Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Swedish language - Government jargon”

This paper conducts a psycholinguistic analysis of a neologistic jargon aphasic, Akala Gboo (a pseudonym of the patient) who is 52 years old. Neologistic jargon aphasia is a type of language disorder that manifests in the form of fluent speech, production of series of meaningless sounds and formulation of new words. This aphasic condition has not been explored to a large extent by researchers. By adopting the descriptive research design and using oral interview as instrument of data collection, the research finds out that the jargon aphasic exhibits elements of phonemic and morphemic paraphasias; as well as production of new words which are very much meaningful to him but they sound as gibberish to the hearers such as kwotekumakumakakununism, inianimous kalikwokaminolamkamkwuu. The paper finds out that the stimulants of the jargon aphasic symptoms are excitement and excessive intake of alcohol and cigarette. However, the paper recommends that government agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) should set up an aphasia centre where the needs of aphasics will be catered for and which will also make them easily accessible for aphasia researchers.

The characters of the dramatist Barbro Smeds often use a fashion- language or a jargon in their dialogue. By its gaps and contradictions an abyss behind is shown its surface. The speech displays curious sliding motions, and by them the characters pursuit of identity becomes visible. This pursuit contains the "tragic irony" of the characters, as they are searching for their inner most kernel, at the same time as their identity is construed by a perpetual interactive process. The language and the speech make it possible to study this formation of identity, because the individual is construed by the language and is born into an already existing one. The three plays studied are Mars or the Spies of Love, R and Sun and Spring. The first play is an investigation of a couple of upper class jargons, the hospital jargon and the language of the evening courses, the second of the broken Swedish of immigrants and the third of the masculine and patriachal political language. In Mars or the Spies of Love each character has a special version of the jargon and in R an individual version of broken Swedish. In Sun and Spring masculine and feminine language are played out against each other, and by that the sexist structure of the political language is shown. Common to all the plays are the instability of the language and its identity-forming function. Another common trait is the feminist aproach. Mars or the Spies of Love is implicitly feminist, because women are moulded as the stronger ones, those who have the capacity of surviving a changing conception of the universe. In Sun and Spring the feminism is more explicitly expressed by a woman's revenge. Every play has a feminist dramaturgy, e g a couple of lesser peaks instead of one and an associative joining together of scenes rather than a causal. According to Sue-Ellen Case the most important aims of a feminist dramaturgy are deconstruction of the perception of woman in the traditional subject system and putting her into the subjects position. Especially Sun and Spring serves those functions.

Since 2008, the Swedish government has launched occasional offers of funding for graduate schools aimed at practising teachers. The fundamental purpose of this initiative is to enhance quality in the Swedish school system by implementing what is stated in the Education Act, namely that education at all levels should be based upon scientific knowledge and evidence-based experience.

This article presents experiments based on the extensible domain-specific web corpus for “layfication”. For these experiments, both the existing layfication corpus (in Swedish and in English) and a new addition in English (the NHS-PubMed subcorpus) are used. With this extended corpus, methods to classify lay-specialized medical sublanguages cross-linguistically using small data and noisy web documents are investigated. Sublanguage is a language variety used in specific domains. Here, the authors focus on two medical sublanguages, namely the “patientspeak” (lay) and the medical jargon (specialized). Cross-lingual sublanguage classification is still largely underexplored although it can be crucial in downstream applications for digital health and cyber-physical systems. Classification models are built using small and noisy training sets in Swedish and evaluated on English test sets. The performance of Naive Bayes classifiers—built with stopwords and with Bag-of-Words—is compared with convolutional neural network classifiers leveraging on MUSE multi-lingual word embeddings. Results are promising and nuanced. These results are proposed as a first baseline for cross-lingual sublanguage classification.

