| 1. |
- Andreassen, Sissel
(author)
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Life Situation, Information Needs, and Information Seeking in Patients with Oesophageal Cancer and their Family Members
- 2006
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis explores the experiences of living with oesophageal cancer from the perspective of patients and family members. Also, their needs for information and how they seek information in relation to the illness were investigated. The thesis comprises one qualitative meta-analysis and three empirical studies including data from patients, family members, and health-care professionals. Paper I was a qualitative meta-analysis the aim of which was to extend knowledge about patients' and family members' experiences of living with oesophageal cancer and clinically similar cancer forms, mainly head and neck cancer. As a result of the thematic analysis we have shown that both patients and family members 'run into an unpredictable enemy'. Patients had to 'endure a fading body' Running into an unpredictable enemy and enduring a fading body led to -entering social silence' for patients and family members.The aim of paper II was to describe patients' experiences of living with oesophageal cancer and how they seek information in relation to the illness. Data was collected by qualitative interviews with thirteen patients and analysed by qualitative content analysis. The findings describe patients' experiences of receiving the diagnosis, their experiences of vague symptoms, and of existential concerns evoked by the illness. Undergoing investigations and treatment caused extreme tiredness. Patients experienced that the illness intruded upon their daily life. In order to manage the life-threatening illness- they sought information about the illness.The aim of paper III was to describe family members' experiences of living with a patient suffering from oesophageal cancer, their information needs and information seeking Data was collected by means of qualitative interviews with nine family members and analysed by qualitative content analysis. The findings describe that family members lacked awareness of the disease. When faced with the diagnosis, shock, stress, and disbelief were evoked . The cancer illness became intrusive into their everyday lives, routines, and life plans. Uncertainty about the course and prognosis of the disease was the main source of distress among them. In order to learn, obtain understanding for the illness, and manage this uncertainty, family members entrusted themselves to the experts and sought information from them.Paper IV was a pilot study the aim of which was to describe patients' and family members' information needs following a diagnosis of oesophageal cancer, their satisfaction with information obtained, and health-care professionals' perceptions concerning patients' and family members' information needs. Data was collected by means of a study-specific questionnaire and analysed with descriptive statistics. The results indicate that patients' and family members need for information following a diagnosis of oesophageal cancer was substantial and had not been adequately met by health-care professionals.In conclusion, the receipt of the diagnosis of oesophageal cancer was an abrupt change from feeling healthy with vague symptoms to having a life-threatening illness. The illness disrupts patients' and family members' social world and relationships, and the whole family is affected. For understanding and managing the illness, they sought information from health-care professionals, social networks, and various media
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| 2. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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An inter-organisational perspective on challenges in one-stop government
- 2008
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In: International Journal of Electronic Governance. - 1742-7509 .- 1742-7517. ; 1:3, s. 296-314
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Fragmentation and isolated development are main problems that hinder successful e-government. This paper has an inter-organisational perspective on challenges in one-stop government. We present a conceptual framework that characterises an inter-organisational relationship and its dimensions. The conceptual framework is used for analysing data from an inter-organisational one-stop government project. When applying the framework we focus on some interesting issues and explain some of the challenges that our interviewees identified. By addressing these inter-organisational aspects we reached further understanding of the problems associated with this case, which can provide added value to discussions of e-government challenges, barriers and problems in general.
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| 3. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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Analysing unexpected forms of potential question tags in the spoken component of the British National Corpus
- 2009
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In: Pre-conference workshop on errors and disfluencies in spoken corpora held in conjunction with ICAME 30, Lancaster U.K., 27 May 2009.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In my thesis project, I compare the use of ‘canonical’ question tags in fiction dialogue and spoken conversation, using data from a BNC fiction subcorpus and the demographic part of the spoken component of the BNC. I first searched for and analysed question tags in fiction, finding it quite unproblematic to apply a conventional definition of question tags (N.B. anchor + question tag = tag question): the tag subject should be co-referent with the anchor subject, the operator should be the same as in the anchor or a form of do if there is a lexical verb in the anchor, and the tag operator should have the same tense and number/person properties as the anchor verb: (1)Well, these things happen, don’t they? Using the same definition in the demographic part turned out to be more problematic, as some phrases which seem to be intended as question tags do not meet the criteria in the definition. These examples can be divided into three categories. The first category is invariant question tags. The tag has a canonical form, usually isn’t it or innit, but it is connected to an anchor with a subject with other number/person properties and/or a finite other than is: (2)you pay much more though isn’t it? The second category may be called modified question tags. These tags have an unexpected form but are logical as there is a plausible alternative wording of the anchor with the same meaning which would make the form of the question tag acceptable. This conforms to the hypothesis that we tend to remember the content of speech rather than the exact wordings. Some examples: (3)But that can be the same anywhere couldn’t it? [alternative: could] (4)Oh it [i.e. the price] was sixteen nineteen nine were they? [alternative: they were] (5)Oh that’s why I came up wasn’t it? [alternative: was] (6)[about a photo] this is at the zoo was it? [alternative: was] The third category is erroneous question tags, i.e. tags where the speaker makes an error in the wording, but where it is still clear that a question tag is intended, as in example (7), which was uttered by a four-year-old girl: (7)you count, one, two, three, four, don’t it? Instances in these three categories are included as question tags in my study. Excluded are question-tag-like wordings involving a new proposition, as in (8) where the change of operator adds a new meaning when the speaker asks for advice: (8)I won’t open another one, should I? and disfluencies, where there seems to be no logical connection to the preceding discourse: (9)Big fancy does are you? Unexpected forms of potential question tags thus require manual analysis; the context is very important here, especially the reaction from the addressee. However, a small number of instances are still problematic. This is sometimes due to the lack of prosodic marking, which can make it difficult to decide whether a tag-like wording is really a question tag or the beginning of a new question.
