Sociala medier innebär både stora hot och möjligheter för de företag som väljer att använda detta som en kommunikationskanal. Sociala medier skapar en plats och ett tillfälle för företag att komma närmare kunderna och genom att göra detta kan företagens intäkter ökas, kostnaderna kan minska och kundkontakten kan bli mer effektiv. Idag blir företags snedsteg, dåliga service och fadäser offentliga på några minuter i de sociala medierna. I form av arga inlägg på företagens vägg på Facebook ackompanjerade av kommentarer från andra som håller med trådskaparen kan en lynchning av företaget som gjort något fel eller retat upp kunder startas. Mot bakgrund av det här resonemanget är syftet med denna uppsats att undersöka hur 3, en av Nordens största mobiloperatörer, bemöter kritik samt hur de väljer att skapa sin identitet på sin Facebook-sida. Den teoretiska referensramen i denna uppsats behandlar systemisk funktionell textanalys, identitetsskapande på internet, intimisering, word-of-mouth samt word-of-mouse och service recovery-teorier. Analysen bygger på en ideationell samt en interpersonell textanalys av fem svar på fem negativa inlägg skrivna av upprörda kunder på 3:s Facebook-sida. Svaren är skrivna från augusti 2012 till december 2012 av anställda på 3. Genom ett antal analyskategorier ur den interpersonella och ideationella strukturen har jag i denna uppsats tittat på hur 3 använder sig av språket för att bemöta kritik från missnöjda kunder på sin Facebook-sida. Jag har även undersökt hur 3 skapar sin företagsidentitet genom bemötandet av de negativa kommentarerna samt hur 3 tilltalar sina missnöjda kunder. Resultatet visar att 3 bemöter kritik på Facebook genom att informera sina kunder om vad det är som har hänt, vem det är som utför lösningen på kundens problem samt att 3 erbjuder sig att lösa kundernas problem. 3 väljer att skapa sin företagsidentitet som informerande och problemlösande. Hjälpsamma, på kundens sida och tillmötesgående framställer de sig i dem delar i svaren där skribenten själv träder fram och skriver ”jag”.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Working with Arab students pursuing a degree in English Language and Translation at the Taiz University, Republic of Yemen, has brought to the researcher‟s attention a number of errors or problems encountered in Arabic to English translation. This study aims to investigate the problems encountered by student translators (STs), novice translators (NTs) as well as more experienced translators (Ts) while translating from Arabic into English. The study starts with the assumption that Arabic and English belong to different families of languages and thus there is rarely a word-for-word equivalence in both languages. The present study is cross-sectional in nature. It is based on empirical data collected from several categories of translators. In other words, the data was collected from fourth-year students in the department of English and Translation in the Faculty of Arts, Taiz University, as well as five NTs who have previously graduated from this department and are currently working in a number of accredited translation offices in Taiz. The study also investigates the challenges faced by Ts. For this purpose, a novel, a tourist brochure, an editorial, and three academic abstracts all translated by established publishing houses and translation centres in and outside Yemen are examined. These texts are analyzed to determine to what extent the problems faced by STs and NTs reoccur in published translations produced by Ts. For its conceptual framework, the study adopts an eclectic approach that does not stick rigidly to a particular paradigm but rather draws upon multiple linguistic and translation theories. However, it is mainly based on Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and the problems have been classified along his taxonomy of meaning metafunctions into ideational, interpersonal and textual. Extra-textual problems are also analyzed. Several SFG-based translation models such as Hatim and Mason‟s (1990) sociometic model, House‟s (1977, 1997) translation quality assessment model, Hervey et al. (1992) register analysis model and Baker‟s (1990) equivalence model are also employed in the study to help the researcher examine the problems encountered in Arabic-English translation within those four categories. In addition, Nord‟s functional model to translation which is based on Skopos theory is also taken into consideration although to a minimum extent. In addition to the analysis of translations produced by various categories of translators, the study uses several triangulation research tools such as questionnaire, Thinking Aloud Protocols (TAPs), retrospective interviews, and classroom observation. These tools are employed to assist the researcher to identify the possible causes for the problems the STs, NTs, and Ts experience from the perspective of the participants themselves. The current translation programme at Taiz University is also analyzed to determine to what extent it contributes to the poor performance of the student translators and would-be translators. The study concludes that STs, NTs and even Ts encounter several problems at the ideational, interpersonal and textual levels. They also encounter problems at the extra-textual stratum. The study attributes these problems to structural and cultural differences between the two languages, the reliance on the dictionary rather than the meaning in use of lexical items, the differences in the cohesion and coherence systems of Arabic and English, the negligence of the role of context in translation as well as unfamiliarity with text-typologies and genre conventions. In other words, participants follow a bottom-up approach in translation and come close to the source text translating it literally. This approach is very damaging because it ignores the fact that the three metafunctions might be realized differently in the two languages. Furthermore, the study concludes that the manner in which translation is taught at Taiz University as well as the syllabus contribute mainly to the lack of translation competence of the student translators and would-be translators. The programme is inadequate and it needs urgent review and improvements. The present syllabus does not keep abreast with the latest theoretical and practical developments in the discipline of translation as well as neighbouring disciplines such as contrastive linguistics, text-analysis, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics and the like. As for methodology, the study concludes that it is the transmissionist (teacher-centred) teaching approach rather than the transformational (learner-centred) which is commonly used in teaching translation. As a result, the read-and-translate approach dominates the scene and no tasks, activities, or projects are given to the STs. The study provides some recommendations, which if implemented, can be useful in enabling Yemeni and Arab universities to improve the competence among student translators in order to improve translation teaching at academic level. A major contribution of this study is the description and classification of translation problems in Arabic-English translation on the basis of meaning systems. Unlike traditional descriptive error analysis, which is widely used to analyze the translation product, SFG-based text analysis provides a systematic description of translation problems which allows a precise articulation of the nature of problems that would otherwise be explained simply as translations which “sound unnatural or awkward” (Kim 2008; Yallop 1999). As far as the researcher knows, no study in the Arab world has yet tackled translation problems from this perspective. Other studies have tackled deviated forms produced by students or translators using an error analysis technique rather than a holistic approach based on solid theoretical knowledge. In other words, while most other studies focused on specific „errors‟ and error analysis and ended at that, the present study does not only looks at „errors‟ as „difference‟ (from contrastive analysis) but rather from several perspectives. It is also more comprehensive by triangulating several sources of data and pooling them together for a more informed understanding.

