The dissertation examines how the Swedish cultural code, contained in books by Astrid Lindgren, was transferred into the Polish linguistic and cultural domain. The research reveals how the Polish cultural filter affected the image of Swedish reality in the translations. The analysis took into account the transfer of both verbal and visual aspects of the cultural elements. A smooth transfer was achieved in the following sphere: changes in the linguistic code between interlocutors from different social strata; the way in which people from the privileged classes were addressed; the transfer of the verbal folklore of children. The folklore of Swedish and Polish children was shown to be more or less congruent, which may indicate the existence of a universal, transnational children’s code. The reconstruction of intertextual references was achieved in relation to the Bible. References to world literature succeeded in crossing the cultural border only partially. The complexity of the cultural code of the original led to an exoticization of the translated text. The colloquial language and dialect of the original, reflecting the structure of Swedish society failed to find its way into the translations. Emotionality in the form of expression, typical of Polish culture, caused the translations to be characterized by the use of diminutives. The emphasis on the emotional element is also visible in the enormous diversification of the verba dicendi in the translations, which also makes the text more expressive. The linguistic and stylistic conventions of the target language (i.e. Polish) caused the translations to depart from Lindgren’s simple and repetitive style. The addition of footnotes in the translations demonstrates the strong didactic tendencies in literature for children in Polish culture. They did not enrich the text of the translation, however, with any new information. The transfer of the visual element in the first translations was characterized by polonization and folkoricization. Scenes that show children at work and portray village life were subjected to a form of purification, so that the small-town milieu—in contrast to the village—was shown to advantage through its visualization. The typical rural buildings and the costumes of their inmates were transmitted via a strategy of folkloricization: by drawing on the relatively well-regarded peasant culture of the Podhale region of Poland.

This case study investigates the acquisition of Russian in a language contact situation. It examines a simultaneous Swedish-Russian bilingual child born and raised in Sweden. Qualitative analysis is provided from age 1;4 to 8;5 focusing especially on the earliest stages (before the end of the critical period at 4;5). The aim was to investigate (a) whether the child reaches the same milestones as monolingual children, (b) whether there is evidence that two separate linguistic systems have been developed, (c) whether the child’s grammatical competence in both languages might be qualitatively different from that of monolingual children and (d) whether there is interaction between the languages. The hypothesis tested is that ample input is needed to construct and develop two linguistic systems on a native-speaker level.

The main result is that the two linguistic systems do not develop independently from each other; rather, 2L1s develop in permanent interaction where the weaker language – Russian – happens to be influenced by the stronger one – Swedish. The bilingual environment per se might lead to decreased structural complexity in the weaker language. Language dominance is viewed as a major determiner of cross-linguistic effects. This could lead to the development of a new individual variety of Russian (outside Russia).  

The results confirm the hypothesis that, even though there was exposure to both languages from birth onwards, the amount of input in the weaker and grammatically more complex language (Russian) received before the cri­tical period was not enough to completely develop full native command of it. The lack of input has an impact on the acquisition of morphology: some morphological categories may have been set randomly or not at all. The structures observed are more ty­pical of L2 than L1 ac­quisition. Morphology may be considered a vulnerable domain since complex mor­phological rules in Russian cannot develop with­out ample input.

The materials examined here consist of 121 Russian letters dating from 1700-1715. The present study aims to  define a stage in linguistic evolution and analyze the morphological heterogeneity in the textual corpus. The letters are divided into three categories: private, semiofficial, and official. All nomina (substantives, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals) are registered and their occurrences processed statistically case by grammatical case. The focus is on linguistic features where a choice is possible and variation is in evidence.

Conservatism asserts itself primarily in strongly standardized texts such as the official correspondence, while  phonetic spelling reflecting akanie and dialectally influenced syncretism between different cases (e.g., the GDLsg) is observable mainly in the private letters, which consitute the least standardized category. There is a trend break among u-genitives and u-locatives, where our findings indicate that the u-ending is losing ground.

A statistically established correlation between declensional type and the presence/absence of a coordinated adjunct is noted in the instrumental plural of masculine o-, jo-stems. The choice of the archaizing Ipl-ending suggests that repetition of the –mi- element is perceived to be redundant.

In the singular paradigm of the adjective the feminine instrumental forms are strongly conservative, and the modern short ending occurs in only a few instances. In the nominative plural the modern ending –ye, -ie dominates for all cases and in all letter categories.

