<p>This study explores the role of learning and education in American historical fiction written in the 1820s. The United States has been, and still is, commonly considered to be hostile to scholarly learning. In novels and short stories of the 1820s, however, learning and education are recurrent themes, and this dissertation shows that the attitudes to these issues are more ambivalent than hitherto acknowledged. The 1820s was a period characterized by a political struggle, expressed as a battle between intellectuals, represented by the sitting president, John Quincy Adams, a Harvard professor, and anti-intellectuals, headed by the war hero Andrew Jackson. The battle over the place of scholarly learning in the U.S. was played out not only on the political scene but also in historical fiction, where the themes of learning and education become vehicles for exploring national identity. In these texts, whose aim is often to establish an impressive national history, scholarly learning carries negative connotations as it is linked to the former colonizer Britain and also symbolizes social stratification. However, it also stands for civilization and progress, qualities felt to be necessary for the nation to come into its own. The conflicting views and anxieties surrounding the issues of learning and education tend to center on a recurrent character in these texts, the learned person. </p><p>After providing an overview of how the themes of learning and education are treated in historical narratives from the 1820s, this dissertation focuses on works of three writers: <i>Hobomok</i> (1824) and <i>The Rebels</i> (1825) by Lydia Maria Child, <i>The Prairie</i> (1827) by James Fenimore Cooper, and <i>Hope Leslie</i> (1827) by Catharine Maria Sedgwick.</p>

Old English literary studies is a fascinating field of research which spans many various approaches including philology and linguistics as well as literary and cultural theories. The field is characterised by a certain conservatism, what in this thesis is referred to as tradition. This thesis examines the scholarship on The Wife's Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer, projecting its cumbersome affinities with tradition as a conservative force as well as the resistance against it. The investigation focuses mainly on two aspects of scholarly research: the emergence of a professional identity among Anglo-Saxonist scholars and their choice of either a metaphoric or metonymic approach to the material. A final chapter studies the concomitant changes within Old English feminist studies. The thesis also summarises the approaches to points of ambiguity in the poems, and provides a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on the two texts.

This thesis examines John Berryman’s poetry of loss together with four different theoretical perspectives. It is the purpose of the study to involve Berryman’s poetry and critical theory in a dialogue which attempts to break down the hierarchy that positions theory as the subject and literature or poetry as the object of study. Instead, by focusing on the otherness of each discourse, that is, what could be called the unconscious of Berryman’s poetry of loss and the language of theory, poetry and theory can be seen to presuppose and mutually imply each other. Those of Berryman’s poems mainly analyzed in the thesis, and which could be called his poetry of loss are “The Ball Poem,” Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, and The Dream Songs. The four theoretical perspectives consist of Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the word and concept departure, David S. Reynolds’s notion of the subversive in the American Renaissance, Nicolas Abraham’s psychoanalytical concept anasemia, and Maurice Blanchot’s theory of death and poetry in his book The Space of Literature. The theoretical base of the thesis is developed primarily from Shoshana Felman’s “To open the question,” an editorial introduction to a special issue of Yale French Studies entitled Literature and Psychoanalysis. The Question of Reading: Otherwise and Timothy Clark’s study Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot.

Keystroke logging records keyboard activity during writing. Time and position of all keystrokes are stored in a log file, which facilitates detailed analysis of all pauses, revisions and movements undertaken during writing. Keystroke logging further includes a replay function, which can be used as a tool for reflection and analysis of the writing process. During writing, writers continuously plan, transcribe, read, and revise in order to create a text that meets with their goals and intentions for the text. These activities both interact and trigger one another. This thesis includes studies in which keystroke recordings are used as bases for visualisation of and reflection on the cognitive processes that underlie writing. The keystroke logging methodology is coupled with Geographical information systems (GIS) and stimulated recall in order to enhance the understanding of keystroke logged data as representations of interacting cognitive activities during writing. Particular attention is paid to writing revision and a taxonomy for analysis of on-line revision is proposed. In the taxonomy, revisions made at the point of inscription are introduced as ‘pre-contextual’ revisions, and highlighted as potential windows on cognitive processing during transcription. The function of pre-contextual revisions as revisions of form and concepts was ascertained in an empirical study, which also showed that 13-year-old writers revised more form and concepts at the point of inscription when they wrote in English as a foreign language (EFL) than in Swedish as a first language (L1). In this thesis, a learning method, Peer-based intervention (PBI), is introduced and examined through case studies and statistical analysis. PBI is based on theories about cognitive capacity, noticing, individual-based learning and social interaction. In PBI, the keystroke-logging replay facility is used as a tool for reflection on and discussion of keystroke logged data, i.e. representations of cognitive processes active during writing. In the studies presented in this thesis, teen-aged and adult writers’ texts, written before and after PBI, were analysed according to text quality and revision. Descriptive and argumentative texts in both L1 and EFL were included in the studies. The results showed that PBI raised adult and teen-aged writers’ awareness of linguistic and extra-linguistic features, and that the effect varied across levels of learner ability, text type and language.