In previous linguistic research, it has been found that there is an indirect relationship between gender and language usage. It has also been found that men and women use language in a distinctive way in their work role. There is a lot of research, both in the gender sciences but also in the linguistics, which has examined the difference in how men and women express themselves in writing. How the difference between the sexes can also be seen from a writing perspective is something that interests me and so in my study I chose to look at how men and women express themselves and portray themselves in personal letters. It is an area that interests me and looking at personal letters to job ads is something that there is not so much previous science around and I believe that more science in this specific area may be supportive in recruitment in the labor market in the future. The aim of my study is to see if there are differences in how men and women portray their characteristics in personal letters. My study is based on the following questions: Are person´s characteristics portrayed in personal letters by means of material or relational processes depending on gender? How do men and women portray their characteristics in personal letters versus the job advert´s qualifications? With the help of SFG and Impression Management I got answers to my questions. My study links to theories around SFG where the focus is mainly on processes. The study also links to Impression Management and Hirdman´s (1998) theory of the gender system. The results of my study show that there are differences between how men and women express themselves in writing. Women often produce their characteristics through relational processes and thus identify themselves with their characteristics. Men have a tendency to express their characteristics through material processes, which means that they identify themselves through actions. In contrast, my results do not support previous research that says that women appear more sensitive and vague while men appear more powerful. My results also show that women express more characteristics than men who are also linked to the job advertisement qualifications.

Skrivundervisning med stöd av genrepedagogik har sedan några år tillbaka bedrivits i flera svenska skolor. Pedagogiken vilar på sociokulturell teoribildning där stöttning och samarbete är centralt. Syftet med denna intervjustudie är att bidra till kunskap om hur verksamma lärare i årskurserna 1–6 upplever arbetet med genrepedagogik. I studien besvaras följande tre frågeställningar: hur arbetar lärarna med genrepedagogik, hur ser låg- och mellanstadielärare på arbetet med genrepedagogik och vilka effekter upplever lärarna att genrepedagogiken ger? Materialet till studien består av fem lärares intervjusvar. Intervjuerna har dels analyserats med hjälp av en innehållsanalysdär svaren har tematiserats utifrån studiens frågeställningar, dels analyserats utifrån de två sociokulturella begrepp som genrepedagogiken utgår från: stöttning och samarbete.  Innehållsanalysen visar att lärarna använder cirkelmodellen som en grund i skrivprocessen när de lär ut en ny genre samt att de använder både systemisk-funktionell grammatik och traditionell grammatik i sin undervisning. De effekter av genrepedagogik som lärarna upplever är genomgående positiva och beskrivs som att eleverna utvecklas i sitt språk och får verktyg som de kan använda i skrivandet. Några lärare lyfter dock negativa aspekter från sina erfarenheter att arbeta genrepedagogiskt som att det tar lång tid och att det fria skrivandet hämmas. Resultatet från analysen som är gjord med stöd av begreppen från den sociokulturella teorin visar att lärarna stöttar sina elever genom checklistor, stödstrukturer och ämnesspecifika begrepp samt genom samarbete. Lärarna beskriver att de upplever att ett genrepedagogiskt arbetssätt skapar tillfällen för elever att samarbeta.

