På senare år har man inom svensk och finsk dialektforskning alltmer börjat uppmärksamma att dialektanvändning kan fylla olika sociala funktioner i samtalet och att en dialekt är något mer än ett autonomt språkligt system som kan lyftas ur sitt sammanhang. Bruket av olika dialektala (och standardspråkliga) uttryck visar sig ofta vara interaktionellt motiverat, varför uttrycken också kan ha olika funktion beroende på i vilket samtalskontext de uppträder. En rad forskare har teoretiskt börjat ta steget från en tradiotionell till en interaktionell dialektologi och använder därmed samtalsanalytiska teorier, metoder och frågeställningar för att beskriva dialektala material ur nya perspektiv. Sådana material kan även användas för att kasta nytt ljus över traditionella språkvetenskapliga frågor och bidra till teoriutvecklingen inom gramatik- och interaktionsforskningen.

Festskrift till Lars-Gunnar Andersson med anledning av hans 65-årsdag. Boken innehåller 20 artiklar om språk av följande författare: Karin Aijmer, Sture Allén, Gunnar Bergh & Sölve Ohlander, Elisabet Engdahl, Catharina Grünbaum, Olle Josephson, Fred Karlsson, Lars Lindvall & Mårten Ramnäs, Per Linell & Kerstin Norén, Magnus Ljung, Sven-Göran Malmgren, Bengt Nordberg, Christer Platzack, Bo Ralph, Lena Rogström, Eva Sundgren, Ulf Teleman, Mats Thelander & Björn Melander, Peter Trudgill samt Jan-Ola Östman. 

This paper presents a study of pronouns used in Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish supervision meetings. In both countries, supervisors use similar sets of pronouns when commenting on an academic essay written by a student. Often, the supervisor addresses the student directly, e.g. but you could write x, or uses an indefinite pronoun, e.g. perhaps one could simply write x. Sometimes, the supervisor makes suggestions while referring to herself as a writer, e.g. I would write x. The supervisor may also use an inclusive we-authorship, e.g. well we cannot write x. This use of we is predominantly found in the Sweden-Swedish data. In relation to politeness strategies, our analysis indicates that pronouns appear in a more direct and clear-cut way (cf. respect strategies) in Finland-Swedish, and with a stronger focus on creating common ground and fostering group membership (cf. solidarity strategies) in Sweden-Swedish. Throughout, we point to differences and similarities between the dominant and the non-dominant variety of Swedish.

Personal training is a new form of institutional interaction that has not been extensively studied as regards language. Still, alongside embodied interaction, language is central in this activity. In this paper, phrasal utterances are studied as a resource for instructing in personal training. The data consist of 7 h 23 min of video recordings of training sessions with Swedish-speaking participants from Finland and Sweden, which are supplemented with field notes. The theoretical–methodolo- gical framework includes interactional linguistics, ethnography of communication, and variational pragmatics. Results show that participants use all semiotic information at hand when they produce and understand phrasal instructions during personal training. This process involves the overall ac- tivity, the participants’ institutional roles as trainer and client, their body positions and movements, and trajectories of earlier interaction and embodied elements of the instructions themselves. Phra- sal instructions are short; thus, they are focused and easily integrated into the ongoing physical ac- tivity. Certain differences are observed between the data from Finland and from Sweden, e.g., Finnish data have more phrasal instructions, whereas the Swedish data have more third-turn follow-ups, which may indicate cultural differences in this domain. The article concludes that phrasal utterances are not only useful as instructions in personal training but also well-suited for the activity type.

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.

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 imperative turns are produced; they are also frequent in the opening and closing routines of the consultations. Thus, there is a link between routinized and projectable actions and the use of imperatives with a pragmatic modulating element.

