L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 2019
Research of L1 education is recently established in the Nordic countries. Since the turn of the c... more Research of L1 education is recently established in the Nordic countries. Since the turn of the century we have seen the emergence of national and Nordic research networks, conference and publication series, research programs, and the designation of positions as professors and associate professors. Stud-ies of Nordic L1 research have taken stock of the disciplinary sub fields, but empirical studies of the L1 school subject as a unitary field are still in demand. The aim of this study is to investigate the emergence of Nordic L1 research and its present profile(s) through PhD research. The present study examines the abstracts of Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish L1 PhD dissertations defended between 2000 and 2017. The results point to a growing field. A general observation is that the research focuses on reading and writing, whereas oral and aesthetical expressions are minor topics. Another result is a set of national differences which are related to governmental policy documents and school curricula. Further, the re-search has become more internationally oriented during recent years. The L1 research is characterized as a professionalized region (Bernstein, 2003) with strong didactization (Ongstad, 2004), and a potential for powerful disciplinary knowledge (Lambert, 2017).
This article presents the theory of Systemic functional linguistics (SFL), first developedby Mich... more This article presents the theory of Systemic functional linguistics (SFL), first developedby Michael Halliday, and exemplifies how the theory can be applied in empirical analysis of text and talk. It shows how SFL is centered on the idea that language functions in social meaning making, and how this idea is theoretically elaborated in terms of stratification, metafunctional diversity, systemic choices and registers. The article includes a theoretical description of these four central notions, followed by a presentation of two empirical studies. Both studies explore lexicogrammatical and semantic choices within the ideational metafunction, though in different registers. The first study is an analysis of the use of grammatical metaphor in text written by monolingual and multilingual upper secondary school students. Grammatical metaphor is the realization of meaning in atypical, or incongruent, ways. In the study, grammatical metaphor is a developmental trait, allowing students to express specialized meanings
through new combinations between semantics and lexicogrammar.
In the second analysis SFL is applied on talk in interaction and combined with activity analysis. The study explores the successive instantiation of the meaning potential of language in a certain context, namely when participants talk about thinking in radio phone-in counseling conversations. An analysis within the ideational metafunction combined with the notion of communicative projects describes how, in this specific case, the participants’ lexicogrammatical choices between a verb and a nominal form contributes in a critical way to a successful outcome of the ongoing counseling activity.
This article deals with spatial aspects of traditional writing technologies, from inscriptions in... more This article deals with spatial aspects of traditional writing technologies, from inscriptions in stone to the printed page. It is argued that writing technologies, by their potential of connecting texts as artifacts and human bodies in space, have an interpersonal, disciplining function that tends to be overlooked by research. Readers are bodily placed in relation to written texts quite differently than are interacting speakers. This argument is elaborated using two examples technological innovations in writing: the rune stone and the classroom. The analysis draws on the contextual theory of social semiotics. It is proposed that, in order to better understand the connections between text, body and space, written texts should be seen as potential participants in interpersonal relations.
Published in Boeriis, Morten & Thomas Hestbæk Andersen (red.) 2012, Nordisk socialsemiotik. Pædagogiske, multimodale og sprogvidenskapelige landvinninger. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, pp. 221–245.
Artikeln presenterar och diskuterar Jim Martins och Michael Hallidays olika kontextmodeller, med ... more Artikeln presenterar och diskuterar Jim Martins och Michael Hallidays olika kontextmodeller, med speciellt fokus på modellernas tillämplighet i forskning om skrivande i skolan. Diskussionen konkretiseras av att båda modellerna används i analys av ett skrivförlopp där en klass svenska gymnasieelever skriver insändare. Behovet av en teoretisk undersökning av de systemisk-funktionella kontextmodellerna motiveras utifrån dels att teorin fått starkt genomslag i svensk skolforskning och skolutveckling, dels att teoridiskussionen kring dessa frågor hittills varit svag också internationellt. Analysexemplet visar hur skrivförloppet med Martins genremodell kan förstås som en sekvens av texter i olika genrer fram till att klassen i grupper producerar sina insändare vilka struktureras antingen efter genren ställningstagande (vilket läraren instruerat dem till) eller efter genren förklaring. Hallidays registermodell visar sig kunna ge en mer komplex förståelse av hur de olika kontextuella variablerna samspelar i situationen, och också belysa elevernas val av en textstruktur på tvärs mot lärarens instruktion. I artikelns avslutande diskussion framhålls förtjänsterna med den deskriptiva apparaten i genremodellen. Kritik riktas emellertid mot genremodellens teoretiska placering av genre som ett överordnat skikt. Registermodellen framhålls som ett mer dynamiskt alternativ såväl för förståelsen av texters roll i sociala aktiviteter som för en didaktisk praktik som också siktar på att eleverna ska utveckla självständighet som skribenter.
