and style develops during the period. An important change is that information about the employer becomes an almost compulsory part of the advertisement by the end of the period. It also gets a salient place in the advertisement. The language/style is more conservative in some regards in the recruitment advertisements than in other genres. In the advertisement, an ideal applicant is constructed through the personal qualitaties asked for, the kind of benefits promised and information about preferred age and sex. During the whole period, one of the personal qualities most sought after is the ability to co-operate. This could be seen as a sign of the stability in Swedish working life. In the year of 2000, however, personal drive becomes the most desirable qualification instead of ability to co-operate. As the ideal candidate is constructed in the advertisement, so is the employer constructed as an attractive employer. The most common way of describing the employer during the whole period is as large, leading and expansive. At the end of the period there is a small but increasing amount of advertisements, which construct a new kind of employer identity more focused on advantages for the employee. During a period of fifty years, conventions for content, visual design and style develop in the recruitment advertisement. Some of these conventions are no longer in use when Internet becomes a competitor to the printed daily newspaper, but some are still used in recruitment advertisements on Internet. What is changing most is the view of the ideal candidate and the good employer. The way these are presented also affects the genre.
|
|
| 14. |
- Horn, Anna Catharina
(author)
-
Lov og tekst i middelalderen. Produksjon og resepsjon av Magnus Lagabøtes landslov
- 2016
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis investigates fifteen out of a total of thirtynine extant manuscripts containing The Norwegian Code of the Realm (1274), henceforth the Code. They are all dated before 1400. The fifteen manuscripts display some kind of harmonization of two particular chapters in the sections on assault and land rent, respectively. I work from the hypothesis that these manuscripts share a common background in a particular exemplar and/or scribal milieu. The thesis has two aims. One is to further our understanding of the relation between the preserved MSS of the Code. The other is to develop a method for analysis of texts which display contamination, or texts that have been transmitted using several exemplars. The analyses are based on parameters that are tied to the production and reception of the Code. The new method is composed of elements from both textual criticism and material philology. The object of study is raised from the level of the word, phrase, or clause to that of the graphic unit of the chapter, defined by elements as initials and rubrics. The chapter is the crucial component upon which the structure of the Code is built. First, a selection of variables regarding codicology, layout, and script are analyzed. Based on the scribes’ ability to execute these features, the manuscripts are sorted into three levels of proficiency. Second, the analysis of the structure of the text shifts to a focus on the order of the chapters. Thus, the structures of the fifteen manuscripts are put into a diagram. The variants are revealed as patterns, which show that the manuscripts have additional variants in common. Nearly all variants relating to rearrangement or interpolation turn out to be attested in earlier regional laws, although by the time when the Code was promulgated, these should presumably have been rendered obsolete. This suggests that the manuscripts derive from a milieu where the Code was seen as a symbiosis of old and new rules, and that older law codes were used as exemplars together with the new Code in order to produce the most convenient Code.
|
|
| 15. |
- Hult, Ann-Kristin, 1977
(author)
-
Ordboksanvändning på nätet : en undersökning av användningen av Lexins svenska lexikon.
- 2017
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Antalet studier i ordboksanvändning har ökat de senaste decennierna. Detta är en följd av det ökade intresset inom både teoretisk och praktisk lexikografi för hur användare faktiskt använder ordböcker och hur man på bästa sätt anpassar ordböcker efter deras behov. En annan avgörande omständighet i sammanhanget är den tekniska utvecklingen och framtagningen av elektroniska ordböcker som har öppnat upp nya möjligheter att undersöka autentisk ordboksanvändning. I denna avhandling redogör Ann-Kristin Hult för en undersökning av användningen av internetordboken Lexins svenska lexikon, LSL. LSL är en enspråkig inlärningsordbok för relativt avancerade nybörjare. LSL genomgick en omfattande revidering 2008–2011 och studien baseras på material från både före och efter revideringen. Användningen av LSL undersöks utifrån tre perspektiv: 1) kvantitativ analys av uppslagningar på ordbokens webbsida, 2) kvantitativ/kvalitativ enkätstudie om användarna och deras användning av LSL och 3) kvalitativa näranalyser av några enskilda informanter och deras aktiviteter på webbsidan. Genom en kombination av metoder kan en mer komplett och nyanserad bild av faktisk ordboksanvändning uppnås. Denna undersökning är ett exempel på hur en sådan kombinatorisk undersökning kan genomföras. De olika metoderna genererar resultat som kompletterar varandra och detta har gett en mer rättvisande beskrivning av användningen av LSL.