ABSTRACTThe language of Chinese secret societies (“triads”) in Hong Kong can be studied by relating triad language to anti-languages, to taboo language, and to the status of the vernacular in sociolinguistic theory. Also examined here are the laws in Hong Kong concerning triad language, and the attitudes of government agencies charged with policing the media. One striking feature of the Hong Kong situation is that the use of triad jargon can in some circumstances constitute a serious criminal offense. However, triad language also appears to be a source of innovation, through the popular media, into mainstream Hong Kong Cantonese. Research on triad language is relevant to the relationship between colonialism and language control. (Cantonese, Hong Kong, colonialism, triad secret societies, censorship, vernacular, taboo language, criminal slang)

This article reports on work on English in Scandinavian countries that is currently available in Danish, and in particular presents and analyses a recent book. This contains six papers given at a conference in Copenhagen in March 1998 on the influence of English on Danish, along with a newspaper article that had raised several of the language policy issues somewhat earlier. The book also contains the text of a policy document written for the Swedish government by the Swedish Language Council, ‘Proposal for a plan of action to promote the Swedish language’.

The aim of this paper is to deepen the knowledge about legitimation practices in a political-economic text, namely, the consolidated government accounts. In particular the study is focused on how contested and conflicting rationalities and values are negotiated and legitimized in consolidated accounts before and after Agenda 2030 was signed. A discourse legitimation approach is used (van Leeuwen 2007, 2008) to study Swedish consolidated government accounts. The report is considered exemplary and the goals are ambitious. Since the introduction of Agenda 2030, the ultimate goals of SOEs have been rephrased and the value configurations developed. The text becomes more political and other values than economic values gain status. This shift is legitimized by references to international commitments, that should act as role models, implying that they are morally good companies contributing to a better world. The Swedish government is constructed as the responsible parent who ensures progress. Hence, the global goals and Agenda 2030 are legitimized but they in turn legitimize state ownership and the government as an active owner of companies.

It is shown, on the basis of Swedish and French data, that expressions of distance may be raising predicates. Given a raising analysis, two interesting consequences follow: (a) One of two widely adopted hypotheses must be abandoned (the idea that an S with a filled Comp is never transparent to government, and the idea that French de and Swedish att, when introducing infinitival complements, are complementizers); (b) Raising predicates may be drawn from lexical categories other than V and A.

The article deals with comparative analysis of the Russian-Swedish parallel texts of the Convention between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden about mutual assistance in the fight against the violation of the tax legislation (Avtal mellan konungariket Sveriges regering och Ryska federationens regering om msesidigt bistnd vid bekmpning av vissa fiskala brott). The Swedish and Russian texts differ immensely in their lexical and grammatical structure. The reason for these discrepancies is rooted, firstly, in typological distinctions between Russian and Swedish as languages of different groups and, secondly, in those processes of conscious simplification and regulation that the Swedish Language of formal business communication have been affected by during the last fifty years particularly in relation to clear language policy (klarsprk). In spite of some innovations the Russian Language of formal business communication in many ways continues to be traditional enough. The article is focused on a narrow range of issues relating to differences in grammatical structure of a sentence and prevailing nominal structures in the Russian text as compared with the verb oriented Swedish one. The juxtaposition of parallel texts and further systematization of differences between the Russian and Swedish Languages of formal and business communication makes it possible to give a comparative characteristic of this functional style existing in Russia and Sweden. The research is carried out by means of the continuous sampling method using the method of linguistic description to characterize utterance structure in grammar. Research results can be used in courses on a comparative typology of Russian and Swedish, stylistics, the theory and practice of translation.

The conflict between the Muslim-Thai community and the Royal Thai Government for quite a long time since the acquisition of Southern Thailand Muslim areas (Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani, Songkhla and Satun) from Britain into the Thai kingdom under the umbrella of the Anglo-Siamese Treaty 1909. This historical research intends to answer one question: why did the Muslim-Thai conflict with the Royal Thai Government drag on? As a result, the Thai Government's initial program was to build nationalism with a Buddhist state ideology through the use of the Thai language with the Thai Rathaniyom jargon, which means Thailand for the Thai people. Malay language is prohibited, Islamic educational institutions must follow national education standards. This is where the Muslim-Thai resistance begins. The resistance varied to voice the aspirations of Muslim-Thai residents in the South who wanted them to be given the authority to manage themselves.

