This study examines positive low- and high-grade assessments in service encounters between customers and salespersons conducted in Swedish and recorded in Sweden and Finland. The assessments occur in a regular sequential pattern as... more
This study examines positive low- and high-grade assessments in service encounters between customers and salespersons conducted in Swedish and recorded in Sweden and Finland. The assessments occur in a regular sequential pattern as third-turn moves that complete request-delivery sequences, longer coherent requesting sections, or request sequences in a pre-closing context. The positive valence of the assessments coheres with the satisfactory outcome of task completion, but their function is primarily pragmatic, used for segmenting the flow of task-oriented institutional interaction. The assessments stand as lexical TCUs, and their delivery is characterized by downgraded prosody and the speaker’s embodied shift away from the other. The analysis reveals distributional differences in the interactional practice: Customers produce task-completing assessments more often than the salespersons, and high-grade assessments are more frequent in the data from Sweden than from Finland. The data are in Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish with English translations.
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This chapter investigates social positioning through the use (or non-use) of address pronouns in Finland-Swedish and Sweden-Swedish service encounters recorded at theatre and event booking venues in Finland and Sweden. The results... more
This chapter investigates social positioning through the use (or non-use) of address pronouns in Finland-Swedish and Sweden-Swedish service encounters recorded at theatre and event booking venues in Finland and Sweden. The results demonstrate some compelling variation in address practices which can be attributed to participant roles (customer or staff), national variety (Finland-Swedish or Sweden-Swedish), age (younger or older speaker and addressee) and situational circumstances, such as type of venue and type of transaction, as well as micro-situational aspects which occur during the course of the interaction (complications, problems or topics treated as sensitive). The study highlights that different forms of address cannot be associated a priori with a certain level of formality, but should be interpreted in their micro and macro contexts in order to understand existing cultural norms for appropriate address.
Research Interests: Intercultural Communication, Languages and Linguistics, Pragmatics, Linguistic Politeness, Discourse, and 14 moreApplied Linguistics, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Swedish Language, Language Variation, Finland-Swedish, Politeness, Institutional discourse, Intercultural Pragmatics, Linguistic Variation, Interlanguage Pragmatics, Address Terms, Pluricentric Languages, Politeness strategies, and Variational pragmatics
Swedish is a pluricentric language and has official status in both Sweden and Finland. Until recently, most studies on such languages have focused on differences and similarities in grammar and lexicon, and less on pragmatic variation. We... more
Swedish is a pluricentric language and has official status in both Sweden and Finland. Until recently, most studies on such languages have focused on differences and similarities in grammar and lexicon, and less on pragmatic variation. We suggest that a pragmatic perspective is of help in understanding the relationship between national varieties, and in this study we investigate greetings in Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish. Previous comparisons of the two varieties suggest that Sweden Swedish is less formal than Finland Swedish, and in this article we problematise the concept of formality and discuss whether formality could explain any differences in the use of greetings. We use three data sets from each of the two countries: videorecorded service encounters from box offices and information desks, recorded focus groups, and experiments. Combined, the data suggest that the Finland-Swedish greeting repertoire is larger than the Sweden-Swedish one, and that Swedish speakers in Finland are therefore more sensitive to social distance than their counterparts in Sweden. At the same time, the study highlights the complexity in the use of greetings, and shows that variables such as gender, age, context and degree of acquaintance all play an important part in the use of greetings in both Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish.
Research Interests: Intercultural Communication, Languages and Linguistics, Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Social Interaction, and 12 moreComparative Linguistics, Swedish, Swedish Language, Language Variation, Finland-Swedish, Sweden, Finland, Pluricentric Languages, Pluricentricity, Variational pragmatics, Greetings, and Pluricentric Language
This chapter investigates the use of imperative-formatted directives in Swedish medical consultations. The specific focus of the chapter is the division of labor between straight, non-modulated imperative turns and imperative turns which... more
This chapter investigates the use of imperative-formatted directives in Swedish medical consultations. The specific focus of the chapter is the division of labor between straight, non-modulated imperative turns and imperative turns which are modulated with a discourse particle or some other verbal mitigating device. The results show that non-modulated imperative turns are embedded in diagnostic work, nominating subsequent actions in a series. Orientations to projected trajectories of action and the other participant's expectations are clearly present when modulated
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The present study investigates the interplay between language, material and embodied resources in one specific type of service encounters: interactions at theatre box offices. The data consist of video recorded interactions in Swedish at... more
The present study investigates the interplay between language, material and embodied resources in one specific type of service encounters: interactions at theatre box offices. The data consist of video recorded interactions in Swedish at three box offices, two in Sweden and one in Finland. Cases representative of the interactions are selected for a multimodal micro-analysis of the customer–seller interactions involving artefacts from the institutional and personal domain.