This study examines the female protagonist Petra von Pahlen in Agnes von Krusenstjerna’s novel Den blå rullgardinen (The blue blind). The aim of the study is to make a stylistic examination of narrative perspective, relations, and agency in several text passages from the novel, to find out how the language of the text shapes Petra von Pahlen as a female character. To see whether the linguistic choices and functions of the text form Petra as an active or passive person, her relation to four other characters in the novel are examined. The material consists of 39 passages of text taken from 10 chapters of the novel, all of which dealing specifically with Petra’s part of the story. Literary theories used for the study are narratology and systemic-functional grammar. The applied methods for analysing the passages are a selection of syntactic and semantic markers compiled by Staffan Hellberg (1985) for stylistic analysis of narrative perspective in Swedish literary texts, and a selection of the tools for investigation of transitivity and ergativity in texts available through the systemic-functional theory of grammar by Michael Halliday (2014). The results show that the narrative perspective used in the text passages are mostly internal focalization, and that the most frequently used stylistic markers are expressions for perception and reflection, similes, metaphors, and words expressing value. The results also show that Petra is most frequently realized through the participant roles of Senser in mental processes, and Goal in material processes. In the ergative analysis Petra is most frequently realized in non-ergative clauses through the participant role as Medium, both in terms of first and second participant; she is seldom realized as Agent. From the quantitative results of the study, Petra can be viewed as a passive character, however an argumentation based on previous research from the fields of literary science and feminist literary stylistics also suggests an interpretation, where the context and themes in the novel, together with an awareness of the different ‘meanings’ of linguistic features, provide a less powerless position for Petra.

This thesis presents a case study from an authentic school practice, where seven students, in their second year of a social sciences program in an upper sec­on­dary school, use internet texts in various learning situations. The aim of the study is to map the reading practices of students encountering internet texts. The main data con­sists of obser­vations, audio and screen recordings, writ­ten instruc­tions, and screen ­shots of the sites visited. Reading practices are ana­lysed, draw­ing on concepts from New Literacy Studies and Systemic Func­tional Grammar, inclu­ding literacy events, literacy in terms of text cul­ture, text­ual norms, abstraction, auth­o­rity and mod­ality as a scale of reliability. The results reveal that meaning making resources such as colours, amount of writing and images and choice of fonts all seem to be parts of students’ con­ceptions of reliability. These textual norms result in learning situations in which students search for texts with pre­dominantly dense writing promoting ency­clopaedic know­ledge. These highly auth­orit­ative texts can be hard to under­stand for the students, something that the text analyses indicate. In com­parison to text books, the internet texts used show, a higher level of auth­ority and abs­trac­tion, rein­forced by gram­matical meta­phors. Most situ­ations in the study include peer interaction, but the most obvious learning poten­­tial resides in situations with a clear reading goal, where stu­dents work in groups and where negotiation is part of the meaning mak­ing pro­cess. The pedagogical implications of the study suggest the potential for students to achieve a higher degree of understanding of the encountered inter­net texts, through group work, and discussions concerning the impact of different layouts and the demands of verbal language. Another potential con­cerns methods for avoiding critical literacy being reduced to trivial visual scanning, via dis­cussions focusing on criteria for reliability evaluations. It is suggested that increased teacher awareness concerning the types of internet texts the students will encounter in authentic situations may contribute to students’ field and genre insight.