This article critically investigates how context is constructed in Systemic Functional Grammar (S... more This article critically investigates how context is constructed in Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). The task is motivated by the immense influence of SFG in text and discourse analysis, and its recent theoretical applications to research on Swedish. The investigation has as its point of departure Halliday’s presentation of context in Language, context and text (Halliday & Hasan 1985), and it focuses on Halliday’s analysis of three examples: an extract of casual interaction, a love poem and a lecture broadcast on radio. Halliday’s perspective on context is applied to journalistic essays written by students in Swedish upper secondary school. Two main theoretical problems are observed. Firstly, the students’ essays do not seem to have context at all in the sense that Halliday elaborates in his analysis of the casual interaction; this is because the video-recorded activity of the writing process cannot be taken as a sufficiently meaningful context. Secondly, although the texts can be analyzed as having “context in text”, it turns out to be difficult to generalize this finding in terms of situation type. A complementary perspective is proposed that makes it possible to analyze the students’ work as a chain of activities realized in a chain of texts. The study is a part of the research project “Text activities and the development of knowledge in school”, funded by the Swedish Research Council.
In this article, we present an analysis of writing in the subject field of Swedish. We introduce ... more In this article, we present an analysis of writing in the subject field of Swedish. We introduce how three teachers individually work with writing processes in their groups of thirteen or sixteen-year old students. The study is mainly based on classroom observations and video recordings. Our model of analysis has emerged from comparison of our data and consists of three points of departure: chains of text (reading and writing in the classroom), talk about text, and typologies of texts that are constructed in the classrooms. The results of the analysis show differences and similarities in various systematic ways, concerning the writing processes as well as the organisation of the classrooms. One of the teachers mainly focuses on the organisation of thought, another on the organisation of the world outside school, and the third on more general knowledge. The teachers’ didactic choices can be said to show the practical outcome of pedagogical theories based on process discourse, functional discourse, and genre discourse. While the classrooms differ to a large extent, the teachers nonetheless abide by the national curricula for Swedish, but in their own way. The study is carried out as a part of the project “Text- and Knowledge Development in School”.
Published in Olofsson, Mikael (red.) 2010. Symposium 2009. Genrer och funktionellt språk i teori och praktik. Stockholm: Stockholms universitets förlag, pp. 13-27.
This article investigates how the use of computers with internet access transforms the conditions... more This article investigates how the use of computers with internet access transforms the conditions of writing in the school context. The case study focuses on a class in Swedish Upper secondary school (16 years old) writing argumentative texts that the students may send to a local newspaper for digital publishing. The video recorded work in one writing group is analyzed in detail in order to show how the group struggles with two sets of demands; on the one hand the well known demands of the school task is met (specified text length and text outline, etc.), and on the other the new demands of the public debate. By the use of Systemic Functional Linguistics the analysis uncovers how during the writing process the students interpersonally orient themselves towards different readers, sometimes writing just for their teacher, but sometimes for the readers of the internet paper. The analysis shows how their writing task quickly gets unexpectedly complex. As a consequence of the controversial proposal that the students want to publish, they need for strategic reasons to not “express their own opinion” as they are supposed to do according to the curriculum. They are also pushed by the situational context of public debate to not choose for the text they are writing the thesis argument outline recommended by their teacher. Instead they elaborate a pattern that makes their thesis a solution for a problem formulated in the introductory part. The study is a part of the research project “Text activities and the development of knowledge in school”, funded by the Swedish Research Council.