The study specifically aims at advancing our understanding of the role of artefacts for structuring and facilitating communicative events in (institutional) interaction. In this way, it contributes to the growing research interest in the interactional importance of the material world. Our results show that mutual interactional focus is reached through mutual gaze in strategic moments, such as formulation of the reason for the visit. Artefacts are central in enhancing intersubjectivity and mutual focus in that they effectively invite the participants for negotiation, for example, about a seating plan which can be made visually accessible in different ways. Verbal language can be sparse and deictic in these moments while gaze and pointing to an artefact does more specific referential work. Artefacts are also a resource for signalling interactional inaccessibility, the seller orienting to the computer in order to progress a request and the customer orienting to a personal belonging (like a bag) to mirror and accept such a temporary non-accessibility. We also observe that speech can be paced to match the deployment of an artefact so that a focal verbal item is produced without competing, simultaneous physical activity.
The study specifically aims at advancing our understanding of the role of artefacts for structuring and facilitating communicative events in (institutional) interaction. In this way, it contributes to the growing research interest in the interactional importance of the material world. Our results show that mutual interactional focus is reached through mutual gaze in strategic moments, such as formulation of the reason for the visit. Artefacts are central in enhancing intersubjectivity and mutual focus in that they effectively invite the participants for negotiation, for example, about a seating plan which can be made visually accessible in different ways. Verbal language can be sparse and deictic in these moments while gaze and pointing to an artefact does more specific referential work. Artefacts are also a resource for signalling interactional inaccessibility, the seller orienting to the computer in order to progress a request and the customer orienting to a personal belonging (like a bag) to mirror and accept such a temporary non-accessibility. We also observe that speech can be paced to match the deployment of an artefact so that a focal verbal item is produced without competing, simultaneous physical activity.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Languages and Linguistics, Conversation Analysis, Social Interaction, Discourse, and 11 moreApplied Linguistics, Multimodal Interaction, Intersubjectivity, Conversational Discourse, Multimodality, Swedish Language, Finland-Swedish, Sweden, Finland, Service Interactions, and Interactional Linguistics
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Research Interests: Sociology and Linguistics
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Sharing language but not communicative patterns: Feedback in Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish academic counselling interaction In this article, we present a study of oral feedback (back-channels and responsive turns) given in academic... more
Sharing language but not communicative patterns:
Feedback in Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish academic counselling interaction
In this article, we present a study of oral feedback (back-channels and responsive turns) given in academic counselling meetings between an essay supervisor and one or two students. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss and improve an academic text written by the students. Our data consist of naturally occurring Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish institutional interactions at the university level. The overall aim of the study is to compare feedback patterns in the Sweden-Swedish and the Finland-Swedish data and to contribute to the field of variational pragmatics. A detailed analysis of the recorded interactions reveals overt differences in the frequency, intensity and distribution of feedback in the two varieties of Swedish. In the Sweden-Swedish data, there is a preference for relational work, evidenced, for instance, by students praising the advice given by the supervisor. In the Finland-Swedish data, an orientation towards clarity is prominent and corrective advice, for instance, is usually uttered in a straightforward way. Our results support previous findings on commu-nicative patterns in Sweden and Finland. These findings highlight the dialogic nature of institutional communication in Sweden, on the one hand, and the orientation to the task and its result in comparable situations in Finland, on the other. The outcome of this study adds to the understanding of the communicative patterns of Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish with a detailed analysis of the oral feedback occurring in counselling meetings.