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| 4. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Citizen Participation and Involvement in eGovernment Projects : An Emergent Framework
- 2008
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In: Electronic Government. - Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin/Heidelberg. - 9783540852032 ; , s. 207-218
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper reports from an action research project where focus groups have been used as an approach for taking citizens’ requirements into account during public e-service development projects. In the paper we use theories from the area of user participation in the information systems (IS) discipline in order to discuss and enhance the specific aspects of citizen participation and involvement in the eGovernment context. The main purpose of this paper is to enrich the eGovernment field in general, and to facilitate the citizen perspective in eGovernment development projects in particular, by using notions from the user participation tradition in the IS discipline. Our empirical findings from performing focus groups are discussed and compared to well-known user participation theories from the IS discipline. This results in an emergent framework for better understanding of citizen participation and involvement in the eGovernment context. The emergent framework consists of a set of questions that can be used in order to put an increased focus on the citizen perspective in future eGovernment development projects.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Communication Analysis of Public Forms : Discovering Multi-functional Purposes in Citizen and Government Communication
- 2007
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In: International Journal of Public Information Systems. - Sundsvall : MidSweden University. - 1653-4360. ; :3, s. 161-181
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper adopts a communication perspective on forms in public e-services. This perspective emphasizes that the main purpose of such forms is to facilitate communication between citizens and government agencies. The form is perceived as a tool for performing communicative actions. A communication analysis (CA) method, originally developed for systems requirements engineering, is applied on a public form; i.e. the medical certificate used in connection with a citizen’s application for a provisional driving license in Sweden. The CA method consists of a set of questions related tothree communicative categories; conditions, actions, and consequences. The CA method is used in order to explore the communicative roles of forms in public e-services. As a result of the communication analysis four multi-functional purposes of citizen and government agency communication are discovered. These purposes contribute to the understanding and evaluation of forms in public e-services. The communicative roles, and their multi-functional purposes, are important design features to focus in the development of e-services and electronic forms. Besides these findings, another outcomeis that the CA method has been tested in an e-government context. The communication perspective, as well as the CA method, contribute with useful insights in this context.
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| 7. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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Corpus research on fiction dialogue: Problems and possible solutions
- 2008
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In: ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English) 29, 14–18 May 2008, Ascona, Switzerland.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A great deal of contemporary corpus-based research is focused on spoken language, the primary mode of language use. There is, however, a genre in the written mode which is particularly interesting due to its relation to spoken language: fiction dialogue, as it aims to give ”the illusion of real conversation” (Leech & Short 2007:132). As linguists, we are well aware that certain special characteristics of spoken language are missing in fiction dialogue: overlaps, hesitations etc., but there might also be other less obvious differences. Studies on fiction dialogue might be interesting for e.g. applied linguistics (fiction dialogue being an important input for learners) and corpus stylistics (see Mahlberg 2007). So far, there seems to be very little corpus research on the language of fiction dialogue. The major reason is probably a lack of specially designed corpora. Fiction texts are included in many corpora, but they are a mix of two subgenres, narrative and dialogue, which differ not only in style but also to some extent in vocabulary and the use of grammatical structures. It is usually impossible to restrict corpus searches to fiction dialogue. Manual discarding of irrelevant matches is possible, but frequency calculations are problematic. In this presen¬tation I will describe how we have calculated the proportion of dialogue in a fiction subcorpus of the BNC. There will also be a discussion on the ideal corpus for research on fiction dialogue. The tagging should allow only matches from fiction dialogue to appear in the result display, but the narrative context is of course necessary to keep. The corpus would have to be balanced for a range of features. The most controversial issue is whether certain literary genres like historical novels should be excluded or separately tagged as their language does not pretend to reflect contemporary real-life conversation. Leech, Geoffrey and Mick Short. 2007. Style in fiction: a linguistic introduction to English fictional prose. 2nd edition. Harlow: Longman. Mahlberg, Michaela. 2007. Corpus stylistics: bridging the gap between linguistic and literary studies. In Text, discourse and corpora: theory and analysis, ed. by Michael Hoey, Michaela Mahlberg, Michael Stubbs and Wolfgang Teubert, 219–246. London: Continuum
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Developing public e-services for several stakeholders : a multifaceted view of the needs for an e-service
- 2009
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In: Proceeding of the 17th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2009). - 9788861293915 ; , s. 653-664
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper discusses how several stakeholders in a public e-service development project consider a future e-service and expected changes in administrative processes and working routines. Our findings indicate a much more multi facetted view than the common win-win situation, with increased quality for citizens and increased efficiency for agencies, which is rhetorically put forth as an effect of public e-service implementation. We have studied a development project resulting in an e-service for handling student anonymity when marking written exams in higher education. In this case we have identified five stakeholder groups related to this e-service; students, teachers, course administrators, exam guards, and the university at an agency level. All of them having certain expectations and fears about the new situation. By presenting this diversity in opinions we add further complexity to the discussion of building trust or mistrust for administration and technology when developing public e-services.
