Nordicity, language and the nation-state
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
Broadcasting the skeptron: the upset of sociolinguistic closure in Swedish public service television
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
This article explores upset reactions to purportedly deviant language use in the newsroom of the Swedish public service television company SVT. Adopting a historical gaze to contemporary struggles, it focuses on the news anchor Dina Haddad (an alias selected by me for the sake of anonymity) and the injurious, bigoted complaints she receives from de...
Media panic, medical discourse and the smartphone
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
This article investigates a space of upset related to the smartphone with its communicative affordances and implications. The notion of moral panic can be seen as a way of conceptualizing spaces of upset and their discursive frames. Informed by this concept and accounts of the panic discourses particularly directed at media, I examine the upset art...
Introduction: spaces of upset in the Nordic region
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
This introductory article opens the thematic issue Spaces of Upset in the Nordic Region. It introduces the contributions of the issue, outlines the concepts that unite them, and discusses the sociolinguistic area in which they are set: the Nordic region. Centering on Denmark, Finland and Sweden, the article offers an overview of some of the socioli...
Sociolinguistic upsets and people of color in social media performances
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
Particularly since the refugee “reception crisis” in 2015, Finland has started transforming into a more diverse and multicultural society. These societal changes have also been accompanied by sociolinguistic change, as well as language ideological debates and tensions, often manifesting in explicitly racist and xenophobic bursts of upset. In this a...
“We just want the language tone”: when requests to use minority languages lead to interactional breakdown in multilingua...
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
In this paper, we analyze two instances of interactional breakdown in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms in Copenhagen and Helsinki. Our focus is situations where teachers request the use of minority languages from pupils, and pupils react reluctantly and display embarrassment. These situations represent sociolinguistic spaces of upse...
Chaos in court: mediatized expressions of upset in relation to Danish courtroom interpreting
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
This paper discusses a disturbance to the Danish legal system, a cornerstone in the state of law. We focus on ‘expressions of upset’ during a reorganization of Danish legal interpreting, which was followed closely by the Danish media. We analyze these expressions as ‘communicative uptakes’ and we discuss how they made different elements of the inte...
Language for work and work for language: linguistic aspirations in the marketing of domestic work
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
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. Draw...
Making the case for linguicism: revisiting theoretical concepts and terminologies in linguistic discrimination research
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
In an effort to foreground the concept of linguicism, this article provides a critical review of the research literature on linguistic discrimination, focusing on common concepts and terms applied to characterise the issue. Giving particular attention to studies which directly consider discrimination based on language or linguistic factors, we iden...
Foreign language ideology and American Sign Language in US public education
Published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language
American Sign Language has been used at schools and programs for signing deaf and hard of hearing students in US history. Recently, American Sign Language (ASL) was offered as a foreign language to students who speak and hear for foreign language credit at American secondary schools. The movement of the language from its place in deaf education to ...
