Det offentliga samtalets dynamik och förändring står i blickpunkten för projektet Samtal i samhället. På vems villkor? Forfattarnas intresse är att med dialogteoretiska och samtalsanalytiska begrepp och metoder studera dynamiken inom och mellan olika offentliga arenor. Delprojekten inriktar sig på diskurser där frågor om ansvar, säkerhet och risk, moral och politik står i fokus. Artikeln avslutas med en jämförelse mellan retorik och kommunikationsforskning.

Talk in safety-critical activities displays features that distinguish it from both ordinaryconversations as well as from other institutional talk, but it also shares some features with these.Formality and informality are both interactionally accomplished phenomena, but they are shapedthrough different sources. Safety rules and pre-printed forms constitute two sources offormalization, dictating how to carry out communicative exchanges in certain types of situations,irrespective of the more specific circumstances in individual cases. Sources of informalization arethe participants’ need to adapt to situation-specific communicative needs, but also, ironicallyenough, routinization itself.In contemporary literature, safety-critical talk tends to be treated either in terms of strictadherence to a formal code, where all informalities are seen as potential sources of accidents, orinformalization is treated as natural and inevitable, focusing on routine conditions where they areapparently harmless. In this paper, based upon detailed analysis of telephone calls between traindrivers and dispatchers on the Swedish railway network, we propose a middle ground. We suggest acontingent theory of formalization, identifying four main types of informalizations, as well asdiscussing when and why they may be harmless and when they may be detrimental.

Man får anta att språkbrukaren har till sitt förfogande ett lexikon innehållande lexikaliska enheter (byggstenar) och en grammatik innehållande regler för hur meningar (el. andra större enheter) konstrueras med de lexikaliska enheterna som byggstenar. De lexikaliska enheterna är inte enstaka morfem; snarare är de stammar eller 'ord', där de senare kan vara grundord, avledningar, sammansättningar etc. (se t.ex. Linell, 1976). Många lexikaliska enheter är emellertid av fraskaraktär. I den här uppsatsen skall vi behandla vissa av dessa s.k. lexikaliserade fraser, varvid vi skall belysa en rad skillnader mellan, på den ena sidan, sådana lexikonlagrade 'fasta förbindelser' och, på den andra sidan, syntaktiska nykonstruktioner (jfr Jespersens (1924: 18 ff.) termer 'formulas' resp. 'free expressions').

Over a long professional lifetime, Ragnar Rommetveit contributed to numerous disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, reflecting discussions in global social science and his own unending quest to understand social and individual life. His remarkable career and impact can be outlined in terms of four main phases. The first involved general social psychology in the 1950s and was reflected in Social Norms and Roles (1953/1955). In the second phase during the 1960s and 1970s, he focused on language-related psycholinguistic research leading to publications such as his 1968 volume Words, Meanings and Messages. The third phase came in the 1970s and 1980s and was motivated by his critique of formal linguistics and resulted in his short, magisterial 1974 volume On Message Structure. The fourth phase between 1980 and 2010 focused on "dialogism," giving rise to works such as his 1992 article "Outlines of a dialogically based social-cognitive approach to human cognition and communication." Along with his intellectual accomplishments, Rommetveits brilliance and generosity inspired students and colleagues at the University of Oslo, as well as from around the world. His capacity to engage with others in unending mediations on communication and mental life ranks among his most important legacies.

When analysing risk discussions in medical settings it is important to consider the specific activity type. In this qualitative study 20 first-time consultations by healthy women regarding hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in the menopause the risk discussion is asymmetrical with the doctors dominating. Despite being set up as a specific opportunity for women in the menopause to discuss problems and risks, it comes forth as a decision-making activity in a traditional medical setting. The consultations fulfil to a high extent the demands for informed decision making, but the risk discussions are recontextualised into a cost-benefit discourse with a typical implicit quantitative bias. The doctors use several different rhetorical strategies such as positive introduction of HRT, embedding drawbacks in positive introductions and/or exits thereby diminishing them. The word risk is avoided to a considerable extent and the term 'drawbacks' is used instead. The most obvious strategy is to move from the woman's symptoms to aspects of prevention, thus changing the discussion from the menopause and different strategies to cope with menopausal problems into a medically oriented discussion of pharmacological treatment alternatives. The 'change of life' in these talks is entirely conceptualised within a 'medical model'.