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| 10. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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E-government in Sweden: New Directions : Editorial
- 2009
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In: International Journal of Public Information Systems. - Sundsvall : MidSweden University. - 1653-4360. ; 5:2, s. 31-35
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In January 2008, the Swedish Government launched a new eGovernment action plan which was formulated to serve as “a new basis for IT-based organisational development in public administration”. The main objective in the plan was formulated as “as simple as possible for as many as possible”. The definition of eGovernment used in the action plan is the one agreed upon by many other European countries: “eGovernment is organisational development in public administrations that takes advantage of information and communication technologies (ICT) combined with organisational changes and new skills”. Behind the suggested course of actions there is a rhetoric that Sweden was now entering a new path regarding eGovernment development. Taken together the declarations in the plan made it and the expressed expectations of profound changes in public administration an interesting target for critical review. Having identified the importance in critically discussing and analysing the action plan, the Swedish Researchers Network in eGovernment (www.egov.nu) arranged a network meeting at the national conference for public sector in Sweden June 2008. The theme for the meeting was “Reflections on the Swedish action plan for eGovernment”. Several researchers and practitioners shared and debated their reflections during this meeting. In order to continue this very interesting discussion after the conference, we then invited authors to submit an article on the same theme, i.e. analysing different aspects of the Swedish action plan for eGovernment. This call for papers was directed both to participants at the network meeting and others, who wanted to contribute to this on-going debate. The call was to encourage authors to communicate and share their insights and opinions regarding the action plan in order to provide knowledge to decision-makers and other practitioners.
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| 11. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-
(author)
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Exploring Relationships between Products Characteristics and B2C Interaction in Electronic Commerce
- 2008
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In: Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research. - Curico, Chile : Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de Talca. - 0718-1876. ; 3:2, s. 1-17
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The main purpose of the paper is to explore and discuss the influence of product type on customer interaction in electronic commerce. We have conducted two qualitative case studies in distance selling companies to inductively explore how the product characteristics of garments and music-CDs influence customer interaction. We apply a product classification scheme built on product theory to characterize and classify these products. By classifying product types according to this scheme we focus certain aspects; e.g., in which situation the customer uses the product and, thus, experiences potential satisfaction. By applying product theory to the electronic commerce context we are expanding this theory into a new area. Knowledge about product characteristics- influence on customer interaction in various phases of electronic commerce enriches and specifies the existing product theory. In order to put this theory contribution into practice, a set of focal questions with the aim to increase product understanding in an electronic commerce setting is formulated. The questions highlight product related issues that are important to consider when deciding communication media in electronic commerce.
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| 12. |
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| 13. |
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| 14. |
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| 15. |
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| 16. |
- Axelsson, Karin
(author)
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Internet technology in home care
- 2005
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In: First International Conference on Lifestyle, Health and Technology. - Luleå : Luleå tekniska universitet.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)
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| 17. |
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| 18. |
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| 19. |
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| 20. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Reaching Communication Quality in Public E-Forms : A Communicative Perspective on E-Form Design
- 2007
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In: Electronic Government. - Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin/Heidelberg. - 9783540744436 ; , s. 342-353
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper adopts a communication perspective on public electronic forms (e-forms). By doing so we define forms as instruments for communication and, thus, also instruments through which citizens perform different communicative actions towards government agencies. As such instruments, the forms might be more or less useful. The purpose of this paper is to explore what features of an e-form that increase the communication quality. We conduct a theoretical synthesis of three existing approaches for designing information systems. The result is a combined theory on key features of an e-form that make the establishment of communication quality more likely. The result consists of four key concepts, each of which give rise to one set of design principles for communication from the issuer of the e-form to the user (citizen), and one set of design principles for communication from the user (citizen) to the recipient of the e-form.
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| 21. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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Research on fiction dialogue: Problems and possible solutions
- 2009
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In: Corpora: Pragmatics and discourse. Papers from the 29th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 29), Ascona, Switzerland, 14-18 May 2008. ; , s. 189-201
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- It seems quite clear that there must be differences in the language of fiction dialogue and the narrative parts of fiction, but fiction is often treated in corpus linguistics as if it were a homogenous genre, and there is very little quantitative research on the language of direct speech in modern fiction. The main problem is that corpora are seldom annotated for direct speech, and if they are, the mark-up may be difficult to use. If there is no mark-up for direct speech, corpus query matches have to be categorized and sorted manually as being inside or outside direct speech, and the proportion of direct speech in the corpus fiction texts needs to be investigated using, for example, statistical methods. As these procedures are time consuming, there is a need for specially designed corpora where direct speech is annotated. Another problem is how to define direct speech, slightly different definitions may be applied depending on whether comparisons are to be made to the narrative parts of fiction or to real-life speech. A further problem is that existing corpora are not usually sampled with a view to providing a representative sample of fiction dialogue; it seems important that samples are taken from different kinds of books and from different parts of books.