L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 2019
Research of L1 education is recently established in the Nordic countries. Since the turn of the c... more Research of L1 education is recently established in the Nordic countries. Since the turn of the century we have seen the emergence of national and Nordic research networks, conference and publication series, research programs, and the designation of positions as professors and associate professors. Stud-ies of Nordic L1 research have taken stock of the disciplinary sub fields, but empirical studies of the L1 school subject as a unitary field are still in demand. The aim of this study is to investigate the emergence of Nordic L1 research and its present profile(s) through PhD research. The present study examines the abstracts of Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish L1 PhD dissertations defended between 2000 and 2017. The results point to a growing field. A general observation is that the research focuses on reading and writing, whereas oral and aesthetical expressions are minor topics. Another result is a set of national differences which are related to governmental policy documents and school curricula. Further, the re-search has become more internationally oriented during recent years. The L1 research is characterized as a professionalized region (Bernstein, 2003) with strong didactization (Ongstad, 2004), and a potential for powerful disciplinary knowledge (Lambert, 2017).
This article presents the theory of Systemic functional linguistics (SFL), first developedby Mich... more This article presents the theory of Systemic functional linguistics (SFL), first developedby Michael Halliday, and exemplifies how the theory can be applied in empirical analysis of text and talk. It shows how SFL is centered on the idea that language functions in social meaning making, and how this idea is theoretically elaborated in terms of stratification, metafunctional diversity, systemic choices and registers. The article includes a theoretical description of these four central notions, followed by a presentation of two empirical studies. Both studies explore lexicogrammatical and semantic choices within the ideational metafunction, though in different registers. The first study is an analysis of the use of grammatical metaphor in text written by monolingual and multilingual upper secondary school students. Grammatical metaphor is the realization of meaning in atypical, or incongruent, ways. In the study, grammatical metaphor is a developmental trait, allowing students to express specialized meanings
through new combinations between semantics and lexicogrammar.
In the second analysis SFL is applied on talk in interaction and combined with activity analysis. The study explores the successive instantiation of the meaning potential of language in a certain context, namely when participants talk about thinking in radio phone-in counseling conversations. An analysis within the ideational metafunction combined with the notion of communicative projects describes how, in this specific case, the participants’ lexicogrammatical choices between a verb and a nominal form contributes in a critical way to a successful outcome of the ongoing counseling activity.
This article deals with spatial aspects of traditional writing technologies, from inscriptions in... more This article deals with spatial aspects of traditional writing technologies, from inscriptions in stone to the printed page. It is argued that writing technologies, by their potential of connecting texts as artifacts and human bodies in space, have an interpersonal, disciplining function that tends to be overlooked by research. Readers are bodily placed in relation to written texts quite differently than are interacting speakers. This argument is elaborated using two examples technological innovations in writing: the rune stone and the classroom. The analysis draws on the contextual theory of social semiotics. It is proposed that, in order to better understand the connections between text, body and space, written texts should be seen as potential participants in interpersonal relations.
Published in Boeriis, Morten & Thomas Hestbæk Andersen (red.) 2012, Nordisk socialsemiotik. Pædagogiske, multimodale og sprogvidenskapelige landvinninger. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, pp. 221–245.
Artikeln presenterar och diskuterar Jim Martins och Michael Hallidays olika kontextmodeller, med ... more Artikeln presenterar och diskuterar Jim Martins och Michael Hallidays olika kontextmodeller, med speciellt fokus på modellernas tillämplighet i forskning om skrivande i skolan. Diskussionen konkretiseras av att båda modellerna används i analys av ett skrivförlopp där en klass svenska gymnasieelever skriver insändare. Behovet av en teoretisk undersökning av de systemisk-funktionella kontextmodellerna motiveras utifrån dels att teorin fått starkt genomslag i svensk skolforskning och skolutveckling, dels att teoridiskussionen kring dessa frågor hittills varit svag också internationellt. Analysexemplet visar hur skrivförloppet med Martins genremodell kan förstås som en sekvens av texter i olika genrer fram till att klassen i grupper producerar sina insändare vilka struktureras antingen efter genren ställningstagande (vilket läraren instruerat dem till) eller efter genren förklaring. Hallidays registermodell visar sig kunna ge en mer komplex förståelse av hur de olika kontextuella variablerna samspelar i situationen, och också belysa elevernas val av en textstruktur på tvärs mot lärarens instruktion. I artikelns avslutande diskussion framhålls förtjänsterna med den deskriptiva apparaten i genremodellen. Kritik riktas emellertid mot genremodellens teoretiska placering av genre som ett överordnat skikt. Registermodellen framhålls som ett mer dynamiskt alternativ såväl för förståelsen av texters roll i sociala aktiviteter som för en didaktisk praktik som också siktar på att eleverna ska utveckla självständighet som skribenter.