The use of samyj for the comparative degree is not particularly prominent in these 18th-century letters. Because this descriptive comparison type developed in the 17th century, its use could have been expected to rise in the 18th, but our materials do not indicate any such increase.

With few exceptions, pronouns generally display forms corresponding to modern usage. One notable deviation is the occurrence of a pronoun with an adjectival ending in the genitive singular (tago), but it is an idiosyncratic feature.

Numerals for the most part correspond to modern usage, although their low frequency does not invite generalizations.

This thesis is a study of the Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev (1874-1948). The aim of the thesis is to re-examine the alleged gnostic subtext in Berdiaev’s thought by exploring a number of interrelated motifs in his world outlook, teaching on man and theory of knowledge. The method employed is a close reading of Berdiaev's philosophical and autobiographical writings. In order to establish which motifs should be examined, how they are to be understood and the manner in which they are interconnected, a scrutiny is made of Hans Jonas’s phenomenological elucidation of ancient Gnosticism. A synthetic conception labelled Jonasian Gnosticism is proposed as the interpretive framework, in order to provide a unitary and consistent heuristic tool with which to investigate the topic, and to distinguish the specific proposed representation of Gnosticism from other existing ones. A chapter is devoted to an analysis of the concept of gnosis as employed by Berdiaev. Another key notion taken from the Jonasian framework is that of demundanization, which denotes among other things a rejectionary attitude towards the world grounded in a negative experience of evil and suffering. Varieties of dualism as well as Berdiaev’s doctrine of the human spirit’s otherworldly origin and non-belonging in the world, constitute other issues that are examined. In addition, both Berdiaev’s assessment of historical Gnosticism and his view of a gnostic return in modern times are examined. The study demonstrates the complexity of Berdiaev’s attitude towards the classic Gnostics, and his attempt to denounce Gnosticism while at the same time making a case for a Christian gnosis. The results suggest both affinities and divergences in the relationship between Berdiaev’s thought and Jonasian Gnosticism. Even though the doctrinal standpoints diverge on crucial points, it is argued that a suggestive affinity nevertheless exists in the shared existential attitude towards self and world.

In late 19th century Russia, Darwinism was viewed as a measuring-rod of modernity. Thus, the Jewish reception of Darwinism may serve as an indicator of the extent to which the Jews in Russia were part of the modernization of Russian society. But the Darwinian concept of evolution of species through natural selection is considered incompatible with a teleological worldview, including a God-given plan for creation. This thesis addresses a twofold problem. One concerns the difficulties of reconciling Darwinism with Judaism and its traditional view of a God-given purpose in creation. The other problem is to explain the possible motives of the Jewish intellectuals for using Darwinian concepts such as the ‘struggle for existence’ in journal articles in the emerging Russian-Jewish press. The study employs discourse analysis, and the concept of isomorphism from institutional theory, for the examination of key concepts, citations, implied readers and purposes in a selection of journal articles from the Russian-Jewish press of the period 1860-1900. Contrasting with the lively general Russian debate on Darwinism, the results show that the Jews in Russia were rather reluctant to discuss Darwinism in the Russian-Jewish press. Censorship, other constraints and imminent problems facing the Jews, such as defence against growing anti-Semitism, are indicated as possible causes of the minimal evidence of a Jewish reception of Darwinism that was found. It was only to the extent that Darwinian concepts such as the ‘struggle for existence’ could be employed to address these more pressing issues that they were they found useful in a Jewish context. The results further imply that the integration between Russian and Jewish intellectuals during this period was weak, as reflected by the insignificant number of references to Russian sources in the selection of Jewish journal articles that were examined.