This article is a study of how the participation status of asylum-seeking children is interactively constructed in interpreter-mediated asylum hearings. We have undertaken a discourse analysis of 50 non-repair side-sequences from 26 hearings with Russian-speaking, asylum-seeking children in Sweden. A side-sequence is here defined as a monolingual sequence conducted in only one of the languages involved in the interviews. It involves the interpreter and only one of the primary interlocutors. In this article, four extracts are chosen for a micro-analysis in order to elucidate how interpreters can challenge asylum-seeking children’s participant statuses. We show that the right of the child to make his or her voice heard can be challenged, especially when the interpreters exclude, distort, discredit and guide the voices of the children, which is often done with the tacit approval of caseworkers.

Episodes in Conversatum are topically and interactionally defined. They are boundaried sequences at a structually intermediate level, that is, above the level of utterance/turn but below that of the whofe encounter and its major phases. We argue that episodes and topics are equally basic tp conversations.

The initiation of a newepisode involes, per definition, the introtiuction of something new. On the oter hand, episode initiation.! are systematically dependent on lextual and contextual resorces that speakers take as given, when  - in the interaction - they guide their interlocutors into doing or talking about sornething new. This poper presents the fundamentals of a modef ofepisode structure and its relations to contextual resources. It also outlines a method, topical episode analysis, for coding and analyzing coherence in terms of episode structure in (especially mu!tiparty) conversation.

Approaching Dialogue has its primary focus on the theoretical understanding and empirical analysis of talk-in-interaction. It deals with conversation in general as well as talk within institutions against a backdrop of Conversation Analysis, context-based discourse analysis, social pragmatics, socio-cultural theory and interdisciplinary dialogue analysis.

People’s communicative projects, and the structures and functions of talk-in-interaction, are analyzed from the most local sequences to the comprehensive communicative activity types and genres. A second aim of the book is to explore the possibilities and limitations of dialogism as a general epistemology for cognition and communication. On this point, it portrays the dialogical approach as a major alternative to the mainstream theories of cognition as individually-based information processing, communication as information transfer, and language as a code. Stressing aspects of interaction, joint construction and cultural embeddedness, and drawing upon extensive theoretical and empirical research carried out in different traditions, this book aims at an integrating synthesis. It is largely interdisciplinary in nature, and has been written in such a way that it can be used at advanced undergraduate courses in linguistics, sociopragmatics of language, communication studies, sociology, social psychology and cognitive science.

Boken handlar om den svåra konsten att värna sin personliga integritet i förhållande till modernitetens centrala maktinstitutioner: masskomm unikation, vetenskap och politik. Boken diskuterar och analyserar vår utsatthet i det moderna. Ytterst gäller denna diskussion den moderna d emokratins grundfrågor. En rad framstående forskare medverkar.

The fourteen contributions in this collection come from different approaches in pragmatics, interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, discourse analysis and dialogue analysis; the name given to what is studied ranges from spoken language and conversation to interaction, dialogue, discourse and communication. What the articles have in common is a similar starting point: they are informed by a form of linguistic understanding which has emerged within what could be called the interactional turn. The materials investigated come from several different languages, representing a variety of interactions: private and public, written and spoken, historical and present-day. While studies of such diverse materials naturally differ in their starting points, goals and aims, engaging them in a dialogue can help reveal where old beliefs may be challenged and new understandings may emerge. The interactional approaches to discourse presented in this volume show that there are several discourses on interaction: interconnected, parallel, but also varying and even divergent

