Today, many children grow up in transnational families with a variety of migration experiences. The Greek-Swedish migration is characterized by a number of migration waves starting in the late 1960s, followed by a period of re-migration to Greece, and then a new migration wave due to the financial crisis in Greece in 2010. This paper investigates seven Greek-speaking families in Stockholm with children from 5 to 17 years old who moved to Sweden after 2010 and in which some of the parents had previously lived in Sweden. Based on ethnographic interviews, we investigated how the families reason about their linguistic choices and linguistic aspirations. Migrant families face the task of caring for both learning the language of the new country of residence and maintaining and developing the family’s mother tongue. While we found several similarities in the way the families ascribed value to knowledge in Swedish and Greek, the parents positioned themselves differently with respect to their perceived agency in their family’s multilingual development. These differences were grounded in the parents’ present and past migration experiences and their current professional and socio-economic situations. When reflecting upon the linguistic choices within the family, migrant parents related the family’s linguistic practices to their own linguistic needs. Making a connection between linguistic practices and migration experiences, we argue, is crucial for understanding how migrant families reflect upon their language learning aspirations and their multilingual lives. 

This paper examines the relationship between language, (in)visibility, and (im)mobility in racialized spaces, focusing on Finnish, Somali, and Arabic speakers in Sweden. Using a theoretical framework based on hegemonic whiteness and intersectionality, the study explores how multilingual practices and subjectivities intersect with race, religion, gender, and class to shape social visibility and mobility. The research draws on linguistic ethnographic data, including interviews, linguistic landscape documentation, and an analysis of the media discourse. The study finds that while Finnish speakers have become invisible due to assimilation policies, Somali and Arabic speakers are hypervisible in Swedish public spaces and discourse, although Arabic speakers are sometimes, and in relation to other migrants, nearing Swedish whiteness. However, all three languages and their speakers are constrained by a white normativity that reproduces inequality. The paper challenges simplistic notions of mobility/immobility and visibility/invisibility in the context of a changing racial order in Sweden, where whiteness serves as a binary sorting mechanism that perpetuates inequality. Overall, this research sheds light on the complex entanglement of language, visibility, and mobility in white spaces and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the intersectional dynamics of race and language. 

This paper employs Conversation Analysis to investigate a specific interactional environment in Swedish police interviews (PIs): sequences where the interviewee asserts an inability to recollect specific events, and the police subsequently challenge this assertion. The police interview serves as a crucial setting for reconstructing past events and identifying the distribution of knowledge among participants. While previous research has delved into the cognitive mechanisms underlying memory retrieval in PIs, there exists a scarcity of empirical investigation of how memories and their associated knowledge are interactionally managed within this high-stakes activity. Prior Conversation Analytic studies exploring how epistemic dimensions shape social interaction form the theoretical basis for the current study, including research indicating how ‘forgetfulness’ can be strategically employed as an interactional resource. Only a few studies have targeted recorded high-stakes interviews in Swedish, and the lack of such is problematic since international research have highlighted the influence of cultural and social factors on conditions and outcomes. Data used for this study comprises anonymized audio recordings (N = 51) from a preliminary murder investigation, making a valuable contribution to the understanding of interactional practices in Swedish police interviews. Results indicate a discrepancy in orientation between the police and the interviewee. The former treats the memories as accessible knowables possible to retrieve, in contrast to the latter, who uses the police’s challenge as a vehicle for contesting the ‘impossible action of remembering.’

This book is about how urban linguistic landscapes reflect and create sociolinguistic, societal and urban dynamics, and how these relations can be scientifically explored. Focusing on the linguistic landscapes of selected cities in northern and southern Europe, it sheds light on how urban areas with diverse profiles differ, and how the linguistic landscapes change through tourism and migration, or in times of crisis. The chapters put forward sophisticated and novel ways of approaching urban sociolinguistics and they enhance understanding of the challenges and opportunities included in the study of sociolinguistic variation in these linguistic landscapes.

