Swedish Man Research Articles

Archetypal Approach and Narrative Techniques in Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance

This study addresses the journey of Håkan, a young Swedish man who does not speak English, and the obstacles he encounters during his quest to locate his brother, Linus, in Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance, (2017). Håkan becomes a legend in the eyes of the indigenous people and the immigrants who meet him in the landscape of the American West. However, he is lost in the wilderness of West America, unable to move forward to find his brother or travel back to his home. Through an archetypal approach, this study probes deeply into the impact of such archetypes as hero, journey, the American Dream, and others on Håkan’s life, a life which becomes boring, routine, and repetitious. The study also traces the narrative techniques used by Diaz to make the readers live the experiences of the protagonist, which are marked by perplexity, stagnancy, and repetition. The focus is on the techniques relevant to aspects like style, plot, setting, and character, and how such techniques integrate with the archetypes to assist the readers in clearly understanding the story. The study finds many archetypes used by the author to manifest Håkan as a myth, a giant, sometimes a killer, and a villain accused of murdering indigenous people, as they claim. The use of the narrative techniques of language, spaces, repetition, and backstory are intertwined with the archetypes to show the stages of loss and stagnancy in Håkan’s life during his quest for his brother in that large wilderness of West America.

A Man and a Perpetuum Mobile? Assigned Hermaphrodite Andreas Bruce's Memoirs

ABSTRACTThis article presents the memoirs of Andreas Bruce, a Swedish man that was assigned female sex at birth and later re‐assigned sex as a male hermaphrodite. His memoirs, written by the end of the nineteenth century, are unique. They exhibit a rare example of what life could be like for gender transgressors during the nineteenth century. According to the memoirs, Bruce's transition and legal gender recognition was the source of some attention, but once he had gained a certificate of hermaphroditism and a male first name, his masculinity seldom seems to have been contested. Bruce navigates between describing himself as an ordinary man and describing his life story as unique.

Books as happy objects: on Swedish rural masculine reader identities

ABSTRACT Joining the research that emphasises the importance of the social and cultural context for reading and masculinities, this article focuses on the significance of book collection for a rural working-class man’s relationship to reading. The data consists of a series of life story interviews, conducted as go-along interviews, with a Swedish rural working-class man in his 60s who collects books. Using theories of class, masculinity and place, and drawing on (Sara Ahmed’s [2010]. The promise of happiness. Duke University Press.) theory of emotions and affect, this study illuminates the intersection of reading practices, identity and masculinity while showing how a working-class man’s reading practices align with and deviate from normative conceptions of being a man within the studied context. Highlighting the practices of interacting with books on a physical level – collecting, holding, sorting, viewing covers, and so on – the article also shows how these tactile practices contribute to a rural working-class man’s development of a reader identity.

Brown Eyed Boy: Narrating Internalized Oppression and Misogynoir in Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s Everything I Don’t Remember

The rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and right-wing extremism in Sweden in the wake of growing migration has affected Sweden’s global reputation as a model progressive welfare state that prioritizes human rights and generously extends citizenship, welfare, and labor rights to migrants and asylum seekers. In Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s Allt jag inte minns [Everything I Don’t Remember] (2015), xenophobia, Islamophobia, and racialized heteronormativity appear in the unlikely form of Vandad, a hypermasculine Muslim immigrant who has secretly fallen in love with another Swedish Arab man. This study involves a narratological analysis of how internalized racism inspires the novel’s narrator of color to produce figurative narrative acts of internal colonialism—that is, violent narrative acts, made possible by the effects of racism, against other non-white characters in the story. The essay additionally explores how the objectification of non-white women’s bodies and acts of misogynoir, the anti-Black misogyny that Black women experience, by queer men of color in the text operate as secondhand technologies of oppression manufactured by the political discourse of the extreme right. The essay concludes with a critique of the far right’s exploitation of collective cultural memory to mass-produce white nationalism in the guise of tradition and the implications this has for non-white Swedes and migrants in Sweden.

”Vi kan inte påstå oss vara feminister om vi inte tänker på hur vi pratar.”

In recent years, the Swedish indefinite impersonal pronoun man has been replaced with en by feminist and norm-critical language users. This usage is an example of a burgeoning amount of Swedish feminist discursive work, and is in need of scrutiny and discussion. Through qualitative interviews with six users of the norm-critical pronoun en, the study seeks to understand its political potential and its limitations. The study concludes that the pronoun is used to advocate a more inclusive and gender neutral society, but that it also carries the potential to give its user a positive feminist identity. Furthermore, the study shows that pronouns also can work to exclude, and that users strategically adopt to this trait in their usage.

