English in contemporary Sweden: Perceptions,policies, and narrated practices

This paper compares trends in Sweden's language planning and language policies, and particularly the rationale underlying recent government legislation, to actual language use at the ‘grass roots’ of society, in order to investigate the extent to which academic and official rationales are confirmed by observed language practices. The passing of the Swedish Language Act of 2009 followed debates in academia and the media which not infrequently characterised English as a major threat to the survival of Swedish. However, despite the strong belief in the utility of English widely held in Sweden, the Swedish language is the preferred language of Swedes as well as immigrants in most domains. These results reveal a contradiction between the arguments put forward by a number of academics, educators and journalists concerning the ‘threat’ of English, and the language practices of ordinary folk in their daily lives.     

Dilemmas in planning English/vernacular relations in post‐colonial communities

In the context of globalization and post‐modern discourses, the debate about the relative status of local and dominant languages poses serious policy problems for post‐colonial communities. Critics of minority language rights (MLR) generally point out that engineering a language shift on behalf of a vernacular language – motivated by the preservationist interests, collective rights and sentimental associations of an ethnic group – is futile, as the economic and social mobilities of individuals are bound to work against this enterprise. Proponents of MLR have gone to the other extreme of essentializing the linguistic identity of minority communities, generalizing their language attitudes, and treating local language rights as non‐negotiable. This article addresses this debate in the context of the attempts to promote Tamil by the military leadership in the North and East of Sri Lanka. The paper brings together data gathered in sociolinguistic studies for four years in the Jaffna society in order to understand the reception of the language policy in everyday life. The leadership recognizes that language policy is a symbolic statement for political purposes and tolerates certain inconsistencies in policy and practice. While the community assures itself of ethnic pride and linguistic autonomy with the stated policies, it negotiates divergent interests in the gaps between the policy/practice divide. Scholars should recognize the agency of subaltern communities to negotiate language politics in creative and critical ways that transcend the limited constructs formulated to either cynically sweep aside or unduly romanticize language rights.     

To Die For: The Semiotic Seductive Power of the Tanned Body

Human skin burns with prolonged exposure to ultraviolet light. This simple physiological process acquires meaning through social interaction—whereby tanned skin assumes symbolic and semiotic properties. In this article we examine the meanings of tanned skin by focusing on the semiotic seductive power of the tanned body. Drawing from forty qualititative interviews, we examine the motives, beliefs, and experiences of people who tan their skin artificially, that is, through exposure to tanning lamps, in order to understand how tanned skin assumes meaning for them. We analyze the practice of artificial tanning and the interplay among processes of seduction, impression management, self‐expression, and the construction, exchange, and interpretation of embodied sign‐values.     

Communities of practice: Legitimacy not choice

Communities of practice has emerged as an alternative to other current sociolinguistic models such as speech communities and social networks, particularly in the area of language and gender. The valorization of non‐linguistic behaviours as adding further explanatory power to sociolinguistic models is timely: it has often been implicit in linguistic study (through ethnography) but rarely been given recognition. However, the types of self‐constituting communities of interest to sociolinguists are not the same as the communities of learning studied by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998) . If this construct is to be useful to sociolinguists, then the mechanisms by which it models access, gate‐keeping and its internal hierarchy need development. Using Eckert's (2000) Belten High data, and other work on adolescent talk, it is argued that gaining legitimate peripheral participation is a matter of sanction from within the hierarchy. Individuals do not have open access to communities based solely on their desire to be part of that community and to take part in its practices. While practices may define the community, the community determines who has access to that practice.     

Understanding ethnic visibility through language use: the case of Taiwan Hakka

This study investigates how the ethnic visibility of Taiwan Hakka is improved through language use. The usage of a unique Hakka symbolic code <nganggiang stiff neck> is focused on. Based on data from the four Taiwan major newspapers, an analysis with text techniques shows that the code emerges along with social-political developments in Taiwan, with its meaning turning from negative to positive connotation. Its frequency is highly correlated with major political events in Taiwan, with peaks during the two or three years before presidential elections. It illustrates semiotic innovation, extending from Hakka to Hakka non-human, to non-Hakka, and to non-Hakka non-human frames. The salient image it creates increases Hakka ethnic visibility and enhances their ethnic identity. A significant implication is that minority ethnic groups can employ a unique symbolic code, empowering it with positive connotation. Through extensive language use, its representation can raise their ethnic visibility and enhance their ethnic identity.     

