Despite its proven societal value, humanities knowledge tends to be marginalized in research policy; this has been a topic of debate for some time. In this chapter, we focus on the valorization of humanities knowledge, with the aim of comprehending the way this process engenders societal impact. We argue that historical impact stories offer an effective methodological approach for a deeper understanding of such valorization and its subsequent impact. Drawing on three humanities research cases from Sweden, we propose that valorization and impacts of humanities knowledge should be seen as processual and as influenced by societal actors who determine the premises and condition the somewhat unpredictable nature of such impacts. We introduce two concepts: (i) acting space, which involves access to collaborators, audiences, and channels that enable knowledge valorization, and (ii) meandering knowledge flows, which provides insight into the uneven and hard-to-predict nature of valorization. Through these concepts, we wish to provide a better and more nuanced understanding of how knowledge valorization in the humanities unfolds. By doing so, we hope to support humanities scholars to find ways of articulating their own modes of mattering.

Ämnet för den här studien är språkliga erfarenheter av interskandinavisk kommunikation. Med hjälp av språkporträtt som metod kartläggs, mer specifikt, språkliga erfarenheter hos två individer som flyttat från Danmark till Sverige i vuxen ålder och i dag talar på ett sätt som i allmänhet uppfattas som svenska. Det som fokuseras i den här studien är emellertid inte individernas inlärning av det svenska språket, utan deras erfarenheter av slitningar mellan olika sätt att värdera interaktion i de två länderna. Flera av individernas narrerade erfarenheter illustrerar hur yttranden som i Danmark kan uppfattas som kvicka och fyndiga uppfattas som vulgära och aggressiva i Sverige. Individernas erfarenheter och de sociolingvistiska implikationerna av dem analyseras med begrepp och perspektiv från Pierre Bourdieu – särskilt används här begreppen språkligt habitus och språkmarknad – tillsammans med Brigitta Buschs begrepp språklig erfarenhet. Studien synliggör att även om danskan och svenskan är närbesläktade språk finns betydande skillnader i den pragmatiska logik som råder på de två ländernas språkmarknader, och att dessa skillnader genererar avsevärda effekter för de rörliga individernas språkliga erfarenheter.

The theme of this study is the linguistic experiences of inter-Scandinavian communication. More specifically, using language portraits as a method, the study maps the linguistic experiences of two individuals who have moved from Denmark to Sweden as adults, and who now speak in a manner that generally passes as Swedish. The focus of the present study, however, is not these individuals’ acquisition of the Swedish language but their experiences of friction between differing ways of evaluating interaction in the two countries. Several of the individuals’ narrated experiences illustrate how utterances which in Denmark are perceived as witty and humorous are perceived as vulgar and aggressive in Sweden. The individuals’ experiences and the sociolinguistic implications of them are analyzed using notions and perspectives from Pierre Bourdieu – in particular, the notions of linguistic habitus and linguistic market are used – along with the notion of Spracherleben, developed by Brigitta Busch. The study illuminates that even though Danish and Swedish are closely related languages, there are significant differences in the pragmatic logic that prevail in the linguistic markets of the two countries, and that these differences generate critical effects on the linguistic experiences of these mobile individuals.

Artikeln presenterar en studie om ord och fraser kopplade till ekologisk hållbarhet, som listats i nyordslistor publicerade av Språkrådet och dess föregångare åren 1986–2021. Resultaten visar att 132 av de 1 533 nyord som hittills publicerats i listorna går att koppla till området. Dessa ord analyseras vidare med hänsyn till hur uppkomsten av hållbarhetsnyord i listorna relaterar till samhällsdebattens idékonjunkturer, vad hållbarhetsnyorden typiskt betecknar, samt vilka hållbarhetsnyord som får störst spridning. Syftet med studien är ytterst att bidra till en diskussion om språkets roll i hållbar utveckling.

Language inevitably plays a key part in the infrastructure of transnational domestic work. Many who work and have worked in the domestic sector in Sweden have Swedish as their second language. The object of this study is to investigate the ways in which this fact is reflected in the marketing of domestic work historically as well as currently. Drawing on two datasets – personal advertisements by job seekers published in a Swedish daily during the twentieth century, and corporate marketing by contemporary cleaning agencies – the study discusses how references not only to language competence, but also to prospective language learning are used in the marketing of domestic work. While the phenomenon of domestic work, especially when performed by migrants, has been a resilient space of upset in the Swedish society for the last hundred years, the article argues that references to language are used to navigate tensions.