Does education explain the terminal decline in the oldest-old? Evidence from two longitudinal studies of ageing

BackgroundCognitive performance substantially deteriorates close to death, as postulated by the terminal decline hypothesis. However, the association between education and terminal decline remains controversial. This study investigated the role of education in terminal decline in two European longitudinal studies of oldest-old. MethodsParticipants were from the Newcastle 85+, UK (n=702), and Octogenarian Twins (OCTO-Twin), Sweden (n= 845). They were assessed biannually over three and five consecutive waves, respectively. In a coordinated analysis, multilevel models were used to examine the association between education and terminal decline on mini-mental state examination (MMSE), controlling for age at baseline, dementia incidence, sex, and time to death from the study entry within each cohort. Cognitive decline was modelled as a linear function of time to death in both cohorts and as a quadratic function in the OCTO-Twin study (because of longer follow-up). Education was a continuous measure (ranging from 6 to 20 years in Newcastle 85+ and 0 to 23 years in OCTO-Twin). FindingsA typical British man, aged 85 at baseline, with 10 years’ education, entered the terminal phase at around 2·5 years before death, and the mean rate of decline was −1·04 MMSE points with each year closer to the time of death (SEM 0·25, p<0·0001). By contrast, a Swedish man, aged 83 years, with an average of 7 years’ education, entered the terminal phase at around 8 years from death, after which the rate of cognitive decline steepened by −1·70 points per year closer to the time of death (SEM 0·20, p<0·0001) and accelerated by −0·11 (SEM 0·01, p<0·0001). Education was positively associated with the estimated mean MMSE scores before death only in OCTO-Twin (0·43, SEM 0·15; p=0·003) and did not attenuate the rate of terminal decline in either cohort. InterpretationDecline and acceleration of this decline were detectable in both studies before death, with steeper rates of decline observed in the Swedish cohort. However, this process was not lessened by education itself. This work contributes to a better understanding of the transition from the subtle cognitive changes associated with age to those of neurological substance, and the role of education in this decline. FundingThe funding sources of this work were the Alzheimer's Society (grant number 144) and the Medical Research Council (unit programme number MC_UU_12019/1).

A Tale of Two Countries, and A Question

R ecently I was invited to present my paper: “Infrared Spectra Alterations in Water Proximate to the Palms of Therapeutic Practioners,” published in these pages, at a water conference held outside the Swedish City of Malmo. It gave me nearly a week to spend time with some intimacy with 60 men and women, most of whom came from the countries of Scandinavia, along with a few others, such as myself. People spent the entire day together from morning to night listening, sharing, eating and even partying in a modest way. It was inevitable that you drop your guard a bit in such a setting, and begin to speak to one another with some familiarity. Over the course of several meals two people, one a middle aged Norwegian water engineer, the other a 19-year-old college student, the daughter of another engineer who had come along with her father independently asked me the same question: “Why do Americans murder each other so much? No one can understand it. It's not the guns; we have guns. There is something else, what is it?” Not an unreasonable question. He told me he watched CNN and the BBC and could not believe the weekly mass murders. “How many he said?” “More than 30,000 a year. More than 300,000 between 2000 to 2010,” I told him. In one of the conversations we were joined by another Swedish man also

Human impersonal pronouns in Swedish and Dutch

This paper presents a contrastive study of the human impersonal pronouns man in Swedish and men in Dutch. Both impersonal pronouns are etymologically derived from man ‘human being’ and they more or less have the same meaning. However, there are important differences in the usage of these pronouns. In this study, the similarities and differences between Swedish man and Dutch men are studied in a Dutch-Swedish parallel corpus. Analysing a parallel corpus has the advantage of allowing one to both study the distribution of man and men in original texts and to contrast the use of these pronouns with their translations.