This article critically investigates how context is constructed in Systemic Functional Grammar (S... more This article critically investigates how context is constructed in Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). The task is motivated by the immense influence of SFG in text and discourse analysis, and its recent theoretical applications to research on Swedish. The investigation has as its point of departure Halliday’s presentation of context in Language, context and text (Halliday & Hasan 1985), and it focuses on Halliday’s analysis of three examples: an extract of casual interaction, a love poem and a lecture broadcast on radio. Halliday’s perspective on context is applied to journalistic essays written by students in Swedish upper secondary school. Two main theoretical problems are observed. Firstly, the students’ essays do not seem to have context at all in the sense that Halliday elaborates in his analysis of the casual interaction; this is because the video-recorded activity of the writing process cannot be taken as a sufficiently meaningful context. Secondly, although the texts can be analyzed as having “context in text”, it turns out to be difficult to generalize this finding in terms of situation type. A complementary perspective is proposed that makes it possible to analyze the students’ work as a chain of activities realized in a chain of texts. The study is a part of the research project “Text activities and the development of knowledge in school”, funded by the Swedish Research Council.
In this article, we present an analysis of writing in the subject field of Swedish. We introduce ... more In this article, we present an analysis of writing in the subject field of Swedish. We introduce how three teachers individually work with writing processes in their groups of thirteen or sixteen-year old students. The study is mainly based on classroom observations and video recordings. Our model of analysis has emerged from comparison of our data and consists of three points of departure: chains of text (reading and writing in the classroom), talk about text, and typologies of texts that are constructed in the classrooms. The results of the analysis show differences and similarities in various systematic ways, concerning the writing processes as well as the organisation of the classrooms. One of the teachers mainly focuses on the organisation of thought, another on the organisation of the world outside school, and the third on more general knowledge. The teachers’ didactic choices can be said to show the practical outcome of pedagogical theories based on process discourse, functional discourse, and genre discourse. While the classrooms differ to a large extent, the teachers nonetheless abide by the national curricula for Swedish, but in their own way. The study is carried out as a part of the project “Text- and Knowledge Development in School”.
Published in Olofsson, Mikael (red.) 2010. Symposium 2009. Genrer och funktionellt språk i teori och praktik. Stockholm: Stockholms universitets förlag, pp. 13-27.
This article investigates how the use of computers with internet access transforms the conditions... more This article investigates how the use of computers with internet access transforms the conditions of writing in the school context. The case study focuses on a class in Swedish Upper secondary school (16 years old) writing argumentative texts that the students may send to a local newspaper for digital publishing. The video recorded work in one writing group is analyzed in detail in order to show how the group struggles with two sets of demands; on the one hand the well known demands of the school task is met (specified text length and text outline, etc.), and on the other the new demands of the public debate. By the use of Systemic Functional Linguistics the analysis uncovers how during the writing process the students interpersonally orient themselves towards different readers, sometimes writing just for their teacher, but sometimes for the readers of the internet paper. The analysis shows how their writing task quickly gets unexpectedly complex. As a consequence of the controversial proposal that the students want to publish, they need for strategic reasons to not “express their own opinion” as they are supposed to do according to the curriculum. They are also pushed by the situational context of public debate to not choose for the text they are writing the thesis argument outline recommended by their teacher. Instead they elaborate a pattern that makes their thesis a solution for a problem formulated in the introductory part. The study is a part of the research project “Text activities and the development of knowledge in school”, funded by the Swedish Research Council.
Uploads
through new combinations between semantics and lexicogrammar.
In the second analysis SFL is applied on talk in interaction and combined with activity analysis. The study explores the successive instantiation of the meaning potential of language in a certain context, namely when participants talk about thinking in radio phone-in counseling conversations. An analysis within the ideational metafunction combined with the notion of communicative projects describes how, in this specific case, the participants’ lexicogrammatical choices between a verb and a nominal form contributes in a critical way to a successful outcome of the ongoing counseling activity.
through new combinations between semantics and lexicogrammar.
In the second analysis SFL is applied on talk in interaction and combined with activity analysis. The study explores the successive instantiation of the meaning potential of language in a certain context, namely when participants talk about thinking in radio phone-in counseling conversations. An analysis within the ideational metafunction combined with the notion of communicative projects describes how, in this specific case, the participants’ lexicogrammatical choices between a verb and a nominal form contributes in a critical way to a successful outcome of the ongoing counseling activity.