| 1. |
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Fact or fiction? : Studies in honour of Solveig Granath
- 2016
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Editorial collection (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This volume collects 14 studies that approach conventional notions of fact and fiction from a wide variety of vantage points. The contributions run the gamut of fields as diverse as language history, syntax, corpus linguistics, applied linguistics, literature, and terminology. Along the way, a few myths are shattered, and new light is shed on some facts and fictions of language. This festschrift is dedicated to Professor Solveig Granath
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| 2. |
- Hübinette, Tobias, 1971-, et al.
(author)
-
Conclusion
- 2023. - 1st
-
In: Race in Sweden. - London : Routledge. - 9781003345763 - 9781032385891 ; , s. 164-165
-
Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In these concluding remarks, we reflect upon and envision the possible future of the notion of race in Sweden. We foresee a continued emergence of the new multiracial and super-diverse Sweden. Following this, the maintenance and defence of the colourblind hegemony of contemporary public life in Sweden must inevitably become more and more challenging as inequalities continue to grow and segregation structured by race eventually becomes impossible to ignore. Thus, while the colourblind fantasy of post-1968 Sweden lives on, and provides cover for the emergence of an increasingly emboldened far right, we suggest that things must change. We, therefore, express our hope that coming generations of Swedes will break with the current white melancholy period. Instead, we hope that tomorrow’s Swedish antiracists, white and non-white alike, will be both more willing and more capable to engage with the concept of race, the language of race and the lived reality of race in a more substantial and critical way.
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| 3. |
- Hübinette, Tobias, 1971-, et al.
(author)
-
Inledning
- 2023
-
In: Sveriges avrasifiering. - Karlstad : Karlstad University Press. - 9789178673308 - 9789178673315 ; , s. 1-19
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The deracialization of Sweden is a research anthology that examines issues of race, racism, anti-racism and whiteness in a Swedish post-war and contemporary context. The anthology consists of 13 studies written by authors from different fields that collectively explore how the concept of race was gradually dismantled and eventually became taboo in Sweden after 1945, and how a specifically Swedish form of anti-racism instead became normative. The anthology's contributions can be seen as case studies, focusing on key persons, public debates, figures of thought, institutions, migration and marketing, based on material from archives, the daily press, interviews, social media and more. Through this empirical and methodological breadth, the anthology as a whole cross-sections Sweden’s evolution from being a race science pioneer to becoming the world's most distinctly “colorblind” country. The book is edited by Tobias Hübinette and Peter Wikström, with contributions written by Martin Ericsson, Johan Samuelsson, Ludwig Schmitz, Emma Severinsson, Mattias Tydén, Mats Wickström, David Assadkhan, Karin Idevall Hagren, Catrin Lundström, Sayaka Osanami Törngren and Jeff Werner.
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| 4. |
- Hübinette, Tobias, 1971-, et al.
(author)
-
Introduction
- 2023
-
In: Race in Sweden. - Abingdon : Routledge. - 9781032385891 - 9781003345763 - 9781000885538 ; , s. 1-11
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Sweden has a paradoxical history when it comes to race, as a term, as a concept and as a lived reality. In this introduction, we provide a short background on the life of the concept of race in Swedish culture and language within the last century. In addition, we introduce some key concepts and outline the aim and central arguments of the book. From its role as a pioneering nation in race science in the earlier parts of the 20th century, Sweden was equally as pioneering in the latter parts in deracialising public life and discourse, embracing a hegemonic, normative colourblindness. In today’s Sweden, neither conservatives nor progressives, and neither xenophobes nor antiracists can talk about race and hope to be taken seriously. However, things may be in the process of changing, in a situation of escalating tensions between an increasingly superdiversified Swedish population and the emergence of a revitalised far right. In the introduction, we outline six empirically focused chapters which constitute analyses and case studies of both historical and contemporary materials aiming to shed light on some of the most important and pernicious articulations of Swedish colourblindness in a time when this doctrine is becoming increasingly untenable.
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| 5. |
- Hübinette, Tobias, 1971-, et al.
