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The socialization of disciplinary outsiders into an academic discipline has been described both in terms of becoming fluent in a disciplinary discourse (Airey, 2009; Airey & Linder, 2009; Northedge, 2002) and achieving disciplinary literacy (Airey, 2011, 2013; Geisler, 1994). In this paper we investigate disciplinary boundaries by documenting the responses of academics to a semiotic disciplinary hybrid. The hybrid we use is the Physikalisches Lied, a bogus piece of sheet music into which disciplinary-specific semiotic resources from the realm of physics have been incorporated to humorous effect.

The piece is presented to three distinct disciplinary focus groups: physicists, musicians and a group of academics who have had little contact with either discipline. In order to elicit disciplinary responses that are free from researcher prompts, each focus group is first asked the simple, open-ended question What do you see here? Once discussion of this question is exhausted the focus groups are asked to identify as many puns as they can—essentially all the disciplinary items that they feel have been misappropriated—and to attempt to explain what this means from a disciplinary standpoint. The differences in the responses of the three groups are presented and analysed.

We argue that semiotic material focused on by each of the three groups and the nature of the explanation offered, provide evidence of the degree of integration into the disciplines of physics and music. Our findings shed light on the process of becoming a disciplinary insider and the semiotic work involved in this process.

References

Airey, J. (2009). Science, Language and Literacy. Case Studies of Learning in Swedish University Physics. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 81. Uppsala Retrieved 2009-04-27, from http://publications.uu.se/theses/abstract.xsql?dbid=9547

Airey, J. (2011). The Disciplinary Literacy Discussion Matrix: A Heuristic Tool for Initiating Collaboration in Higher Education. Across the disciplines, 8(3).

Airey, J. (2013). Disciplinary Literacy. In E. Lundqvist, L. Östman & R. Säljö (eds.), Scientific literacy – teori och praktik (pp. 41-58): Gleerups.

Airey, J., & Linder, C. (2009). A disciplinary discourse perspective on university science learning: Achieving fluency in a critical constellation of modes. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 46(1), 27-49.

Geisler, C. (1994). Academic literacy and the nature of expertise: Reading, writing, and knowing in academic philosophy. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Northedge, A. (2002). Organizing excursions into specialist discourse communities: A sociocultural account of university teaching. In G. Wells & G. Claxton (eds.), Learning for life in the 21st century. Sociocultural perspectives on the future of education (pp. 252-264). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

The aim of the study was to investigate how reading aloud is organized in the class-room and if the teachers made any adaptations for students with reading comprehension difficulties. Three teachers and two special education teachers were interviewed about their views on reading aloud and adaptations. Two students were interviewed about their experiences of listening to read-alouds. The results of the study showed that the students appreciated to listen to their teachers reading aloud and to take part in conversations about the text. The teachers who had been educated by Skolverket, Läslyftet, used comprehension strategies during the reading aloud lessons and found the strategies to be a good adaptation for the students with comprehension problems. The special education teachers mostly worked with students with word- reading difficulties. They did not use read-alouds and comprehensions strategies in their teaching. The study also indicate the importance of implementing research in education. 

I den här studien undersöks andraspråkselevers användning av bildspråk i den egna produktionen. Studien bygger på elevtextanalyser där texterna som analyseras är skrivna av arabisktalande andraspråkselever i kurs 1 och kurs 2 i svenska som andraspråk på gymnasiet. Syftet med studien är att undersöka i vilken mån andraspråkselever använder bildliga uttryck i sina texter och vad de uttrycken som används har för konventionaliseringsgrad, det vill säga graden av idiomatik i användning. Studien syftar även till att undersöka om de bildliga uttrycken som används kan vara lån från förstaspråket. Resultatet visar att bildliga uttryck förekommer i andraspråkselevers texter och utgör 7,65% av textmaterialet. Den vanligaste typen av bildspråk i materialet är metaforer; idiom förekommer däremot i en väldigt liten utsträckning och utgörs alltid av modifieringar som oftast beror på fel användning av preposition. Detta ger en bild av att prepositioner utgör en svårighet vid inlärning av relativt fasta fraser som idiom. Utifrån resultatet har jag även funnit att helfrasinlärning kan vara en bra utgångspunkt vid inlärning av idiom särskilt i de tidiga stadierna av språkinlärningen, dels för att det kan vara svårt för inlärare att förstå de nyansskillnader som finns mellan vissa prepositioner, dels för att idiom ibland kan uppvisa ogrammatiska drag vilket gör dem mer komplicerade att analysera. Resultatet har även visat att elevernas kulturella och språkliga/litterära bakgrund fungerar som inspirationskälla vid användning av nybildade bildliga uttryck. 