This study focuses on Swedish political press conferences and explores the discursive efforts of politicians to express unity despite diverging ideological views. It concerns the use of the first person pronoun ‘we’ (Swedish. we) and is influenced by both dialogue theory and linguistic theories, which highlight the meaning of pronouns in context. The data consist of transcribed web broadcasts of press conferences with the leaders of the four political parties that form the Swedish Government since 2006. Our analysis reveals that a clear-cut use of the personal pronoun ‘we’ can serve the same political purposes as a more ambiguous use, i.e. to show unity while there are differences. The four party leaders are involved in a communicative project of ‘doing unity’ to demonstrate that they are a very capable government.

The aim of this topos analysis is to identify features of argumentation in Swedish parliamentary debates on asylum policy in 2015 and 2016 compared to German debates. Findings include a focus on procedural rather than substantive aspects and an adaptation of government-like argumentation by cooperating opposition parties. These can be attributed to the focus on consensus and cooperation in Sweden, governed by a minority government, and may be typical of minority governments, common in Scandinavia, in general.

Yang Zhong's excellent book about Local Government and Politics in China gives a succinct and convincing account of the frameworks for local governance in the PRC today. The organization, functioning, powers and evolution of local government in China are notoriously difficult to grasp due to the many intersecting layers and lines of authority, the diversity of local conditions, and the shorthand language used by administrators to refer to local government. Although there is a growing literature on local government in contemporary China, we have, until now, lacked a comprehensive overview in English.For almost a decade Yang Zhong has observed the behaviour of local government in a small number of places in China, and is thus able to base his account on actual practice. The style is refreshingly simple and easy to follow, the administrative jargon is well explained, and the structure of the presentation is lucid. The core aspects of local governance are covered, with a sound focus on counties, townships and towns, and a separate chapter dealing with village politics. Local authorities in cities are not covered; this omission is unfortunate, but understandable from the point of view of keeping the book within manageable limits.

This study aims to describe language variations on YouTube podcasts in terms of speakers and in terms of usage. In this study, there are three YouTube channels that will be investigated, namely the Deddy Corbuzer Podcast channel, Raditya Dika Podcast (PORD) and Akbar Faizal Uncensored. In their podcasts, podcasters often invite speakers from various circles. For example, community leaders, entrepreneurs, homeland celebrities, YouTubers, and government officials. They are invited to be interviewed regarding issues that are developing in the community. Therefore, the podcast videos on the YouTube channel are never separated from several language variations. This research is classified as a descriptive qualitative research with the data obtained by oral data and the data source, namely broadcast broadcasts on the youtube channel. This research will focus on the use of language variations in terms of speakers and in terms of usage used in the podcast. The results of this study indicate the use of language variations which include: (a) Language variations in terms of speakers consisting of; (1) Dialect; (2) Acrolect; (3) Vulgar; (4) Slang; (5) Jargon; (6) Argot; and (7) Colloquial; (b) There are 3 areas of language variation in terms of usage, namely: (1) Business Fields; (2) Education Sector; (3) Political Sector.

AbstractThis paper considers Canada’s young offenders in the context from which they enter the youth criminal courtroom. To determine how youth criminal justice courts violate the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), this analysis relates said context to several phenomena, including legal linguistics, oral language competency, literacy, communicative competency, non-verbal communication, the physical structure of youth courtrooms, and legal translation (Government of Canada eds. 2018. Youth criminal justice act. Ottawa: Government of Canada.). As a result of the standards of procedural communication upheld by the Canadian criminal justice system, young people’s rights, including the right to be respected regardless of cultural, ethnic, or linguistic differences, the right to be heard and to participate in proceedings, the right to be sentenced meaningfully, the right to privacy, and the right to be tried in a timely manner are abused in the youth criminal courtroom. Although insufficient structures of procedural communication cause these issues and are beyond the control of counsel, defense counsel are often blamed for their effects. Legal professionals must make important adjustments such as altering the formal speech required in youth criminal courtrooms, employing legal professionals with the role of translating legal jargon to young people in the courtroom, and closing youth courtrooms off from the public to reduce the YCJA violations occurring in youth criminal justice court. These adjustments are ultimately the responsibility of the Canadian criminal justice system.