|
|
| 16. |
- Jakobson, Liivi
(author)
-
Skriftlig lärarrespons för vuxna nybörjare i svenska som andraspråk : teoretiska perspektiv, responspraktik och uppfattningar
- 2019
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This compilation thesis serves to fill a research gap in teacher written feedback on second language (L2) writing and pronunciation by focusing on adult beginners of culturally diverse backgrounds. Basically, this thesis seeks to answer three questions: 1. What do teachers focus on and in what manner is feedback given?, 2. What are the teachers’ beliefs about feedback?, and, 3. What are the students’ preferences concerning feedback? The study presented in the first article concerns international students and elaborates on a model for analyzing teacher feedback practices regarding writing and pronunciation and the students’ ranking of that feedback. Based on the need for a holistic perspective recognized in the first study, the second article presents and discusses the research gap regarding feedback in adult beginner-learner L2 contexts and proposes a hermeneutic approach in the field of L2 research. In article three and four, a new feedback analysis model based on hermeneutics was applied for the design of a questionnaire, which includes the Likert scale and ranking. These studies investigated teachers’ (article three) and students’ (article four) perceptions and priorities regarding feedback. Data from the students’ questionnaires indicated that the students evaluated feedback on grammatical structures in writing as top priority. They generally valued all feedback manners, but clearly preferred specific praise and specific criticism. Results from the teachers’ questionnaires, combined with interviews, showed that they evaluated almost all categories as important but the ranking showed that there was a variation between teachers’ perceptions, which was influenced by a lack of time, and communication with the students, together with technical problems in web-based contexts. The analysis indicates several factors contributing to the complexity of feedback and, thus, providing feedback requires intuition and dexterity on the part of teachers. It is suggested that aligning students’ expectations and teachers’ practices and beliefs is especially important in distance-learning contexts in order to facilitate new understanding for clarifying the meaning of feedback.
|
|
| 17. |
- Jansson, Håkan, 1957
(author)
-
Purism på glid? : Studier i nutida isländskt ordbruk
- 2015
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to investigate changes in vocabulary use in modern Icelandic. This is done by surveying loanwords not conforming to loanword patterns dominant in standard Icelandic since the rise of purism in the second half of the 19th century, and by mapping of the use of colloquialisms and colloquial word forms in written language. The surveys are based on a corpus study and a study of recorded speech. This research serves as a departure point for further investigation of words and word forms. The investigation has shown three categories of words that depart from earlier, purist influenced practice: (1) unorthodox words with sound-alike spelling or non-standard word formation; (2) words formed with foreign morphemes; and (3) foreign words with Icelandic spelling. The spoken language survey shows an increased use of loanwords over the time span covered (1990, 2000 and 2010). It also shows that the older interlocutants are more prepared to adhere to purist norms, while the younger ones are less hesitant to use loans. The observed tendency of change in those vocabulary use patterns is seen in the light of four underlying factors briefly explored: (1) social relations in general, (2) the organisation of education and the extent to which it involves exposure to foreign languages, (3) the development of travel, concerning both Icelanders’ trips abroad and foreigners’ visits to Iceland, and (4) the new electronic public sphere, that allows ordinary language users to communicate without the involvement of “gatekeepers”, who control language usage in other kinds of media.