Leukocyte-derived microparticles and scanning electron microscopic structures in two fractions of fresh cerebrospinal fluid in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a case report

IntroductionAmyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by degeneration of motoneuron cells in anterior spinal horns. There is a need for early and accurate diagnosis with this condition. In this case report we used two complementary methods: scanning electron microscopy and fluorescence-activated cell sorting. This is the first report to our knowledge of microparticles in the cerebrospinal fluid of a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.Case presentationAn 80-year-old Swedish man of Caucasian ethnicity presented to our facility with symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis starting a year before his first hospital examination, such as muscle weakness and twitching in his right hand progressing to arms, body and leg muscles. Electromyography showed classical neurophysiological findings of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Routine blood sample results were normal. A lumbar puncture was performed as a routine investigation and his cerebrospinal fluid was normal with regard to cell count and protein levels, and there were no signs of inflammation. However, scanning electron microscopy and fluorescence-activated cell sorting showed pronounced abnormalities compared to healthy controls. Flow cytometry analysis of two fractions of cerebrospinal fluid from our patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was used to measure the specific binding of antibodies to CD42a, CD144 and CD45, and of phosphatidylserine to lactadherin. Our patient displayed over 100 times more phosphatidylserine-positive microparticles and over 400 times more cell-derived microparticles of leukocyte origin in his cerebrospinal fluid compared to healthy control subjects. The first cerebrospinal fluid fraction contained about 50% more microparticles than the second fraction. The scanning electron microscopy filters used with cerebrospinal fluid from our patient were filled with compact aggregates of spherical particles of lipid appearance, sticking together in a viscous batter. The quantitative increase in scanning electron microscopy findings corresponded to the flow cytometry result of an increase in leukocyte-derived microparticles.ConclusionsMicroparticles represent subcellular arrangements that can influence the pathogenesis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and may serve as biomarkers for underlying cellular disturbances. The increased number of leukocyte-derived microparticles with normal cell counts in cerebrospinal fluid may contribute to the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis inflammatory process by formation of immune complexes of prion-like propagation, possibly due to misfolded proteins. The two complementary methods used in this report may be additional tools for revealing the etiology of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, for early diagnostic purposes and for evaluation of clinical trials, long-term follow-up studies and elucidating the pathophysiology in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Working for more and better primary care in the Baltic Sea Region

Twenty years have passed since the first contacts were made between Scandinavian GPs and colleagues in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. Today these Baltic and Nordic colleagues are project partners in ongoing EU projects or have built up a close collaboration between their universities. One of the earliest initiatives was Forum Balticum, a research-methodological workshop, aimed to stimulate the development of primary care research [1]. In the Baltic countries, academic and clinical family medicine has advanced strongly since then [2]. However, there are huge and even growing health differences between the countries in the Baltic Sea region. While the gap in life expectancy between the countries has slowly been revised for a few countries, some striking differences are persistent. The average Swedish man will live 20 years longer than a Russian will. Russia also has the widest gap in life expectancy between men and women, [3], which, at 12.8 years, is the highest figure globally. Further, even though Russian women live much longer than Russian men, their health status is poorer for several more years than in the Nordic countries. Also for the Baltic countries, where general public health data look better than a few years ago, the difference between men and women does not seem to be converging. In Estonia and Lithuania, women live 11 years longer than men [3]. A similar picture of large and persistent, or very slowly closing differences in maternal, infant, and child mortality data, can be shown. What can be done to target these significant health disparities? Simply adding more resources would probably not do the trick. The authors have participated in many projects for developing primary health care (PHC) in the Baltic Sea region, of which ImPrim is one: ‘Improvement of public health by promotion of equitably distributed high quality primary health care systems’. ImPrim is an EU flagship project in the Baltic Sea region where 12 partners from seven countries develop strategies, and pilot new tools and education programmes. The participating countries are Belarus, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, and the Kaliningrad region of Russia. Three pillars form the work of ImPrim: (1) improving PHC funding and reimbursement; (2) enhancing PHC professional development; (3) PHC as a pillar of regional development. The first ImPrim report concludes that 20 years of reform have improved PHC systems in terms of efficiency and patient responsiveness. Also, the differences in financial resources between the countries do not explain differences in quantities of services, and not necessarily quality either. Countries with limited resources produce as many services as the more affluent countries (Figure 1), and accessibility is as good. Therefore, the potential for PHC and general health systems improvement is good, even with limited resources. Figure 1. Outpatient contacts and inpatient admissions in the Baltic Sea region countries. Out-patients contacts per person and year and in-patient care admissions per 100 000 people. One crucial development for PHC may be to strengthen the role and impact of nurses. Reimbursement systems and legal restrictions on nurses’ professional role impede the rational use of qualified staff. Networking across the Baltic on a collegial basis stimulates mutual learning and should include PHC nurses [4]. In ImPrim, nurses are trained in state-of-the-art family medicine models of comprehensive work. Nurses in all countries can have more individual responsibilities. A clinical audit is a bottom-up method of quality development [5]. Within ImPrim, Lithuanian nurses have registered over 7000 consultations in a clinical audit to acquire baseline data on workload and working conditions. Another issue is irrational use of antibiotics. In Lithuania, a project to combat antibiotic resistance resembling the Swedish STRAMA has been developed in collaboration between Klaipeda and Lund universities. Smoking and alcoholism cause great gender mortality differences in Russia and the Baltic countries [6]. Smoking is responsible for 40–60% of male mortality in Russia and the Baltic countries. A focus on how to reduce smoking would also affect the gender mortality gap. Most of our challenges need to be tackled both at the grass-roots level with changes in PHC, and on a policy level including public health policies. Therefore, ImPrim has two action levels in many of its components. The first is to tackle health care problems such as lifestyle with simple advice and motivational interviewing. The second concerns advocacy for public health awareness and national policies supporting clinical procedures.