This book is a monograph about Anna Świrszczyńska’s poetry. It may be described as one woman’s attempt to read another woman’s literary work by taking into account established canons as well as the tools of feminist literary analysis. Part One begins with a discussion of Świrszczyńska’s biography (Chapter One). It then moves on to an overview of critical (mainly male) reactions to Świrszczyńska’s work (Chapter Two), with special regard to Czesław Miłosz’s contribution to its interpretation and popularization (Chapter Three). In Part Two there are three principal discussions: 1) of Anna Świrszczyńska’s early work Wiersze i proza [Poems and Prose] (1936), in which the poet develops her specific female view of European art and culture as disintegrated into incongruent fragments. Her premonition of the apocalypse, which is soon to be fulfilled in the events of World War II, finds its expression in the poet’s desperate attempts to unite the fragments of a shattered culture into individualized versions of myths (Chapter Four); 2) of the collection Budowałam barykadę [Building the Barricade] (1974), in which what is most crucial to the poet (biographically and poetically) is expressed – the encounter with human suffering in an inhuman world. Following this, her poetic view of the mortal body exposed to suffering under an empty sky becomes a well established motif in her work (Chapter Five); 3) of the collection Jestem baba (1972), in which Świrszczyńska introduces into poetry, by making the non-poetical “baba” her lyric heroine, the “outlawed feminine” and, as a result, revolutionizes the language of poetry and poetic representation, which leads in turn to liberating herself from the hegemony of the totalizing male gaze. In this way her anti-world is created (Chapter Six). The “world” is understood here as a male term – one might say that Świrszczyńska creates a “woman’s anti-world” as a place where the woman herself has to regain the right to name things according to her own terms.

This study applies major principles of cognitive linguistics to the task of developing a novel model of the bilingual dictionary called the dictionary for productive comprehension (DPC). Based on conceptual analysis and coherent network representation of entry words, multi-word expressions, and constructions, the DPC provides access to the conventional linguistic knowledge of native speakers.

In seeing linguistic units as contentful symbolic forms, the DPC is designed with a view of language as a lexicogrammatical continuum. By constructing the bilingual dictionary at the intersections of the two languages’ concepts under clearly specified conditions of their neutralization, it is given theoretical status.

However, the main purport of this study is in the realm of applied lexicography. Among its tasks are: operationalizing conceptual analysis by establishing heuristically viable discovery procedures; working out guidelines for converting conceptual networks into the microstructure of dictionary entries, and for organizing its macrostructure as a natural-language thesaurus of lexicalized and lexicogrammatical concepts; laying a foundation for selecting and locating MWEs, proverbial expressions and constructions in a principled way, and suggesting approaches to organizing the constructicon, the part of the dictionary that contains schematic constructions.

The DPC model offers effective remedies for the two major faults of the conventional bilingual dictionary, i.e. unrecognizability of the SL entry as a coherent whole by the TL user, and, consequently, inability to suggest precise cognitive orientations for the user's own production of an equivalent TL text. It proves that the bilingual dictionary can be something other than an inventory of disparate senses, a boundless set of translation equivalents, or an eclectic mixture of the two. By maintaining conceptual integrity of linguistic units, DPC affords the user a means of grasping the essence of a foreign word, MWE, or construction as if they were units of one’s native speech, as well as a generative potential with regard to translating into the TL. At the same time, by making conventional linguistic knowledge of the native speaker explicit, DPC serves the purpose of a learner’s dictionary.

The Ukrainian society has gone through vast changes since independence in 1991 and in this thesis some of these social changes are discussed through the prism of language policy. The main topic of the study is language policy (conceptualised as language practices, language beliefs, and language management) in the eastern Ukrainian city Kharkiv. This topic is examined within a framework focusing on motivation, allowing for a study of how people in Kharkiv describe, explain and rationalise language policy in the context of change in society. Ukrainian is the only state language in Ukraine, but Russian is widely used in Ukrainian society, and in Kharkiv Russian is the predominantly used language. One specific topic of the study is how young Ukrainians perceive the role granted the Ukrainian language in on-going processes of nation-building, related to the formation of a national identity. This is contrasted with discussions on individual linguistic rights and what is considered reasonable to demand from the Ukrainian population in terms of language practices. Further, the study examines the concept of language conflict, notably what kinds of conflict can be identified in and extracted from discussions on the role of language in society. This examination shows that it is not necessarily a case of potential conflict between groups or individuals, but also that individuals may struggle with internal conflict. This study demonstrates how language conflict is not about language, but rather about social positions, interests and value systems. This also illustrates the fact that the three components of language policy are not necessarily interrelated and consistent. Especially language practices and language beliefs are often at odds. Fieldwork was carried out in Kharkiv 2003-2005 and the study relies on a combination of methods (in-depth individual interviews, group interviews and a large-scale questionnaire).

The present study considers the diachronic changes that took place in Soviet political discourse as reflected in six selections of Pravda editorials from the 1920s through the 1950s, as well as slogans and headlines in that newspaper from 1917 through 1933.

The principal goal of analyses conducted on various levels is to identify and investigate a number of tendencies demonstrating the gradual transformation of the language of revolution into totalitarian language.