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| 22. |
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| 23. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Seven key lessons learned from e-government development : a reflective analysis of an e-government project
- 2009
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In: Scandinavian Workshop on eGovernment.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this paper a longitudinal case study of an e-government development project is reported. The authors have followed a development project during three years, from its initiation to its end. The purpose of the paper is to identify and analyze important decisions made and external factors that occurred during the project and discuss their consequences. The findings are presented as seven key lessons that other e-government projects can learn from. The contributions are, thus, both a reflective analysis of an empirical e-government development example and normative statements about how to conduct successful e-government projects.
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| 24. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Six key lessons for e-government projects
- 2009
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In: Electronic government. - Linz : TRAUNER Verlag. - 9783854996255 ; , s. 93-103
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this paper we analyze a public e-service development project from its initiation to its end and reflect upon the process as well as its results. The purpose of the paper is to develop knowledge about how e-government projects should be managed and performed in order to be successful. We do this by identifying and analyzing important decisions made and external factors that occurred during the project and discussing their consequences. The findings are presented as six key lessons for e-government projects. The novel knowledge contribution is that the lessons combine aspects from established CSFs of IT projects with e-government-focused issues. Together these six lessons can be more useful in e-government projects than previous sets of general CSFs for IT projects.
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| 25. |
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| 26. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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Tag questions in British fiction
- 2007
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In: ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English) 28, 23–27 May 2007, Stratford-on-Avon, U.K.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The canonical tag question is a typical feature of spoken British English. It has been found in a recent corpus-based study that there are nine times as many tag questions in colloquial British English as in colloquial American English (Tottie & Hoffmann 2006). Tag questions are, however, also used in the written mode, and then of course primarily in fiction. The language of dialogue in fiction is a genre of its own well worth studying (cf. Oostdijk 1990). The overall aim of my Ph.D. thesis is to investigate whether tag questions are used in the same way in British fiction dialogue as in natural British conversation. Interesting features are structure of the tag, polarity (reversed or constant), sentence type in anchor (declarative, imperative, interrogative or exclamative), position (appended or inserted), ellipsis in the anchor and, of course, also pragmatic functions. The data are taken from the British National Corpus: for the fiction study, a thinned sub-corpus restricted to the imaginative domain, book as medium, 1985-1993 as publication date and UK and Ireland as domicile of author. The results of this study will then be compared to the results of a similar study of the spoken part of the BNC, where the context-governed part and the demographic part will be studied separately. I will present some preliminary findings from this fiction study. There will also be a discussion of some methodological problems, i.e. how to define a tag question and how to establish the proportion of direct speech in the fiction part of the BNC (cf. Semino & Short 2004). References Oostdijk, Nelleke. 1990. The language of dialogue in fiction. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 5:3, 235–241. Semino, Elena & Mick Short. 2004. Corpus stylistics: speech, writing and thought presentation in a corpus of English writing. London & New York: Routledge. Tottie, Gunnel & Sebastian Hoffmann. 2006. Tag questions in British and American English. Journal of English Linguistics, 34:4, 283¬–311.
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| 27. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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Tag questions in English translations from Swedish and Norwegian – are there differences?
- 2006
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In: Svenska som källspråk och målspråk: aspekter på översättningsvetenskap/Birgitta Englund Dimitrova & Hans Landqvist. ; , s. 4-21
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study compares the frequencies of tag questions in translated English texts and English original texts as well as in English texts translated from Swedish and from Norwegian, using data from the fiction parts of the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus and the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus. Tag questions are found to be underused in translated English, and especially in translations from Swedish. The sources of the question tag translations in the Swedish and Norwegian original texts are then examined to discover reasons for this difference between translations from these two closely related languages. It is suggested that this may be because Norwegian, unlike Swedish, has question tags of the English type and appears to use more right-dislocated elements and "pure" declarative questions.
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| 28. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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Tag questions in English translations from Swedish and Norwegian – are there differences?
- 2006
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In: ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English) 27, 24–28 May 2006, Helsinki, Finland.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study first compares the frequencies of tag questions in original English texts and English translated texts using data from the fiction parts of the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus and the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus. It then compares the frequencies of tag questions in English texts translated from Swedish and Norwegian. A large difference was found. The sources of the tag question translations in the Swedish and Norwegian original texts were then examined to discover reasons for this difference between these two closely related languages. It is suggested that this is because Norwegian, unlike Swedish, has inflected tag questions and more often uses right-dislocated elements and declarative questions.