The aim of this contribution is to take a number of key notions in dialogical theory, and look for their possible counterparts in recent neuroscience. This comprises points like other-orientation, relationism and context-interdependence, embodiment of language, responsive understanding, potentialities, unfinalisability, implicitness and degrees of awareness, and redundancy of processing. The conclusion is that there is indeed an incipient convergence between neuro-biology and cognitive dynamics, on the one hand, and dialogism on the other. A general dialogical framework has something to offer to cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, not in the least because dialogue and dialogical interaction appear to be more fundamental than language (at least as language has been conceived most often). Brains are complex organisms coordinating the apperception of and interventions into the world, rather than producing and processing agency-free representations of the world. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Om språkutveckling / Jan Anward -- Forskningsmiljöer och seminariekulturer : ideal och verklighet / Gunnar Berg -- Gruppens obönhörliga brist på demokrati / Gunnel Colnerud -- Undervisningsspråket : en del av lärares yrkesspråk / Anna-Lena Eriksson Gustavsson, Rose-Marie Fahlén, Ulla-Britt Persson & Joakim Samuelsson -- Dialogism and social constructivism / Per Linell -- Samhällsaktiva skolor och skolaktiva samhällen i glesbygd : utopi eller möjlighet? / Annika Andræ Thelin -- Användningen av tiden i skolan / Mats Ekholm -- Offensiva spelare och coacher i matchen om skolan / Lennart Fahlén, Elisabeth Ahlstrand, Ingrid Westlund & Leif Mideklint -- Analyser av skolors anda / Rolf Lander -- Samhällsförändring, skolprofilering och identitet / Lars Naeslund & Jens Pedersen -- Succession and managing the transition from predecessor to successor / Siv Boalt Boëthius -- Freud som gruppsykolog : en orättvis betraktelse till 150-årsdagen / Stefan Jern -- Gruppens känslomässiga klimat / Eric Olsson -- Från Göteborg till Dortmund : studier i masshändelser / Michael Rosander & Ingrid Hylander -- Gruppetenking og operativ effektivitet i team / Endre Sjøvold -- Existens och relationer / Dan Stiwne -- Är det bra att vara ambitiös? / Viveka Adelswärd och Johan Hofvendahl -- Ja, för jag är så jävla snygg!" : retsekvenser och informellt lärande i högstadiets grupparbeten / Karin Aronsson & Michael Tholander -- Skolpsykolog : beprövad erfarenhet och specialitet på vetenskaplig grund? / Gunilla Guvå & Ingrid Hylander -- Slump, sammanträffanden och spår : om en lärares inflytande / Stefan Jern & Anders Hempel -- Villkor för psykologisk forskning : hur de statliga forskningsråden fördelade sina pengar inom psykologiområdet 1996-98 / Rolf Sandell och Kjell Granström -- Urval publikationer Kjell Granström. Svensk engelsk och norsk text.

The empirical and descriptive strengths of sociolinguistics, developed over more than 40 years of research, have not been matched by an active engagement with theory. Yet, over this time, social theorising has taken important new turns, linked in many ways to linguistic and discursive concerns. Sociolinguistics and Social Theory is the first book to explore the interface between sociolinguistic analysis and modern social theory. The book sets out to reunite sociolinguistics with the concepts and perspectives of several of the most influential modern theorists of society and social action, including Bakhtin, Foucault, Habermas, Sacks, Goffman, Bourdieu and Giddens. In eleven newly commissioned chapters, leading sociolinguists reappraise the theoretical framing of their research, reaching out beyond conventional limits. The authors propose significant new orientations to key sociolinguistic themes, including- - social motivations for language variation and change - language, power and authority - language and ageing - language, race and class - language planning In substantial introductory and concluding chapters, the editors and invited discussants reassess the boundaries of sociolinguistic theory and the priorities of sociolinguistic methods. Sociolinguistics and Social Theory encourages students and researchers of sociolinguistics to be more reflexively aware and critical of the social bases of their analyses and invites a reasessment of the place sociolinguistics occupies in the social sciences generally.