A quantitative analysis of the vocabulary of slogans and headlines in Chapter 2 focuses on chronological changes in words and addresses the contexts in which they were used. The same material is used in a review of the polarization of vocabulary in positive and negative contexts.

Chapters 3-6 are devoted to a qualitative analysis of editorial texts on three levels: lexical rhetorical means (Chapter 3), semantically charged elements of argumentation (Chapter 4), and the overall composition of the text (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 concludes the study with an illustration of the devices considered in Chapters 3-5 based on two editorials, one each from the revolutionary and totalitarian periods.

The analysis identifies a number of stable elements present throughout the period under study, such as the self – other opposition and references to the classics of Marxism-Leninism. At the same time, noted on all levels are changes illustrating the process by which the language of revolution was gradually transformed into totalitarian language. These include the disappearance from rhetoric of emotionality, imagery, and elements of logic, as well as stylistic leveling and an increase in the frequent repetition of the same conclusions and clichés.

The volume includes the following contributions:

Johan Muskala: Lars Steenslands publicerade skrifter

Per Ambrosiani: Названия стран света в славянских языках: север и юг [Nazvanija stran sveta v slavjanskich jazykach: sever i jug]

Jan Ivar Bjørnflaten: Na halavá vjancý nadéli: Grammaticalization and Russian Historical Morphology

Per-Arne Bodin: Översättning av den ortodoxa kyrkans realia från ryska till svenska

Ludmila Ferm: Глагольное управление в русском языке XVIII века: узус и норма [Glagol´noe upravlenie v russkom jazyke XVIII veka: uzus i norma]

Larisa Korobenko: Från Pskov till Uppsala – så här!

Magnus Ljunggren: Belyj’s Peterburg and Switzerland

Irina Lysén: К вопросу о методах анализа переводческой техники первых славянских переводчиков библейских текстов [K voprosu o metodach analiza perevodceskoj techniki pervych slavjanskich perevodcikov biblejskich tekstov]

Elisabeth Löfstrand: Fiskar och fåglar i Ockupationsarkivet

Lennart Lönngren: Синтактическая зависимость союзов и союзных слов в русском языке [Sintakticeskaja zavisimost´ sojuzov i sojuznych slov v russkom jazyke]

Barbara Lönnqvist: ”E’ du helt dårka?” Ryska lämningar i helsingforsiskt ungdomsspråk

Ingrid Maier: „Ontsegh-brief van den Turckschen Keyser …“. Ein fiktiver Brief des türkischen Sultans an den König von Polen in russischer Übersetzung (1621)

Barbro Nilsson: Parameterord: ordförbindelser med deverbativer

Juhani Nuorluoto: Medieval Slavic Texts as a Source of Evidence in Observing the Diachrony of Sound Change

Jens Nørgård-Sørensen: Notes on the Typology of Analogy

Thomas Rosén: O «графичесих заимствованиях» в современном русском языке [O «graficeskich zaimstvovanijach» v sovremennom russkom jazyke]

Lea Siilin: Эмоциональный мир русской агиографии: чему радуется русский святой? [Emocional´nyj mir russkoj agiografii: cemu raduetsja russkij svjatoj?]

Ewa Teodorowicz-Hellman: Några reflektioner kring kvinnors efternamn i det moderna polska språket

Barbara Törnquist-Plewa: Diabeł tkwi w szczegółach: uwagi na temat szwedzkiego tłumaczenia powieści Czesława Miłosza „Dolina Issy”

Willem Vermeer: Jagić’s Chronology of the Progressive Palatalization

This study examines different aspects of language variation in contemporary Czech television discourse. The modern Czech language is characterised by a specific linguistic situation in which speakers must choose between two varieties – Standard Czech (SC) and Common Czech (CC). This choice depends on a number of linguistic, cultural, social and other factors. Television discourse, which is a mixture of prepared and unprepared speech, provides a good opportunity to study the distribution of these varieties and their function. The aim of the dissertation is to research these issues in talk shows and discussion programmes. The following aspects are analysed in the dissertation:

– The frequency of occurrence of a number of phonological and morphological elements of the two varieties. This analysis is conducted in a quantitative study of a corpus of 24,000 words (fifteen television shows). The elements are categorised and analysed statistically. The frequency of these elements is shown on two levels: in the total corpus material and in groups of programmes. The results are compared with previous studies of spoken Czech.