The present article discusses toponyms in different languages referring to the 

same geographical location, making a distinction between similarity in 

sound (phonetic adaptation, name quotation, etc.) and similarity in sense 

(name translation, etc.). In the latter case, following Coates (2005), a 

distinction is made between semantic reference, onymic reference, and 

apparent etymological sense. The short theoretical introduction is illustrated 

with examples from bilingual or multilingual areas such as Southern Austria 

(Kärnten—with German and Slovenian place-names) and, particularly, 

Hong Kong, which exhibits an intricate interplay between two varieties of 

Chinese—Cantonese and Mandarin—and English, where, due to the funda- 

mental differences between the Chinese and English writing systems, 

particular attention is paid to the different Romanization methods for 

Chinese. 

This chapter is intended to offer assistance for the linguistic description of writing systems throughout the history of one or, especially, several languages and provide a comparative description of the different units of writing systems. The first section establishes the definitions of the concepts of grapheme, graph, allograph and suprasegmental grapheme. The application of these concepts to English and Romance languages is exemplified by three models and methods of diachronic and comparative description of writing systems: Romance scriptology, cultural history of European orthographies, and comparative graphematics of punctuation. The second section discusses biscriptality, the phenomenon of employing two or more writing systems for the same language, not rare in the history of languages from different families, and related to different aspects of society and language users. With examples mainly from Russian and other Slavic languages, biscriptality is shown to be present on several levels of written language, and various applications of biscriptality are characterized with the help of dichotomies such as synchronic vs. diachronic biscriptality, monocentric vs. pluricentric biscriptality, and societal vs. individual biscriptality.

In this article, we take a narrative approach to Swedish media texts regarding farming, forestry, and Sami livelihoods. The main purpose is to illuminate how a master narrative on climate change is shaped, activated, and put into practice in different ways in different settings and contexts. The study discusses the complex interplay between different levels of narratives and the narrative dynamics that influence and shape collective representations of climate change. We discern a narrative level that does not explicitly challenge the master narrative, but operationalizes it in close relation to cultural contexts and specific goals, resulting in what we call conventionalized narratives.

The purpose of this study is to analyse how three idioms, in English, French and Swedish, despite different lexical compositions are capable of conveying the same meaning. The idioms in question are a thorn in the side, une épine au pied/dans le pied and en nagel i ögat. This study is concerned with how different metaphorical images are used to express the same meaning. Furthermore, it examines what it is in the semantics of the lexical items that enables these idioms to express the same idiomatic meaning. Using a cognitive linguistic approach the analysis is conducted at a linguistic and a conceptual level. The analysis shows that these three different idioms are capable of conveying the same idiomatic meaning because they are motivated by the same conceptual metaphor.

The aim of this thesis was to study change in the meaning of the word cool, comparing the 1890s, the 1950s and the 2010s. Examples where the word cool was used were obtained from the Corpus of Historical American English, which is created by Mark Davies, and analyzed in terms of in which senses and text types they were used. The results show that the biggest meaning change in cool between the 1890s and the 2010s is that the most prominent sense in the 1890s is ‘calm’, and ‘slightly cold in a pleasant way’ not far after, and in the 2010s the most prominent sense was ‘pleasant, enjoyable or likable’. The most frequent senses of cool in the 1950s were ‘slightly cold in a pleasant way’, ‘temperature that is too cold’, and ‘calm’ as the most commonly used. The most prominent text type where the word cool occurred was fiction in all three analyzed decades.

Translating ancient texts is a challenge for the translator. It is not enough to be competent in the languages in question, it is also necessary to be able to interpret the cultural context and reproduce it for the readers of the target text. In this thesis, the Swedish translation of La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades by the translators Lars Axelsson y Margareta Marin has been analyzed. The purpose was to analyze how the translators have overcome the problems and difficulties that can be encountered whilst translating an ancient text, and what was the result of such translation. A methodology for translation by Vinay and Darbelnet and the skopos theory by Vermeer have been used to carry out the analysis. As a result, it was seen that oblique translation was the most common method, and the target text is different than the original text in many ways. Despite this, the translators have succeeded with conserving the essence of the original text in the target text.