(author)
-
Race in Sweden : Racism and antiracism in the world's first 'colourblind' nation
- 2023
-
Book (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Race in Sweden is an introduction to, and a critical investigation of, the Swedish relationship to race in the post-war and contemporary eras. This relationship is fundamentally shaped by an ideology of colourblindness, with any kind of race talk being taboo in public discourse and everyday language use, and in practice forbidden in official and institutional language.A study of a country which was until recently strikingly white but has become extremely diverse, yet where the legacy of Swedish whiteness co-exists with a radical, colourblind, antiracist ideology, Race in Sweden will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in race and ethnicity, whiteness and Nordic studies.
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| 6. |
- Hübinette, Tobias, 1971-, et al.
(author)
-
Scientist or Racist? The Racialized Memory War Over Monuments to Carl Linnaeus in Sweden During the Black Lives Matter Summer of 2020
- 2022
-
In: Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies. - : Center for Ethnic and Cultural Studies (CECS). - 2149-1291. ; 9:3, s. 27-55
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This is a study of the Swedish debate on statues and monuments to the world-famous Swedish natural scientist Carl Linnaeus that took place during the Black Lives Matter movement breakthrough in the summer of 2020. The purpose is to examine how understandings of race, racism, identity,and history were articulated in the debate. The empirical material consists of Twitter posts and newspaper editorials,which we approach through thematic analysis complemented with discourse analysis of illustrative examples and excerpts. Theoretically, we conceptualize the debate as a case of a Swedish racialized memory war. The results show that discourse participants constructed the terms of the debate as a matter of being “for” or “against” Linnaeus’ legacy, and consequently as a matter of being for or against science, reason, progress, and a supposedly non-ideological historiography, rather than as a matter of qualitatively renegotiating how we selectively remember and celebrate historical persons and legacies, and formulate tendentious narratives of the past that serve present agendas. In this memory war, discourse participants mainly representing the white majority population of Sweden mobilized a defense of a “canonized” understanding of Linnaeus’ legacy on the editorial pages of the Swedish newspapers and on Twitter. This defense, we argue, supports an ongoing effort to absolve Swedes of any substantial complicity in European and Western racism and colonialism. In effect, what is defended is a white-washed use and understanding of history – a status quo that largely remains unchallengedin Sweden.
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| 7. |
- Hübinette, Tobias, 1971-, et al.
(author)
-
The Swedish N-issue, Swedish N’s and white transracial identifications
- 2023
-
In: Race in Sweden. - Abingdon : Routledge. - 9781032385891 - 9781003345763 - 9781000885538 ; , s. 66-92
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This chapter presents an investigation of a particular discursive figure, one of conceptualising white Swedes as “Swedish Negroes” and problems affecting white Swedes as “Swedish Negro issues”. This discursive figure emerged in the post-war period and continued to make itself heard of well into the 1970s. This investigation comprises a kind of case study of what we call the “Swedish N-word” (neger – “Negro”). However, by extension, this is also a case study of incipient Swedish antiracism in the guise of white Swedish identifications with African Americans and with blackness in general. Throughout the period when the figure occurred most often, white Swedish women and white Swedish workers, and later on many other white Swedish groups such as youth subcultures, people living on the countryside and so on, claimed that they suffered the Swedish “Negro problem” and consequently that they were the “Swedish Negroes”. This white Swedish antiracist identification with blackness – or, as it may also be construed, appropriation of the ethos of black struggle – is theoretically articulated through the concept of transraciality. We argue that white Swedes identified so strongly with African Americans at least in part out of a desire to escape from a whiteness tainted by Nazism and colonialism after the Holocaust and during the era of decolonisation.
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| 8. |
- Olin-Scheller, Christina, 1958-, et al.
(author)
-
Social Excursions During the In-between Spaces of Lessons : Students’ Smartphone Use in the Upper Secondary School Classroom
- 2021
-
In: Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0031-3831 .- 1470-1170. ; 65:4, s. 615-632
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this article, we focus on smartphone use initiated by students during lessons, with the aim of deepening the knowledge of when and why this use happens. Our methodological approach is video-ethnographic. The empirical data consists of 20 focus students in 9 upper secondary school classes, comprising 70 h of video material. The results show that the use of smartphones most often occurs in what we call the in-between spaces during lessons. These spaces are individual and negotiated within the classroom interaction frames. We argue that turning to one’s phone during an in-between space may largely be seen as a social excursion that is generally smoothly and tactfully integrated into the social order of the classroom.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Sundqvist, Pia, 1965-, et al.