Swedish is a pluricentric language in the sense that it has official status in more than one nation. Swedish is the main language of Sweden but spoken by a minority of 5.4% in Finland. Because of national differentiation, the varieties of Swedish differ from each other in certain respects. Variation in pronunciation, lexis and syntax are well documented. However, differences in pragmatic aspects of language use, such as expressions of politeness, intimacy and formality, have not been researched systematically to date. This paper has its background in a project which aims to fill this research gap. It presents the general societal background for Swedish in Finland and some of its characteristic differences from the Swedish standard. In addition, two studies which explore the pragmatic differences are presented: a study of speaker attitudes to forms of address and a conversation analytic study of expressions of criticism in teacher-student encounters.

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.

Inom forskningsprogrammet Interaktion och variation i pluricentriska språk (IVIP) utforskas kommunikativa mönster i sverigesvenska och finlandssvenska i tre typer av institutionella samtal: servicesamtal, lärandesamtal och vårdsamtal (se t.ex. Norrby m.fl. 2014; Wide 2016). I denna artikel fokuserar vi på servicesamtalen, i vilka deltagarna har bestämda roller (kund–personal) och i regel inte känner varandra från tidigare. Servicesamtalen är starkt rutinartade och inriktade på ärendet, dvs. köp av biljetter, och ärendepresentationen är sålunda en central social praktik i samtalen som är anpassad till situationen och identifierbar för deltagarna. Syftet med artikeln är att redogöra för de vanligaste presentationsformerna i servicesamtalen och jämföra distributionen av dem mellan varieteterna och språken.

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 communicative 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.

The project Dialect Levelling in West Sweden focuses on the dialect situation in the first decade of the 21st century compared with the dialects spoken in the same region in the 1940s–1960s. Seventy teenagers participating in group interviews have been recorded and their use of phonological and morphological variables has been analysed. Comparisons with data recorded in the same region by The Institute of Language and Folklore in 1940–1960 show that dialect levelling is under way. It seems that the population of this area no longer speak a traditional dialect. An important issue, however, is how much the traditional dialects have actually changed, and to what extent the method for collecting data affects the answer. In the mid-20th century, the praxis within Swedish dialectology for selecting informants was to find as old and rural dialect speakers as possible to represent a specific region, and the purpose was that of documenting the dialect as a linguistic system. Today, however, many studies select informants based on speaker variables, because the aim is to document the dialect situation (i.e. who uses what linguistic variants when), rather than the traditional dialect as a linguistic system. Thus, there is a distinct difference between a linguistic interest and a sociolinguistic one. In this paper I suggest that it is critical when discussing dialect change to observe this very methodological change. In order to illustrate this, the use of dialect variants by two informants recorded in 1948 is compared with the use of dialect variants by three informants recorded in 2007 and 2008. The informants are all from around a small rural village located approximately 70 km from Gothenburg in West Sweden. This is an area where a specific variety of West Swedish has been spoken. By comparing these individuals, the concept of dialect change is problematized.

Svenska talas på många ställen i världen, och i två länder har det status som nationellt språk: Sverige och Finland, där det talas sverigesvenska och finlandssvenska. Men samtalar svenskspråkiga på samma sätt i Sverige och Finland? Även om det är samma språk som talas kanske det ändå finns en del skillnader?

The traditional dialects of Sweden are changing. In order to investigate how these changes may be proceeding, the use of traditional dialect and new linguistic features have been analyzed in three separate dialect areas: Inland West Sweden, Coastal West Sweden and Torsby in Northern Värmland. The focus is on how much of the traditional dialect used in the mid-20th century is still in use in each location, and what is replacing it in the process of change; this is done by analyzing speakers’ realizations of a total of 137 traditional dialect variables and 18 new variables. In some locations, dialects are leveling towards the standard, more or less rapidly. In others, there is a clear dialect shift to the urban Gothenburg variety or to the use of a combilect, which is a mix of traditional dialect variants, standard variants, new variants and urban variants. Similarities and differences between these separate processes are discussed, with special attention given to the reasons behind dialect change.