The present study investigates language learners’ perceptions of what types of language learning activities they carry out in the Spanish second language (L2) classroom and what activities are the most common ones. A further aim is to investigate how the activities align with a model based on task-based language teaching. The group studied are Swedish learners of Spanish as L2 in a Swedish setting, where out of class exposure to first language (L1) Spanish is generally limited. The activities carried out in class are therefore expected to have a high impact on learners’ L2 acquisition in Spanish. The participants were tested after finishing secondary school. The reported learning activities, which in the long run should lead to goal attainment according to the national curriculum, were ranked and classified. The activity types were then graded along the scale explicit/analytic – implicit/experiential, according to a model based on task-based language teaching, an approach that is closely related to the action-oriented view of language, central to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the Swedish syllabus. Ninety-nine learners were included in the study, which is based on quantitative data consisting in self-report questionnaires in which participants estimate what activities they have typically been involved in. Results show a dominance of activity types based on a structural view of language with focus-on-form rather than on meaningful communication, and a dominance of writing-based activities. The study also has direct implications for the classroom, where it points to the importance of including more communicative oral activities without the support from writing in the teaching.

This study aims to describe and analyze prosodic differences in prominence realization in both spontaneous and read speech produced by Swedish second language speakers (L2 speakers) in comparison with native speakers (L1 speakers) of Spanish. A further aim of the study is to provide concrete descriptions of the differences between L2 and L1 prominence realization that may serve as tools for language teachers. Phonetic, phonological and to some extent pragmatic aspects will be considered. Results show that the F0 (fundamental frequency) rises in prominent words are steeper and faster in native speech than in L2 speech. Results also show that stressed vowels have longer duration in prominent words in L2 than in L1 Spanish. The number of boundary rises used by both groups differed significantly according to task and group. Pragmatic aspects, such as the use of different intersubjectivity seeking strategies, might explain differences found exclusively in the spontaneous task.

Over the past decade, there has been a renewed scientific interest in psychedelic science. This renewed interest is primarily driven by potential applications in psychiatry, specifically for the mental health challenges of depression. The Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ30) is widely used to predict assess patient experience and predict possible correlations between psychedelic experience and therapeutic outcome. However, MEQ30 does not describe the subjective aspect of the experience. The research question asked in this paper was: Can a cognitive vocabulary approach be used to interpret descriptions of subjective psilocybin-induced experiences in non-therapeutic settings? Publically available reports of psilocybin-induced experiences that are available on the Internet were collected and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Cognitive labels were given to the identified themes post priori, and this indicates that a cognitive vocabulary approach is able to capture the subjective aspect of the psilocybin-induced experience. We conclude that it is unnecessary to resort to mystical terminology as found in the MEQ30 to understand and explain the subjective aspect of the psilocybin-induced experience.

Purpose: Accurate production of lexical stress within English polysyllabic words is critical for intelligibility and is affected in many speech-language disorders. However, models of speech production remain underspecified with regard to lexical stress. In this study, the authors report a large-scale acoustic investigation of lexical stress production in typically developing Australian English-speaking children ages 3-7 years (n = 73) compared with young adults (n = 24).

Method: Participants named pictures of highly familiar strong-weak and weak-strong polysyllabic words. Of 388 productions, 325 met criteria for acoustic measurement. Relative vowel duration, peak intensity, and peak f(0) over the first two syllables were measured.

Result: Lexical stress was marked consistently by duration and intensity but not f(0). Lexical stress on strong-weak words was adultlike by 3 years. All 3 measures showed significant differences between adults and children for weak-strong words still present at 7 years.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that protracted development of weak-strong stress production reflects physiological constraints on producing short articulatory durations and rising intensity contours. Findings validate treatment that is centered on strong-weak stress production for children >= 3 years with dysprosody. Although intervention for the production of weak-strong words may be initiated before age 7 years, reference to normative acoustic data is preferable to relying on perceptual judgments of accuracy.

The teaching of a foreign language to adultsvery often lacks appropriate assistance for thelearning of pronunciation. Insights into thelearning processes are necessary in order to beable to design a special learning programme.The project aims at investigating theseprocesses for university students engaged inbeginner level courses of German in Swedenand of Swedish in the German speakingcountries in the context of multiple languagelearning. Both languages are linguisticallyclosely related to each other, especially wherephonology is concerned. A typical foreignaccent very often hampers smoothcommunication. Therefore minimizing theforeign accent appears to be a challenge,especially when these two kindred languagesare concerned.The project research will be carried out asa longitudinal study. Various kinds of speechmaterial will be recorded at certain intervals,digitalized and collected in the database MiFA,analysed and labelled for cross searching. Ourresults will add new knowledge and insightsinto the learning of pronunciation of twokindred languages in the context of multiplelanguage learning. A large quantity of data willallow for a quantitative evaluation of differenthypotheses, foremost the role of the first andthe second language.

