This study explores parents' and children's use of and response to direct or indirect behaviour regulation in a family context. Ten families with two children each were divided into two groups depending on the age of the children (6-7 and 10-11 years or 10-11 and 13-14 years). Video-recorded regulatory dinner talk was transcribed, coded and analysed with regard to directness or indirectness in relation to behavioural outcome. Dinner talk was predominantly direct, but younger children were addressed by direct regulators as two-thirds of all regulators, whereas the opposite was seen with older children. Though children also tended to be direct, younger children used three times as many direct regulators as older ones. Compliance appeared in two-thirds of all direct regulators, but almost one-half of all indirect regulators were not complied with. Differences between groups were furthermore distinguished by instances of compliance: those who were most non-compliant were the children in group 2.

This article aims to contribute to the study of professional discourse by focusing on the role of written texts in complex communication processes. It also aims to contribute to the field of social semiotics by problematizing the concept of grammatical metaphor, framing it multimodally and interactionally. The case in focus is a risk analysis meeting which is characterized by explicit definitions of goals and methods: the objective of risk analysis is to identify and evaluate potential risks that might threaten a project. However, the activity also has other goals, such as finding common ground and developing a joint perspective in the project group. Managing these divergent agendas is possible given the technique developed and the tools used-small pieces of paper, pens, a whiteboard, whiteboard markers, and oral conversation. In the choice of resources for different purposes, materiality is crucial. Because of the affordances of the small notes and the thick ink marker, the individual risks are thingified at an early, stage, while oral conversation is used for problematization and negotiation. In the minutes, the construal of risks as things is preserved and contributes to the reification and thus technification of similar meanings in the social practice of the organization.

In the research project Literacy Practices in Working Life, the role played by reading and writing in common nonacademic occupations in Sweden was investigated. The results highlight not only some typical ways of using writing to frame units of work but also differences reflecting the main focus of work ("people" or "things") and overall organizing principles. This article deals with patterns in the use of writing, which may be related to modern ways of organizing work (efficiency and flexibility, personal responsibility, identification with the company, etc.). Case studies show a range of literacy practices-running from extensive and rather complicated uses of writing connected with individual responsibility to very restricted and dependent uses of reading and writing governed by a top-down organization. Examples illustrate how emerging ways of governing work through written discourse, related to the new, knowledge-based work order, create very different roles for workers.

Svensk forskning om språk i arbetslivet intresserar sig alltmer för vård och omsorg. Delvis hänger detta samman med en förändrad arbetssituation för de vårdanställda, som medfört ökande krav på kommunikation i arbetet. Personalen förväntas bland annat kunna dokumentera sina insatser, bemöta patienter på ett servicemässigt korrekt sätt och informera olika målgrupper om svåra eller känsliga ämnen. Texterna i denna volym handlar om fleraolika yrkesgrupper inom vården: om läkare, barnmorskor, sjuksköterskor verksamma vid sjukvårdsrådgivningen, undersköterskor och vårdbiträden i äldreomsorgen samt telefonoperatörer som tar emot färdtjänstbeställningar. Detta speglar hur vårdsektorn ser ut idag: många olika kompetenser behöver samverka och kommunicera, samtidigt som de språkliga utmaningar som möter de vårdanställda blir alltmer komplicerade och krävande. Patienten sätts också i ökande grad i centrum, vilket gör att kommunikation som arbetsredskap är något som behöver medvetandegöras.

Bokens författare är verksamma som språkforskare och intresserade av olika aspekter av språk och kommunikation i vården. I sina bidrag analyserar de normer som styr hur språket används i samtal och texter, liksom hur språket bygger upp och fungerar i olika kontexter. Författarna intresserar sig också för hur språkvetenskapens analysområde gränsar till och överlappar andra vetenskaper, som vårdvetenskap och samhällsvetenskap. Här framtonar ett mångvetenskapligt fält där delvis nya metoder kan behöva utvecklas. Denna utveckling är ett genomgående tema för samtliga bidrag i den här boken.    

In this paper social semiotics, and systemic functional linguistics in particular, are used in order to identify registers of digital literacy in the use of virtual learning environments. The framework of social semiotics provides means to systemize and discuss digital literacy as a linguistic and semiotic issue. The following research question was investigated in the paper: What different registers of digital literacy could be identified when students and teachers communicate and interact in a VLE? The research question was answered by. initially, an application of social semiotics to virtual learning environments, and its relation to the knowledge domains of everyday, specialized and reflexive digital literacy. This application was then further developed, using an analysis of a course specific use of a virtual learning environment in a case study. The study identified discrepancies between the digital literacies of teachers. designers and students. These discrepancies mean that a shared semiotic register was sometimes difficult to maintain. The conclusion is that the designers and teachers as co-designers of virtual learning environments need a better understanding of everyday digital literacy in order to design more sufficient learning environments. The paper shows that digital literacy must be considered as a situated practice, and that it concerns functional and communicative competencies rather than acquiring a set of technical skills.