Kapitlet argumenterar för att ämnet nordiska språk framgångsrikt har erövrat en idé om att maktens representanter ska uttrycka sig begripligt. Effekten av det är att det skapas en efterfrågan på det slags expertkunskap som genereras och förmedlas vid institutioner för nordiska språk eller svenska. Forskare i ämnet får agera experter i diverse utredningar och före detta studenter med en examen i ämnet kan ta tjänst som språkvårdare eller språkkonsult vid myndigheter och departement. Vad som hänt är att man lyckats argumentera för att specialkompetens i grammatisk och stilistisk analys är nödvändig för att kunna få till stånd texter som uppfyller det ideal som kristalliserats till värdena vårdat, enkelt och begripligt. Idealet har fått epitetet klarspråk. Detta handlar om en typ av forskningsgenomslag som formar offentlig kommunikation, och därmed en del av tillvaron för i princip alla som lever i Sverige.

In this chapter we examine the value held by national languages, here Swedish, in the scholarly career trajectories in non-Anglophone countries. To this end, we analyse the language policies of Swedish higher education institutions and the narrated perceptions of two international recruits. Adopting Pierre Bourdieu’s distinction between scientific and academic capital, we argue that Swedish language skills constitute a vital asset in processes of accruing power in Sweden’s scientific world. Hence, as we maintain, English is not all that matters, despite internationalization being high on the agenda. 

This article explores communicative aspects of preparing others, by studying prenatal education classes in which midwives prepare expectant parents for delivery. Data include documentation from classes and interviews with the presenters. This twofold dataset enables investigation into how ideologies of communication figure into the production of discourse. A dominant idea is that discourse can stand in for lived experience in the endeavor to decrease nervousness and fear in the expectant parents. The observation data are therefore analyzed by paying attention to how the expectant parents’ future deliveries are discursively represented. Drawing on the conceptual framework for analyzing anticipatory discourse, the study shows how the midwives largely frame this future as predictable and the mother as highly agentive. When addressing unexpected turbulence, however, the midwives use the opportunity to stress the agency of medical professionals to maintain a representation of the delivery event as generally predictable.

The main argument of this chapter is that knowledge is a phenomenon to be understood in the intersection of discourse and action, and that entextualization (Bauman and Briggs 1990) mediates this relationship. Drawing on mediated discourse analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2004; Jones 2013), the chapter explores an online discussion forum thread used by over 200 pregnant women expecting a child in the same month. The empirical examples demonstrate how the participants in this thread exchange information, provide reports and contest knowledge. By way of these examples, the analysis claims that a key process in such knowledge practices is the entextualization of prior actions, often from the private life of the participants. Through such processes, a range of transient actions are treated as a unit, such as an experience, that is given a linguistic form. Recentered in the interaction of the thread, the unit functions as a piece of knowledge for others to draw on. In this vein, the discussion forum becomes a resource for the participants to appropriate control over medical knowledge and the biologically and socially turbulent experience of pregnancy.

This article explores the relationship between discourse and experiences of ill health. Drawing on narratives, it shows how a mother experiencing difficulties breastfeeding embodies sentiments of shame over what she perceives as a failure to perform motherhood. The notions of interdiscursivity and historical bodies are employed to ground the individual’s experience in discursive practices and to argue that shame is a sentiment that arises in the rupture of biopolitical ideologies construed in those practices. Expressing shame becomes a resource for assuming responsibility over failed motherhood, at the same time that it appears to obstruct recovery to smoothly functioning breastfeeding.

Den här artikeln utforskar förhållandet mellan diskurs och erfarenheter av ohälsa. Med hjälp av narrativa data visar artikeln hur en mor som har problem med amningen förkroppsligar skamkänslor över vad hon uppfattar som ett misslyckande att performera moderskap. Begreppen interdiskursivitet och historisk kropp används för att förstå hur individens erfarenheter relaterar till diskursiva praktiker, samt för att föra fram tesen att skam är en känsla som uppstår i disharmoni med biopolitiska ideologier som konstrueras i dessa praktiker. Att uttrycka skam blir en resurs för att ta på sig ansvaret för det misslyckade moderskapet, samtidigt som det förefaller förhindra återgången till en fungerande amning.