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| 29. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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Tag questions in fiction dialogue vs. spoken conversation
- 2009
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In: ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English) 30, Lancaster, U.K., 27-31 May 2009.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Tag questions are a typical feature of spoken English, and particularly spoken British English (Tottie & Hoffmann 2006), but they are also found in fiction, especially in fiction dialogue. This study compares the use of tag questions in spoken conversation and fiction dialogue. The data comes from the British National Corpus: the demographic part of the spoken component and a subcorpus of fiction where only tag questions found in direct speech are considered. The proportion of direct speech has been calculated statistically in order to enable frequency comparisons to the spoken data. The query results have been thinned randomly; still, over 1,100 instances from each mode have been analysed for a wide range of features. Tag questions may have declarative, imperative, interrogative and exclamative anchors; these types are treated separately in this investigation due to their formal and functional differences. Tag questions with declarative anchors are very common in spoken conversation, where they are about three times as frequent as in fiction dialogue. Tag questions with imperative anchors are, on the other hand, infrequent in spoken conversation, and twice as frequent in fiction dialogue. Tag questions with interrogative anchors are infrequent in both modes, and tag questions with exclamative anchors are not found at all in the thinned query result, although a search in the whole of the BNC shows that there are a few such examples, most of them in the spoken demographic part. For the tag questions with declarative anchors, there are both similarities and differences in the distribution of various features in the two samples. Similar proportions have been found for e.g. the features reversed/constant polarity, tense of the tag operator and modal/non-modal tag operator. Forms of be are predominant in question tags in both the spoken and the written sample, usually in the wording isn’t it. A striking difference is, however, that you is a more common tag subject than it in fiction dialogue. In fact, intentional subjects are found in about two thirds of the question tags in fiction dialogue, but only in about half of the question tags in the spoken sample. Question tags with be (including innit) are more predominant in the spoken sample, whereas forms of do are used in a higher proportion in fiction dialogue than in spoken conversation. For the reversed-polarity tag questions, the pattern positive anchor plus negative tag (vs. negative anchor plus positive tag) is more predominant in the spoken sample. Non-standard tags, e.g. innit, and ellipsis in the anchor are found in both samples, but to a higher degree in the spoken data. Tag questions are not always followed by a response from the addressee: about a quarter of all tag questions are turn-holding in my spoken data. Andersen found innit to be turn-holding in a third of all instances in his study of teenagers’ use of innit in COLT (2001:133, 315), but innit is turn-holding to the same degree as other questions tags in my spoken BNC data. By comparison, tag questions are turn-holding to an even higher degree in fiction dialogue: in about 45 per cent of the instances, the same speaker goes on talking after the tag question. The differences in frequency and distribution of features for tag questions between fiction dialogue and spoken conversation indicate that the language of fiction dialogue is well worth studying. Andersen, Gisle. 2001. Pragmatic markers and sociolinguistic variation: A relevance-theoretical approach to the language of adolescents. Philadelphia: Benjamins. Tottie, Gunnel and Sebastian Hoffmann. 2006. Tag questions in British and American English. Journal of English Linguistics 34 (4): 283–311.
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| 30. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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Tag questions in translations between English and Swedish
- 2008
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In: Nordic Translation Conference, 6–8 March 2008, London, U.K.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Tag questions in translations between English and Swedish Tag questions consisting of an anchor clause and a grammatically dependent question tag, as in (1), are a typical feature of spoken British English (Tottie & Hoffmann 2006:288). (1)You can see to it, can’t you? (ESPC-EO, DF1) Tag questions are, however, also found in fiction. As most other languages do not have grammatically dependent question tags, and often use invariant tags or other structures such as modal particles for similar functions, it is interesting to look at the translations of tag questions from and into English. It has been shown earlier that there are considerably fewer tag questions in English fiction text translated from Swedish and Norwegian than in equivalent original English fiction text (Axelsson 2006:10). This paper looks at the Swedish translations of English tag questions, and compares them to the sources of tag questions found in English translations from Swedish. The data, 119 Swedish translations of English tag questions and 48 Swedish sources of English tag questions, come from the fiction parts of The English-Swedish Parallel Corpus (ESPC). The Swedish translations of English tag questions are quite distinct for three types of tag questions: 1.reversed polarity question tags after declarative anchors, as in example (1) 2.constant polarity question tags after declarative anchors, as in (2): (2)You have, have you? (ESPC-EO, RD1) 3. question tags after imperative anchors, as in (3): (3)Make us a cup of coffee, will you? (ESPC-EO, DL1) Constant polarity question tags constitute about a tenth of the tag questions in both the English originals and the English translations from Swedish. Typical Swedish equivalents are interjections and the modal particle alltså. There are ten tag questions with imperative anchors in the English originals, but none in the English translations from Swedish. The Swedish translations are mostly phrases which might as well be translated into please. The invariant tag eller hur is the most common Swedish translation of English reversed polarity question tags after declarative anchors, which seems to be a clear overuse, whereas the modal particle väl is the most common Swedish source for translations into English tag questions. About a fifth of all Swedish translations are “double” in that there is a combination of a modal particle and an invariant tag, a sentence type never found in the Swedish original texts in the ESPC. References Axelsson, Karin. 2006. Tag questions in English translations from Swedish and Norwegian – are there differences? Svenska som källspråk och målspråk. Aspekter på översättningsvetenskap: artiklar från en forskarkurs vid Göteborgs universitet höstterminen 2005. (Översättningsstudier vid Göteborgs universitet 9). [Swedish as a source language and as a target language: articles from a research course at Göteborg University in the autumn of 2005. (Translation studies at Göteborg University 9)], edited by Birgitta Englund Dimitrova and Hans Landqvist, 4–21. Göteborg: Översättarutbildningen vid Humanistiska fakulteten. Tottie, Gunnel & Sebastian Hoffmann. 2006. Tag questions in British and American English. Journal of English Linguistics, 34:4, 283–311.