Feedback in Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish academic counselling interaction
In this article, we present a study of oral feedback (back-channels and responsive turns) given in academic counselling meetings between an essay supervisor and one or two students. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss and improve an academic text written by the students. Our data consist of naturally occurring Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish institutional interactions at the university level. The overall aim of the study is to compare feedback patterns in the Sweden-Swedish and the Finland-Swedish data and to contribute to the field of variational pragmatics. A detailed analysis of the recorded interactions reveals overt differences in the frequency, intensity and distribution of feedback in the two varieties of Swedish. In the Sweden-Swedish data, there is a preference for relational work, evidenced, for instance, by students praising the advice given by the supervisor. In the Finland-Swedish data, an orientation towards clarity is prominent and corrective advice, for instance, is usually uttered in a straightforward way. Our results support previous findings on commu-nicative patterns in Sweden and Finland. These findings highlight the dialogic nature of institutional communication in Sweden, on the one hand, and the orientation to the task and its result in comparable situations in Finland, on the other. The outcome of this study adds to the understanding of the communicative patterns of Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish with a detailed analysis of the oral feedback occurring in counselling meetings.
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This chapter gives an overview of Finland Swedish as a non-dominant variety of Swedish. The first part outlines the status and position of Swedish in Finland and documents research on Finland Swedish. We present this body of work with... more
This chapter gives an overview of Finland Swedish as a non-dominant variety of Swedish. The first part outlines the status and position of Swedish in Finland and documents research on Finland Swedish. We present this body of work with reference to work on Finland-Swedish status- and corpus planning. While there is an impressive body of work
on the phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactic characteristics of Finland Swedish, much less attention has been paid to the pragmatic and interactional aspects of Finland Swedish vis-à-vis Sweden Swedish.
With the exception of a few studies on politeness strategies, address and greeting practices, no systematic investigation of communicative patterns in the two Swedish varieties has been undertaken. The second part presents our methodological framework for such an investigation, and present preliminary results from a pilot study on openings in 12 institutional telephone conversations in the respective national variety.
These results suggest that there are systematic differences which
warrant further investigation.
on the phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactic characteristics of Finland Swedish, much less attention has been paid to the pragmatic and interactional aspects of Finland Swedish vis-à-vis Sweden Swedish.
With the exception of a few studies on politeness strategies, address and greeting practices, no systematic investigation of communicative patterns in the two Swedish varieties has been undertaken. The second part presents our methodological framework for such an investigation, and present preliminary results from a pilot study on openings in 12 institutional telephone conversations in the respective national variety.
These results suggest that there are systematic differences which
warrant further investigation.
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Research Interests:
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Research Interests: Intercultural Communication, Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Communities of practice, Cross-Cultural Communication, and 13 moreIntercultural Pragmatics, Cross-cultural pragmatics, Address Terms, Forms of address, Academics, Sociolinguistic, Wissenschaftskommunikation, Sociolingüística, Languages for special purposes, Wissenschaftssprache, Academic Communication, Address Forms, and Communication In Academic Settings
Research Interests: Sociolinguistics, Conversation Analysis, Institutional talk, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Conversational Discourse, and 10 moreConversation, Swedish Language, Finland-Swedish, Address Terms, Forms of address, Pluricentric Languages, Pluricentricity, Direct Address, Variational pragmatics, and Address Forms
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National variation of address in pluricentric languages: the examples of Swedish and German Catrin Norrby (Stockholm) and Heinz L. Kretzenbacher (Melbourne) This study contributes to the pragmatic dimension of pluricentric... more
National variation of address in pluricentric languages: the examples of Swedish and German
Catrin Norrby (Stockholm) and Heinz L. Kretzenbacher (Melbourne)
This study contributes to the pragmatic dimension of pluricentric languages, an aspect that to date has been studied to a lesser extent than their lexis, morphosyntax and phonology. It compares patterns of address and perceptions of what constitutes “appropriate” address in Swedish and German, two pluricentric languages each with a clearly dominant variety. German and Swedish data were collected at five urban locations (Gothenburg in Sweden, Vasa/Vaasa in Finland, Mannheim and Leipzig in Germany and Vienna in Austria) with focus group meetings and questionnaire-based network interviews. Also, a modified questionnaire was posted in Internet forums in Swedish and German that had discussion threads on address form usage.