Samtalsspråkets grammatik, finns den? Frågan kan tyckas överraskande, men för de flesta människor är grammatik förknippat med skriftspråk och med skolans språkundervisning. Den traditionella grammatikforskningen har mestadels byggt på skriftspråket. Den här boken vill visa att också det fritt flödande, oreflekterade talet i dialoger och flerpartssamtal följer grammatiska regler, även om dessa delvis är av annan art och framsprungna ur andra praktiker än skriftspråkets. Syftet med boken är att beskriva strategiskt valda, återkommande grammatiska strukturer som kan bilda underlag för fortsatta talspråksgrammatiska studier.

This collection of original articles focuses on the function, role, and structure of linguistic and extralinguistic “context(s)” in relation to the notion of “constructions” and in construction grammar. It thus takes up and brings together two equally complex concepts of linguistics, which both encompass structural as well as pragmatic and discourse-oriented aspects. Although both notions – contexts as well as constructions – have been under intense discussion in linguistics during the last decades with a wide span of research interests, integrative studies of these aspects have been largely missing.

The eight papers presented in this volume explore the possibilities and risks of integrating context(s) into particular constructions and construction grammar in general. Topics range from particular language and construction-specific problems such as the "polysemy" of modal verbs in relation to context-sensitive constructions, to general technical analyses and proposals, including proposals for formalizing contextual features in constructional representations.

The volume will be of interest to scholars and advanced undergraduates interested in linguistic theory in general and in constructional, pragmatic and discourse-analytic approaches in particular.

This chapter discusses the concept of intersubjectivity and its relation to dialogue. It argues that intersubjectivity is hardly a monolithic notion, but rather a family of related concepts, and elaborates on various forms and aspects of intersubjectivity in both wider philosophical contexts and more local empirical contexts. Many scholars have argued that intersubjectivity necessarily presupposes subjectivity as a more basic notion, a position which is associated with classical phenomenology. Intersubjectivity is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and a multi-ambiguous term. It is not a specific, easily localisable phenomenon, nor a precise descriptive notion. In a truly dialogical approach to human sense-making, interactivities are arguably more basic than intersubjectivities. As regards intersubjectivity, partial rather than complete types are the canonical cases. Both interactivity and intersubjectivity can take many forms. Intersubjectivity, imbued as it is with linguistic aspects, should be seen as a central dimension of being in the world.

This book is a comprehensive introduction to a dialogical perspective on language, languaging, thinking, communication and culture. It builds upon social psychology, social and dialogical philosophy (phenomenology), interactional linguistics, and humanistic ideas of thinking and communication.

Dialogical terms comprise, for example, dialogue, dialectics, dynamics, extended dialogism, external dialogue, partial holism, situations, contexts and activities, partial and partially shared understandings, participation, appropriation, and meaning-making, interpenetrations of concepts, e.g. persons and culture.

According to dialogical theory, a great deal revolves around the assumption that the making of meaning and social order in human activities and cultures is usually and initially built on interactions and relations between Self and Others. Basic properties of contributions to external dialogues are relations between initiatives and responses. Categories of responsive actions include minimal, short (“elliptical”) and expanded (“full”) responses. An important distinction is that between situated and sociohistorical contexts; we can talk about “double dialogicality” (situated vs. sociohistorical). An explanatory context theory must also distinguish between co-textual, other situation-based, and cultural (non-local) types. Pragma-semantic categories are linguistic means and situated (“participants’”) meanings; a parallel distinction is that between meaning potentials (of words and constructions) and message potentialities. (of situated utterances).