|
|
| 18. |
|
|
| 19. |
|
|
| 20. |
- LaBontee, Richard, 1985
(author)
-
Strategic Vocabulary Learning in the Swedish Second Language Context
- 2019
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This large-scale research project represents an exploratory investigation into the reported vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) used by adult, beginner Swedish L2 learners living and studying in Sweden. A questionnaire instrument, the Swedish Vocabulary Learning Strategy Survey (SVLSS) built explicitly for data collection in this context is developed and used over the course of five studies regarding learners’ approaches to Swedish L2 vocabulary learning. Results from the first study are used to establish a preliminary item list for the SVLSS from collected interview and learning task data. Pilot results (SVLSS 1.0, 1.1) guide revisions to access- ibility, readability, and item list, resulting in a 74-item questionnaire (SVLSS 1.2). The second study adopts a six-category VLS taxonomy for the instrument that is extracted through the guidance of exploratory factor analysis. Findings are used to conduct revisions aimed at supporting the adopted taxonomy, and again to improve accessibility, and readability. The third study situates the SVLSS instrument within a comparative review of other VLS questionnaires, guiding extended revisions started in study two. Revision results in the acceptance of an updated VLS taxonomy, and in the 69-item SVLSS (2.0). The fourth study explores what the target demographic believes it means ‘to know a word’ as a means of better these learners’ vocabulary learning experience. The fifth study uses the SVLSS 2.0 to explore possible patterns in learners’ VLS use across demographic grouping variables, offering two emergent learner profiles. Findings across these studies indicate that adult, beginner learners of Swedish L2 vocabulary report using strategies for establishing new word information more than any other VLS type, suggesting that the need to acquire vocabulary knowledge before it can be used in other strategic manners is high for this demographic. Also, significant differences between learners’ use of VLS are seen even amongst relatively minor differences in learners’ beginner proficiency levels, adult age groups, and amounts of time spent learning the language. A synthesis of findings suggest that these learners value communicative practices for learning words, though may not be able to reflect this in their learning behavior at earlier levels of Swedish. This report concludes with suggested use guidelines and planned updates for the SVLSS instrument, as well as suggested and planned future research for the field of Swedish L2 VLS use.
|
|
| 21. |
|
|
| 22. |
|
|
| 23. |
|
|
| 24. |
|
|
| 25. |
|
|
| 26. |
- Nordenfors, Mikael, 1972
(author)
-
Skriftspråksutveckling under högstadiet
- 2011
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Abstract The aim of this thesis is to characterize patterns of development in texts written by pupils in secondary school in Sweden. The thesis applies both a traditional quantitative approach to 318 texts and an approach based on the concept voice to 266 texts. The texts were written by the same 31 pupils through school years five to nine, thus the overall approach is also a longitudinal one. The first approach shows that text length is increasing at an overall during the examined years, but the increase is declining succinctly. The second result is that word length and word variation also increases, but is not declining in the same fashion as text length did. When special attention was given to grade in relation to high values from the measures, it was found that a lot of individual deviations were to be found. The two other measures, word length and word variation, were found to have more regularly high values when the text also had a high grade. The second approach’s quantitative investigation showed that voice is increasing between school year 5 and 8, but that it, after the text written in school year 8, began to decrease. But when singular types of voice were investigated, some of these increased rapidly in the end of the investigated period of time. Such types of voices were also more represented amongst texts that had been granted a higher grade. Thus different strategies of managing the use of voice loans (including strategies used to manipulate these) developed, but mainly within the latest years of the investigated period of time, and mainly within texts that had a higher grade. Some pupils did not develop such strategies at all, and some did develop them, but only partially. The two approaches showed significant differences between text types, e.g. in texts where a specialized vocabulary was dominating, average word length turned out to be much higher. Another example is that referring and referred voice dominates the voice loans of texts that concerns facts but quoting and quoted voice dominates the voice loans of fictional texts. Keywords: Secondary school, junior high school, pupil, writing development, longitudinal approach, direct speech, indirect speech, free indirect speech, voice, projection, word length, text length, word variation, text analysis.
