Text and context

Many of the researchers are working to explore the different roles that texts and conversations can have with regard to education and public administration, as well as within other occupations and pursuits. What do young people write in school, and why? How do municipalities formulate their information in order to reach out to young citizens? What is the function of language switching in literary fiction? What kind of conversations are conducted within the field of healthcare?

This area brings together researchers from different research traditions, such as conversational analysis, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, rhetoric, cognitive and ethnographical writing, translation science, etc. They are united by an interest in the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used. What determines the particular formation of speaking, writing and reading in a certain situation? And how does the language contribute to the creation of a certain situation? As a whole, the breadth of this research category contributes to our increased knowledge of how texts and conversations are formed and changed by the environments and situations in which they are used.

As a joint forum for discussion, either a language-use seminar or a lab-based session is organised every Friday.

Several of the educational courses at the Department of Swedish are closely linked to the research conducted in the text and context category, such as the programmes for language consultants and teacher-training.

Are you interested in collaborating with us? We are keen to conduct research into subjects that are relevant to schools and working life. We can provide assistance in the form of expertise in investigating or evaluating, and we also offer education by assignment.