Communication comprises cognitive, emotional and volitional aspects, and involves partial (and partially shared) understandings, and relations of power and respect. Utterances are characterised by responsivity, addressivity, incrementation, and relatively frequent re(tro)constructions of ongoing processes.

The book includes separate sections on evolution and ontogenesis, dialogue and thinking, individual and collective aspects of language and languaging, activity types, multimodality of utterances, conditions production, reception and understanding of utterances, and also some traditional – but partially misguided – ideas in the theorisation of language and communication. This includes a discussion of the “written language bias in linguistics” which is a historical feature of the language sciences despite their shift from “practical” to “theoretical” concerns.

All chapters are designed to highlight dialogical aspects. The last two chapters contain a discussions of general dialogical ideas as well as of phenomenology as an overarching framework. The differences between natural-science and humanistic approaches to the mind and mental capacities of man conclude the book.

Several arguments build upon earlier work by the author, such as Linell (1998, 2005, 2009) and numerous papers such as Linell & Marková (1993) and Linell (2016, 2020a, 2021a). A list of major sources of inspiration is given in Appendix 1.

Den text som publiceras här som SIC 1 är en nlgot utökad version av den  föreläsning som jag höll den 22 april 1982 vid min installation som professor vid temainstitutionen vid universitetet i Linköping.

This title takes a look at how terms such as "perspective", "viewpoint" and "aspect", words that are frequently used and easily understood, are interrelated, namely, as perspectival terms, or as elements of a perspectival structure.

In this multi-disciplinary volume, comprising the work of several established scholars from different countries, central concepts associated with the work of the Bakhtin Circle are interrogated in relation to intellectual history, language theory and an understanding of new media. The book will prove an important resource for those interested in the ideas of the Bakhtin Circle, but also for those attempting to develop a coherent theoretical approach to language in use and problems of meaning production in new media.

A volume in Advances in Cultural PsychologySeries Editor: Jaan Valsiner, Clark University"This is a remarkable and highly original work on dialogism, dialogical theories and dialogue. With his erudite and broadly based scholarship PerLinell makes a path-breaking contribution to the study of the human mind, presenting a novel alternative to traditional monologism and exploring thedynamics of sense-making in different forms of interaction and communicative projects. Although Per Linell discusses complex dialogical concepts, the text is written with exceptional clarity, taking the reader through critique as well as appreciation of great intellectual traditions of our time."(Professor Ivana Markov, University of Stirling, U.K.)"Per Linells Rethinking Language, Mind And World Dialogically represents a landmark in the development ofa transdisciplinary dialogically basedparadigm for the human sciences. The author?'s lucid analysis and constructive rethinking ranges all the way from integrating explanations ofsignificant empirical contributions across the entire range of human sciences dealing with language, thought and communication to foundational, epistemological and ontological issues."(Professor Ragnar Rommetveit, University of Oslo, Norway)Per Linell took his degree in linguistics and is currently professor of language and culture, with a specialisation on communication and spokeninteraction, at the University of Link ping, Sweden. He has been instrumental in building up an internationally renowned interdisciplinary graduateschool in communication studies in Link ping. He has worked for many years on developing a dialogical alternative to mainstream theories inlinguistics, psychology and social sciences. His production comprises more than 100 articles on dialogue, talk-in-interaction and institutionaldiscourse. His more recent books include Approaching Dialogue (1998), The Written Language Bias in Linguistics (2005) and Dialogue in FocusGroups (2007, with I. Markov, M. Grossen and A. Salazar Orvig).

Per Linell har, tillsammans med medarbetare och kolleger, arbetat under lång tid med samtal, särskilt sådana som hör hemma i institutioner och professioner och deras kontakter med klienter. I de två volymerna om Samtalskulturer ligger fokus främst på sådana institutionella samtal, men böck~rna ger även ett samhälleligt förankrat perspektiv på samtal och kommunikation i allmänhet. Samtalskulturer vänder sig både till samhällsvetare med intresse för interaktionen mellan människor och tillspråkvetare med specialisering på språkets och språkandets roll i samhällslivet.