This chapter examines whimsy as a trope in the early music of Pink Floyd, demonstrating a spontaneous quality that challenges stable and linear conceptions of time, with juxtaposition and illogicality often present. It begins by establishing the concept of the psychedelic self, a radical image of the human subject that includes whimsy, but that is not defined by it. The chapter then goes on to read 13 early compositions by Pink Floyd that demonstrate elements of whimsy and that correspond to the psychedelic self. It argues the image of the psychedelic self in the songs matches the conditions of LSD intoxication that researchers in the neurological sciences are only now managing to describe clinically. The chapter concludes that the musical legacy of Pink Floyd is a sustainable one, with our understanding of cognition just now catching up and projecting into the future an image of the self that embraces fragmentation of self-identity, multiple simultaneous cognitive perspectives and non-linear temporality.

In the production of Swedish, vowel quantity is known to be realized in the vowel, but also affects duration of a postvocalic consonant. The goal of this study is to examine the use of postvocalic consonant duration as a perceptual cue to vowel quantity. Listeners' responses and reaction times were recorded for synthesized materials in which the vowel spectra and duration were kept constant and the postvocalic consonant duration was adjusted. Results show no indication that listeners actively used the duration of a postvocalic consonant to identify vowel quantity. These findings suggest that adjustments in postvocalic consonant duration in Swedish productions may be temporal artifacts of the preceding vowel quantity rather than reflecting linguistically relevant information.

The school was one of the main institutions where policies of colonization and assimilation took place. Currently, in the four countries where Sami people reside, namely Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, different policies for supporting Sami languages are carried out. Sami teaching at school is provided in these countries to different extents. In addition to physical teaching in these four countries, remote Sami language education in primary and secondary schools is provided solely in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. In Norway, two universities offer different Sami language courses within teacher training programmes. In addition, the Sami University of Applied Sciences carries out North Sami teacher education, both for early childhood education as well as primary and secondary education, and it is taught in the North Sami language. In Sweden, the University of Umeå provides courses for Sami language teachers. In Finland, several universities offer Sami language courses for teachers. In Russia, the Murmansk Arctic State University offers a philological master programme called ‘Technologies of the Sami Language Teaching’. The Institute of the Peoples of the North of the Herzen University offers pedagogical education at the bachelor level. Within this education, Sami language courses are provided. This chapter demonstrates the positive policy tendencies regarding Sami people in four countries and their languages. Besides this, there are an increasing number of projects on Sami language learning and professional training across the four countries. Nevertheless, there is still work to be done to improve the existing tendencies. 

Recent work on Object Shift (OS) suggests that this is not as uniform an operation as traditionally assumed. In this paper, we examine OS in the spontaneous speech of adults in large Danish, Norwegian and Swedish child language corpora in order to explore variation with respect to OS across these three languages. We evaluate our results against three recent strands of accounts of OS, namely a prosodic/phonological account, an account in terms of cognitiv status, and an account in terms of information structure. Our investigation shows that there is both withing-language and across-language variation in the application of OS, and that the three accounts can explain some of our data. However, all accounts are faced with challenges, especially when explaining exceptional cases.

I denna undersökning granskas tre beslutsmallar från Uppsala kommun för att bedöma i vilken grad de efterföljer språklagens direktiv om att språket i myndighetstexter ska vara vårdat, enkelt och begripligt. Genom att kombinera läsbarhetsanalys med komparativ analys utvärderas besluten i relation till klarspråksprinciper. Resultaten pekar på varierande styrkor och svagheter i beslutsmaterialet. Även om språket över lag är vårdat, konstateras det att det finns svagheter när det gäller enkelhet och begriplighet. Analysen identifierar potentiella förbättringsområden, särskilt gällande ordval och förkortningar som inte förklaras. Även den grafiska utformningen och anpassningen till olika målgrupper framstår som utmanande aspekter i beslutsmaterialet. I diskussionen lyfts svårigheterna med att objektivt bedöma texters svårighetsgrad fram och betonas vikten av att förstå målgruppen för att effektivt tillämpa klarspråksprinciper. Avslutningsvis föreslår studien några åtgärder som kan förbättra klarspråket i beslut, bland annat genom en översyn av befintliga textmallar och granskning av externa parter för att säkerställa en övergripande förståelse. Denna forskning bidrar till förståelsen av klarspråksutmaningar inom offentliga beslut och pekar på behovet av ytterligare forskning för att stärka klarspråksarbetet, bland annat i avseende på samspelet mellan tryckt och digital text. 