Extending and Broadening Blumer's Conceptualization of Fashion: Adding Notions of Generic Social Process and Semiotic Transformation

Abstract

Herbert Blumer's critics and followers have, for the most part, neglected the significance of his theory of fashion. In this paper I revisit Blumer's thesis on fashion by identifying the fashion process as an instance of the generic social process of semiotic transformation. The concept of semiotic transformation refers to the change in meanings of symbolic objects over time. By identifying six elements of the generic social process of semiotic transformation (systemic permeability, systemic freedom, logonomic fluidity, logonomic openness, indeterminacy, and logonomic hegemony) and by viewing semiotic transformation as a joint act grounded in emergence, I argue that the meaning of change over time is a process structuring both the definition of the situation and symbolic objects. I conclude the paper with a set of reflections on the significance of Blumer's work on fashion for the development of a research agenda of semiotic transformation and for the legacy and reception of Blumerian theory.     

Voting and Social Inclusion in Sweden

Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non‐citizen residents arguing that it would increase political influence, interest and self‐esteem among foreign citizens. The aim of this paper is to explore the act of voting as a measure of social inclusion by comparing voting propensities of immigrants (people born outside Sweden), their descendants (born in Sweden) and native Swedish citizens (those who have citizenship through jus sanguine) while controlling for a range of socio‐economic, demographic characteristics, contextual factors and a set of “hard” and “soft” social inclusion related variables. In particular we focus on the impact of citizenship acquisition ‐‐ does the symbolic act of attaining citizenship result in increased voting participation on the part of Swedish residents who are not citizens by birth. We use the Swedish 2006 electoral survey matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden to assess the correlates of voting by Swedish‐born and immigrant residents. Using instrumental variable regressions we estimate the impact of citizenship acquisition. We find that acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference to the probability of voting. Immigrants who naturalise are in general far more likely to vote than those who do not.     

From the Depths of Despair: Performance, Counterperformance, and "September 11"

After introducing a perspective on terrorism as postpolitical and after establishing the criteria for success that are immanent in this form of antipolitical action, this essay interprets September 11, 2001, and its aftermath inside a cultural‐sociological perspective. After introducing a macro‐model of social performance that combines structural and semiotic with pragmatic and power‐oriented dimensions, I show how the terrorist attack on New York City and the counterattacks that immediately occurred in response can be viewed as an iteration of the performance/counterperformance dialectic that began decades, indeed centuries, ago in terms of the relation of Western expansion and Arab‐Muslim reaction. I pay careful attention to the manner in which the counterperformance of New Yorkers and Americans develops an idealized, liminal alternative that inspired self‐defense and outrage, leading to exactly the opposite performance results from those the al‐Qaeda terrorists had intended .     

THE LANGUAGE OF TIME: TOWARD A SEMIOTICS OF TEMPORALITY

This article examines temporality from a semiotic perspective, as a quasi-linguistic system of signification, shedding light on the rudimentary elements of the "language' of time and the way both individuals and societies use them in their "speech.' It first explores how people manipulate various dimensions of temporality (e.g., duration, speed, frequency, timing) as virtual semiotic codes through which they manage to convey various social messages (e.g., about priority, importance, commitment, respect, intimacy, informality) without having to articulate them verbally. It then proceeds to show that this schema of symbolic relations between the temporal and the social seems to operate not only at the microsocial level of interpersonal relations but also at the macrosocial level of societal politics. Using the Jewish Sabbath, the Christian Lord's Day, and the French Republican calendar as case studies, it examines the way "temporal contrasts' are used to substantiate and accentuate social (conceptual, cultural, and political) contrasts. The article introduces the "semiotic quadrangle,' the use of which enables the student of symbolic communication to view meaning as a function of an entire system of symbolic associations at both semantic and syntactic levels.     

Home Language Instruction in Sweden: what is the situation in 1998?

This article focuses on one of the components of education for immigrants in Sweden: home language instruction. Viewed, mainly in the 1970s, as a generous asset of Swedish social policy, foreign observers nowadays seem less eager to analyse and follow up on all of the concrete measures and ideological debate that have taken place since. However, the Swedish experience of more than 20 years in home language instruction is still worth consideration, as it has witnessed major changes in the 1990s.     