The book is targeted at scholars in the field of urban sociolinguistics and those wishing to approach the subject through the lens of linguistic landscapes. It also gives interesting suggestions to people involved in language planning and policy reflection, as well as those engaged in urban redevelopment planning. Last but not least, it offers theoretical and methodological guidance to students and researchers in a variety of disciplines.

This book is about how urban linguistic landscapes reflect and create sociolinguistic, societal and urban dynamics, and how these relations can be scientifically explored. Focusing on the linguistic landscapes of selected cities in northern and southern Europe, it sheds light on how urban areas with diverse profiles differ, and how the linguistic landscapes change through tourism and migration, or in times of crisis. The chapters put forward sophisticated and novel ways of approaching urban sociolinguistics and they enhance understanding of the challenges and opportunities included in the study of sociolinguistic variation in these linguistic landscapes.

How the critical stages of the pandemic were reflected in urban LLs is also in focus in the eighth chapter, which presents a study of crisis communication through unofficial signs in Helsinki and Stockholm. The discussion is about how different rules and recommendations were communicated and legitimised on unofficial signs in the signscapes of both Finland and Sweden. Based on a combination of sociosemiotics, discourse analysis and translation studies, the study gives insights into the role of unofficial signage in the dissemination of crisis communication, and how moral evaluation, rationalisation and authorisation are used as legitimation strategies in transmitting official COVID-19 regulations among the unofficial layers of urban LLs.

The second chapter starts the journey through the urban LLs of a selection of European cities with an endeavour to apply Umberto Eco’s concept of the model reader to LL studies. It explores language use and the intended audience of signs in Stockholm’s nature reserves, with a focus on the addressees. Simultaneously, it offers insights into an urban sphere that has not attracted much attention in previous studies of urban LLs. The case study, which is based on data collected from the fringes of Sweden’s capital city, opens up stimulating paths for the further study of both the sociolinguistic variation in urban LLs and the (perceived) use of different urban spaces.

I denna artikel är vårt syfte att diskutera flerspråkiga praktiker för kommunikation om risk under Covid19-pandemin genom exempel hämtade från de språkliga landskapen i Helsingfors och Stockholm. Vi är intresserade av hur officiell myndighetsinformation av juridisk karaktär överförs (översätts) till skyltar i det offentliga rummet av både officiella och inofficiella aktörer.

This study is part of a project on initial assessment of first language (L1) literacy in adult newcomers prior to the commencement of L2 studies in Swedish. Here, we explore the assessment summariesof newcomers’L1 literacy, performed by L2-teachers, with assistance from an inter-preter. According to the syllabus, instruction in Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) should be adapted to the individual ́s needs and goals; however, SFI often fails to do so. L1 literacy—i.e., using texts in different domains (school, work, society, and everyday life)—serves as a foundation for L2 learning and teachers’access to and utilization of students L1 literacy can significantly enhance instruction. From a sociocultural approach to literacy and based on Luke and Freebody’s ‘Four Resource Model’, a qualitative document analyses of L1 literacy assessment summaries (N=50) demonstrated literacy practices form different domains of student life, beyond school literacy. Literacy practices from all four learner roles, i.e.,Code-Breaker, Text Participant, Text Userand Text Analyst were identified in the assessments to various degrees dependent on the students’background, which is illustrated by a close analysis of 5 summaries. This information is both important for teachers’planning of second language teaching and in the long term for the development of second language teacher education.

This book presents the first major study of ditransitives in Swedish. Using a combination of well-established and innovative corpus-based methods, the book reveals considerable changes in the constructional behaviour of ditransitive verbs over the course of the last 200 years. The key finding is that the use of the so-called double object construction has decreased dramatically in terms of frequency, lexical richness and semantic range. This development is parallelled by a decisive increase in prepositional object constructions. The results are of high relevance to the ongoing debate within construction grammar on constructional productivity and on the nature of horizontal links.

This open access book examines the supervision of undergraduate degree projects, with a particular focus on how supervision may contribute to developing student independence and academic literacies. Based on an extensive research project, it uses examples from focus group interviews as well as actual supervision situations, taken from different higher education programmes at several universities in Sweden and Russia. The authors discuss issues such as supervisors’ perceptions and understandings of student independence, the relationship between supervisor and student, the significance of emotions in the supervision process, different supervision tools to foster independence, and the supervisor’s role not only as a guide and helper but also as an assessor of the students’ work. The book will appeal to scholars within the field of teaching and learning in higher education, as well as those from other disciplines who are interested in developing their own supervision practice.