The aim of this study was to investigate how the North Westrobothnian dialect "skelleftebondskan" has been transferred between three generations within two family groups and what the dialect means for these individuals. The data was collected from semi-structured interviews where six people with a family connection to Skellefteå participated. The analysis of the data showed that dialectal knowledge and positive attitudes of the dialect had transferred from the oldest participants to the youngest participants within the family groups. Despite two participants in one family group not having lived in Skellefteå for as long as the participants in the other family group, the knowledge and meaning of the dialect was quite similar between them. And despite the oldest participants having more knowledge of the dialect and more frequently used it, the younger participants still thought the dialect was important. The data showed that the dialect was part of the participants’ identity and heritage as well as their linguistic repertoire. 

How language specific words should be translated between two languages is not always obvious. Therefore, this thesis has the intention to examine how Russian diminutive common nouns are translated into Swedish. The difficulties of translation, inter alia, arise from the fact that the Russian language is rich in diminutives, whereas the usage of diminutives in Swedish is rare. Because of this difference, it is not guaranteed that there is a lexical counterpart in Swedish for Russian diminutives, and the translation must be adapted to retain the diminutive meaning.

By examining how Russian diminutives usually are translated into Swedish, and whether Russian diminutives emerge during translation from Swedish, the Russian-Swedish language specificity for diminutives could be mapped. With the help of a parallel corpus, native texts and their translations can be examined in a qualitative analysis to categorise the most common translation strategies, and whether the diminutive meaning is retained during translation.

The findings presented in this thesis demonstrate that Russian diminutives of common nouns are exceedingly language specific toward Swedish, as the meaning frequently is lost. During translation from Swedish to Russian diminutives usually emerge, despite that the Swedish original text completely lacks diminutive words.

Written and oral material produced by a group of low-achieving learners of English from the 2-year lines of the Swedish upper secondary school was analysed from the perspective of grammatical correctness and communicative ability. The grammatical analysis focussed on the verb phrase and tests included both free production in speech and writing and elicitation tests. Communicative ability was assessed ‘ ‘objectively* ’ by identifying such parameters as fluency, copiousness and span, and “holistically” by using non-expert evaluators.The scores thus obtained were correlated. Grammatical correctness was correlated with communicative ability both in speech and in writing and writing proficiency was correlated with speech proficiency with respect to both grammatical correctness and communicative ability.Our findings are that there is a positive correlation between grammatical correctness and communicative ability. A remarkable finding is that the percentage of correct verb phrases correlates very weakly with communicative ability in written data. In oral data, the correlation is in fact slightly negative. The learner’s competence in grammar is reflected in both his written and oral performance. On the other hand, there is no correlation between communicative ability in writing and communicative ability in speech.The study shows that a working command of a set of syntactic rules is essential for communication. Errors are, however, an integral part of the learning process. The major part of errors are accounted for by the learner’s use of compensatory strategies. Among these low-achievers, communicative ability in conversation is distinct from writing ability.

Writing center tutors and librarians share in the goal of helping students with the recursive processes of writing and researching. Nevertheless, few writing centers that are located in university libraries work collaboratively, but rather simply share a location.

Research from the US shows that collaboration can take different forms, and while some of these may be readily transferable to European university systems, some will be challenging to implement. Also, this research tends to originate from librarians rather than writing consultants (Ferer, 2012).

Umea University is unusual in that it works collaboratively. Drawing on our experience, we will provide a Swedish university's perspective based on the collaboration between its Writing Centre and University Library. We explain how we work together to match students' writing and researching needs, the challenges in collaborating, and what future additional collaborations are possible. Finally, we raise the question, what more can we do to develop and maintain our collaboration?

Discussing best practices can provide valuable information to better meet the new generation of students. Research, thinking and writing go hand in hand. Rather than compartmentalizing these processes, writing tutors and librarians can work together with students to help them navigate these intricately linked processes. Collecting this expertise into one location allows students more comprehensive support and convenient access: "one-stop shopping" (Cooke & Bledsoe, 2008).

Writing centers and libraries can have an influence in the current reformation of higher education and should contribute to the discussion by promoting their strengths and sharing their respective knowledge (Elmborg, 2005). We hope to contribute to the conversation through our presentation.