Alla samtal måste börja på något sätt, och det vanligaste sättet att inleda är att utbyta hälsningsfraser. I den här artikeln undersöker vi bruket av hälsningsfraser i finlandssvenska och sverigesvenska servicesamtal.* Inom forskningsprogrammet Interaktion och variation i pluricentriska språk (IVIP) har vi samlat in ett omfattande videomaterial i servicesituationer i Sverige och Finland (se t.ex. Norrby m.fl. 2015). Syftet här är att kartlägga bruket av hälsningsfraser i finlandssvenska och sverigesvenska utifrån 260 av dessa samtal vid teaterkassor och bokningscentraler. Mer specifikt vill vi undersöka: 1. Hur ser hälsandets lexikon ut i sverigesvenska och finlandssvenska? 2. Hur varierar hälsningsfras med talarens ålder, kön och interaktionellaroll? 3. Vilka eventuella anpassningar gör deltagarna i sitt hälsningsbeteende? Artikelns titel anspelar på en studie av Lars-Gunnar Andersson från 1996, nämligen Hej, hej, hemskt mycket hej, där han undersökte hälsningsmönster i olika servicesituationer. Genom att låta 60 studenter vid Göteborgs universitet göra etnografiska observationer i sammanlagt över 150 timmar kunde Andersson beskriva svenskans hälsningsmönster. Hans studenter noterade också att vissa individer tog efter andras hälsningsbeteende. I den här studien jämför vi våra resultat med Anderssons (1996) och därigenom kan vi också jämföra etnografiska observationer med videoinspelningar.

This study investigates the use of greetings in Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish service encounters and the social meaning of different greeting forms. Situated within the framework of variational pragmatics, the study explores Swedish as a pluricentric language and investigates with interactional and statistical analyses to what extent the variable nation affect variation in greeting forms. While nation indeed is an important factor, the study also illustrates how social variables such as age, gender and participant roles as well as situational variables such as medium, region and venue impact the greeting choices participants make. Further, by applying an interactional analytical perspective the study contributes to the methodological development of variational pragmatics. This analysis shows how the sequential position of a greeting plays a part in the choice of greetings, and demonstrates that pragmatic variation emerges in interaction. The article suggests that greetings can be a resource for indexing the degree of social distance between interlocutors, and thereby manifest recurring cultural patterns.

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, but less on pragmatic variation. We suggest that a pragmatic perspective aids 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 problematize the concept of formality, and discuss whether formality may explain any differences in the use of greetings.

We use three datasets from Finland and Sweden respectively: video recorded service encounters from box offices and information desks, recorded focus groups as well as experiments. Combined, the data suggest that the Finland Swedish greeting repertoire is larger than the Sweden Swedish one, and that Finland Swedes therefore are more sensitive to social distance than Sweden Swedes. At the same time, the study highlights the complexity in the use of greetings, and that variables such as gender, age, context and level of acquaintance all play an important part in the use of greetings in both Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish. 

While greetings are performed in all cultures and open most conversations, previous studies suggest that there are cross-cultural differences between different languages in greeting behavior. But do speakers of different national varieties of the same language organize and perform their greeting behavior in similar ways? In this study, we investigate the sequential organization of greetings in relation to gaze behavior in the two national varieties of Swedish: Sweden Swedish spoken in Sweden and Finland Swedish spoken in Finland. In recent years, the importance of studying pluricentric languages from a pragmatic perspective has been foregrounded, not least within the framework of variational pragmatics. To date, most studies have focused on structural differences between national varieties of pluricentric languages. With this study, we extend the scope of variational pragmatics through adding an interactional, micro perspective to the broader macro analysis typical of this field. For this study, we have analyzed patterns for greetings in 297 videorecorded service encounters, where staff and customers interact at theatre box offices and event booking venues in Sweden and Finland. The study shows that there are similarities and differences in greeting behavior between varieties. There is a strong preference for exchanging reciprocal verbal greetings, one at a time, in both. There is also a similar organization of the greeting sequence, where customer and staff establish mutual gaze prior to the verbal greetings, thus signaling availability for interaction. The duration of mutual gaze and the timing of the greeting, however, differ between the two varieties. We have also conducted a multi modal analysis of gaze behavior in correlation to the greeting. We found that the customers and staff in the Finland Swedish data share mutual gaze before and during the verbal greeting, and often avert gaze after the verbal greetings. However, in the Sweden Swedish data, the participants often avert gaze before the verbal greetings. Our results thus indicate that both similarities and differences in pragmatic routines and bodily behavior exist between the two national varieties of Swedish. The present study on greeting practices in Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish should contribute to the field of variational pragmatics and to the development of pluricentric theory.