(author)
-
The teacher as examiner of L2 oral tests : A challenge to standardization
- 2018
-
In: Language Testing. - : Sage Publications. - 0265-5322 .- 1477-0946. ; 35:2, s. 217-238
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The present paper looks at the issue of standardization in L2 oral testing. Whereas external examiners are frequently used globally, some countries opt for test-takers’ own teachers as examiners instead. In the present study, Sweden is used as a case in point, with a focus on the mandatory, high-stakes, summative, 9th-grade national test in English (speaking part). The national test has the typical characteristics of standardized tests and its main objective is to contribute to equity in assessment and grading on a national level. However, using teachers as examiners raises problems for standardization. The aim of this study is to examine teachers’/examiners’ practices and views regarding four aspects of the speaking test – test-taker grouping, recording practices, the actual test occasion, and examiner participation in students’ test interactions – and to discuss findings in relation to issues concerning the normativity and practical feasibility of standardization, taking the perspectives of test-takers, teachers/examiners, and test constructors into account. In order to answer research questions linked to these four aspects of L2 oral testing, self-report survey data from a random sample of teachers (N = 204) and teacher interviews (N = 11) were collected and quantitative data were analyzed using inferential statistics. Survey findings revealed that despite thorough instructions, teacher practices and views vary greatly across all aspects, which was further confirmed by interview data. Three background variables – teacher certification, work experience, gender – were investigated to see whether they could provide explanations. Whereas certification and gender did not contribute significantly to explaining the findings, work experience bore some relevance, but effect sizes were generally small. The study concludes that using teachers as examiners is a well-functioning procedure in terms of assessment for learning, but raises doubts regarding assessment of learning and standardization; a solution for test authorities could be to frame the test as non-standardized.
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| 11. |
-
Sveriges avrasifiering : Uppfattningar om ras och rasism under efterkrigstiden
- 2023
-
Editorial collection (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Sveriges avrasifiering är en forskningsantologi som berör frågor om ras, rasism, antirasism och vithet i ett svenskt efterkrigstida och samtida sammanhang. Antologin samlar 13 studier av författare från olika fält som sammantaget utforskar hur begreppet ras gradvis avvecklades och blev tabu i Sverige efter 1945, och hur en specifikt svensk form av antirasism i stället kom att bli normerande.Antologins bidrag kan beskrivas som fallstudier, vilka berör nyckelpersoner, samhällsdebatter, tankefigurer, institutioner, migration och marknadsföring, utifrån material från arkiv, dagspress, forskningsintervjuer, sociala medier med mera. Genom denna empiriska och metodologiska bredd blir antologin som helhet ett tvärsnitt som belyser hur Sverige utvecklades från att vara en rasbiologisk pionjär till att bli världens mest utpräglat ”färgblinda” land.Boken är redigerad av Tobias Hübinette och Peter Wikström, med bidrag författade av Martin Ericsson, Johan Samuelsson, Ludwig Schmitz, Emma Severinsson, Mattias Tydén, Mats Wickström, David Assadkhan, Karin Idevall Hagren, Catrin Lundström, Sayaka Osanami Törngren och Jeff Werner.