Per Linell disputerade i allmän språkvetenskap (Uppsala, 1974) och har varit professor vid Linköpings universitet, först vid tema Kommunikation 1981-2005 och därefter i språk och kultur 2006-2011. Han har fått internationellt erkännande för sina bidrag till "dialogiska" teorier om människors meningsskapande i kommunikation och tänkande. Sådana teorier betonar hur man som sarntalare, författare, tänkare och praktiker är beroende av andra personer, av kontexter och interaktioner. På detta område har Linell publicerat böcker som Approaching Dialogue (Amsterdam, 1998) och Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically (Charlotte, NC, 2009). I boken The Written Language Bias in Linguistics (London, 2005) analyserar han utförligt skriftspråksorienteringen i språkvetenskapen. Han har arbetat med samtal av många olika slag och analyserat deras funktioner i samhället. Det gäller särskilt samtal i institutioner och professioner (Samtalskulturer, Linköping, 2011). I boken Språkande har han samlat olika uppsatser om grammatiken i verkliga yttranden i samtal.

For some time I have been thinking of the predicament of present-day linguistics in terms of what I venture to call "the written language bias". It seems to me that a great number of our explicit or implicit theories, our methods and preferences are heavily influenced by the very long traditions of analyzing mainly, or only, certain kinds of written language. Even when we are in fact focussing on spoken language, we seem to approach it with a theoretical apparatus which is more apt for the analysisof written language. This essay represents a first attempt on my part to systematize some thoughts about this. I hope that it will stimulate discussion and lead to constructive criticism.

This bock was largely written in t he academic year 1980/81 when I was employed by the Swedish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. When I worked at it, I profited from many ideas and suggestions of other people. Among these schalars I want to single out two, Jens Allwood and Ragnar Ronunetveit, with whom I had many inspiring discussions.

Linguists routinely emphasise the primacy of speech over writing. Yet, most linguists have analysed spoken language, as well as language in general, applying theories and methods that are best suited for written language. Accordingly, there is an extensive 'written language bias' in traditional and present day linguistics and other language sciences. In this book, this point is argued with rich and convincing evidence from virtually all fields of linguistics

Mainstream linguistics has always been relatively ‘monologistic’ in nature. By contrast, a dialogical (‘dialogistic’) linguistics would systematically consider the subject’s relation to the other in interaction and in contexts. This article makes some suggestions concerning what such a linguistics could contain. Two phenomena are discussed in more detail: grammatical constructions with their outer syntax and lexical items with their meaning potentials. This is done with reference to Swedish data, in particular a grammatical construction called x-and-x, the syntax and semantics of which are explored.

Sextonde sammankomsten för svenskans beskrivning hölls i Linköping den 22 och 23 oktober 1987. Värdinstitutioner var Institutionen för Språk och Litteratur och Tema Kommunikation.

Sammankomstens huvudtema var svenska språket i bruk, men i enlighet med traditionen var även andra områden inom forskningen kring svenskan företrädda. Antalet deltagare var c:a 175, och sammanlagt 38 föredrag hölls, varav tre plenarföreläsningar. Tre bidrag (Linda Jönsson: Polisrapporten - en skriven berättelse på talets grund, Godelieve Laureys: Rörelseverb i svenskan och holländskan och Tomas Riad: Reflexivitet och predikation) kommer att publiceras på annat sätt, medan övriga 35 bidrag finns i de två volymer som här föreligger.

Organisationskommitten bestod, utom av utgivarna, av Mats Arwidson och Marianne Axelson. Vi tackar dem varmt för allt deras arbete före, under och efter sammankomsten. För hjälp med redigeringen vill vi tacka Elisabeth Andersson och Lotta Strand. Vi vill också framföra ett tack till Stiftelsen Tornbylyckorna-Lektorshagen i Linköping som gav ekonomiskt stöd till sammankomsten. Tryckningen av konferensvolymerna har möjliggjorts genom bidrag från HSFR (F 753/88).