The data for German show that native speakers perceive distinct differences between Austrian and German standards of address and related phenomena such as greeting formulas. In Germany, variation in address practices also raises the question of what effect the division of the country from 1949 to 1989 had on the pragmatics of address.
In Sweden Swedish, the V form was virtually abandoned in the 1960s. With very few exceptions, such as addressing elderly people in service encounters, universal T is now the default address. However, in Finland Swedish, V is still employed to express status and formality, reflecting conservatism and the influence of the Finnish language. This means that controversy as to whether V is exclusionary in Sweden is not relevant in Finnish Swedish.
Address in pluricentric languages underlines the importance of societal and sociocultural developments. Our study of German and Swedish not only shows different address practices between national centres, but also emphasizes that knowledge of address in the others’ varieties is largely stereotypical.
Catrin Norrby (Stockholm) and Heinz L. Kretzenbacher (Melbourne)
This study contributes to the pragmatic dimension of pluricentric languages, an aspect that to date has been studied to a lesser extent than their lexis, morphosyntax and phonology. It compares patterns of address and perceptions of what constitutes “appropriate” address in Swedish and German, two pluricentric languages each with a clearly dominant variety. German and Swedish data were collected at five urban locations (Gothenburg in Sweden, Vasa/Vaasa in Finland, Mannheim and Leipzig in Germany and Vienna in Austria) with focus group meetings and questionnaire-based network interviews. Also, a modified questionnaire was posted in Internet forums in Swedish and German that had discussion threads on address form usage.
The data for German show that native speakers perceive distinct differences between Austrian and German standards of address and related phenomena such as greeting formulas. In Germany, variation in address practices also raises the question of what effect the division of the country from 1949 to 1989 had on the pragmatics of address.
In Sweden Swedish, the V form was virtually abandoned in the 1960s. With very few exceptions, such as addressing elderly people in service encounters, universal T is now the default address. However, in Finland Swedish, V is still employed to express status and formality, reflecting conservatism and the influence of the Finnish language. This means that controversy as to whether V is exclusionary in Sweden is not relevant in Finnish Swedish.
Address in pluricentric languages underlines the importance of societal and sociocultural developments. Our study of German and Swedish not only shows different address practices between national centres, but also emphasizes that knowledge of address in the others’ varieties is largely stereotypical.
Research Interests: German Studies, Sociolinguistics, German Language, Sociolinguistic Variation, Swedish Language, and 13 moreLanguage Variation, Finland-Swedish, German, Address Terms, German language and literature, Forms of address, Pluricentric Languages, Variationist sociolinguistics, Austrian German, Pluricentricity, Direct Address, Variationist Linguistics, and Pluricentrismo
This chapter gives an overview of Finland Swedish as a non-dominant variety of Swedish. The first part outlines the status and position of Swedish in Finland and documents research on Finland Swedish. We present this body of work with... more
This chapter gives an overview of Finland Swedish as a non-dominant variety of Swedish. The first part outlines the status and position of Swedish in Finland and documents research on Finland Swedish. We present this body of work with reference to work on Finland-Swedish status- and corpus planning. While there is an impressive body of work on the phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactic characteristics of Finland Swedish, much less attention has been paid to the pragmatic and interactional aspects of Finland Swedish vis-à-vis Sweden Swedish. With the exception of a few studies on politeness strategies, address and greeting practices, no systematic investigation of communicative patterns in the two Swedish varieties has been undertaken. The second part presents our methodological framework for such an investigation, and present preliminary results from a pilot study on openings in institutional telephone conversations in the respective national variety. These results suggest that there are systematic differences which warrant further investigation.