Denna uppsats syftar till att synliggöra och diskutera hur klimatförändringar beskrivs i läromedel ämnade för grundskolan i ämnet geografi. Studiens teoretiska och metodologiska utgångspunkt är systemisk-funktionell grammatik, med fokus på den ideationella grammatiken. Det analyserade materialet utgörs av tre läromedelstexter, avsedda för årskurserna 4-6, 7 och 8. Genom en transitivitetsanalys visar studien att mänskliga förstadeltagare sällan förekommer i materialet. En analys av texternas ergativitet visar att förhållandevis få satser är ergativa, vilket innebär att majoriteten av processerna beskrivs som händelser, snarare än handlingar. Resultatet av ergativitetsanalysen visar vidare att agenter realiseras genom nominaliseringar eller andra abstrakta fenomen. Människans roll i klimatförändringar sätts således i periferin.

This thesis investigates the use of metalanguage and its relation to learning outcome in group discussions. Metalanguage is defined as a language about language, a way to talk about the features of a language using a specific vocabulary with great precision. It is suggested that metalanguage is necessary in order to develop the pupils' awareness when text analyses are carried out in school. The purpose of the study is to understand how pupils take on the task presented by the teacher, how they reach consensus, if and how they make use of some kind of metalanguage, and to what degree their discussions can be regarded as learning conversations. Twelve conversations in groups were recorded on video. The pupils were in the first or the final year of upper secondary school and they all attended either Natural Science Programme or Technology Programme. The conversations took place without the teacher being present. In three groups the conversation was observed by the researcher. The task was to talk about a phishing mail using questions provided by the teacher. The three observed conversations were transcribed following principles from Conversation Analysis, CA. The rest of the conversations were transcribed following a key close to written language in order to simplify the reading. Two analyses were carried out. First, the conversations were analysed regarding how to take on the task, interaction and use of metalanguage. Secondly, the structures of the conversations were analysed using concepts from systemic functional grammar. The results show that the conversations are symmetrical and co-operative and that the pupils are focused on solving the task. No metalanguage is used by the students; the discussions are performed using colloquial speech and dramatizations and referring to experiences. The absence of metalanguage is contrasted in effectiveness by the using of terms from the field of information technology. Using experiences from texts outside school proves to be a way of dealing with the task. However, experiences and results are not abstracted into scientific terms and no learning concerning language and text seems to take place. The using of concepts from systemic functional grammar shows that the pupils are mainly concerned with interpersonal aspects of the text, somewhat concerned with ideational aspects – especially logical – and to a less degree concerned with textual aspects. It is suggested that the lower degree of textual focus is related to the absence of metalanguage. It is also shown that the pupils discuss features of the text focusing on various strata of language. Although the pupils' frequent use of experiences from text encounters should be regarded as a great potential from a pedagogical point of view, the results indicate the need of a metalanguage to achieve precision and effectiveness in discussions about texts. Also, the need of instructions guiding the pupils to make use of metalanguage is indicated. The possibility of using concepts from systemic functional grammar is pointed out and further research is suggested.

The purpose of this study is to examine how three volunteer organizations present volunteer projects on their websites to identify who is constructed as central in the description of the project and which role is created for the reader. This study uses Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA), Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and Post-colonial theory as a theoretical framework to analyze visual and textual elements from three project descriptions. The findings indicate that the project descriptions of two of the organizations highlight the volunteer worker, while at the same time using a tourism discourse in creating the reader’s role. The findings also show that the third organization highlights the beneficiaries of the volunteer work, while creating the reader role of a friend. Additionally, the findings indicate the existence of underlying collective beliefs that can be connected to post-colonial structures in two of the project descriptions but not in the third. The conclusion is that who is highlighted, and the role created for the reader, differ between the three organizations. Two of the organizations focus more on the volunteer worker, and this coincides with the occurrence of Othering. The third organization focus more on the beneficiaries, with no occurrence of Othering.

This study investigates how six writing-instructions aimed at third-year students in upper secondary school, resulting in high student performance, are designed. The aim was to identify common patterns of speech acts and text activities in the writing-instructions and to examine how clearly these communicate what is expected of students. To address this, a qualitative analysis of the six writing-instructions was conducted using tools from systemic-functional grammar: speech act and the concept of text activity. The analysis results show that the writinginstructions primarily communicate through the speech acts of statement and command. The speech act statement is used to provide information about the requirements and expectations of the task, while the speech act command structures the instructional part. The congruent use of speech acts demonstrates that all writing-instructions clearly convey their message. The framing text activity of explanation is used in all writing-instructions, providing a clear guidance, and writing frameworks, and is clarified and reinforced by the embedded text activity of description. The study results suggest that writing-instructions that clearly communicate expected content, structure, and writing frameworks correlate with higher student performance. Further research could expand this study with either a larger sample or in combination with an interview study.