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| 31. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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Tag questions in translations between English and Swedish
- 2009
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In: Northern lights: Translation in the Nordic countries. - Oxford : Peter Lang. - 9783039118496 ; , s. 81-106
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper deals with Swedish translations of English tag questions and Swedish sources to English tag questions in translations from Swedish into English. The data comes from the fiction parts of the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus (ESPC). English question tags are usually variant, i.e. grammatically dependent on the preceding clause, the anchor, whereas Swedish question tags are invariant. The English tag questions in this study are divided into three types: 1) Tag questions with declarative anchors and reversed polarity, 2) Tag questions with declarative anchors and constant polarity, and 3) Tag questions with imperative anchors. The reason is that these types perform different functions in English, and they are thus hypothesized to have different sets of correspondences in Swedish. This proves to be the case; the most common Swedish correspondences to question tags of the first type are clause-internal modal adverbs, especially the modal particles väl and ju, and invariant tags, or combinations of these, whereas tag questions of the other types mostly have a range of other kinds of translations. The large majority of tag questions are of the first type; accordingly, this chapter focuses on the Swedish correspondences of such tag questions. There are clear differences in the Swedish translations of and sources to such question tags: invariant tags are most common in the Swedish translations, whereas modal adverbs dominate in the Swedish sources. Combinations of a modal adverb and an invariant tag are only found in the Swedish translations, and this might be seen as a result of the translation process. The Swedish invariant tags eller hur and inte sant are overused in the Swedish translations compared to the Swedish sources (and the Swedish originals), which means that the sentence type tagged declarative is also overused in the Swedish translations.
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| 32. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Talking to, Not About, Citizens : Experiences of Focus Groups in Public E-Service Development
- 2007
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In: Electronic Government. - Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin/Heidelberg. - 9783540744436 - 9783540744443 ; , s. 179-190
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper focuses deficient understanding of citizens’ needs regarding public e-services. In Sweden e-government efforts are motivated by dual goals of citizen benefit and agencies’ internal efficiency. Rhetorical, this is a persuasive ambition, but in practice it seems to be easier to focus agency efficiency and redesign of business processes and information systems than to find out what citizens really want. Citizens, i.e. the future users of the e-service, are in best case represented in the project by citizen organizations. More seldom do individual citizens take part in the project. User needs are, thus, sometimes “guessed” instead of analyzed. We report from an e-government project which started with little understanding of the future users. To overcome this we introduced focus groups as a method to meet and talk to citizens and find out their needs regarding the e-service. The paper discusses how focus groups can be used in e-government projects.
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| 33. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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The Social Construction of Data Stability : Discovering Tactics for Establishing and Preserving Stability in Data Bases
- 2008
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In: Proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Information Systems. - Galway : International university of Ireland. - 9780955315923
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper questions the idea of data stability. We focus on core ideas behind an information centric strategy concerning stability in databases (created through enterprise-wide data modeling). We investigate if and how data stability is obtained when an information centric strategy is implemented in practice. We claim that, even though there are many research contributions about information centric strategies, there are still few papers focusing on problems concerning consequences of the strategies’ practical implementation. This is, however, an important issue since data integration is a key element of strategic management in, e.g., ERP-systems, data mining applications, and service-oriented architecture (SOA). It is, thus, most important not to neglect existing experiences, when developing the IT systems of tomorrow. The result of our two case studies reveal four tactics focusing on actions conducted to obtain and maintain stability in databases. The tactics are 1) change avoidance, 2) anticipated generalization, 3) constructive standardization, and 4) expansion to new application areas.
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| 34. |
- Axelsson, Karin, 1959
(author)
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The typology of question tags
- 2007
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In: ALT (Association for Linguistic Typology) 7, 25–28 September 2007, Paris, France.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The typology of confirmation-seeking question tags has earlier been treated by Ultan (1969/ 1978) and, in particular, by Moravcsik (1971), who presented both a paradigmatic and a syntagmatic typology. This paper discusses these typologies and suggests a new typology based on how the use of such question tags is restricted in relation to the preceding clause, the anchor. Four categories are proposed: neutral question tags (1–2), polarity-biased question tags (3–4), polarity-dependent question tags (5)–(6) and grammatically dependent question tags (7). This paper presents and compares data on grammatically dependent question tags, GDQTs, from ten languages: English, Norwegian, Danish, Welsh, Irish, Portuguese, Estonian, Finnish, Malayalam and Kiwai. The Norwegian (8) and Danish structures (9) are very similar to English GDQTs (7), the main difference being that a particle vel is often added in the positive tags. Welsh GDQTs display constant polarity, a positive tag following a positive anchor and a negative tag following a negative anchor. The structure of Welsh GDQTs is usually particle or negator plus inflected interrogative form of bod ‘be’ plus optional subject personal pronoun (10). The structure of Irish GDQTs is negative or positive tensed interrogative particle plus repeated finite (11). Portuguese has several GDQT structures, both constant and reversed ones (12). Finnish has only negative GDQTs after positive anchors (13). Estonian GDQTs repeat the verb of the anchor, preceded by a negative or positive polarity item (14), or followed by a particle ju and preceded by a negator if negative (15). All Estonian GDQTs display constant polarity. In Malayalam, the negative GDQTs only vary depending on what verb is used in the anchor (16), and for positive GDQTs what verb would have been used in the anchor if it had been positive. There are very few data on Kiwai GDQTs, but they are interesting as this shows that polysynthetic languages may also have GDQTs (17). A hierarchy for grammar dependency features in GDQTs is suggested: polarity < tense < number/person < gender. It is also proposed that if a language has GDQTs, it usually also has other confirmation-seeking question tags.