Sextonde sammankomsten för svenskans beskrivning hölls i Linköping den 22 och 23 oktober 1987. Värdinstitutioner var Institutionen för Språk och Litteratur och Tema Kommunikation.

Sammankomstens huvudtema var svenska språket i bruk, men i enlighet med traditionen var även andra områden inom forskningen kring svenskan företrädda. Antalet deltagare var c:a 175, och sammanlagt 38 föredrag hölls, varav tre plenarföreläsningar. Tre bidrag (Linda Jönsson: Polisrapporten - en skriven berättelse på talets grund, Godelieve Laureys: Rörelseverb i svenskan och holländskan och Tomas Riad: Reflexivitet och predikation) kommer att publiceras på annat sätt, medan övriga 35 bidrag finns i de två volymer som här föreligger.

Organisationskommitten bestod, utom av utgivarna, av Mats Arwidson och Marianne Axelson. Vi tackar dem varmt för allt deras arbete före, under och efter sammankomsten. För hjälp med redigeringen vill vi tacka Elisabeth Andersson och Lotta Strand. Vi vill också framföra ett tack till Stiftelsen Tornbylyckorna-Lektorshagen i Linköping som gav ekonomiskt stöd till sammankomsten. Tryckningen av konferensvolymerna har möjliggjorts genom bidrag från HSFR (F 753/88).

In medical contexts, parties often have reasons to focus on risks: risks of developing diseases or of having children with congenital diseases, risks involved in taking drugs or in using a particular type of therapy, and so forth. In such risk-implicative contexts, doctors and nurses deal with the risk topics sometimes directly, at other times quite indirectly. In this article, we discuss results from studying 5 different health care contexts, We discuss contextual factors that might account for some of the considerable differences in risk talk. Our claim is that the different explicit versus implicit orientations are linked to where and how the different health care experts position themselves vis-A-vis scientific risk formulations and everyday risk perceptions, Our data on the implicit orientations to risk cast doubt on theories of discourse that would hold that all relevant understandings in discourse are made verbally manifest.

ASLA är Svenska föreningen för tillämpad språkvetenskap. När ASLA och dess internationella och överordnade organisation AILA (Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquee) kom till, tolkade man begreppet "tillämpad språkvetenskap" på ett sätt som nu håller på att bli omodernt. Man tänkte sig att den teoretiska lingvistiken med dess beskrivningar av språkstrukturen på olika plan (fonologi, grammatik, lexikologi, semantik etc.) var en sorts abstrakt modell av vad man kan när man behärskar ett språk. De som då studerade hur man använder, tillägnar sig, undervisar i eller översätter mellan språk, sysslade med att söka tillämpa de lingvistiska teorierna på dessa skilda områden. Den tillämpade språkvetenskapens förklaringar skulle, enligt detta synsätt, härledas från lingvistikens modeller, evenh1ellt kompletterade med sociologiska, psykologiska eller pedagogiska hjälpteorier.

Detta tillämpningstänkande kan naturligtvis fortfarande ha sina poänger i specifika sammanhang. Men de som idag arbetar med att utforska, beskriva och förklara språkliga praktiker utgår oftast från att språkanvändningen i tal, samtal, skrivande, lyssnande och läsande inte kan förstås främst, ännu mindre enbart, som en tillämpning av språkliga regler. Det handlar i stället om kognitiva och kommunikativa verksamheter som har en annan natur. Dessa verksamheter ingår i psykologiska, sociala och kulturella processer och kontexter som kräver en annan teoriram än den som ger en exklusiv prioritet åt det språkstrukturella. Man behöver helt enkelt en teori (eller flera olika sorters teorier) för språkliga praktiker, som utgår från verksamheterna, interaktionerna, samtalen och texterna som primära analysenheter, inte som sekundära i relation till abstrakta strukturer. Den moderna "tillämpade" språkvetenskapen arbetar med bl.a. sådana perspektiv på sina olika problemområden.