In this paper, we explore second language (L2) teachers’ cognitions regarding the initial assessment of adult learner literacy in their strongest language. Instruction can thus be adapted according to what is stipulated in the curriculum and syllabus. The literacy assessment is conducted in the student’s strongest language with assistance from an interpreter, translated decoding and reading comprehension tasks and concerns assessment of learners with little or no prior education. Questionnaires and interviews with L2 teachers reveal great variation based on four categories of teacher knowledge, namely, Subject matter knowledge, Knowledge of students, Pedagogical knowledge, and Knowledge of educational contexts. These four categories were partly intertwined with each other and both a resource and a deficit perspective emerged. The teachers’ cognitions regarding the concept of literacy, the value of initial L1 literacy assessment and students’ prior literacy and multilingual resources, as well as its potential for instruction planning were diverse. This may have significant implications for what emerges in initial assessments of a student's L1 literacy. In turn, this affects the validity of the assessment and, ultimately, the quality of education.

This study explores upper-secondary school students’ source-based writing skills and what teachers can focus on to improve these skills. The students who participated were enrolled in university preparatory programmes at a Swedish municipal upper-secondary school. The results are based on 73 texts written by students in the subject Swedish (first-language education) and 11 interviews based on the students’ texts. Before the interviews, I went through the students’ texts and prepared questions about their use of sources. I use phenomenography to describe four different ways of using sources and variation theory to identify four critical aspects of learning this skill. To use sources in the most developed way, students need to be able to discern that: (1) acknowledging sources varies with literacy practice; (2) ideas from sources support arguments in own writing; (3) own ideas are separate from those of others; and (4) sources are compared and evaluated throughout the writing process. These critical aspects can be used to plan the teaching of source-based writing for upper-secondary school students.

The article provides an overview of feminist linguistics, which explores language as a key communication tool and a powerful force in shaping identity and power. It highlights the evolution of feminist thought in linguistics from identifying language's role in gender inequality to its current integration in academic discourse. Key areas such as sociolinguistics, lexicography, and discourse analysis have been enriched, focusing on issues like gendered language ideology and sexist language. The article also covers the impact of feminist linguistics in reshaping language norms through activism, especially outside traditional frameworks and on digital platforms, with movements like #MeToo as examples. It discusses how gendered language practices influence societal gender equality, illustrating ongoing challenges and progress in feminist linguistic research.

This paper presents a study of the linguistic landscape of a commercial public space: the shopping mall Sunnuhlíð in Akureyri. This landscape is in the periphery in seve­ral ways, as it is located outside the town centre and away from the more populous south­western Iceland. The data consists of photos of signs in the shopping mall. We discuss how language and place are made visible in the linguistic landscape through an analysis of which languages are used, what functions the signs and languages on them are given and, building on that, what sense of place is created by the language­use. We approach the data mainly through a qualitative discussion of illustrative examples of signs but do also present quantitative observations about the linguistic landscape in question in general. Our analysis shows that most signs use Icelandic only. Thereafter, English is the second most reoccurring language. The results show that the signs in the shopping mall are geared towards the locals, with presupposed knowledge of Icelandic. Other languages take on more specific functions. We discuss the results in the context of multilingualism in Iceland and the status of different languages in the Icelandic society.

The aim of this study is to demonstrate how the presence of an emerging written record may affect the content of an asylum narrative, based on which a decision concerning the asylum claimant's right to receive protection eventually is taken. The lion's share of studies on interpreter-mediated asylum interviews to date focus on risks involved with assigning non-professionals to perform the interpreting. This study draws specifically on a 3.5 min-long sequence taken from an asylum interview involving a professional interpreter, working between Russian and Swedish, and the corresponding paragraph of the Swedish-language written minutes, produced in parallel by the caseworker at a Migration Agency office. The study demonstrates something that hasn't been highlighted much in the literature on asylum interviews, namely the mutual impact of the interpreter-mediated communicative format-the specific turn taking order and the restricted linguistic transparency-and the parallel record keeping; the intricate passage from two spoken languages to an asylum narrative in the form of a text written in one of these languages.