Unexpected cure from cutaneous leukocytoclastic vasculitis in a patient treated with N-butyldeoxynojirimycin (miglustat) for Gaucher disease

Cutaneous leukocytoclastic vasculitis (CLV) is a necrotizing inflammation of the small vessels in the dermis. We report the case of a Swedish man with an untreated N370S/L444P Gaucher disease who developed CLV at the age of 79 years. The patient has been treated for CLV with topical and oral corticosteroids, moisturizing agents, and periodically with antibiotics for 3 years without improvement. Administration of miglustat (N-butyldeoxynojirimycin; Zavesca®) because of progress of Gaucher disease resulted in a prompt and durable cure of the CLV.

‘It was entirely his fault’: constructing white masculinities and the Haga Man assaults in Umeå, Sweden 1998–2006

Several cases of single repeat offenders in urban space have raised public concern in Sweden during recent decades. Few studies have been conducted on the consequences of the ‘hostage situations’ that emerge when one individual offender causes fear and affects a large group of people in a specific place. The concern of this article is to examine consequences of the Haga Man phenomenon: the case of a serial rapist operating between 1998 and 2006 in Umeå, a medium-sized Swedish city. The article focuses on the construction of white masculinities among male respondents in Umeå during the time of the attacks. I examine how men positioned themselves in relation to the public image of the offender as a ‘normal Swede’ and how they related to women's increasing fear of violence in urban space. Three prominent constructions of masculinity emerged from the research data: the dangerous stranger, the suspect and the protector. These three constructions of masculinity were not clear-cut and did not ‘belong’ to specific men – several of the interviewees articulated various forms of masculinities but stressed them in different ways depending on, for instance, age and/or ethnicity/race. I conclude that men largely positioned themselves as protectors as a strategy to distance themselves from the perpetrator (the image of the ‘normal Swedish man’ performing the rapes) and to ensure that they would not be perceived as suspects. However, men largely perceived that women's increased fear of crime was ‘one man's fault’ and broader issues about gendered power relations in space were not raised.

First case of detection of Plasmodium knowlesi in Spain by Real Time PCR in a traveller from Southeast Asia

Previously, Plasmodium knowlesi was not considered as a species of Plasmodium that could cause malaria in human beings, as it is parasite of long-tailed (Macaca fascicularis) and pig-tailed (Macaca nemestrina) macaques found in Southeast Asia. A case of infection by P. knowlesi is described in a Spanish traveller, who came back to Spain with daily fever after his last overseas travel, which was a six-month holiday in forested areas of Southeast Asia between 2008 and 2009. His P. knowlesi infection was detected by multiplex Real time quantitative PCR and confirmed by sequencing the amplified fragment. Using nested multiplex malaria PCR (reference method in Spain) and a rapid diagnostic test, the P. knowlesi infection was negative. This patient was discharged and asymptomatic when the positive result to P. knowlesi was reported. Prior to this case, there have been two more reports of European travellers with malaria caused by P. knowlesi, a Finnish man who travelled to Peninsular Malaysia during four weeks in March 2007, and a Swedish man who did a short visit to Malaysian Borneo in October 2006. Taken together with this report of P. knowlesi infection in a Spanish traveller returning from Southeast Asia, this is the third case of P. knowlesi infection in Europe, indicating that this simian parasite can infect visitors to endemic areas in Southeast Asia. This last European case is quite surprising, given that it is an untreated-symptomatic P. knowlesi in human, in contrast to what is currently known about P. knowlesi infection. Most previous reports of human P. knowlesi malaria infections were in adults, often with symptoms and relatively high parasite densities, up to the recent report in Ninh Thuan province, located in the southern part of central Vietnam, inhabited mainly by the Ra-glai ethnic minority, in which all P. knowlesi infections were asymptomatic, co-infected with P. malariae, with low parasite densities and two of the three identified cases were very young children under five years old.