|
|
| 27. |
- Ohlsson, Claes, 1970-
(author)
-
Folkets fonder? : En textvetenskaplig studie av det svenska pensionssparandets domesticering
- 2007
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The social and political background for this study is the change in Sweden from a system of a collective pension scheme to a system that includes elements of individual responsibility and a higher personal involvement of Swedes in pension saving funds. This phenomenon has been conceptualized as domestication, a metaphor that serves as a unifying notion in this study. The aim is to capture the idea of controlling markets from the perspective of individual investors. Two groups of texts are studied, advertising materials from banks and information from the PPM agency, responsible for the fund- based premium pension. What role do these texts play in the domestication of pension savings in commercial funds?The investigation includes a careful analysis of the settings of the texts and an identification of text purposes. Another matter of interest is the part that textual genres and their institutional framework play in the process. The methods are qualitative close reading techniques, held together by a view of language as a communicative and social phenomenon. Domestication in- volves the construction of informal relations between senders and the con- ceived reader together with individual-focused strategies. The senders share strategies of informalisation and individualisation but genres have differenti- ating roles in the actualization of domestication strategies. Domestication stabilizes the shared discourse of the banks and the PPM agency. It is how- ever doubtful that the focus on the individual’s responsibility has helped to gain trust in a pension system partially based on commercial funds.
|
|
| 28. |
- Olvegård, Lotta, 1957
(author)
-
Herravälde. Är det bara killar eller? Andraspråksläsare möter lärobokstexter i historia för gymnasieskolan
- 2014
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis explores and characterizes Swedish high school students’ encounters with history textbook texts, with a focus on students having Swedish as their second language. Reading history textbooks entails comprehending and learning not only the subject matter but also the specific language of history. In order to perform successfully in history as a school subject, Swedish high school students are expected to read texts in the field of history in an analytical and critical manner. However, difficulties in understanding written school-related texts is likely a contributing factor why many L2-students do not achieve the same marks as their L1- peers. These difficulties are investigated within the current body of work. The results of this thesis are generated from two empirical studies. The first study investigates structural and lexico-grammatical features in five high school history textbooks, drawing on systemic- functional linguistics, SFL. The second study explores a number of L2 and L1 high school students’ mediated encounters with their history textbook. The data for the second study is derived from two series of conversations with eleven L2- and L1-readers. The results show that history textbook texts impose great linguistic demands upon the L2- readers. For example, in order to comprehend the texts the reader must have: a large and deep knowledge of vocabulary, an ability to analyze complex linguistic structures, and an ability to make inferences which is necessary for interpreting implicit information in addition to identification and tracking of historic actors within the texts. The L2-readers who struggle to comprehend the textbook texts, and/or do not share the textbook author’s frame of references, use various textual and contextual resources to find clues in order to make meaning of the text. One important resource for the L2-readers to make meaning of the text is the reader’s own interpretation of the teacher’s expectations of the students’ understanding of history as a school subject. However, both textual and contextual clues can lead readers to unexpected interpretations of the text contents.
|
|
| 29. |
- Prentice, Julia, 1977
(author)
-
På rak sak. Om ordförbindelser och konventionaliserade uttryck bland unga språkbrukare i flerspråkiga miljöer.
- 2010
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The overall aim of the thesis is to investigate and describe the use and mastery of different types of phraseological units and conventionalized expressions in the language of adolescents in multilingual environments. The thesis comprises three studies focusing on different aspects of phraseology in relation to first and second language acquisition, development and use. The studies have been carried out mainly from a cognitive perspective. The first study focuses on deviation from standard Swedish in adolescents’ use of phraseological units. Data from the SUF-project (Language and language use among adolescents in multilingual urban settings) have been analyzed in relation to standard Swedish reference data and compared to a constructed variety, rendered in a novel placed in a Swedish multiethnic setting. In the novel deviations from standard Swedish were found to be mostly lexico-grammatical, whereas the authentic data appears to be more complex and deviate both on a lexico-grammatical and a semantic-pragmatic level. The second paper reports on a study on the use of figurative word combinations and their degree of conventionalization in written data from the SUF-project. The results support the initial hypothesis that the frequency and types of figurative expressions in the participants’ texts can, at least to some degree, be linked to the participants’ linguistic background. L1 students use more conventionalized figurative word combinations than L2 students, whereas modifications of conventionalized figurative expressions are more frequent in the L2 students’ texts. The study also shows that the students create novel figurative word combinations based on a great variety of source domains. The third study focuses on the mastery of Swedish conventionalized expressions among adolescents with various linguistic backgrounds. Complementary data have been collected by means of a survey that contains four tests focusing on various aspects of the mastery of conventionalized expressions. The quantitative results show that L1 students reach significantly higher test results than L2 students. Furthermore, L2 students with an early age of onset reach significantly higher results than the later L2 learners. Thus, age of onset appears to be an important factor for the participants’ mastery of conventionalized expressions in Swedish, a conclusion that is also confirmed by the qualitative analysis of part of the data.