This paper presents a study of the double object construction (DOC) in 19th‑ and 20th‑century Swedish, focussing on the semantic range of the construction. The results show that throughout this period, the Swedish DOC occurs with verbs of transfer (e.g. ge ‘give’), future transfer (erbjuda ‘offer’), dispossession (beröva ‘deprive’), hindrance (neka ‘deny’), communication (säga ‘say’), causation (förorsaka ‘cause’), creation and obtaining (laga ‘cook’, skaffa ‘obtain’) as well as verbs of attitude (avundas ‘envy’). Verbs of benefaction and malefaction (öppna ‘open’, spärra ‘block’) are found in the 19th‑century data, but do not occur in the DOC in present-day Swedish anymore. Over time, verbs of transfer have come to constitute the majority of the instances of the DOC, while most other semantic categories have undergone a decrease in token frequency, relative to the construction as a whole. These findings suggest that since the beginning of the 19th century, the Swedish DOC has undergone a process of semantic specialization, similar to the development of the corresponding constructions in English (Colleman and De Clerck 2011; Zehentner 2018) and Dutch (Colleman 2011). The study also reveals a decline in text frequency and overall type frequency of the DOC as a whole, indicating that the construction has become less productive over the last two centuries.

Signs in the linguistic landscape (LL) can be used to both inform the publicand to regulate their actions – functions that are highly relevant when communicatingabout risk. This chapter discusses the characteristics of the riskdiscourse carried by the linguistic landscape, more specifically the safetyinformation signage found onboard metro carriages in Stockholm andHelsinki. The analysis deals with both how such information is presentedon the multimodal signs and what kinds of risks and responsibilities aredepicted as part of this information. The results show that emplacement andthe visual design, more specifically the application of colours, are noteworthycharacteristics of risk discourse present in the LL. Few actual risks arespelled out in the signage and even if the readers can be given responsibilityto act in the face of risks, this information can be worded in different ways.Considering interpersonal speech functions, both direct commands andmore ambivalent, passive statements can be found, with some differences inpractices between the two cities. Overall, the situated nature of the safetyinformation signage points to the role of place semiotics in meaning makingwithin risk discourse, thus highlighting the value of considering the LL inorder to gain a better understanding of risk communication.

Under två decennier har högre utbildning haft breddad rekrytering som målsättning, vilket har fört med sig nya och mer heterogena studentgrupper. En av dessa är studenter med annat modersmål än svenska, och återkommande tenderar deras skrivförmåga att fokuseras i debatten. Att skrivande är sammankopplat med det sociala sammanhang där skrivandet sker har beskrivits väl inom fältet Academic Literacies. I den här artikeln presenteras en studie med fokus på lärares attityder och förhållningssätt till andraspråksstudenters skrivande. Syftet med studien är att belysa normer som präglar skrivandets sammanhang, för att på så vis få en bättre bild av de förutsättningar som präglar och omgärdar andraspråksstudenters skrivande i olika ämnen under deras utbildningsprogram. För att undersöka detta har lärares skriftliga respons som rör språket analyserats med avstamp i teorier om respons. De lärare som skrivit responsen har också intervjuats om sin respons med hjälp av stimulated recall-teknik. Resultaten visar att lärarnas respons präglas av deras egna erfarenheter, syn på skrivprocessen samt den egna rollen inom utbildningen. Sammantaget visar undersökningen att bristen på kollegial samsyn mellan ämnen inom programmet ger utrymme för parallella normer att existera, vilket resulterar i att studenterna möter ett brett spann av förväntningar på hur texter ska utformas. 