Characterization of a novel sequence variant, TPMT*28, in the human thiopurine methyltransferase gene

The activity of the human enzyme thiopurine methyltransferase (TPMT) varies greatly between individuals because of genetic polymorphism. TPMT is involved in the detoxification and activation of thiopurines such as 6-mercaptopurine, 6-thioguanine, and azathioprine. These drugs are used in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia and inflammatory bowel disease. A total of 29 sequence variants have been identified so far in the TPMT gene. However, most of these variants are rare and not fully characterized. In this study, we describe the identification and characterization of a novel TPMT sequence variant, originally found in a Swedish man of Italian origin. Sequencing of the variable number tandem repeats region of the TPMT promoter and exons III-X revealed a T-to-C transition at nucleotide 611, causing an amino acid substitution from isoleucine to threonine at amino acid 204, positioned in an α-helix, approximately 16 Å from the active site. This new variant was found in the patient and in his son. Both had intermediate enzyme activity (8.1 U/ml packed red blood cells and 8.8 U/ml packed red blood cells, respectively) and neither carried other variants in the coding region of the gene. To be able to study this variant in more detail, the TPMT*28 variant was expressed in Escherichia coli, and an in-vitro characterization of the variant revealed that the protein was destabilized and showed a stronger tendency towards degradation at 37°C than the wild-type protein. The individuals carrying the TPMT*28 variant had less TPMT protein and lower TPMT activity in both red and white blood cells compared with a wild-type control. We present a detailed in-vivo and in-vitro characterization of a novel TPMT sequence variant (TPMT*28) causing decreased TPMT activity. Individuals carrying TPMT*28 might have an increased risk for developing severe side effects if treated with conventional doses of thiopurines.

Swedish traveller with Plasmodium knowlesi malaria after visiting Malaysian Borneo

Plasmodium knowlesi is typically found in nature in macaques and has recently been recognized as the fifth species of Plasmodium causing malaria in human populations in south-east Asia. A case of knowlesi malaria is described in a Swedish man, who became ill after returning from a short visit to Malaysian Borneo in October 2006. His P. knowlesi infection was not detected using a rapid diagnostic test for malaria, but was confirmed by PCR and molecular characterization. He responded rapidly to treatment with mefloquine. Evaluation of rapid diagnostic kits with further samples from knowlesi malaria patients are necessary, since early identification and appropriate anti-malarial treatment of suspected cases are essential due to the rapid growth and potentially life-threatening nature of P. knowlesi. Physicians should be aware that knowlesi infection is an important differential diagnosis in febrile travellers, with a recent travel history to forested areas in south-east Asia, including short-term travellers who tested negative with rapid diagnostic tests.

Concomitat late soft tissue infections byCladophialophora bantianaandMycobacterium abscessusfollowing tsunami injuries

A Swedish man and woman sustained severe soft tissue injuries during the tsunami catastrophe in Thailand in December 2004, and subsequently received partial thickness skin grafts after multiple surgical revisions. Four to six weeks post trauma they displayed signs of purulent infections in the non-traumatized, virtually intact skin outside the resection margins. Skin biopsies revealed granulomatous reactions and pigmented fungal hyphae were observed in specimens from the male patient. Cladophialophora bantiana and Mycobacterium abscessus were recovered concomitantly from samples obtained from both patients. Antifungal treatment was given with voriconazole for one month, after which no fungal growth was detected on biopsies. Antimycobacterial treatment was given with clarithromycin and amikacin. The symptoms gradually subsided in the male patient, but recurrent abscesses were noted with the female patient, from which M. abscessus was recovered despite prolonged antibiotic therapy.