This study examines the difference in perception of a character in a male and a female guise amongst university students in Seychelles, and elaborates on how such difference reflects gender hierarchies in general. The students were given a questionnaire consisting of five scenarios, in which two or more characters communicated, and then answered questions about their perception of the characters. The character’s gender mattered to how he/she was perceived for at least one of the characters in the dialogue, in four of the scenarios, and in one scenario there was no difference in perception of the male guise and the female guise. The biggest difference in perception of a male guise and female guise was in a scenario in which one character commented on his/her colleague’s appearance. The male guise was perceived more negatively both when commenting and when rejecting such comment. However, the space in which the interaction took place, and the relationship between the characters influenced how they were perceived. So, when a group of people commented on an unknown person’s appearance, on the beach, the respondents perceived both the male guise and the female guise of the character similarly both as commenters and as receivers of the comment. 

The aim of this investigation was to study what adjectives the media uses when describing female and male football players and sportswomen and sportsmen. The objective was to see if the adjectives described men and women differently and whether the adjectives reinforced gender stereotypes. To see the frequency an adjective had an online corpus was used and the analysis was based on Fairclough´s model of critical discourse analysis. The results showed that many adjectives were used for both genders. However, adjectives regarding appearance only showed in the results for women. In conclusion, the men and women were described in similar ways, however, as the women were also described by their beauty indicates that the media reinforces the gender stereotypes in certain ways.

Although many studies have been conducted on second language acquisition and bilingual education, little is known about the role of language in the formation of identity by adolescent immigrants in the language classroom. More specifically, this study aims to investigate the use of code-switching by immigrant and refugee students learning Swedish and English in a high school preparatory program. Furthermore, this study investigates the relationship between students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards code-switching and language as a resource, and theories on language as a marker of identity. Quantitative collection of data and qualitative interviews reveal tensions between the ways in which teachers and students relate to code-switching and bilingualism. This study concludes that language in general, and code-switching in particular, can be used by students as a marker of identity. It further concludes that teachers to some extent discourage the use of code-switching, and thereby undermine the students’ possibilities in forming multicultural identities.

The presentworkis a study within a framework of functional grammar, by which is understood a grammar that aims not only at describing variations in syntactic form, but also at identifying their communicative function. The scope of the study is limited to adjectives as predicate complements to subjects. The analysis is based on excerpts from twenty Swedish novels by different authors, and also on some spoken material. Predicate complements can occur with different types of verbs and have, broadly speaking, four possible positions in the sentence: final, middle, initial and extra-posed after the sentence. The final position in the sentence is used for predicate complements that are non-omissible, i.e. are non-omissible in order for the sentence to remain in the same context. In this position, the predicate complement is most clearly rhematic, providing information important to the communicative development of the text. The middle position is used for the omissible predicate complements, i.e. if the predicate complement is deleted, the sentence can still remain in it* s context. The initial position is occupied by predicate complements that provide inferred information. These are mostly thematic. Predicate complements in the final position outside the sentence are more independent, almost of sentence status. Variations in word-order thus affect the information structure of the sentence. These functional rules governing the placement of the predicate complements in a Swedish sentence are also valid for adverbs of manner. In Swedish, these two categories are very close in certain cases where they appear to be interchangeable.The study also shows that sentences comprising copula+predicate complement and sentences comprising verbs of the type l^igga (lie)+predicate complement partly have different functions and occur in different contexts. This functional difference can be correlated with various differences in syntactic behaviour. Verbs of the type Z-i^a+predicate complement often form a semantic unit, in which both the verb and the adjective have a reduced lexical meaning. In this unit the adjective carries the greater information value. Such units are broken by the insertion of the words där/här (there/ here). In these cases, the verb and the adjective no longer constitute a semantic unit and they regain their full lexical meaning. The sentence then has another information structure in which the information value of the verb and the adjective are equally great. Such sentences summarize and/or describe states of affairs;, they do not develope the narrative further.In a study of the function of syntactic variants, analyzing predicate complements to verbs other than copula verbs as reduced sentences is found not to be useful. Paraphrasing predicate complements by full clauses is not meaning preserving: the predicate complement receives greater emphasis and the paraphrase has other presuppositions.