Texts and Other Symbolic Spaces

This article examines the cultural fabric of national identity in light of recent debates in the human sciences on the nature of texts and "textual realities." In discussing various political and historical examples, it argues that conceiving of national identity as a "textual reality" is to understand it (a) as a symbolic construction, (b) as a process of continuous cultural interpretation and reinterpretation, (c) as semiotic mediation, and (d) as a heterogeneous composition of different, often contradictory, layers of meaning. Although these issues have been discussed in different disciplines and theoretical contexts, they are viewed here as aspects of the same phenomenon, reflecting, each in its way, the conceptual scope of the textual approach. In further developing this argument, the article outlines a concept of text that covers not only linguistic phenomena in the traditional sense but also meaningful structures in a larger, cultural sense: symbolic spaces that embrace several semiotic media. Based on the idea of text as a symbolic space, a concept of national identity is suggested that, although it implies viewing identity as a discursive and narrative construction, is not limited to the mode of linguistic storytelling but also includes narrative media such as architecture, landscape design, cultural traditions such as commemorative rituals, and other symbolic and material practices.     

The ��Semiotic Self��: From Peirce and Mead to Wiley and Singer

Norbert Wiley (1994) provides a synthesis of Peirce??s and Mead??s views on the self. The Peirce-Mead ideal type model of the self involves the I and the me as well as the I and the you. Hence, at each moment we are a combined ??me-I-you?? in past, present and future. Milton Singer (1989) discovers the semiotic self through his anthropological research, but does not apply the concept as rigorously as one might hope. Peirce??s triadic epistemology and Pragmatism is explored to frame his contribution to the semiotic self. His categories of Firstness, Secondnes and Thirdness are briefly considered. Some anecdotal information about the self in Indic Civilization is discussed. It is argued that the INSOR model can be useful. The key is to move beyond Cartesian notions and to see the semotic self as a ??semiotic object,?? always subject to interpretation by the person engaged in symbolic interaction and exchange.     

Social capital and leaving the nest: Channels and housing tenures

Young adults in Europe sometimes have trouble moving away from their parents and obtaining a home of their own, which is considered an important step in the transition to adulthood. This paper investigates whether nest-leaving is affected by individual social capital and parental economic capital. The paper also examines how these resources are related to the type of housing tenure obtained and whether the housing was acquired through informal channels. In addition, the paper assesses whether differences in access and returns to social capital can explain the later nest-leaving of the children of immigrants. The study uses a Swedish two-wave panel survey of young adults aged between 19 and 22. Individual social capital is operationalized as an extensive social network measured with the position generator, while parental economic capital is estimated with registered disposable income. The results show that individual social capital is positively related to prospective nest-leaving, but parental income is not. Nevertheless, both individual social capital and parental economic capital are related to the obtained housing tenure type: social capital is linked to informal ‘second-hand’ rental agreements often acquired through contacts, whereas having high-income parents is linked to obtaining owned housing tenure. The children of immigrants are found to be more likely to live with their parents, but this is not explained by lower access or return to social capital.     

Immigrants in the Old‐Age Pension System: The Case of Sweden

The article investigates incomes and especially state pensions 2008 among elderly immigrants who arrived in Sweden before 1970. At age 70 and above, the level of state old‐age pension for immigrant men was nearly the same and for immigrant women somewhat higher than for natives with similar characteristics. At age 65–66 the state pension was lower for immigrants than for their native counterparts. The differences in pensions for immigrants of different ages are probably due to changed rules in the Swedish state old‐age pension system from 2003. The new rules have hit different age groups in different ways. The gaps are partially levelled out when other incomes are included. The extent to which levelling occurs varies greatly between different immigrant groups. For immigrants who have arrived during the last decades, the future state old‐age pension outcomes are expected to be worse.

Policy Implications

• The Swedish Pensions Agency should set up a register of pensions from abroad. This will tell us to what extent old‐age pensions from the home country compensate for low old‐age pensions from the Swedish system.
• Better integration on the labour market is a powerful measure for reducing the risk of future low pensions among immigrants. This is a challenge for Swedish integration policy.
• To what extent can other parts of the Swedish welfare system in the future compensate individuals with low old‐age pensions?

     

Immigrants’ Returns to Schooling in Sweden

The aim of this paper is to find out if the returns to immigrants’ schooling are lower than the returns to natives’ schooling. In addition the paper tries to establish whether immigrants who invest in different amounts of Swedish education also differ in their returns to schooling. For immigrants arriving in Sweden as adults, the returns to schooling are on average one log point lower than for natives. The results show that returns to schooling are considerably higher for immigrants who arrived in Sweden during compulsory school age than for immigrants who arrived in Sweden after compulsory school age. Moreover, immigrants who complete their schooling in Sweden show, in general, much higher returns than immigrants with only foreign schooling.     