The generic person in English and Swedish

To find out how the ‘generic person’ is expressed in English and Swedish, the use and correspondence of the generic pronouns one in English and man in Swedish are examined in a bidirectional English-Swedish translation corpus. The material demonstrates clearly the greater frequency and versatility of Swedish man and the restricted use of English one. The difference is partly register-related: while man is stylistically neutral one is relatively formal and often replaced by you or various other pronouns. However, the most striking difference is syntactic. The English correspondences of man cut across grammatical systems and can be seen to reflect two diverging tendencies: the English fiction texts often have a subject corresponding to Swedish man, but the non-fiction texts rely to a large extent on syntactic shifts and clause reductions without a corresponding subject. In other words, the difference between the languages is not just a matter of pronoun choice but of syntactic preferences and subject selection.

The development of generic maður/man for the construction of discourse stance in Icelandic and Swedish

The paper compares two lexical items, Icelandic maður and Swedish man, for the construction of a detached, general discourse stance (Berman, Ragnarsdóttir and Strömqvist, 2002). Both forms mean ‘man’, but they can also be used in a generic sense. In that usage, Icelandic maður is associated with several semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic constraints, whereas Swedish man is more freely applicable across contexts and genres. Data derived from 632 discourse tokens produced by 158 subjects were analyzed, focusing on frequency distributions of generic usages of maður/man with respect to age (10–11, 13–14, 16–17 years, adults), genre (narrative, expository), modality (speaking, writing), and language (Icelandic, Swedish). Both Icelandic and Swedish revealed a clear preference for using maður/man in expository discourse, a finding which validates the assumption that these terms play a role in the construction of a depersonalized, general discourse stance. Further, Swedish man was used considerably more frequently than Icelandic maður, a finding which is explained as due to the difference in the constraints restricting the domain of use of the apparently equivalent term in the two languages. By and large, two main factors were found to underlie the distributions of maður/man: general socio-cognitive development and culturally specific stylistic constraints.

Cardiomyopathy in Swedish patients with the Gly53Glu and His88Arg transthyretin variants

We report two new amyloidogenic transthyretin (TTR) variants detected in the Swedish population. One variant was previously unknown, while the other has been described in a French family. In Swedish patients, both variants have caused late-onset cardiac amyloidosis characterised by heart failure. In both cases, the diagnosis was determined by the detection of amyloid deposits in skin and/or rectal biopsies and identification of TTR mutations by genetic analysis. The index case of the previously unknown mutation (ATTR His88Arg) was a 66-year-old Swedish man, who sought medical attention for increasing dyspnea. Echocardiographic examination disclosed a restrictive cardiomyopathy, and subsequent examinations disclosed TTR amyloidosis. The patient is alive with moderate symptoms one year after the onset of disease. The index case for the new Swedish mutation (ATTR Gly53Glu) is a woman who sought medical attention at the age of 57 because of increasing dyspnea. Echocardiographic examination disclosed a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with diastolic impairment. The diagnosis of systemic amyloidosis was made by fat aspiration biopsy and histopathology. The patient developed severe intractable heart failure, with pulmonary effusion and ascites. She died four years after the onset of her disease of intractable heart and kidney failure. Post mortem examination of biopsy specimens and blood revealed TTR amyloid deposits and the ATTR Gly53Glu mutation was detected.

The development of generic maður/man for the construction of discourse stance in Icelandic and Swedish

The paper compares two lexical items, Icelandic maður and Swedish man , for the construction of a detached, general discourse stance (Berman, Ragnarsdóttir and Strömqvist, 2002). Both forms mean ‘man’, but they can also be used in a generic sense. In that usage, Icelandic maður is associated with several semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic constraints, whereas Swedish man is more freely applicable across contexts and genres. Data derived from 632 discourse tokens produced by 158 subjects were analyzed, focusing on frequency distributions of generic usages of maður/man with respect to age (10–11, 13–14, 16–17 years, adults), genre (narrative, expository), modality (speaking, writing), and language (Icelandic, Swedish). Both Icelandic and Swedish revealed a clear preference for using maður/man in expository discourse, a finding which validates the assumption that these terms play a role in the construction of a depersonalized, general discourse stance. Further, Swedish man was used considerably more frequently than Icelandic maður , a finding which is explained as due to the difference in the constraints restricting the domain of use of the apparently equivalent term in the two languages. By and large, two main factors were found to underlie the distributions of maður/man : general socio-cognitive development and culturally specific stylistic constraints.