– A comparative study of the Communist and post-Communist television discourse, in which television programmes from before and after 1989 are analysed and compared. The study reveals a number of linguistic differences between the two programmes and their relation to such factors as operational roles, the function of media and the frequency of dialogue markers.

– A qualitative analysis of the fifteen programmes which comprise the corpus. The aim of this study is to show the function of the two Czech varieties in different types of television discourse. The variables affecting the participants’ choice of variety are analysed.

The investigation shows that dialogue form, genre and operational roles are directly related to the choice of SC and CC in the programmes. These results are also connected with language norms and other social factors.

This study investigates the translation process of three translator students and their production of translated non-fiction texts. The students are followed from an initial examination task over a period of time of 5 years. The translated texts produced during this period are analysed with selected methods of text analysis, which is compared to their source texts. The text analysis focuses on certain grammatical features that are known to generate problems for translators with the language pair Russian – Swedish.

The results of the analysis show that the systematic differences in the languages involved are not as problematic as expected for the participants. Writing skills in the TL, translation principles and initial beliefs as well as the individual’s approach concerning the task of a translator turn out to have the most significant influences on the participants’ performance. In a complementary analysis, introspection data obtained from concurrent verbalisations are analysed according to a model that allows indicating and classifying marked processing in the translations. The role of contrastive language knowledge is especially emphasised in this part of the study.

The results are put in relation to each other to obtain a picture of the individual development of the participating translator students. The three case studies show that each participant developed his/her competence during the time of the study. They also show that this development stays within a conceptual frame set by the participants before they started their training as translators.

The implications for translator training that can be drawn from this study are mainly concerned with the importance of writing skills in the TL, contrastive language knowledge and the importance of questioning individual beliefs and principles concerning the task of the translator as well as approaches to translating.

Mot slutet av perestrojkan skedde ett kulturellt paradigmskifte i Ryssland i samband med censurens avskaffande och sovjetsystemets fall. I den intellektuella debatten bearbetades kulturtidskrifternas, litteraturens (Ordets) och intelligentsians förändrade samhällsfunktion. Kaos och förändrade sociala roller liksom utarmning respektive berikande skapade eskatologiska stämningar. I Vladimir Makanins uppmärksammade berättelse "Laz"/"Passagen" från 1991 får övergångens problem skönlitterär gestaltning.

The aim of the dissertation is to analyze the political conceptions of the monthly "Kultura" in the period since its creation until 1980. The magazine, which started coming out in 1947 in Italy, was created by expatriate Poles, who after the Yalta Agreements chose to stay in the West. The editorial board soon moved to France where on the outskirts of Paris in the small town of Maisons-Laffitte the monthly journal has been edited ever since. Thanks to the original profile of the magazine and its political philosophy it has managed to group around itself numerous outstanding Polish writers and commentators, both those active in the emigré communities and those living in Poland. Also Western authors as well as writers and commentators from other countries in Central and Eastern Europe published their texts on the magazine's pages.

In spite of "Kultura's" illustrious successes and unique accomplishments, earlier research on its history has not moved beyond its initial stage. In publications devoted to the phenomenon of "Kultura" we may encounter contradictory ideological qualifications and opinions on the magazine's political profile. This is a consequence of the fact that there is painful lack of source materials and dissertations analyzing the accomplishments of "Kultura" from a long term perspective. This dissertation aims to fill out this gap by analyzing a period of over thirty years in the history of the periodical. An attempt is made to divide this history into periods on the basis of ideological and political criteria. A further aim is to define the style of political thinking dominant in the materials published in the periodical and to characterize it against the background of earlier political debates in prewar Poland. The adopted diachronic perspective and the wide spectrum of analyzed phenomena provide the basis for an assessment of which conceptions and ideological elements and values were constantly present in the political platform of the editors and which made only a temporary appearance in connection with the political sympathies of the periodical or the changing circumstances on the world scene. It should be added that this is the first dissertation on the subject to cover truly comprehensive research material and to analyze the political trends in "Kultura" from a long-term perspective.

The main thesis of the dissertation may be formulated as follows: "Kultura" succeeded in forging such conceptions and theories and in chosing such political options whose adequacy has found confirmation in the postwar developments both in Poland and on the international scene. This was possible, inter alia, because the magazine managed to rise above the limitations of traditional Polish ideological and political trends and worked out on its pages a new style of political thinking. "Kultura" is thus understood for the purposes of this dissertation as a periodical, a political centre and a school of political thought.