Studier som fokuserar på det akademiska skrivandets sociala sammanhang har påvisat ett glapp mellan lärarnas förväntningar på studenternas skrivande och studenternas tolkningar av lärarnas krav. En studentgrupp vars skrivande särskilt har hamnat i fokus är flerspråkiga studenter, vilket kanske kan förklaras med att lärarna ofta är ovana vid dessa studenters förutsättningar. I syfte att rikta ljuset mot glappet undersöker vi hur högskolelärare reflekterar muntligt kring sin bedömning av flerspråkiga studenters texter vilka uppvisar tydliga andraspråksdrag. Materialet utgörs av retrospektiva intervjuer kring lärarnas respons på studenttexter, och för undersökningen tillämpas det sociokulturella ramverket Academic Literacies, i kombination med Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA). Genom att undersöka hur kategoriseringar konstrueras interaktionellt bidrar studien till att belysa hur normer och förväntningar kopplade till bedömningspraktiken uttrycks. Resultaten pekar på variation gällande attityder till andraspråksdrag, och MCA bidrar till att fånga hur dessa attityder uttrycks genom kategoriseringar och positioneringar. Å ena sidan konstrueras klassiska akademiska ideal, där lärare och student positioneras med stort avstånd till varandra gällande kompetenser och resurser. Å andra sidan uttrycks också ett mer dynamiskt förhållningssätt mellan lärare och student, vilket representerar ett perspektiv rotat i Academic Literacies.

The 17th Nordic Name Research Congress was held online in June 2021 and arranged by the University of Helsinki in cooperation with The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, Institute for the Languages of Finland and Södertörn University. These proceedings contain fourteen articles based on papers presented at the congress, discussing different perspectives on the congress theme or other issues with personal names, place names or other types of proper names. Summaries in English are included.

I alla nordiska länder har arbetslivets krav på färdighet i andraspråket (L2) blivit ett nyckelområde i språkutbildning för vuxna invandrare. Denna artikel är en del av en serie som ger en översikt över språkpolitik och forskningsverksamhet i de nordiska länderna relaterad till L2 i arbetslivet, tillsammans med nya empiriska analyser. Här ligger fokus på det svenska perspektivet. Artikeln har som syfte att undersöka eventuell språklig komplexitet i Socialstyrelsens kunskapsprov för läkare med examen från utanför EU/EEA. Provet testar ”... kunskap, viss förståelse och förmåga att tillämpa kunskapen på kliniska fall” (Umeå universitet, 2022, 5 okt.) och skrivs av i första hand andraspråksanvändare, med en särskild språklig utmaning att läsa och förstå uppgifterna. Artikeln utgår från hypotesen att vissa uppgifter är språkligt komplexa, vad gäller drag som brukar anses vara försvårande även för den avancerade andraspråkstalaren: komplex syntax, lågfrekventa allmänord och flerordskonstruktioner, samt uttryck för modalitet och förekomst av flera aktörer. Resultat visar att dessa drag finnas i de undersökta uppgifterna, vid sidan om en medicinsk terminologi. Flera uppgifter som många prövande svarade fel på var också de som var språkliga komplexa. En slutsats som dras är därmed att man i provkonstruktionen bör förhålla sig till krav på validitet inte bara gällande test av medicinska kunskaper utan även språkfärdighet, i ljuset av att flertalet av de prövande är andraspråksanvändare. Artikeln föreslår dels ett försök till språklig anpassning, exempelvis en syntaktisk redigering. Dels efterfrågas en större tydlighet om de språkliga kraven, i syfte att stötta de prövande att förbereda sig bättre. Inte minst utifrån ett utbildnings- och integrationsperspektiv skulle såväl samhället som individen vinna på detta.

Från sitt rum på Fjällgatan, där det diktades, skrevs och kritiserades, lade Sophie Adlersparre grunden till den svenska feministrörelsen. Inte minst bidrog hennes arbete som redaktör till att många av tidens viktigaste röster fick rum i offentligheten. I år skulle Esselde ha fyllt 200 år.