|
|
| 30. |
- Sandberg, Malin, 1989-
(author)
-
Från beslut till broschyr : Intertextualitet, äldre och kultur i texter inom en statlig satsning
- 2020
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The overarching purpose of this study is to map out how intertextual relations are manifested in texts produced within a government initiative on arts for the elderly, and to shed light on how discourses on the elderly and the arts are articulated in texts from the initiative. This purpose is addressed with qualitative research methods, and with a focus on three themes: intertextual relations, representations of the elderly, and constructions of the purposefulness of the initiative. The study is regarded as a case study, which at a more general level can contribute to an understanding of texts in institutional contexts as well as public discourses on the arts and the elderly.The study draws on data consisting of a collection of texts produced within the three-year initiative called Kultur för äldre (Arts for the elderly), which was launched in 2011 and aimed to increase elderly peoples’ access to the arts. The texts are written by different authorities and professionals: the Swedish government, the Swedish Arts Council, local project organizers, and an external consultant. They vary by genre, ranging from government decisions to information brochures, and fill various purposes in different, but related, contexts.The results show that there are both explicit and implicit intertextual relations between the texts in the data, and that three main intertextual chains can be defined. These are traceable from explicit markers of intertextuality, as well as contextual information and by following certain phrases that are recontextualized between texts. Analyses of representations of social actors, constructions of purposefulness, and visual resources in the data, show that discourses on the elderly as dependent and in need of health care tend to be both reflected and reproduced in the data. The arts, finally, tend to be framed within a social welfare discourse, and reproduced as important, first and foremost through utilization rather than in its own right.
|
|
| 31. |
- Sandwall, Karin, 1960
(author)
-
Att hantera praktiken – om sfi-studerandes möjligheter till interaktion och lärande på praktikplatser
- 2013
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The overall aim of this work is to explore and problematize adult second language students’ opportunities for interaction and language learning at work placements. The study is designed as four case studies where students enrolled in Sfi – the basic Swedish language programme for adult immigrants – were observed in school and at various work placements. Data from interviews, field observations, audio and video recordings were analysed from an ecological perspective (van Lier 2004a). Also, notions such as identity, agency, face, investment, and participation in (imagined) communities of practice have been used. The quantitative and qualitative analyses, partially supported by a computer program, suggest that several factors influenced the students’ opportunities for interaction and language learning. These factors are related to aspects of interaction, workplace tasks and relations concerning participants, workplace practices and tuition. The quantitative analysis shows that three of the students interacted by means of verbal utterances, body language and/or artifacts to a very limited degree. An exception was a student placed at a preschool who was indeed involved in interaction to a higher degree, but almost exclusively with 2-3-year-olds. During the period observed, students talked, on average, between 30 seconds and 2 minutes each day. Further, the amount of interaction decreased significantly over time. The qualitative analysis shows that as the situated interaction was mediated by affordances, it generally worked well. Paradoxically, this reduced the students’ need to use and expand their linguistic resources. Also, students’ “simple” and solitary workplace tasks, as well as their limited tutoring and participation in social intercourse, contributed to the scarcity of interaction. The analysis further suggests that the “school world” and the “work placement world” were perceived as two separate entities with no mutual relevance. One implication is that the learning potential of both contexts must be made visible, more fully exploited and strengthened. For implementing this, and for integration of (in-)formal learning within and between the contexts, pedagogical tools are proposed. The results are further related to short-term goals of labour market policy as well as to more long-term integration-policy goals concerning individuals’ further education and active participation in society.
|
|
| 32. |
- Sheikhi, Karin, 1965-
(author)
-
Vägar till förståelse : Andraspråkstalare i samtal med en studie- och yrkesvägledare.