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| 35. |
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| 36. |
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| 37. |
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| 38. |
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| 39. |
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| 40. |
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| 41. |
- De Oliveira Santos, F., et al.
(author)
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Study of 19Na at SPIRAL
- 2005
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In: European Physical Journal A. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1434-601X .- 1434-6001. ; 24:2, s. 237-247
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The excitation function for the elastic-scattering reaction p( 18 Ne, p) 18 Ne was measured with the first radioactive beam from the SPIRAL facility at the GANIL laboratory and with a solid cryogenic hydrogen target. Several broad resonances have been observed, corresponding to new excited states in the unbound nucleus 19 Na. In addition, two-proton emission events have been identified and are discussed.
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| 42. |
- Glimskär Stålberg, Karin, 1971-
(author)
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Prenatal Ultrasound and X-ray - Potentially Adverse Effects on the CNS
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim with this thesis was to assess the impact of prenatal ultrasound exposure on psychotic illness, childhood brain tumors (CBT) and school achievement, and to evaluate prenatal X-ray exposure and the risk of CBT.In a cohort study, children born in Malmö 1973-1978, where prenatal ultrasound was used routinely, were considered exposed (n=13, 212) and children born at hospitals with no use of ultrasound, were considered unexposed (n=357,733). Exposed men had a tendency toward a higher risk of schizophrenia. For other psychoses there were no differences between groups. Other factors related to place of birth might have influenced the results. In a case control study, children born 1975-1984 with a diagnosis of CBT (n=512), and randomly selected control children (n=524) were included. Exposure data on X-ray and ultrasound from antenatal records was completed with information from the Medical Birth Register. We found no overall increased risk for CBT after prenatal X-ray exposure. When stratifying by histological subgroups, primitive neuroectodermal tumors had the highest risk estimates. For ultrasound exposure, no increased risk for CBT was seen and numbers of examinations or gestational age at exposure had no substantial impact on the results. In a follow-up of a randomized trial on prenatal ultrasound scanning 1985-87, we assessed the children’s school grades when graduating from primary school (15-16 years of age). We performed analyses according to randomization, ultrasound exposure in the second trimester and exposure at any time during pregnancy. There were no differences in school performance for boys or girls according to randomization or exposure in the second trimester. Boys exposed to ultrasound any time during fetal life had a reduced mean score in physical education and small, non-significant increased risk of poor school performance in general.
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| 43. |
- Goldkuhl, Göran, 1949-, et al.
(author)
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E-services in Public Administration - Editorial
- 2007
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In: International Journal of Public Information Systems. - Sundsvall : Mittuniversitetet. - 1653-4360. ; 3:3, s. 113-116
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)
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| 44. |
- Halilovic, Amra, 1965-
(author)
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Ett praktikperspektiv på hantering av mjukvarukomponenter
- 2006
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Nyutveckling och förvaltning av ett informationssystem står ständigt inför nya krav och förutsättningar. Utvecklingen skall ske på kortare tid och med ökad produktivitet. Ur förvaltningssynpunkt skall IT-systemen snabbt kunna anpassas till förändringar i verksamhet och teknik, samtidigt som dessa IT-system även skall ha en hög kvalitet och säkerhet. Allt detta kräver nya sätt att arbeta och att organisera IT-verksamheten på. Ett av dessa nya arbetssätt gäller hantering av mjukvarukomponenter. Den grundläggande idén med detta arbetssätt är att utveckling och förvaltning av IT-system inte skall basera sig på nyutveckling av mjukvara, utan på återanvändning av befintliga mjukvarukomponenter.Forskningsprocessen har haft en kvalitativ ansats med induktiva och deduktiva inslag. Datainsamlingen har skett via källstudier och intervjuer. Hanteringen av mjukvarukomponenter har studerats på två interna IT-avdelningar hos två myndigheter. Syftet har varit att kartlägga vad komponenthantering innebär och på vilket sätt arbetet på IT-avdelningarna har förändrats. Komponenthanteringen beskrivs ur ett praktikperspektiv, vilket innebär att IT-verksamhetens förutsättningar, handlingar, resultat och klienter analyseras.Avhandlingens resultat utgörs av en praktikteori för komponenthantering. Praktiken ”Komponenthantering” består av fyra subpraktiker: komponentanskaffning, komponentförvaltning, komponentbaserad systemutveckling och komponentbaserad systemförvaltning. Produkten av denna praktik är användbara IT-system. I avhandlingen diskuteras olika sätt att organisera denna praktik, samt vilka grundläggande förutsättningar som behövs för att bedriva denna praktik. Syftet med den praktikteori som presenteras är att den skall visa på hur intern IT-verksamhet kan bedrivas för att kunna möta de nya krav på effektivitet, förändringsbarhet, kvalitet och säkerhet som ställs på verksamheten.
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| 45. |
- Harrefors, Christina, et al.