This study investigates processes for dialect change in two seemingly similar rural villages (Torsby and Edsbyn) in two separate dialect areas in Sweden. The aim is to describe dialect change since the 1940s, and to explain the reasons for the different processes by using sociolinguistic and culture analytical methods. In both Edsbyn and Torsby the dialects are levelling towards the standard, but with different momentum. In Edsbyn, the dialect is much more standardized than in the signifi- cantly more stable Torsby. In a Swedish context, the linguistic stability in Torsby is striking. The culture analysis reveals that part of the explanation for the difference between Edsbyn and Torsby is the way the citizens perform belongingness. The Edsbyn informants consider themselves as part of a larger north Swedish area, whereas the Torsby informants primarily display a very local be- longingness. In other words, there seems to be a connection between how large a region a person considers him- or herself to be part of, or feels belongingness to, and how important the dialect is. In this case, the smaller the region, the more important the dialect. In the article, we suggest that the reason for the separate processes of dialect change in Edsbyn and Torsby is the informants’ orientations to place and dialect.

Stundligen företar vi människor oss sånt som vi inte alls funderar över. Vi gör det bara.

Har du tänkt på att vi i mötet med en gammal bekant gärna börjar med att reda ut när vi sågs senast? Och kanske när vi kommer att stöta på varandra igen?

Eller har du funderat på i vilken ordning vi tar av och på kläderna i ett omklädningsrum med andra personer runt oss? Har du undrat över hur vi människor hanterar köande, cyklande, särskrivningar eller hur vi hälsar på varandra? De här sakerna är nämligen exempel på sånt vi oftast företar oss utan att reflektera över det särskilt mycket.

Boken Sånt vi bara gör handlar om olika kulturellt och socialt betingade vardagshandlingar. Volymen bjuder på 91 korta, koncentrerade texter skrivna av forskare inom humaniora. Utifrån egen och andras forskning berättar de engagerat och lättillgängligt om sånt vi bara gör. Varje text kompletteras med en faktaruta med lästips för den vetgirige.

Sånt vi bara gör kan läsas för nöjes skull, men boken passar också utmärkt som diskussionsunderlag i studiecirklar liksom i gymnasie- och högskolans undervisning med kultur och språk i fokus.

The article gives an account of research into the relationships that exist between varities of pluricentric languages, introducing central concepts and theoretical underpinnings of pluricentric research, covering power relationships, expressions of identity and attitudes as well as the debate on pluricentricity vis-à-vis pluriareality. The article surveys foundational work in the field concerning linguistic structural differences between varieties as well as more recent work on pragmatic  and interactional variation in pluricentric languages.

Syftet med  studien  är att undersöka förekomst och vilka funktioner sekvensavslutande värderande responser fyller i servicesamtal mellan kund och personal vid teaterkassor, bokningscentraler och likande runtom i Svenskfinland och i Sverige. Vi ställer oss följande frågor:

1. Enligt vilka interaktionella mönster förekommer positiva värderande responser i servicesamtalen?

2. Vad bidrar de med i interaktionens sekventiella flöde?

3. Vilka slags värderande uttryck förekommer?

4. Finns det skillnader i bruket mellan svenskan i Finland och svenskan i Sverige på någon av punkterna ovan, och vad kan eventuella skillnader tänkas bero på?