A Symbolic Interactionist User's Guide to the Answering Machine: 22 Reflections on Vocal Encounters in an Emerging Social World

This article offers a sociological analysis of a new communication technology—the answering machine. A general semiotic model of “machine talk” is suggested and connected, through the social world perspective, to forms of sociability that involve the fragmentation of time and space. The symbolic meaning given to the answering machine in literature, television, the cinema, and everyday language, as well as its use at home, are examined. Drawing on such disembodied discursive practices as speciality and simulacra, the conclusion provides a Baudrillardian look at “machine talk” as reflecting the postmodern shift from face-to-face interactions to telecommunications.     

Ethnic Enclaves,Networks and Self‐Employment among Middle Eastern Immigrants in Sweden

The proportion of immigrants from countries in the Middle East living in Sweden has increased since the 1970s, and it is a well‐known fact that immigrants from the Middle East suffer from low earnings and high rates of unemployment on the Swedish labour market. There are often great hopes that self‐employment will enable immigrants to improve their labour market situation. Further, in Sweden as in many other countries, the question of whether the existence of ethnic enclaves are good or bad for immigrants’ earnings and employment opportunities has also been widely debated. This paper presents a study of the extent to which Middle Eastern ethnic enclaves and networks in Sweden enhance or hinder immigrants’ self‐employment. The results show that the presence of ethnic enclaves increases the propensity for self‐employment. Thus, immigrants in ethnic enclaves provide their co‐ethnics with goods and services that Swedish natives are not able to provide. The results also show that ethnic networks seem to be an obstacle to immigrant self‐employment. One explanation is that an increase in network size implies increased competition for customers among self‐employed immigrants. The question of whether ethnic enclaves are good or bad for the integration of immigrants into the labour market has been widely debated. The results of this paper provide us with information about the integration puzzle. Ethnic enclaves seem to enhance self‐employment propensities among Middle Eastern immigrants in Sweden.     

Multiculturalism and welfare state integration: Swedish model path dependency

The present article offers an account of Swedish integration policies in the post-war period. The theoretical purpose is to assess Christian Joppke’s hypothesis that recent trends of integration policy convergence have rendered the national model approach analytically useless. The analysis shows that Sweden deviates, in some important respects, from the European trend by not formulating demands that link integration achievements to immigrants’ access to fundamental rights. The conclusion is that the Swedish case does not support Joppke’s hypothesis, but rather indicates that path dependency of national models is a valid explanation to ongoing developments. It is argued that the Swedish exception should be understood as an expression of the persistent impact of a policy logic according to which integration requires that all citizens have equal and universal access to certain fundamental rights. The article builds on general comparisons with European policy developments and uses Denmark as a more specific reference point.     

Problems with the 'language‐as‐resource' discourse in the promotion of heritage languages in the U.S.A.

In the United States, language 'rights' have been tethered to ethnic or racial entitlements as a means to redress historical patterns of discrimination and exclusion. The perception that language 'rights' are about the redress of past wrongs has had negative effects on efforts to gain broad public support for the teaching and maintenance of languages other than English. The language‐as‐resource orientation ( Ruiz 1984 ) is considered as an alternative to a language rights approach. However, analysis of texts produced by advocates of the heritage language movement reveals the shortcomings of the language‐as‐resource metaphor in advancing broad‐based support for the teaching, maintenance, and use of minority languages in the U.S. While efforts to promote heritage language education as a national strategic priority may result in short‐term governmental support, wider and more sustained popular support for such programs will require significant modifications in the underlying values and ideologies about the status and role of languages other than English in education and public life.     

The construction,composition and rationale of immigrants’ network: The support strategies of Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto,Canada

In this article, we investigate the construction, composition and rationale behind the personal networks of recent immigrants to Canada. Drawing on egocentric-network analysis and interviews with 172 Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto, we reveal their networking strategies during their integration. First, we identify social locations that help create ties with different groups: workplaces and schools offer access to ties with non-immigrants and other immigrants alike, while religious and ethnic organizations facilitate ties to co-nationals (i.e., Ghanaians). Second, most individuals within immigrants’ network are co-nationals whose relationship began in Canada, followed by sustained transnational ties in the origin and diaspora and few ties with the non-immigrant. The nature of this network is explained by examining the migration project of immigrants together with the context of reception in Canada, which suggests a desire by immigrants to stay in Canada and make Canada their second home. The implications of these findings are discussed.