Research Interests: Languages and Linguistics, Pragmatics, Linguistic Politeness, Sociolinguistics, Cross-Cultural Studies, and 13 moreLinguistics, Swedish, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Swedish Language, Language Variation, Interpersonal Relationships, Finland-Swedish, Address Terms, Pluricentric Languages, Pluricentricity, Direct Address, Interactional Linguistics, and Variational pragmatics
As part of a major ongoing project, we consider and compare contemporary patterns of address pronoun use in four major European languages - French, German, Italian and Swedish. We are specifically interested in two major aspects:... more
As part of a major ongoing project, we consider and compare contemporary patterns of address pronoun use in four major European languages - French, German, Italian and Swedish. We are specifically interested in two major aspects: intralingual behaviour, that is, within the same language community, and interlingual dimensions of address pronoun use. With respect to the former, we summarize our
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Research Interests: German Studies, Sociolinguistics, Language Variation and Change, German Language, Linguistics, and 16 moreSwedish, Sociolinguistic Variation, Swedish Language, Finland-Swedish, German, Linguistic Variation, Address Terms, Sociolinguística (Sociolinguistics), Variation, Language Studies, Social distance, Sociolingüística, Variationist sociolinguistics, Austrian German, Direct Address, and Variationist Linguistics
This paper reports on an ARC Discovery Project in an early stage of development which examines changes in the address systems of three languages, French, German and Swedish, and the impact of sociopolitical changes and events on these... more
This paper reports on an ARC Discovery Project in an early stage of development which examines changes in the address systems of three languages, French, German and Swedish, and the impact of sociopolitical changes and events on these systems in France, ...
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This article investigates how interpersonal relationships are expressed in medical consultations. In particular, we focus on how modes of address are used in the two national varieties of Swedish: Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish, with... more
This article investigates how interpersonal relationships are expressed in medical consultations. In particular, we focus on how modes of address are used in the two national varieties of Swedish: Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish, with the aim to compare the pragmatic routines in the two varieties. Thus the study contributes to the field of variational pragmatics, where national varieties of pluricentric languages are recognised as important research objects. Address practices are analysed in two comparable corpora of video recordings from Sweden and Finland using both a quantitative and a qualitative CA-inspired method. There are several differences between the data sets: the Sweden-Swedish data are characterised by exclusive use of the informal T pronoun (du ‘you’) and an overall higher frequency of direct address compared to the Finland-Swedish data. In some medical consultations in the Finland-Swedish data the formal V pronoun (ni) is used. The qualitative analysis confirms these differences and the tendency is that the Sweden-Swedish medical consultations are more informal than the Finland-Swedish ones, which are characterised by more formality and maintenance of social distance between the interlocutors. The different pragmatic orientations at the micro level of communication can also be related to socio- cultural preferences at the macro level in society -- the development towards greater informality and intimate language is more pronounced in Sweden than in Finland.
Research Interests: Languages and Linguistics, Language and Social Interaction, Pragmatics, Linguistic Politeness, Sociolinguistics, and 28 moreLanguage Variation and Change, Social Interaction, Interaction, Linguistics, Swedish, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Conversational Discourse, Doctor-patient communication, Interpersonal Relationships, Finland-Swedish, Politeness, Institutional discourse, Conversational Discourse Analysis and Identity, Crosscultural Pragmatics, Address Terms, Politeness Research, Forms of address, Crosscultural Communication, Pragmatics (Speech Acts, Conversation & Discourse Analysis), Pluricentric Languages, Politeness Pragmatics, Pluricentricity, Direct Address, Politeness strategies, Variational pragmatics, Crosscultural Differences, Address Forms, and Institutional conversations
How we address one another – whether we use first names, or titles and surnames, for example – says a great deal about who we are, our social relationships and which groups in society we belong to. This edited volume examines address... more
How we address one another – whether we use first names, or titles and surnames, for example – says a great deal about who we are, our social relationships and which groups in society we belong to. This edited volume examines address choices in a range of everyday interactions – from radio interviews and service encounters to commercials and internet forums – taking place in Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Italian and the two national varieties of Swedish, Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish. By comparing local, national and cross-border address practices, this volume uncovers both commonalities and differences in the way social meaning is expressed and shaped through address. The chapters also highlight the importance of investigating the daily encounters that make up the social fabric of our lives. This book will be of great interest to researchers of intercultural and cross-cultural communication, interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and pragmatics.