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Umeå University wants to increase the number of students who do part of their degree course at a foreign university, as part of a general drive to increase internationalization in all fields (Verksamhetsuppdrag & resursfördelning 2007 Fastställd av universitetsstyrelsen 2006-11-13). However, students going abroad need preparation – not just in the specific formalities of behaviour etc. in the country they will visit but in developing an understanding that will help them to function wherever they go outside Sweden. As there was no course of this kind available for Umeå's outgoing students the Department of Modern Languages decided to make use of its expertise in the field and put together a 5-credit course in raising intercultural awareness. The department received financial support for the planning and delivery of a pilotcourse, Spring 2007, from the International Committees of the University and the Faculty of Arts. The ultimate aim of internationalization must be the increased understanding that comes from working with others, which demands intercultural awareness. Intercultural awareness comes from reflecting on one's own values and beliefs vis-à-vis those of others and achieving an attitude of acceptance. This is not achieved through textbooks or lectures about gestures etc. but through participation in structured activities.

Based on current results produced in modern cognitive linguistics this study examines linguistic evidence derived from the experiential field ,labor⁴ in German and Swedish in order to formulate a theory which more closely describes the relationship between semantic and conceptual structure in lexical concepts. The author maintains that semantic information can be seen as the content of the culture which it reflects and that semantic content is represented in culture specific modes. On the basis of frequency lists a chronologically organized cultural lexicon is presented for each language and culture area. The aim of the cultural lexicon is to point out central fields of concern in the two examined language communities at different times. The second part of the investigation deals with the conceptual structure in two culturally relevant types, labor and unemployment, of the cultural lexicon. In accordance with modern relativist views it is argued that linguistic form must be seen as a result of cultural embodiment and that modes of representation in the human mind must also show traces of this embodiment. It is shown that conceptual (and semantic) structures not only reinforce views of the world, but also play a central role in compatibility restrictions on the performance level. The author suggests that semantic and conceptual structures in lexical concepts are distributed in a metaphorical profile specific to each lexical concept and held together on its various levels by so called protosemes and concernes.

The thesis explores the form, function and sociolinguistic distribution of explicit apologies in the spoken part of the British National Corpus. The sub-corpus used for the study comprises a spoken text mass of about five million words and represents dialogue produced by more than 1700 speakers, acting in a number of different conversational settings. More than 3000 examples of apologising are included in the analysis.

Primarily, the form and function of the apologies are examined in relation to the type of offence leading up to the speech act. Aspects such as the sincerity of the apologies and the use of additional remedial strategies other than explicit apologising are also considered. Variations in the distributions of the different types of apologies found are subsequently investigated for the two independent variables speaker social identity (gender, social class and age) and conversational setting (genre, formality and group size). The effect of the speaker-addressee relationship on the apology rate and the types of apologies produced is also examined.

In this study, the prototypical apology, a speech act used to remedy a real or perceived offence, is only one of a number of uses of the apology form in the corpus. Other common functions of the form include discourse-managing devices such as request cues for repetition and markers of hesitation, as well as disarming devices uttered before expressing disagreement and controversial opinions.

Among the speaker social variables investigated, age and social class are particularly important in affecting apologetic behaviour. Young and middle-class speakers favour the use of the apology form. No substantial gender differences in apologising are apparent in the corpus. I have also been able to show that large conversational groups result in frequent use of the form. Finally, analysis of the effects of the speaker-addressee relationship on the use of the speech act shows that, contrary to expectations based on Brown & Levinson’s theory of politeness, it is the powerful who tend to apologise to the powerless rather than vice versa.

The study implies that formulaic politeness is an important linguistic marker of social class and that its use often involves control of the addressee.

The Journal of Northern Studies is a peer-reviewed academic publication issued twice a year. The journal has a specific focus on human activities in northern spaces, and articles concentrate on people as cultural beings, people in society and the interaction between people and the northern environment. In many cases, the contributions will represent exciting interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches. Apart from scholarly articles, the journal contains a review section, a section with reports from conferences etc. and information about upcoming events relevant for Northern Studies.

The aim of this research has been to describe and analyse Swedish linguistic and cultural influence, on identification, and idiomatic awareness as well as on the Spanish used by Hispanic Americans who have lived more than 12 years in Sweden.

The analysis has been carried out within the field of sociolinguistics, specifically in the area of language contact, drawing on methodological aspects of ethno linguistics, sociology of language and cognitive linguistics. The research was divided into two phases. In the first phase, we describe and analyse Corpus 1, consisting of 20 interviews of first generation Hispanic Americans political refugees. In the second phase, we describe, compare and analyse Corpus 2, which consists of 105 questionnaires distributed to first and second generation Hispanic Americans in Sweden.

The results have shown that in Sweden Hispanic Americans have gradually generated a variety of Spanish which clearly shows features of Swedish culture and language and with an aspect of standardisation due to the fact that in the intercommunication between language speakers of varieties of Spanish certain variations have slowly been eliminated over the course of time. The sociolinguistic situation of the informants has been observed as well as the nature of the immigration and identification and idiomatic awareness in relation to their integration or lack of integration into Swedish society. The use of 38 words with a high level of synonymy was also investigated in order to establish standardisation of these representative words among the varieties of Spanish, spoken in Sweden. Furthermore we have investigated clichés, lexical, semantic-pragmatic and syntactic loans from Swedish as well as Swedish cultural influence on use tense among the informants.

Om naturvetenskapens och logikens inflytande på tysk språkvetenskap och grammatik från ca 1800 fram till våra dagar, en symbios på gott och ont.

Om den synnerligen heterogena och svårdefinierbara kategorin Adverb i ett historiskt perspektiv (1800- och 1900-talet). Några viktiga avgränsningsförsök under perioden analyseras, delvis på basis av sekundärlitteratur, och slutsatser av granskningen dras.