This paper analyses the similarities and differences of the cognitive structures of the English-Swedish idiom pair to step into someone’s shoes and att axla någons mantel (to shoulder someone’s mantle [lit.]) in order to investigate possible conceptual or embodied motivations for their meanings. Using dictionaries and corpora to support all findings, the conceptual nature and intended meaning of each idiom were closely analysed and compared. The investigation shows metaphorical, metonymical and embodied structures which might possibly explain why these two idioms mean the same thing as a whole even though they are lexically different from each other. The results indicate that conceptual and embodied mechanisms have motivated the meanings of the idioms, thus suggesting that idiom comprehension in general as well as second language learning would greatly benefit from a more cognitive approach.

This study investigates to what extent an intensive reading intervention of two weeks, based on repeated reading, can improve the reading fluency for students with reading difficulties in secondary school. The study also investigates how the students evaluated the intervention based on repeated reading. Nineteen students with reading difficulties in secondary school were selected and divided into two comparable groups, an intervention group and a control group. Ten students in the intervention group were given daily one to one tutorial training in decoding and fluency by reading lists with words, nonwords and texts repeatedly times. Visual as well as spoken feedback were given between every set of reading. The control group received ordinary classroom teaching. Tests before and after the intervention with all students were done. The intervention students completed a questionnaire about their evaluation of the intervention and how they estimated their reading ability after the training period. The results of the study showed that most students in the intervention group increased their test results in terms of decoding words and text reading compared to the control group. The results of the questionnaire showed that the students experienced that they had increased their reading ability and that they had become more self-confident about their reading.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the metaphorization of ROMANTIC LOVE in spoken Swedish. The study is based on 4 semi-structured focus group conversations with participants in two age groups; 24–33 and 50–54. A Swedish short film and questions related to the film were used as stimuli for the conversations. Research questions asked are 1) How is the concept of ROMANTIC LOVE metaphorized in the recorded group conversations? 2) How does the metaphorization vary between the conversations? and 3) What cultural model for ROMANTIC LOVE in the conversations can be reconstructed based on identified metaphorizations? The study is situated within Cognitive Linguistics and the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and a Discourse Dynamics Approach to Metaphor. Consequently, metaphor is seen as a cognitive, linguistic, socio-cultural and discursive phenomenon, where metaphorization is a dynamic process that develops, adapts and flows within the conversations and between the participants. Accordingly, the identified metaphorizations are considered to be influenced by the speakers and their embodied experiences, their embodied cognition, the discourse event, and socio-cultural aspects of metaphorization. The focus of the present study, ROMANTIC LOVE, is considered as a dynamic concept based on philosophical, feminist, psychological and metaphorical research. Metaphors are identified through a discourse dynamic version of MIP and MIPVU.

From the analyses, 6 systematic metaphors are proposed, where ROMANTIC LOVE is metaphorized as a PHYSICAL OBJECT (incl. as a POSSESSION and as a LIVING ORGANISM), as a CONTAINER (incl. CONSTRUCTION and BODY as a CONTAINER), as TRAVELLING together (with primary focus on TRAVELLING together rather than SOURCE or TARGET), as a UNITY (with focus on how a UNITY is ESTABLISHED, MAINTAINED and DISSOLVED, ideally by two COMPATIBLE partners), as a PHYSICAL and NATURAL FORCE and as a DISEASE (where LOVE can affect a person’s perception and sanity). In addition, ROMANTIC LOVE is, in a small number of expressions, metaphorized as a CRIME, as a PHYSICAL CONFLICT and as a GAME. The variation in metaphorization is small between the conversations. Some metaphorizations seem to be related to the age of the participants. ROMANTIC LOVE ismoreover something people usually have influence over and in some ways can control. In total, 780 metaphorical expressions and 9 source domains are identified. Departing from the interplay betweenmetaphorization and culture, a cultural model for ROMANTIC LOVE is reconstructed, where a multifaceted, embodied and experiential concept of ROMANTIC LOVE emerges.

The importance of feedback in writing classes has long been recognised. However, most feedback centres on writing products (e.g., drafts, completed essays) with feedback on writing processes difficult to provide. This paper explores the potential of keystroke logging software (KSL) to provide process-oriented feedback with a secondary focus on increasing self-regulated writing capacity. Specifically, we designed a four-stage intervention using KSL to provide feedback for 34 undergraduates over a 16-week English as a foreign language online writing class. Students recorded themselves writing narrative, descriptive, expository, and opinion essays (~450 words each). Both groups were given feedback tasks designed to improve time management, revision, and source use, but Group B was given targeted and more concrete tasks (i.e., increasingly other-regulated). Results show significant improvements on first draft performance for Group B in text quality and words typed. There was no significant difference between groups on second draft scores. Moreover, both groups reported a significant increase in their use of peer learning strategies, whilst Group B reported significant increases in metacognitive strategies, particularly idea planning. Based on these findings and students’ perceptions on process-oriented feedback, we make a number of recommendations for future studies and lessons that seek to incorporate process-oriented feedback.