I år är det 200 år sedan Sophie Adlersparre föddes. Vem sa du? Sophie Adlersparre. Kallades Esselde. Ringer inga klockor? Nåväl, du är inte ensam…

In this case study we investigate the role of transnational networks and language brokering in labour migration within the European Union. By describing the working days of Estonians hired by a city maintenance company in Sweden, we demonstrate how language skills and network ties of a manager enable work migration in the local context. Most of the recruited workers belong to the manager's circle of family and friends. The manager is thus both capitalising on his social relationships and reinforcing a social support network in the receiving country for the individuals involved. The article promotes our understanding of the interface between migration, multilingualism, and language brokering in the understudied blue-collar workplaces and dissects the social and economic values of linguistic resources in work migration across the Baltic Sea. The data consist of ethnographic observations of daily work routines, video recordings of interaction, and interviews.

In this paper, we conduct a critical discourse analytical study of asylum interviews in order to contribute to knowledge and awareness of (a) how asymmetrical power relations are discursively (re)produced as well as manoeuvred and negotiated during the interaction and (b) what this means in terms of positioning of the participants. Focusing on a number of metacommunicative sequences characterised by a notably high degree of interpersonal complexity, we examine how participants are positioned and how positioning is discursively realised. We draw on eight observed and recorded asylum interviews conducted in Sweden 2018–2021. Metacommunicative positioning is analysed mainly with a focus on speech functions and modality. We show that metacommunication is used by all participants largely as a means of constructing an asylum narrative within the framework of an institutional discourse. The participants can position each other in (dis)advantageous ways in their attempts to deny, or sometimes claim, responsibility for miscommunication. The applicants generally obey the metacommunicative instructions given by other, more powerful participants. However, we also show an example of an applicant who makes resistance to the institutional discourse. Furthermore, all participants use metacommunication as a tool to guide each other in the conversation, thereby positioning themselves as responsible for the co-construction of the asylum narrative. Finally, we underline the benefits of conducting critical discourse analysis in the study of asylum interviews, although such studies can barely change the fact that the asylum determination process is unequal and asymmetrical in its core.

1500-talet är på många sätt en omvälvande period i Sverige, som kanske bäst karaktäriseras som en tid av brytning. Samtidigt som perioden av eftervärlden har kommit att definieras som en tid av kulturell nedgång och nedläggning av universitet, är det tydligt att vissa miljöer blir allt mer beroende av skrift och skriftkompetens. En sådan miljö är hovet. 

I föredraget presenterar jag en avslutat postdokstudie i vilken jag undersökt brev skrivna, alt. utfärdade, av Vasakvinnorna. Syftet med studien är att lyfta fram och beskriva dessa aristokratiska kvinnors skrift- och språkbruk under 1500-talet, med fokus på dels funktion: vad skrev de? Till vem? I vilket syfte? Dels skriftförtrogenhet och språklig variation: när skrev de själva och när användes skrivare? Hur ser de språkliga mönstren ut och utvecklar de sig åt något håll under århundradet? 

Teoretiskt utgår studien från historisk sociolingvistik, med avstamp i den inriktning som har kommit att benämnas ”sprachgeschichte von unten” (Elspass 2005). 

Litteratur

Elspaß, Stephan, 2005. Sprachgeschichte von unten. Untersuchungen zum geschriebenen Alltagsdeutsch im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer. (Reihe Germanistische Linguistik, 263).

Elspass, Stephan, 2012. “The Use of Private Letters and Diaries in Sociolinguistic Investigations”. I:  Hernández-Campoy, J. & Conde-Silvestre, J. C. (red.), The handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. S. 156–169.

In the Nordic countries, municipal courts experienced a vast increase in the production and use of administrative and juridical records during the Early Modern period.Among other external factors, in Sweden, this intensification can be linked to the steadilyincreasing use since the fourteenth century of the vernacular as the written language inlegal contexts. With the establishment of the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm (1614),it was decided that all lower courts would send their records there. In consequence, townscribes, in addition to writing a draft (in Swedish koncept) and a transcript (renskrift), hadto formulate yet another version of the court record for the higher court (renovation).This led to a dynamic writing process: differing versions of the court record were created,each one written at a different time for a somewhat different purpose and with differentrequirements in terms of content and linguistic style, but all of them legally valid. Empirical comparisons show there may be vast differences between the first draft and the editedtranscript, both in style and content, with the second text a modified version, with greateruse of legal linguistic markers. In this article, we discuss the empirical and theoreticalaspects of the textual transmission of court records in Early Modern Sweden. We focuson Stockholm municipal court records 1634 in draft and transcript and analyse the scribalstrategies in the two versions. First, we present a comparative analysis of the versions anddescribe how the draft and transcript were rephrased and stylized. Second, we present amaterial-philological analysis of the manuscripts in order to enhance the discussion ofthe function and use of the versions. The study shows that the town scribe Eggert Matsson Aurelius has made use of the following strategies when transforming the draft into atranscript: copying, rephrasing, expanding, summarising, and omitting.