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| 12. |
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| 13. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-
(author)
-
Acting out on Twitter : Affordances for animating reported speech in written computer-mediated communication
- 2019
-
In: Text & Talk. - : De Gruyter Mouton. - 1860-7330 .- 1860-7349. ; 39:1, s. 121-145
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Quotative be like is a construction associated with informal spoken contexts and, especially, with various forms of embodied enactments. This study examines instances of quotative be like in a corpus of Twitter data (1,000,000 tweets; 1,113 quotative instances). Special attention is paid to how users of Twitter employ the platform's affordances to animate their speech reports - i.e. to represent voices, enact body language, or otherwise 'dramatize' the speech reports. The aim is to investigate how a linguistic format which is richly embodied in face-to-face interaction gets 're-embodied' on Twitter. The study finds that animation of reported speech on Twitter is visually, and predominantly typographically, afforded. In the material, oral practices are more frequently reconfigured and remediated rather than directly reproduced. That is to say, even when users are not reproducing spoken utterances, they often employ graphical strategies that are mainly understandable by analogy to spoken and embodied face-to-face interaction. However, users also draw on emergent online repertoires with no face-to-face analogues, such as 'pure' typographical play and the recruitment of established online memes. Thus, the findings suggest that orality lingers as a trace, but is not a necessary component, in bringing reported speech to life in a text-based computer-mediated setting.
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| 14. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-, et al.
(author)
-
Bringing Beyond into the L2 Classroom : On Video Ethnography and the 'Wild' In-class Use of Smartphones
- 2022
-
In: The Routledge Handbook of Language Learning and Teaching Beyond the Classroom. - London : Routledge. - 9781003048169 ; , s. 408-425
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Just as everyday social life increasingly plays out in, around, and surrounded by digital and online technologies, so too does language learning. Learning in the digital wilds has emerged as an important area of study in its own right, yet at the same time, the increasing ubiquity of connected personal mobile devices means that learners bring the wilds with them into the classroom, offering potential for rewilding language learning in the classroom. In this chapter, we review, discuss, and recommend an approach to studying this topic in a participant-centered way, empirically grounded in video ethnography and ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis. Through classroom video recording and screen recording of learners’ personal mobile devices, a wide range of language learning-relevant activities may be observed that permit researchers to explore the contingent and complex ways in which connected devices open up windows to learners’ authentic interests, engagements, and relationships outside of the classroom in ways that enrich the classroom’s affordances for learning from an ecological perspective.
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| 15. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-, et al.
(author)
-
Equality data as immoral race politics : A case study of liberal, colour-blind, and antiracialist opposition to equality data in Sweden
- 2021
-
In: British Journal of Social Psychology. - : British Psychological Society. - 0144-6665 .- 2044-8309. ; 60:1154, s. 1154-1176
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This study concerns discursive mobilisations of race and racism in the Swedish debate on equality data, in the case of a controversial statement made by a Swedish Green Party MP. In March 2019, female Muslim MP Leila Ali Elmi argued publicly for introducing equality data in Sweden, in opposition to prevailing colour-blind and antiracialist norms. Her statement was controversially formulated in terms of ‘registering’ people ‘by race’, leading to forceful criticism in the mainstream press and on social media, particularly on Twitter. In a material representing this criticism, we analyse discourse participants’ argumentative strategies, focusing on mobilisations of race and racism as acts of subject positioning, performative of a moral identity. Participants positioned themselves as morally righteous, liberal antiracists by virtue of their own antiracialism (Goldberg, 2009, The threat of race. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ) and colour-blindness (Bonilla-Silva, 2010, Racism without racists. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MA), while constructing equality data as a racist practice, and as a threat to a liberal order. They also constructed advocates of equality data, and specifically Ali Elmi herself, as being irrational race ideologues, to be morally condemned for espousing a return to racial thinking comparable to that of German Nazism or scientific racism. The findings point to the exceptional status and character of what we call a colour-blind antiracialism in Sweden, and further show how far ‘liberal arguments for illiberal ends’ can go in reinforcing a moral status quo and counteracting antiracist reform.
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| 16. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-, et al.
