Today English is a world language; it is spoken by millions both as first and second language almost all over the world. The varieties best known to Swedish pupils are the varieties British and American English. Another variety of English, which is spoken by both native and non-native speakers, is a mixture of British English and American English called Mid-Atlantic English. As long as the English language has been a part of the Swedish curriculum, the leading variety taught has been British English, but lately American English has influenced Swedish teenagers because of its prominent status in media. Since both British English and American English are used in Swedish schools, different attitudes can be perceived among pupils and teachers towards these two varieties. The aim of this paper is to determine if Swedish pupils are using British or American English or if they mix these two varieties. Attitudes and prejudice amongst pupils and their teachers towards these two varieties are looked into as well as whether the pupils speak the variety of English they claim they speak. The question of why the pupils speak the variety they do is also investigated. The results show that most pupils mix British and American English and that American English features predominate in the mix. According to this investigation, teachers and pupils find British English to be a bit “snobbish” while American English can sound a bit “cocky” to them. This investigation concludes that the two major influences on the pupils are their teachers and different kind of media.

This study is intended to unveil whether the culinary vocabulary of British English and American English are likely to converge or diverge in the future, as a way of contributing to understanding the evolution of the English language and its varieties. The topic itself was founded in travels to America which were paired with nearly fifteen years of interaction with British English, leading to understanding that some (food) words come to have different meanings even in similar languages, and possibly also within the same language.  Understanding this led to the thesis question: Are the culinary vocabularies of British English and American English likely to converge or diverge? This is an area of study which has seemingly been left untreated so far under the umbrella of Linguistics. As such, the research in this essay focuses on determining a future convergence or divergence between the language varieties from a language historical aspect as well as taking sociolinguistic aspects of language change into account. These aspects are fashion, foreign influence and social need. In addition to the research, a survey involving 15 British and 15 American students between the ages of 18 and 30 which helps determining the current interaction between the two language varieties. Through the research and analysis of these areas of interest, it is found that the culinary vocabularies of the two language varieties are unlikely to converge completely, but are in a state both of constant partial convergence and divergence.

This essay discusses women’s use of swear words in both single sex constellations and mix sex constellations. Its primary aim is to find out which swear words women use the most. The secondary aim is to see what communicative function they have in the women’s usage. As a final point, the tertiary aim is to discover in what gender constellation women swear the most. In this research, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodology is used. The quantitative methodology is used to find out which words are the most common, and the qualitative methodology is used to examine which communicative functions they converse, as well as to study how the different gender constellations effect the usage of dirty language. The analysis of this essay is divided into these three parts - which words, which communicative functions, and the effect of gender constellations - and concludes and confirms previous research in this narrow and rare field of investigation. This paper shows that women swear less than men but more when they are in the company of their own gender. It also displays which words are the most common, both in tables and in discussion. Finally, this essay shows the most common functions of the chosen swear words women use.

Set within the framework of the newly established field of variational pragmatics (Schneider and Barron, 2008), this study investigates pragmatic variation between two different regional varieties of English, namely American English and Singaporean English. Specifically, the speech act of compliment responses is compared. The data were collected through written discourse completion tasks (DCT) and responses were analysed and coded using an adapted version of Holmes’ (1988) categorization system for compliment responses (CRs). The CRs come from a total of 40 participants and a total of 320 compliment responses were analysed. The DCT was supplemented by an introspective-recall with six participants. The findings demonstrate that the preferred strategy for both groups is in the order of accept, evade and reject. Even so, the Singaporeans use more reject strategies and less accept strategies than the Americans do. Further, the Americans employ more combination strategies than the Singaporeans. The Singaporeans however, employ more non-verbal and paralinguistic cues than the Americans. The results also show differences in the two varieties’ attitudes to and perceptions of compliment responses. In addition, the study suggests that compliments in Singapore might be undergoing a change. The findings are particularly important for pedagogical purposes.

This study is based on data gathered from two corpora. It investigates and analyses the written English of second language users, in this case English used by Swedes, with the English used online in blogs found in the Birmingham Blog Corpus, which includes blogs written in English by authors of various nationalities. The aim is to compare Swedes’ use of English in blogs and the English used in general in blogs. The study focuses on typical features associated with either American English (AmE) or British English (BrE) and investigates which variety is the most prominent online.  The results indicate that features that are generally associated with AmE have a higher frequency in both analysed corpora in this thesis. The conclusion is therefore that AmE tends to dominate both Swedish and international authors’ use of English in blogs.