Undersökningen är en delstudie inom forskningsprogrammet Interaktion och variation i pluricentriska språk: kommunikativa mönster i sverigesvenska och finlandssvenska (IVIP) som undersöker språk och social interaktion inom tre domäner: service, lärande och vård i Sverige och Finland.

Vid teaterkassor och bokningscentraler utspelar sig dagligen en mängd korta möten mellan kund och personal. Kunden kommer för att hämta eller köpa biljetter och det är personalens uppgift att försöka uppfylla önskemålen. Dessa institutionella samtal är målinriktade, effektiva och förs vanligen mellan personer som inte känner varandra. Samtalen följer en typisk struktur: kunden framställer sitt ärende, personalen genomför det, kunden betalar och parterna tar avsked. Ofta sker allt detta inom loppet av ett par, tre minuter. Mot den bakgrunden kan det verka osannolikt att deltagarna skulle ta upp ämnen av privat karaktär, till exempel tala om familjemedlemmar, men i vårt arbete med 1 000 servicesamtal vid biljettkassor runtom i Sverige och Svenskfinland har vi noterat att det trots allt förekommer. Syftet med föreliggande artikel är att undersöka referens till icke-närvarande familjemedlemmar i servicesamtal. Först ger vi en bakgrund till forskning om personreferens och beskriver de teoretiska utgångspunkterna för studien. Därefter redogör vi för material och metod innan vi presenterar våra resultat och diskuterar dem.

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.

Många av världens språk är s.k. pluricentriska språk, dvs. språk som talas i fler länder än ett. Bara i Europa finns en rad exempel på sådana språk, till exempel engelska, franska, tyska och svenska. Men samtalar man på samma sätt i olika länder bara för att man talar samma språk? Eller ser de kommunikativa mönstren olika ut? Programmet ”Interaktion och variation i pluricentriska språk” (finansierat av Riksbankens Jubileumsfond 2013-2020) undersöker och jämför kommunikationen i samma typer av samtal i liknande miljöer i Sverige och Finland, med fokus på domänerna service, lärande och vård. Syftet är att identifiera skillnader och likheter i hur man utformar sociala handlingar som tilltal, signalerar samtycke och oenighet eller formulerar kritik och beröm i finlandssvenska och sverigesvenska.

I vår presentation tar vi fasta på interpersonella orienteringar i läkare-patientsamtal inspelade i Sverige och Finland. Dels studerar vi förekomsten av tilltalsformer, dels studerar vi hur råd och direktiv formuleras i dessa interaktioner. Våra resultat visar att det finns klara tendenser till ett mindre formellt tilltal i de sverigesvenska samtalen. Samtidigt kan inte tilltalsstrategierna beskrivas enbart som mer formella i Finland, utan man utnyttjar speciellt i de finlandssvenska samtalen olika slags tekniker för undvikande av direkt tilltal. Tilltalsstrategierna hänger vidare ihop med hur råd och direktiv formuleras, dvs. hur pass direkt eller indirekt de riktar sig till den andra parten.

Forskningsprogrammet syftar till att bidra till den internationella teoriutvecklingen inom forskningen om pluricentriska språk. Genom att använda teorier och metoder som samtalsanalys och kommunikationsetnografi kan programmet belysa och förklara pluricentriska språkfenomen som tidigare forskning inte riktigt kunnat komma åt. På så vis bidrar programmet till att utveckla den s.k. variationspragmatiken samtidigt som vi får ny kunskap om vad som är unikt för finlandssvenska respektive sverigesvenska samtal.

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 latter 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. 