(author)
-
Jämlikhetsdata som "statlig rasregistrering" och "postkolonial rasfixering" : En studie av den svenska debatten om jämlikhetsdata
- 2023
-
In: Sveriges avrasifiering. - Karlstad : Karlstad University Press. - 9789178673308 - 9789178673315 ; , s. 367-400
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The deracialization of Sweden is a research anthology that examines issues of race, racism, anti-racism and whiteness in a Swedish post-war and contemporary context. The anthology consists of 13 studies written by authors from different fields that collectively explore how the concept of race was gradually dismantled and eventually became taboo in Sweden after 1945, and how a specifically Swedish form of anti-racism instead became normative. The anthology's contributions can be seen as case studies, focusing on key persons, public debates, figures of thought, institutions, migration and marketing, based on material from archives, the daily press, interviews, social media and more. Through this empirical and methodological breadth, the anthology as a whole cross-sections Sweden’s evolution from being a race science pioneer to becoming the world's most distinctly “colorblind” country. The book is edited by Tobias Hübinette and Peter Wikström, with contributions written by Martin Ericsson, Johan Samuelsson, Ludwig Schmitz, Emma Severinsson, Mattias Tydén, Mats Wickström, David Assadkhan, Karin Idevall Hagren, Catrin Lundström, Sayaka Osanami Törngren and Jeff Werner.
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| 17. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-
(author)
-
Metalanguaging as resistance : The socially-mediated rejection of public apologies in the wake of #MeToo
- 2019
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The aim of this paper is to investigate how local negotiations of linguistic normativity form part of a structure of civic engagement or political participation in today's socially mediated publics. The public apology is a discursive genre that has received much folk linguistic attention in public debate (e.g., Ancarno, 2015), especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement of 2017–2018. Several prominent examples of such public apologies have been characterized as empty apologies, pseudo apologies, or, simply, "non-apologies" (cf. Kampf, 2009). This paper presents a case study for a larger project focusing on metapragmatic negotiations and contestations in the reception of public apologies as non-apologies in social media spaces. While the larger project will mainly focus on post-#MeToo cases, this paper addresses a prominent ‘portal case,’ namely Donald Trump’s “Pussygate” apology video, which was published in October of 2016 on Trump’s Facebook page. The paper presents analyses of Twitter conversations (i.e. conversational reply-chains) about this apology video from the days immediately following its release, with a microanalytic (Giles et al., 2015) focus on how metalinguistic notions of real versus non-apologies are articulated in informal public discourse. Negotiations of the Trump video’s merits as an apology are rarely only that, but rather tend to be interwoven with affectively charged ideological positionings – in relation to party politics, progressivism, feminism, and more. Through articulating notions such as non-apology, social media interactants are in effect practicing a kind of layperson’s critical discourse analysis.
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| 18. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-
(author)
-
Nonpology unaccepted : Insincere apologies in social media discourse
- 2018
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper presents a pilot study of how social media interactants construct a notion ofnonpologies. Nonpology is a neologism sometimes found in social media discussions of what research has called, e.g., “non-apologies” or “quasi-apologies” (Kampf, 2009). Such concepts often relate to a socially recognized genre of “public apologies” (An- carno, 2015) by politicians, celebrities, or corporate spokespersons. Public apologies that rate as nonpologies may either lack an explicit moment of apologizing, or come across as insincere or self-serving in some way. This study focuses on how Twitter in- teractants construe public apology-framed events, for instance in wake of the #MeTooawareness raising campaign of late 2017. The material is a collection of Twitter conver- sations in which at least one interlocutor refers to an event specifically as a nonpology. This material is analyzed in a microanalytic framework with a focus on the emic (i.e., discourse participants’) construction of the concept. For example, talking about come- dian James Corden’s apology for a rape joke, two Twitter users orient to the apology as insufficient and insincere:A: Ugh his apology is so shit. SNL did Weinstein jokes that ripped Weinstein. It can be done. Corden just acted like rape is hilarious.B: Yup. He punched right down.B: And it’s a nonpology; I’m sorry IF you were offended.Here, A dismisses Corden’s apology as “so shit,” suggesting that the apology was inad- equate to make up for the transgression of the rape joke. B replies to A’s tweet twice. First, B aligns with A’s criticism of the rape joke itself. Second, B expands on A’s dis- missal of the apology by labeling it a nonpology. B elaborates on the nonpology concept by constructing a paraphrase of Corden’s apology. In the paraphrase, B conceptualizes the nonpology as being focused on the taking of offense rather than on the transgression itself, and as being conditional (B emphasizes “IF”).Through analysis of such instances, the pilot study aims to contribute to the develop- ment of a larger project on non-apologies in mediated interaction. Since the focus is on everyday interaction, the project will contribute to linguistic/interactional scholarship on the structure and felicity conditions of apologies in general. Further, since the con- cepts of nonpologies are formulated in response to events of critical political signifi- cance in the public’s view, the project will contribute to our understanding of everyday, micro-level, political participation in the context of digitally-mediated publics.Ancarno, C. (2015). When are public apologies “successful”? Focus on British and French apology press uptakes. Journal of Pragmatics, 84, 139–153.Kampf, Z. (2009). Public (non-) apologies: The discourse of minimizing responsibility. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(11), 2257–2270.