The thesis explores the form, function and sociolinguistic distribution of explicit apologies in the spoken part of the British National Corpus. The sub-corpus used for the study comprises a spoken text mass of about five million words and represents dialogue produced by more than 1700 speakers, acting in a number of different conversational settings. More than 3000 examples of apologising are included in the analysis. Primarily, the form and function of the apologies are examined in relation to the type of offence leading up to the speech act. Aspects such as the sincerity of the apologies and the use of additional remedial strategies other than explicit apologising are also considered. Variations in the distributions of the different types of apologies found are subsequently investigated for the two independent variables speaker social identity (gender, social class and age) and conversational setting (genre, formality and group size). The effect of the speaker-addressee relationship on the apology rate and the types of apologies produced is also examined. In this study, the prototypical apology, a speech act used to remedy a real or perceived offence, is only one of a number of uses of the apology form in the corpus. Other common functions of the form include discourse-managing devices such as request cues for repetition and markers of hesitation, as well as disarming devices uttered before expressing disagreement and controversial opinions. Among the speaker social variables investigated, age and social class are particularly important in affecting apologetic behaviour. Young and middle-class speakers favour the use of the apology form. No substantial gender differences in apologising are apparent in the corpus. I have also been able to show that large conversational groups result in frequent use of the form. Finally, analysis of the effects of the speaker-addressee relationship on the use of the speech act shows that, contrary to expectations based on Brown &amp; Levinson’s theory of politeness, it is the powerful who tend to apologise to the powerless rather than vice versa. The study implies that formulaic politeness is an important linguistic marker of social class and that its use often involves control of the addressee.

The Internet has become a natural element in society and is constantly gaining ground in schools. The aim of this paper is to find out whether upper secondary school students in Sweden estimate that their Internet use affects their second language learning positively. The study was operationalized by means of a self-completion questionnaire which was distributed to 80 students from the same school. The results show that most of the informants estimated that they spend much time on the Internet in general, most often reading the news, and that they use Swedish and English to almost the same extent doing so.  The students' English use in school is estimated to be voluntary and controlled while the Internet is mostly used voluntarily for English homework. Besides engaging in information search both in school and at home, a considerable number of students estimate that translation is an activity exclusively for homework. Most students also find that they are receptive Internet users and that their general Internet use is in line with the comprehensive aims of the English subject listed in the curriculum. / Internet har blivit en naturlig del av samhället och är på ständig frammarsch i skolorna. Syftet med denna uppsats är att ta reda på om gymnasieelever i Sverige anser att användningen av internet påverkar deras andraspråksinlärning positivt. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av en enkät som delades ut till 80 elever från samma skola. Resultaten visar att de flesta av de tillfrågade ansåg att de tillbringar mycket tid på Internet, främst för nyhetssökningar, och att de använder både svenska och engelska. Elevernas användning av internet på engelsklektionerna i skolan tros vara både frivillig och kontrollerad medan internet används mest frivilligt för engelskläxor. Förutom att genomföra informationssökningar både i skolan och hemma, anser ett relativt stort antal elever att översättning utförs nästan uteslutande för läxor. De flesta elever anser dessutom att de är receptiva internetanvändare och att deras allmänna internetanvändning påverkar de förmågor som de ska tillägna sig i engelska enligt läroplanen positivt.