The chapter investigates address practices in 318 audio and video recorded service encounters at theatre box offices and other booking venues equally distributed across the two national varieties of Swedish, Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish. The results demonstrate compelling variation in address choices, which can be linked to participant roles (customer–staff), generation (below and above 50 years) and national variety. Overall informal address with T (du) is the most common address form in both varieties, and is particularly salient among older customers in Sweden. There are few occurrences of V address in the data, and most are found among younger Finland-Swedish staff.

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.

En bok om och i sådana fall hur göteborgskan har påverkat de traditionella dialekterna i Västergötland och södra Bohuslän.

Allt färre människor i Sverige talar dialekt. Det beror främst på att dialekterna jämnats ut och allt mer kommit att likna standardsvenskan. I större städers omnejd är det också tydligt att drag, som tidigare betraktats som urbana, sprider sig. Inte minst har detta sagts gälla i Göteborgs närmaste omgivning. I boken Dialektutjämning i Västsverige, som är en slutrapport från ett större forskningsprojekt, ställs frågan hur det ser ut lite längre bort i den västsvenska regionen och språket på ett antal orter 45–130 km från Göteborg undersöks. Sprider sig göteborgskan dit också eller står sig den traditionella dialekten starkare där?

I boken beskrivs hur västsvenska dialekter har förändrats sedan mitten av 1900-talet och hur dagens dialektsituation kan karaktäriseras. Dessutom undersöks processerna för språkförändring i två områden som ligger på samma avstånd från Göteborg men som har haft traditionellt olika dialektsystem – Västergötland och södra Bohuslän. Eftersom språklig förändring föregås av språklig variation läggs stor vikt vid att söka förklaringar till sådan variation, dels på en övergripande samhällsnivå, dels i det enskilda samtalet.

Avslutningsvis problematiseras begreppet dialekt och författarna diskuterar hur termen kan användas om olika språkliga varieteter i ett samhälle som genomgått stora språkliga förändringar det senaste århundradet.

We investigate the realisation of the variable (e) (as either the dialect variant [a] or the standard variant [e]) in the Swedish county of Värmland, with special attention to the small rural village of Torsby. Our analysis shows that dialect variants that are infrequent in recordings made in this area in the 1940s are generally absent in data from 2011.  However, the dialect variant [a] does not follow this pattern. Even though it is used infrequently in some consonant contexts in the older data, it has increased significantly over the last 70 years, both language internally as well as in the speech community. Here, we present an acoustic analysis of the vowel pronunciation and discuss the social meaning this feature has in contemporary Torsby. 

In this study, we focus on the use of [ɨ:] (sometimes referred to as damped /i/). This variant has different connotations in different parts of Sweden. In some rural areas, it has traditionally indexed place, whereas it has indexed class and gender in Sweden’s second largest city Gothenburg (Bruce 2010, Gross 2018, Svahn & Nilsson 2014). Previous studies have shown that in the urbanization of Sweden, the urban variant [ɨ:] has spread from city centers to other locations in Sweden. In the process, it has begun to index urbanity and modernity (see e.g. Svahn & Nilsson 2014). But what happens to this feature in urban Gothenburg where it traditionally has indexed class and gender alongside place? Does the changing social meaning in other locations also affect Gothenburg?

This article compares variation in the use of address practices across languages (Swedish, Finnish) and national varieties (Sweden Swedish, Finland Swedish). It undertakes quantitative and qualitative analyses of three sets of transcribed medical consultations. In Sweden Swedish, address pronouns which lower social distance overwhelmingly dominate. In Finnish, both address forms reducing social distance and practices maintaining greater distance are found, with age and level of acquaintance revealed as the most salient factors. Finland Swedish is located somewhere between Sweden Swedish and Finnish, displaying a stronger tendency than Finnish to use informal direct address forms to reduce social distance, but also showing similarities with Finnish in the use of direct formal address and indirect address. The differences can be related to larger socio-cultural patterns which, however, form a continuum rather than a fixed set keeping the two languages and countries completely apart.