This paper discusses the names of bus stops in two Nordic capital regions: Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm, Sweden. These names can be defined as official, urban toponyms, and the naming is also characterised by the reuse of existing nomenclature whereby the names gain a secondary referent as a label for a bus stop. The choice of names is analysed from a sample of bus stops from the two regions. Street names are the most used source for names of bus stops. Other sources include names of train and metro stations, names of areas, other official urban nomenclature (e.g., names of squares, parks), and names of various potential destinations and urban landmarks. As the names themselves cannot reveal information about the actual use and perception of the names, the paper also outlines potential research questions for further socio-onomastic approaches. 

This study examines the discursive construction of ‘refugees’, ‘migrants’, ‘asylum seekers’ and other mobile humans in the Swedish press. Quantitative and qualitative methods from Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies are combined to analyze a corpus of about 31 000 newspaper articles, published during 28 central months of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, 2015–2017. The analyses show that many different labelling strategies are used to categorize humans that flee to Sweden into several sub-groups. These sub-groups are framed in different ways.

Sedan 2011 skriver eleverna i högskoleförberedande gymnasieprogram ett vetenskapligt präglat gymnasiearbete. Många elever upplever dock att detta arbete är svårt att skriva. Syftet i denna artikel är att undersöka vilka förutsättningar elever får för detta vetenskapliga arbete, mer specifikt hur elever förbereds för gymnasiearbetet genom skrivuppgifter under utbildningen. Forskningsfrågorna rör hur lärarna kategoriserar det skrivande eleverna kommer i kontakt med i gymnasiekursernas skrivuppgifter, vilket annat stöd eleverna får genom skrivuppgifterna och hur detta stöd förhåller sig till gymnasiearbetets krav. I undersökningen ingick tre gymnasieklasser som följdes från årskurs 1 till årskurs 3. Teoretiskt utgår vi från ett academic literacies-perspektiv där hela undervisningskontexten är betydelsefull i relation till skrivandet. Empirin består av skrivuppgifter som har publicerats på skolornas studiewebbar. I analysen används begreppen stöttningsverktyg, genre och skrivhandlingar. Resultaten visar variation i uppgifter och stöd mellan olika gymnasieprogram och ämnen, men visar samtidigt på bristande systematik och samsyn i hur skrivuppgifter utformas och beskrivs, och vilket stöd som ges. 

This article presents a qualitative, empirical study of two educational programmes for immigrants that integrate languageinstruction and vocational training. In the context of migration, social inclusion is often conceptualised as access to socialcapital. Proficiency in the national language is considered key for employment and fast integration into working life hasbecome a primary goal in Swedish migration policies. This article examines the two programmes from the perspectiveof inclusion into an (imagined) future professional community of practice (CoP), focusing specifically on the participants’possibilities to invest in a professional linguistic repertoire. The article is dedicated to empirical analyses and positive factors,recognising the need for research. Data consists of interviews with students and teachers, observations, and videorecordings of course activities. Organisational aspects of the courses, such as the teachers’ backgrounds and the courses’proximity to future CoPs, as well as relational aspects of the learning environments, are considered essential for the participants’inclusion in a future professional CoP. Analyses of the programmes’ content demonstrate that participants areassumed to lack context‐specific, vocational knowledge, including professionally related vocabulary. The article contributesto knowledge on how inclusion can be managed in practice in educational settings for adult immigrants and promotesan understanding of how vocationally adapted courses can assist immigrants in becoming members of a future professionalCoP.