This chapter considers the language biographies narrated by two female forced migrants from the area of the former Yugoslavia that is now Bosnia. We analyse these to access defining traumatic and agentic moments towards high-level language and literacy skills in Swedish. They arrived, along with many other forced migrants fleeing the Balkan wars, during a deep economic recession. The immigrant group has outperformed other forced migrant groups in Sweden and these language biographies provide pertinent insights into adaption, and the route to the achievement of high-level literacy and language competencies. These insights should be viewed broadly and not as prototypical for forced migrants. Our findings suggest agentic acts of proactive language- and literacy-learning need to be interwoven across an individual's social, academic, and working life.

The study examines the use of quotation marks in investigations by the police and the social services’ child care. The purpose is to illustrate the function of the quotation marks and possible interpretations of the texts in the light of the quotation marks. This is studied in the different types of discourse presentation: direct and indirect speech and narration. The starting point for the study is that quotation marks are a meaning-making resource, and that their usage plays a role in the functionality of texts in the contexts where they are used. Another purpose is to contribute to terminology development within the research field. The material consists of 20 investigative texts. A relevant purpose of these texts is to convey information obtained during conversations and interviews, and the texts thus represent a discourse that exists in the borderland between spoken and written language. The results of the study are interpreted with the help of concepts such as intertextuality and recontextualization. The analyses show that the primary function of quotation marks can be linked to the activity of retelling, but in the child care investigations in particular, the use of quotation marks is heterogeneous, and the functions of this typographical resource appear to be unclear. Another finding is that 50 percent of all quotation marks in the texts are unconventional and are not described in writing guidelines. This finding highlights the need for a conceptual apparatus which is appropriate for understanding and describing quotation marks as a meaning-making resource. Quotation marks are studied primarily in literary stylistics, but this study shows that quotation marks as a textual and meaning-making resource are also a relevant topic in research on non-fiction prose.

Juridisk översättning är ett komplicerat område som kräver kunskaper både inom lingvistik och juridik. Detta översättningsområde omfattar olika typer texter, allt från juridiska dokument på nationell nivå till dokument på EU-nivå och dokument som har en global påverkan. Eftersom denna typ av texter, som exempelvis lagar och domslut, har en påverkan på samhällen och människors liv är det viktigt att översättningen blir så lik originalet som möjligt. I denna uppsats diskuteras svenska översättningar av Europadomstolens domslut. De svenska översättningarna jämförs med domsluten på franska, vilket är ett av Europadomstolens två officiella språk. Dessa domslut är vägledande för medlemsländerna i Europarådet och påverkar därför lagar och förhållningssätt i de olika medlemsländerna. Skillnader mellan domsluten på svenska och franska diskuteras liksom de potentiella konsekvenser skillnaderna skulle kunna få.

This study examined the metaphors used in contemporary American conservative discourse between October 2018 and March 2019, focusing on material published by conservative think tanks (CTTs) and tweets made by Republican senators in relation to climate change. For the CTTs, a domain-specific corpus (36,388 words) was compiled and a smaller corpus (3967 words) was assembled based on 135 tweets. These datasets showed that conspiracy scepticism was the most common type of scepticism used to discredit climate change data, scientists and environmental policies. In addition, the datasets indicate that conservative agents frequently used metaphors of WAR, RELIGION, HEALTH, BUILDING, JOURNEY, WATER and PRODUCT to convey negative frames. These domains linked to the conceptual key LIFE IS A STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL and were presented in a moral context. In response to these findings it is suggested that the scientific community incorporate emotional language, metaphors and moral values when communicating environmental issues.

Documenting and analyzing how multilingualism materializes around us gives insights in the use, hierarchies and inclusions of languages in society. The visualization of these insights, however, is often challenging as characteris- tics of languages, their flows, movements etc. demand contextualization and clar- ifications that can be difficult to render on a visualization model such as a map. This paper discusses the challenges of visualization and the potentials of digital maps in Linguistic Landscape Studies. We suggest to include and integrate vari- ous layers of qualitative and quantitative data in order to strive for rendering the dynamism of language use.