Hur skapas en bild av kompetens och auktoritet hos en institutionell  representant i ett samtal med en person ur allmänheten? Kring den frågan  kretsar den här artikeln, som analyserar samspelet mellan en rådgivande  sjuksköterska och en inringande person i ett telefonsamtal om  vaccinering mot svininfluensa (den nya influensan). Syftet är att bättre  förstå rådgivarens retoriska kompetens som den framstår i den aktuella  rådgivningssituationen och som en del av samhällets krisberedskap.

Active listening in conversation is considered an important professional duty within nursing in general and in medical telephone advice service in particular. This can be accomplished in several ways, often by the use of minimal responses, such as in back channeling and short vocal feedback signals. The aim of this article is to explore the professional use of feedback signals in medical advice calls. Previous research has reported a variety of functions of feedback signals, both in professional contexts and in telephone calls, and such functions include continuers and empathic and channeling tokens. The results of my present study indicate that the feedback signals in telephone advice mainly belong to one of a number of information-oriented subtypes. Referential signals are the most frequent, but other commonly-used signals have regulatory, channeling, or phatic functions. Emotional- affective signals are also used, but to a less degree than in e.g. psychotherapy. The different functions can be distinguished and defined by prosodic features used in their production. Feedback signals usually appear at syntactic borders, except for empathic signals, which are uttered more freely. The signals seem to be part of a professional practice in which the nurse continuously and pedagogically adapts to the emergent situation and the caller. It is suggested that the form of feedback signals may be conventionalized to some degree, a finding that, however, needs to be further explored.

I den här artikeln analyseras några miljödebatter i den svenska  riksdagen under 90- och 00-talen, främst med avseende på hur deltagarna  behandlar de ämnen som ingår i debatten. Utifrån ett antal dimensioner  hos den moderna offentligheten analyseras diskussionens olika former.  Politisk deliberation står i centrum för analysen, som fokuserar  genredrag och genreväxlingar. Här diskuteras hur deliberationen påverkas  av deltagarnas grad av sakkunskap i de frågor som debatteras och vilka  behov det finns av expertbidrag. De senares roll för politisk  deliberation och besluts­fattande fokuseras och jämförs med politikernas  språkstrategiska val i en diskussion om konflikten mellan  välunderbyggda beslut och politisk ­prestige.

Despite the widespread acknowledgement of the importance of high levels of literacy, national reports in Sweden show a decrease in all types of students' literacy abilities. Several studies also repost dysfunctional teaching in reading and writing. This article is based on the assumption that changing the way educators teach reading and writing requires changing the way they understand the context of reading and writing. The two studies discussed here examined a group of students' prefferd literacy practices and the literacy pracices promoted by the national curriculum. The article focuses on the potential benefical interaction between students' everyday literacy practices and the formal literacy practices promoted by schools. Additionally, classroom talk as an important part of constructing literacy is discussed.

The article deals with the construction of gender and sexuality in contemporary Swedish dictionaries. Feminist linguists have pointed out the reproductive force of dictionaries and shown their sexist attitudes towards women. Traditionally, dictionaries are compiled by men for men in a patriarchal society, based on the speech and writing of men. And dictionaries not only tell us about the views and attitudes of the society, they also actively reinforce and reproduce those views. Central words for sexual organs and sexual activities in nine Swedish dictionaries have been analysed. The analysis shows that the female sexuality is not made invisible or passive in a systematic way. For example, the clitoris is described as an active organ “causing orgasm” in two of the dictionaries and the definition of intercourse given in a dictionary intended for use in compulsory school is at least partly non-heterosexist. Dictionaries from the twenty-first century have also included a neutral colloquial word for the female genitalia – which has been thought of as absent in Swedish. All this can be interpreted as an effect of the relatively strong political influence of feminism, struggle for gender equity and the gay movement in Sweden in the past decade. And due to the reproductive force of the dictionaries, this is a good sign of progress.

In standard Swedish there has been no neutral, colloquial word for the female genitalia. This problem attracted considerable attention in the 1990s. Different words were proposed, with the word snippa soon emerging as the most popular alternative. The word now seems to be one of the most common words to denote girls’ genitals and is included in dictionaries and children’s books. This article uses various methodological approaches within the framework of language planning theory to make a critical analysis and evaluation of the reform.

  Three primary explanations are given for the success of the reform: first, the time and place of the reform were favourable – Sweden at the end of the 20^th century was one of the world’s most gender-equal countries; second, the strategies adopted by agents of the change gave the initiative momentum; and third, on a formal level, the word is in line with the cultural understanding of gender. This calls into questions whether the word snippa contributes to the struggle for gender equality.

  The article ends with a discussion of what this language planning project can tell us about the function of feminist language planning in the ongoing work to end patriarchy inSwedenand around the world.