(author)
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Elderly people's perceptions of how they want to be cared for : an interview study with healthy elderly couples in Northern Sweden
- 2009
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In: Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences. - : Wiley. - 0283-9318 .- 1471-6712. ; 23:2, s. 353-360
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Many countries encounter a demographic change where the number of elderly people will increase. As a result, the number of very old people needing care, services and medical assistance will increase. Care in the private home is often described as providing the best alternative for many elderly people. The aim of this study was to describe elderly people's perceptions of how they wanted to be cared for, from a perspective of becoming in need of assistance with personal care, in the future. Twelve couples of healthy elderly people living in a couple hood participated in an interview study. They were all 70 years and older and received no kind of professional care or social support. Open individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with the support of written vignettes. The vignettes were formed as scenarios that described three levels of caring needs where the elderly people would become ill. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the interviews. The findings were interpreted in one main theme: maintaining the self and being cared for with dignity to the end. The theme was built from three categories: at home as long as possible, professional care at nursing home when advanced care is needed and fear of being abandoned. The categories reflect the perception that when minimum help was needed, care and support by the partner and nursing staff were preferred. As the scenarios changed to being totally dependent on care, they preferred care in a nursing home. There was a pervading concern of the risk of not being seen as an individual person and becoming a nobody with no meaningful relations. Thus, there must be a singular goal to support old people, in all stages of their lives, through the recognition and affirmation of self, and providing care with dignity to the end.
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| 46. |
- Helander, B., et al.
(author)
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Ingestion of lead from ammunition and lead concentrations in white-tailed sea eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla) in Sweden
- 2009
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In: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 407:21, s. 5555-5563
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this study we show for the first time that lead poisoning from ammunition is a significant mortality factor for white-tailed sea eagle (WSE) (Holiaeetus albicilla) in Sweden. We analyzed 118 WSEs collected between 1981 and 2004 from which both liver and kidney samples could be taken. A total of 22% of all eagles examined had elevated (>6 mu g/g d.w.) lead concentrations, indicating exposure to leaded ammunition. and 14% of the individuals had either liver or kidney lead concentrations diagnostic of lethal lead poisoning (>20 mu g/g d.w.). Lead concentrations in liver and kidney were significantly correlated. In individuals with lead levels <6 mu g/g, concentrations were significantly higher in kidney than in liver; in individuals with lead levels >20 mu g/g, concentrations were significantly higher in liver. The lead isotope ratios indicate that the source of lead in individuals with lethal concentrations is different from that of individuals exhibiting background concentrations of lead (<6 mu g/g d.w.) There were no significant sex or age differences in lead concentrations. A study from the Baltic reported in principle no biomagnification of lead, but background lead concentrations in WSE liver in this study were still four to >10 times higher than concentrations reported for Baltic fish from the same time period. in contrast to other biota there was no decrease in lead concentrations in WSE over the study period. The proportion of lead poisoned WSE remained unchanged over the study period, including two years after a partial ban of lead shot was enforced in 2002 for shallow wetlands. The use of lead in ammunition poses a threat to all raptors potentially feeding on shot game or offal. The removal of offal from shot game and alternatives to leaded ammunition needs to be implemented in order to prevent mortality from lead in raptors and scavengers.
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| 47. |
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| 48. |
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| 49. |
- Iranmanesh, Sedigheh, et al.
(author)
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A caring relationship with persons who have cancer
- 2009
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In: Journal of Advanced Nursing. - : Wiley. - 0309-2402 .- 1365-2648. ; 65:6, s. 1300-1308
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Aim. This paper is a report of a study conducted to elucidate the meaning of a caring relationship with people with cancer.Background. A caring relationship becomes the most important focus of caregiving when treatment of the body has reached the limits where cure is no longer expected. Caring as perceived by people with cancer involves nurses having professional attitudes and skills in order to provide good care, including emotional and practical support.Methods. A phenomenological hermeneutic approach influenced by Ricoeur was used. Eight nurses working in an oncology unit in Iran were interviewed in 2007 about their experiences of caring relationships with people who have cancer.Findings. The findings were interpreted as getting involved in a mutual/demanding close relationship. Closeness demanded nurses to be present, to listen to patients, and to be compassionate. Closeness was also mutual and characterized both caregiving and receiving new insights into values in the nurses' own lives. The close relationship was at times frustrating when they were faced with situations that they could not handle and were out of their control.Conclusion. Closeness is an important foundation for caring, and acquires a special dimension in the care of people with cancer and their relatives. It derives from the personal and professional experiences of nurses in their own life stories. Nursing education should include a reflective approach in order to develop caring skills in oncology nursing that are not merely attuned to medical care.
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| 50. |
- Iranmanesh, Sedigheh, et al.
(author)
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Swedish nurses' experiences of caring for dying people : a holistic approach
- 2009
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In: Holistic Nursing Practice. - 0887-9311 .- 1550-5138. ; 23:4, s. 243-52
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Most people need to be cared for at the end of their lives by professionals. This study aimed to elucidate the meaning of nurses' experiences of caring for dying persons at home and in a special unit in a hospital. Four registered nurses working in private homes and 4 registered nurses working in a specific unit in a hospital setting were interviewed. The study was planned and carried out with a phenomenological hermeneutic approach. A naive reading guided a structural analysis, which resulted in 3 main themes: meeting patients and family members as unique persons, learning in a challenging environment, and gaining personal strength. The interpreted comprehensive understanding conveyed a meaning that caring for families with a member awaiting the end of life created a situation where the presence of an inevitable death demanded nurses to create close relationships with each unique person involved.
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