- 2013
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this work is to explore how shared understanding is achieved in career counseling with second language clients. Video-recorded counselling sessions are analysed along with participant interviews and other secondary data. The methods are mainly interpretative, but some quantification of data has been made. The thesis has an emergent research design and comprises three sub-studies. These make use of various theoretical frameworks and concepts, such as interactional sociolinguistics, modified interaction and CA.The results show that the second language speakers’ knowledge of Swedish, as it is normally tested, is not crucial for the degree of success in achieving shared understanding. Instead, other aspects of conversational ability, such as explicitness, persistence and social skills, in combination with the ability to utilise the first language speaker as an interactional resource, are more significant.It is also clear that the first language speaker, being at the same time the institutional representative, has far-reaching responsibilities in the conversation in order for the interactants to reach shared understanding. The analyses show that “understanding” in counselling often implies a kind of learning for the clients. Only after a certain degree of learning are the clients able to express their ideas or make a decision and, subsequently, negotiate shared understanding of their intentions.All three sub-studies show that the negotiation of understanding is successful at a local level in most cases. Global understanding, however, is a challenging task. The cause of these difficulties is more often the asymmetrical relationship regarding knowledge of education and the labour market than linguistic shortcomings in the clients. To achieve shared global understanding requires a degree of awareness and activity from both interactants and a substantial amount of negotiation.
|
|
| 33. |
-
Svenskans beskrivning 35 : förhandlingar vid trettiofemte sammankomsten. Göteborg 11–13 maj 2016
- 2017
-
Editorial proceedings (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Sedan 1963 har det vid olika universitet i Sverige och Finland regelbundet arrangerats sammankomster för svenskans beskrivning. Forskningsprojekt och forskningsresultat om svenska språket har presenterats och diskuterats.Den trettiofemte sammankomsten ägde rum den 11–13 maj 2016 i Göteborg och samlade ca 160 deltagare. Konferensen anordnades av Institutionen för svenska språket vid Göteborgs universitet. Det övergripande temat för sammankomsten var Ord och detta belystes i 68 presentationer – plenarföredrag, sektionsföredrag, posterpresentationer och workshoppar. I denna volym finns två av plenarföredragen och 26 av de övriga presentationerna publicerade.
|
|
| 34. |
|
|
| 35. |
- Thyberg, Kajsa, 1975
(author)
-
Det-konstruktioner i bruk. En systemisk-funktionell analys av satser med icke-referentiellt det i modern svenska
- 2020
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to map out functions of modern Swedish det-constructions, i.e. different clausal patterns including the non-referential third person pronoun det, for example, det är kul att spela tennis (‘it’s fun to play tennis’), det fläktade en skön vind från sjön (‘there was a nice wind blowing from the lake’) and det är mysigt med blommor och växter i hemmet (‘it’s cosy with flowers and plants at home’). The research questions concern how the world is semantically represented, how assessment can be expressed and how non-referential det is distributed in comparison to referential det. The study uses corpus data consisting of sentences with det in texts from news reports, personal blogs and academic works. The analytical perspective derives from Systemic Functional Grammar, focusing on the ideational and interpersonal metafunction. Basic concepts used from the theory are process, modality and modal assessment. The results show that non-referential det has approximately the same frequency as referential det in all three investigated text types, and that referential det sometimes has a wide and less clear kind of reference. Most of the det-constructions operate as a relational process where the first participant may be either implicit or construed as a medium as the process is non-agentive. However, passive det-constructions differ considerably from active ones as the process implicates an agent to a much higher degree – yet without expressing the agent role. Furthermore, the process of the passive det-construction is not relational but mental, verbal or material. The results also show that det-constructions can be used as a modal resource expressing several types of modality and modal assessment. This interpersonal grammar is regularly construed metaphorically by a relational clause as a semantically extending alternative to an adjunct or finite construction. However, some det-constructions are used as a modal resource which is considered not metaphorical, as they do not have the adjunct/finite alternative. In addition, the borderline between metaphor and non-metaphor regarding the constructions is investigated and discussed. By adopting a systemic-functional perspective on Swedish det-constructions, this study not only contributes a deeper understanding of the functions, but also increases the description of the Swedish language in systemic-functional terms, thereby developing the theoretical application.