Det har därför förefallit oss konsekvent att som tema för 1997 års ASLA-symposium välja "Samtal och textanvändning i professionerna". Många moderna professioner har just samtal och textpraktiker som karaktäristiska inslag. Det kan gälla jurister, läkare, sköterskor, logopeder, socialarbetare, kuratorer, lärare, rådgivare, personalutvecklare, marknadsförare, ombudsmän och förhandlare, översättare, och många andra. De använder språk på speciella sätt i samtal och texter inom och mellan sina professioner, och i kontakterna med klienter, kunder och lekmän av olika slag. "Discourse and the Professions" är namnet på en ny AILA-kommission, som syftar till att bl.a. fungera som forum för forskning om sådana språkliga verksamheter. (Kommissionen har f.ö. startats på initiativ av Britt-Louise Gunnarsson.) För oss i Linköping och särskilt på tema K känns det särskilt naturligt att välja det ovannämnda temat, eftersom vi under årens lopp sökt bidra till just denna forskning (se t.ex. ASLA-Information, 21:3, 1995). Forskningen finns emellertid generellt väl representerad på många institutioner i Sverige och i övriga Norden. Det sistnämnda förhållandet har vi velat uppmärksamma genom att som plenartalare inbjuda Deirdre Boden (Köpenhamn), Lars Sigfred Evensen (Trondheim) och Anssi Peräkylä (Helsingfors).

I denna volym publiceras 19 av de 21 föredragen vid ASLA:s årsmöte i Linköping 6-7 november 1997. Föredragen av Deirdre Boden och Hans Strand saknas. De problemområden som främst kommit att representeras är kommunikation i vården och inom organisationer och företag. I övrigt uppmärksammas bl.a. sådana språkprofessioner som översättare och lärare (även om Lars Sigfred Evensens bidrag sätter elevernas texter i centrum).

ASLA:s årsmöte understöddes ekonomiskt av tema Kommunikation. Organisationskommitten bestod förutom av mig själv av Lars Ahrenberg och Linda Jönsson, som också fungerat som medutgivare av denna volym, samt Charlotte Lodens, som vi tackar för organisatorisk hjälp och praktisk redigering av volymen.

I den här boken har vi samlat ett antal texter skrivna av forskare som på olika sätt haft förmånen att samarbeta med och stå i dialog med Viveka Adelswärd. Den omedelbara anledningen är att vi alla vill hylla Viveka när hon den 17 mars 2002 fyller 60 år. Vi gör det som representanter för mycket vida kretsar av kollegor och forskare som fått ta del av Vivekas kunskaper, engagemang och vänskap i den akademiska världen, i Sverige, i Norden och internationellt.

Trust, distrust and conflict between social groups have existed throughout the history of humankind, although their forms have changed. Using three main concepts: culture, representation and dialogue, this book explores and re-thinks some of these changes in relation to concrete historical and contemporary events. Part I offers a symbolic and historical analysis of trust and distrust while Parts II and III examine trust, distrust and conflict in specific events including the Cyprus conflict, Estonian collective memories, coping with HIV/AIDS in China, Swedish asylum seekers, the Cuban missile crisis and Stalinist confessions. With an impressive array of international contributors the chapters draw on a number of key concepts such as self and other, ingroup and outgroup, contact between groups, categorization, brinkmanship, knowledge, beliefs and myth.  Trust and Conflict offers a fresh perspective on the problems that arise from treating trust, distrust and conflict as simplified indicators. Instead, it proposes that human and social sciences can view these phenomena within the complex matrix of interacting perspectives and meta-perspectives that characterise the social world. As such it will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and lecturers of human and social sciences especially social psychology, sociology, political science and communication studies.