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| 19. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-, et al.
(author)
-
Smartphones in the Swedish upper-secondary classroom : A policy enactment perspective
- 2024
-
In: Learning, Media & Technology. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1743-9884 .- 1743-9892. ; 49:2, s. 230-243
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This study addresses normative orientations to smartphone use in Swedish upper-secondary classrooms. We present a Nexus Analysis from a policy enactment perspective of a material comprising ethnographic interviews, classroom video observations, and smartphone screen capture, investigating how a cultural conception of the smartphone as a source of disturbance is negotiated in discursive and embodied social action. Three groups of policy actors – head teachers, teachers, and students – balance competing agendas such as digitalization strategies, popular media narratives, and student autonomy and peer relationship maintenance. There is a tension between orientations to the smartphone as a legitimate resource for socialization and learning in the digitalized classroom, but also as an exception to desired digitalization – a potential threat to the social and disciplinary order of the classroom. Notably, the students display considerable awareness of such tensions, in reflective comments made in interviews and in displayed strategies for managing their smartphones in class.
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| 20. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-
(author)
-
Thought police, bigots, and PC emojis : Construals of political correctness in Twitter conversations
- 2016
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This study investigates the discursive construction of political correctness (PC) in everyday written interaction on social media. The notion of PC has emerged as a contentious emblem of polarized political discourse in the Left–Right and progressive–conservative interfaces, recently perhaps especially in the light of social media campaigns for social justice such as 16 MOOD – S 2016 – Book of Abstracts #BlackLivesMatter. As the OED notes, PC may in contemporary, typically depreciative, usage be taken to mean “conforming to a body of liberal or radical opinion, esp. on social matters, usually characterized by the advocacy of approved causes or views, and often by the rejection of language, behaviour, etc., considered discriminatory or offensive”(Politically, n.d.). Commentators, critics, and scholars exhibit a range of perspectives on the meanings and functions of PC (see e.g. D’Souza, 1991; Wilson, 1995; Lakoff, 2000; Fairclough, 2003), but naturalistic empirical work on PC as a discursive entity in everyday language is largely lacking (Granath & Ullén, forthcoming).The present study aims to contribute to an empirically grounded understanding of PC via analysis of the meanings and functions of labeling something or someone as politically correct on Twitter. To this end, a dataset of 159 conversations (i.e., reply chains automatically marked as conversations by Twitter) featuring the exact phrase “politically correct” was collected. The focus on conversational tweets comes with some limitations, but yielded a material of Twitter users interacting with one another on political topics, responding to news events, commenting on pictures, et cetera, revealing how these discourse participants reproduce, contest, and negotiate notions of PC. In a context partly defined by context collapse (Marwick & boyd, 2011), some Twitter users situate their construals of PC in public discourse by @-addressing public figures or using hashtags, whereas others deploy joking accusations of PC in more “private” interactions. Conversations range from playful to heated, sometimes in the course of a single exchange.In its analytical approach, this study attempts to square the circle of respecting the perspectives of discourse participants, while retaining a critical political engagement (Bucholtz & Hall, 2008). It is argued that empirical attention paid to the functional flexibility of the PC label in a social media context may help elucidate, if not resolve, the apparent intractability of both public and private ideological disputes which are variously viewed as stifled by political correctness or stifled by accusations of political correctness.