|
|
| 36. |
- Tingsell, Sofia, 1974
(author)
-
Reflexivt och personligt pronomen. Anaforisk syftning hos ungdomar i flerspråkiga storstadsmiljöer.
- 2007
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis is an empirical study of the choice between a reflexive and a non-reflexive pronoun to express coreference in Swedish. Anaphoric binding has previously been considered to follow a typical pattern in which reflexive (possessive) pronouns are interpreted as coreferent with the subject of the finite clause, the domain, in which they occur. Non-reflexive (possessive) pronouns are non-coreferent with the subject of the finite clause in which they occur. The first aim of this study is to investigate to what extent the finite clause constitutes the domain for binding and in what grammatical, semantic or pragmatic contexts variation occurs. The second aim is to relate variation in the distribution of reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns to the speakers’ linguistic background. The empirical data for this study is a corpus of spoken and written language based on interviews with 97 adolescents in multilingual urban settings in Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö and with a control group of 21 adults from the same cities. All 4088 instances of a choice between a reflexive and a non-reflexive pronoun have been annotated with syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information. The data also includes a grammaticality judgement test with the same informants. The results show that the typical pattern is used in 97% of the cases (infinitival clauses excluded). Variation most commonly involves non-reflexive possessive pronouns which occur in 12% of the contexts in which a reflexive possessive pronoun is prescribed by the typical pattern. This variation appears mainly in two contexts: in prepositional phrases and in elliptic answers, that consist of only a PP or an NP. The reasons for variation are discussed in terms of markedness, reanalysis of grammatical structure and language processing. Variation occurs significantly more often with multilingual than with monolingual adolescents. Variation also occurs significantly more often with adolescents than with adults. Other factors, such as age of onset, native language, gender, amount of multilingual interaction and city of residence are also of importance. The implications of the results for grammatical description are discussed with respect to transformational grammar and Lexical-Functional grammar.
|
|
| 37. |
- Winlund, Anna, 1973
(author)
-
Inte för räddhågsna. Undervisning i grundläggande litteracitet och svenska som andraspråk på gymnasieskolans språkintroduktion
- 2021
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The overall aim of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding about the education of Swedish as a second language and basic literacy to recently immigrated adolescents with little prior experience of school-based learning. It investigates how the students are given access to the literacy practices that are required for active and independent participation in school and in society, how the students take part in the activities and interactions offered in this particular school context, how the relationship between the teachers and these adolescents is manifested and finally, how the rules of the school context relate to the literacy practices that are available to the students. The thesis is based on four ethnographic studies investigating diverse aspects of this education, using different theoretical frameworks. The data consists of observations of lessons in Swedish and social sciences, conversations with the teacher, the students and the language tutor, in addition to formal interviews with the students. The results indicate that the teacher and the language tutor played an important role to give the students access to the literacy practices and rules of schooling. Students’ previous knowledge, as well as class field trips and concrete examples, served as important foundations for their instruction. Also, the teachers’ engagement with the students’ linguistic and other semiotic resources contributed to the students’ participation in literacy practices. Concurrently, the interaction about topics that had previously been unfamiliar to the students seemed to enhance their ability to understand new discourses. The study implies that some of the rules and norms associated with schooling promote learning in this specific context, while other rules seemed adapted to prepare the students for future studies. The thesis also discusses students’ agency and opportunities to invest in their schooling in the mainstream society.
|
|