This chapter presents a theory of texts often used in Scandinavian “sakprosa” research. In the chapter, the constitutive features of any text are presented. It is shown how the text as a cultural artefact has the quality of and at the same time being a unique utterance and instantiating a text norm. In the text theory presented, text is part of a text culture, to which other text sharing similar norms belong. Thus, a “text” is conceived as an utterance that competent participants in a specific cultural time and space assign a certain cultural value.

In this study, youth participation in a participatory democracy project is examined at the intersection of the deontic and emotional order. The data are drawn from a yearlong participatory democracy project where 14–15-year-olds meet with politicians and public servants to decide on a vision for how the community should be in 2050. By analysing their interactions, the present study shows how adult community representatives elicit adolescents’ negative emotional experiences and transform these into deontic building blocks in the impending decision-making. The analysis shows how the transformation of adolescents’ negative emotional experiences casts the adolescents as emotional perceivers and deontic objects, a role they are shown to comply with. Furthermore, this sets up a proximal deontic order that, in turn, re-establishes a distal deontic order, both in which the adolescents’ positions are subordinated and regulated. Ultimately, by inviting youths to participate in the democracy project itself as well as eliciting their negative emotional experiences the politicians and public servants are shown to use the youths as emotional gearwheels in an already set larger deontic machinery.

Sexual consent is advocated around the world to reduce sexual assault. The widespread affirmative consent model emphasizes a need for unambiguous consent. In this paper, we contribute to a deeper understanding of how ambiguities in the initiations of sexual activities are routinely solved to achieve consent. Drawing on conversation analytic research on joint decision-making, and a dataset of 80 cases of sexual initiation in contemporary TV-series and movies, we investigate the interactional practices by which sexual activities are presented as consensual and how consent is achieved across sequences of interaction. We found there to be social advantages of synchronous initiation, compared to sequential verbal initiations, which were associated with various social vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities could however be circumvented by two practices, each of which made use of a distinct combination of verbal and embodied resources. While ambiguities exist, our results oppose the idea of sexual consent as a practically hopeless and awkward endeavor. Instead, consent consists of joint action that is achieved through recognizable and systematic ways.

Court records and the history of the early modern period go hand in hand. Court records are crucial for our knowledge of the period and the most important set of data for several fields of scholarship. In this article we study how Scandinavian historians and language historians have used court records in their research. In this multidisciplinary synthesis of such historical and language historical research in court records in Finland and Sweden, the focus is research mainly in Finnish and Swedish but also in English, published between 1950 and 2020, but weighted towards the twent-first century. We show that historians have often been interested in source criticism whereas language historians concentrate on the question of linguistic variation and change. We identify three major themes that are fruitful for multidisciplinary collaboration between historians and linguists who relay on court records as a source: the records (their accuracy and reliability), the discourse levels (the records' textual structures and  patterns), and the scribes (the common denominator). The study emphasises the multidisciplinary dimensions of court record research; the researcher should preferably be alert to the theoretical and analytical discussions in both disciplines and draw on one another's expertise. The article is an outcome of "City scribes in the kingdom of Sweden in the early modern period (1614–1714): Their profession, agency and use of language", a multidisciplinary research project at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, financed by the Kone Foundation for the period 2020–2024. 

This article takes a look at the linguistic landscapes of the Stockholm archipelago with the aim to discuss if, and how, a specific sense of place is produced or reflected in the signs, building on Lefebvre’s concept of social spaces. Signs collected from two islands, Nämdö and Svartsö, are used in qualitative analysis. Firstly, the construction of such a (rural) linguistic landscape is discussed, focusing on the languages used as well as the emplacement and general functions of signs. Secondly, a closer look at some examples from the linguistic landscape provides insight into signs that are speaking to locals and visitors. The analysis shows that the linguistic landscape is almost exclusively made up of signs in Swedish. Functionally, a variety of different signs can be found, partly centred by local businesses, and on bulletin boards, but many signs with general information and instructions can also be found throughout the landscape. Examples of signs addressing both permanent residents and visitors can be identified, but the general sense of place the linguistic landscapes reflect is that of more organic places, not overly produced or touristic ones.