The aim of this paper is to briefly clarify the categorization and usage of kinship terms in American and British English in comparison with the Swedish kinship terms, both considering the vocative use and the referential function. There will also be a comparison with previous studies. The Swedish language contains considerably more detailed definitions for kinship. By choosing mostly informants with experience of both language cultures, this paper will investigate and explore whether English speakers themselves experience this as a lack of kinship vocabulary, and in what circumstances supplementary explanation is needed to clarify the identities of referents and addressees.  It will further be established how and when the use of such terms can give rise to misunderstandings or confusion. Kinship terms will also be considered in connection with the present social and cultural environment. Seemingly, the use of kin terms has changed over recent decades and there appears to be etymological, lexicological and semantic causes for such misunderstandings. This essay research was conducted using interviews in which informants relate their experiences of language changes as well as regional variations with respect to how family members and relatives are addressed or referred to. Kinship terms are insightful and important within the field of genealogy and have implications for diverse disciplines such as law, church history, genetics, anthropology and popular custom. Interestingly, kinship terms can be found to be used where there is no existing kinship at all. They also have a great impact on daily communication in terms of respect and relations, and as expressions of empathy, responsibility and solidarity.     Key words: American English, anthropology, British English, communication, culture, etymology, genealogy, kinship terms, referential, relations, respect, social control, Swedish, vocatives

With data from the Corpus of Historical American English, this study charts the semantic development of lame, crippled, handicapped, and disabled from the 1900s to the 2010s. Using both qualitative concordance line examination and frequency data, it attempts to determine what types of change have occurred in American English (as represented by COHA) within each adjective. Further, the study isolates each adjective’s ‘human disability’ reference usage from its total frequency to determine a history of how people with disability have been described in the data period. The study finds that the trends of the adjectives’ ‘disability’ reference sense quite cleanly follows a euphemism treadmill (Pinker, 2007: 320): lame’s descent cooccurs with crippled’s ascent, which is also true for crippled and handicapped, and handicapped and disabled, with some overlap. Notable form-centric developments are the emergence of an abstract sense of lame through a metaphorical application of the ‘disability’ sense; the steady frequency of a metaphorical application of crippled to describe ‘damage’ in an inanimate noun referent; the rise of handicapped’s metonymical handicapped parking, against its general trend; and disabled’s semantically narrowed emergence as the most frequent lexical item after the US civil rights movement.

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Detta examensarbete är indelat i tre delar. Examensarbetet består av en översättning av tre kapitel ur Etta James självbiografi Rage to survive: the Etta James story skriven av James och spökförfattaren David Ritz, samt ett kapitel om vilka textspecifika översättningsproblem som uppstod vid översättningen. Den tredje delen består av en djupanalys av hur varieteten African-American English (AAE) översatts i två andra verk, nämligen I know why the caged bird sings av Maya Angelou och The bluest eye av Toni Morrison där översättningarna av dessa verk jämförs med min översättning av Rage to survive: the Etta James story. Djupanalysens syfte är att undersöka hur många talspråksmarkörer som finns i de ovannämnda verken, samt hur många av dessa markörer är specifika för AAE. Dessutom används Englund Dimitrovas varietetsskala (2001). Detta för att undersöka huruvida måltexterna ligger på skalan i relation till källtexterna genom mängden talspråksmarkörer. Översättningen genomfördes med målet att ligga så nära källtextens stil som var möjligt med hänsyn till målspråkets grammatiska regler och förutsättningar. Detta för att kunna erbjuda den målspråklige läsaren en likvärdig effekt som läsaren av källtexten. För att uppfylla detta mål fick en del kompromisser göras. / This thesis is divided into three main parts. It consists of a translation of three chapters from Etta James’ autobiography named Rage to survive: the Etta James story, written by James herself and ghost writer David Ritz. The thesis also features a part involving the issues that arose when I translated Rage to survive: the Etta James story and how I solved these issues. The third and final part consists of an analysis of how African-American English (AAE) has been translated in two other novels in the past, namely I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison’s The bluest eye. I compare the translations of these two novels with my own translation of Rage to survive: the Etta James story in the analysis where I strive to gain insight into the norms for translating spoken varieties. The translation was carried out with the purpose of maintaining the stylistic and informal markers as intact as possible while at the same time adhering to the grammatical prerequisites of the target language (Swedish). / <p>Översättningen är borttagen ur den publicerade versionen i fulltext i DiVA (denna version) på grund av upphovsrätten.</p><p>The translation has been removed from the published version of the essay in DiVA due to copyright.</p>