This investigation is about the English language in Swedish TV-commercials. Theinvestigation shows that there are commercials in Sweden that involve other languages thanSwedish. The languages found in this study apart from Swedish were English, Italian andGerman. The results show that the most common language was Swedish, which was used in405 (96.4%) of the 420 commercial spots of which the data consists. In 57.6% of thecommercials Swedish was the only language that was used compared to the 3.6% spots whichonly included English. Swedish was used together with English, Italian or German in 159commercials. There were 168 ads which contained some form of English, as the onlylanguage or together with Swedish. The results show that there was no major differenceregarding the time when the commercials containing only Swedish were broadcast. The sameconclusion could be drawn for the commercials which contained Swedish together withEnglish. The commercials which only included English were broadcast most frequently in themorning and at night. In conclusion, Swedish was the language used to the greatest extent.Furthermore, English appeared in nearly 50% of the commercials even though it was onlyused exclusively in a few ads. / Den här undersökningen handlar om användningen av engelska i svensk tv-reklam.Undersökningen visar att det finns reklam i Sverige som använder sig av andra språk änsvenska. De språk som användes utöver svenska var engelska, italienska och tyska.Resultaten visar att det språk som användes mest var svenska, som användes i 405 (96.4%)av de 420 reklaminslag som utgör datan. I 57.6% av reklaminslagen var svenska det endaspråket som användes jämfört med de 3.6% som endast innehöll engelska. Svenska användestillsammans med engelska, italienska eller tyska i 159 reklaminslag. Totalt innehöll 168reklaminslag engelska i någon form, som enda språk eller tillsammans med svenska.Resultaten visar att det inte var någon större skillnad på vid vilken tidpunkt reklam på enbartsvenska sändes. Samma slutsats gick att dra för de reklaminslag som innehöll svenskatillsammans med engelska. Reklam som endast innehöll engelska i någon form sändes mestfrekvent i tidsintervall ett och tre, det vill säga på morgonen och på kvällen.Sammanfattningsvis var svenska det språk som användes mest. Engelska däremot, användesi nästan 50% av reklaminslagen även om det endast användes på egen hand i några få inslag.

The habitual aspect has been a feature of Irish English for centuries. How it has evolved may have had a lot to do with contact between Standard English and the Celtic language, Irish, spoken in Ireland. As time passes does the impact which these two languages have had on each other weaken? How has a major feature of Irish English, the habitual aspect, fared in the digital world? This essay executes some digital detective work and finds that habitual markers do be always there…

Elevernas tillgång till olika digitala medier har under de senaste 10 åren ökat. Flera elever möter idag det engelska språket utanför skolan i form av olika aktiviteter. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur lärare förhåller sig till den engelska som eleverna har med sig in i klassrummet.  Begreppet extramural engelska innefattar all den engelska som eleverna kommer i kontakt med på fritiden. Studien har en fenomenografisk inspirerad ansats och materialinsamlingen har gjorts genom semistrukturerade intervjuer. Fyra lärare på tre olika skolor har medverkat i studien. Resultatet visar att lärarna försöker att inkludera elevernas extramurala engelska i undervisningen, Lärarna ser dock både möjligheter och hinder med att använda elevernas extramurala engelska i engelskundervisningen. Samtliga lärare ser elevernas extramurala engelska som något positivt och tycker det är bra att eleverna lär sig engelska utanför skolan. / Students’ access to digital media has for the last ten years increased. Several students have been exposed to the English language out of school in the form of various activities. The aim of the study is to examine how teachers relate to the English that the students bring into the classroom. Extramural English includes all English that students encounter in their spare time. The study has a phenomenographic inspired approach and semi-structured interviews have been used to collect data. Four teachers from three different schools have participated in the study. The conclusion of the study shows that teachers try to include students extramural English in the classroom, however the teachers see both possibilities and obstacles with using students extramural English in the classroom. All teachers see the students extramural English as something positive and think that it is good that the students learn English out of school.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka huruvida elever i årskurs 3 möter engelska i så stor utsträckning att det påverkar deras motivation till att lära sig engelska i skolan och huruvida elevernas hörförståelse påverkas av deras extramurala aktiviteter. Studien genomfördes i två olika klasser i årskurs 3 på en ort i Norrland. Respondenter i studien var 30 elever och två lärare. Studien genomfördes med hjälp av enkäter som delades ut till elever i årskurs 3 för att ta reda på i vilken utsträckning de mötte extramural engelska och hur motiverade eleverna var att lära sig engelska. Ansvariga lärare i respektive klass fick fylla i en enkät där de fick ge ett omdöme kring elevernas hörförståelse. Studien använde sig av en kvantitativ metod där numeriska data samlades in och analyserades. Resultaten i studien tyder på att elevers hörförståelse påverkas av den mängd extramural engelska de deltar i. Eleverna i studien som hade en högre nivå av extramural engelska hade ett bättre omdöme i hörförståelse i engelska. Ytterligare ett positivt samband mellan extramural engelska och motivation kunde etableras. De elever som deltog i studien som hade en högre extramural engelska var också mer motiverade att lära sig engelska. Sammanfattningsvis verkade extramural engelska vara gynnsamt för hörförståelsen och för viljan att lära sig engelska bland eleverna som deltog i undersökningen.