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| 21. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-
(author)
-
Tweeting like one talks : Approaching 'talker identity' emically
- 2016
-
In: Research methods <em>as </em>practice.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper highlights methodological challenges involved in approaching the issue of online ‘orality’ from a novel emic perspective, based on material and analyses from an ongoing study of how users of Twitter construe the notion of ‘talk-like’ tweeting.
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| 22. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-, et al.
(author)
-
Unacceptable non-apologies : The production and receipt of public apologies in mediated interaction in the wake of #MeToo
- 2018
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Late 2017 saw the emergence of #MeToo, a social media-based campaign concerning sexual assault and harassment. #MeToo has resulted in several public statements from high-profile figures accused of transgressions ranging from inappropriate comments to outright assault. Such statements have frequently been treated in journalistic and social media as failed or absent apologies – as non-apologies. The present paper focuses on the mediated delivery of apologies and their receipt as non-apologies across traditional (broadcast and print) media and new social media. As empirical cases, we examine three media events from the global #MeToo movement: the Donald Trump “PussyGate” affair, a controversial joke about the Harvey Weinstein case by TV host James Corden, and public accusations of sexual harrassment leveled against a well-known Swedish TV show host. We specifically focus on the grounds for rejecting apologies by examining how the apology was 1)designed and launched, and 2) interpreted and assessed in media/social media. Using conversation analysis (CA) (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974; Clayman & Heritage, 2002) and textual discourse analysis, we demonstrate how responses orient to selected aspects of the apology in assessing it, such as blame-shifting, trivialization, accounts of intentions, or conditionalization. By examining the original apologies in their sequential and discursive contexts (e.g. Robinson, 2004; Drew et al, 2016), and contrasting their composition and delivery with the grounds for rejection brought forth in reactions, the study aims to enhance our understanding of the social delicacy of public apologizing and the selective recontextualization of such apologies in receipts and rejections.
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| 23. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-, et al.
(author)
-
When colourblindness runs amok : the Swedish debate on equality data
- 2023. - 1st
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In: Race in Sweden. - Abingdon : Routledge. - 9781032385891 - 9781003345763 ; , s. 139-163
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- While the collection and analysis of equality data including racial identification is common in many parts of the world, prevailing norms of colourblindness and antiracialism prevent such practises in Sweden. This chapter presents a case study of the outrage and indignation that met a Green Party member of parliament (MP) who, in February 2019, proposed that Sweden should collect equality data comprising racial identification. We analyse a comprehensive corpus of opinion and editorial texts, as well as a sample of Twitter posts representative of the colourblind outrage directed at the Green Party MP, as well as at leftists, antiracists, identity politics and associated actors and movements. Our analysis reveals a range of argumentative strategies through which a colourblind, antiracialist status quo is preserved. Colourblind arguments are recruited by both a professional and a lay commentariat, positioning antiracist activists and politicians as a race-obsessed, authoritarian and divorced-from-reality threat to democracy, freedom and social order. In this way, a kind of liberal–conservative alliance is mobilised to resist and deny any substantial effort to engage with the realities of segregation and prejudice, reinforcing colourblindness as the only morally acceptable antiracist stance, in today’s Sweden.
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| 24. |
- Wikström, Peter, Fil dr, 1986-
(author)
-
When I need/want to : Normativity, identity, and form in user construals of 'talk-like' tweeting
- 2016
-
In: Discourse, Context & Media. - : Elsevier. - 2211-6958 .- 2211-6966. ; 14, s. 54-62
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The focus of this study is on how Twitter users construe talk-like tweeting in metalinguistic utterances. In a material of tweets containing or responding to explicit comparisons of tweeting to talking (N=520), a broad range of construals are identified, showing Twitter users associating talk-likeness with, e.g., notions of the textual representation of voice, of grammatical (in-)correctness, of accurately reflecting one׳s ‘real-life’ identity, and of regional or social variation in language use. These associations frequently serve normative functions, enforcing or contesting linguistic and discursive norms in both serious and playful ways. The findings offer a novel perspective on the oft-debated orality of computer-mediated discourse, providing a window on how a process of enregisterment (Agha, 2007) is instantiated and how language norms are actively negotiated by participants in everyday online language use on Twitter.
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