AbstractThis article analyses literary approaches to the relation between the folkhem, the Swedish welfare state, and the miljonprogram (a public housing program between 1965 and 1974 implemented by the social democratic government with the aim to build 1 million homes to solve the housing shortage). Since its initiation, this housing program has been subjected to critique addressing, among others, issues with quality and the promotion of segregation and social exclusion. Literary discussions since the mid-1960s have both responded to this critique and challenged it. They have questioned the impact of welfare politics on a still divided society by drawing on negative aspects of miljonprogram-areas. Recent texts that negotiate class and ethnicity, however, reclaim these areas with positive descriptions. They highlight their meaning as homes for a large part of Swedish contemporary society and thereby re-connect to the original idea of the folkhem – a home for the people.

This paper examines government, library, and archival resources available in a national minority language in two provinces that border each other in Sweden and Norway. Finn’s Forest (Finnskogen), a forested area within the borders of Varmland, Sweden and Hedmark, Norway, was populated through immigration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by an ethnic and linguistic Finnish minority (figure 1). The Forest Finns (Skogfinner) minority population became the target of centuries-long forced linguistic and cultural assimilation practices by the Swedish and Norwegian governments.

Abstract The autonomy created for Åland in 1920 along with the linguistic and cultural guarantees stipulated in the 1921 Åland Agreement established Åland as a monolingual Swedish-speaking province within otherwise bilingual Finland. In particular, the Ålandic municipalities could themselves decide whether Finnish was to be taught in their primary schools. One hundred years later, Åland is still monolingually Swedish-speaking. The Finnish language, however, has been a hotly debated topic on Åland over the years. This article examines the status of the Swedish and Finnish languages that was established by the Autonomy Act and the Åland Agreement and explores the degree to which the Finnish language was present in Ålandic society during the first decades of the autonomy. The arguments and ideas presented in one particular political dispute that took place in 1968 between the speaker of the legislative assembly, Thorvald “Thusse” Eriksson, and the premier of the provincial government, Martin Isaksson, are then analyzed in more detail. The debate was precipitated by, among other things, an upcoming reform of the school system that called attention to the question of whether Finnish were to be taught in Ålandic schools. Eriksson and Isaksson disagreed on what attitude Åland should have toward Finland, Finnish speakers, and the Finnish language and on whether Finnicization was a threat to Åland. Eriksson saw any intrusion of the Finnish language as a threat to Åland's autonomy, while Isaksson believed Ålanders had to know some Finnish to be competitive on the job market. The overall aim of the article is to broaden our understanding of how ideas and perceptions related to language and autonomy have developed over time on Åland and to put them in a broader perspective through the use of the concept of societal cultures.

This article aims to contribute to an understanding of how social and institutional factors affect the language learning environments of university students studying less-commonly taught languages (Turner, 1958), at beginner level by distance online. The empirical material is drawn from longitudinal case studies of students who enrolled in beginner-level distance courses in LCTLs at a regional Swedish university in the early 2010s. The study supports previous research illustrating the importance of sociocultural factors in learning activities. Furthermore, the study adds to research showing that for LCTLs an online learning context provides affordances that simply may not exist in campus settings and makes the study of LCTLs accessible to people for whom it would otherwise not be, an important contribution to linguistic diversity. The novel finding of this study is the direct and clearly articulated effect of different policies and frameworks on individuals’ choices of how, when and where to study, which suggests a need to examine further the ways that government and supranational entities shape the decisions made by adult learners.

Abstract The present study deals with organised terminology work in Sweden from the 1940s to the late 2010s. Using archive material, we describe how practical terminology work was carried out in Sweden during the period 1941–2018/2019, when the Swedish Centre for Technical Terminology/the Swedish Centre for Terminology (TNC) was the central actor. Thereafter, we discuss models for building a new infrastructure for terminology work after the closure of the TNC in 2018/2019. This discussion is based on interviews and analyses of articles and current reports. The study shows that multifaceted contacts with experts, academia, industry and society have played an essential role for terminology work in Sweden since the 1930s. In the current situation (2019), the activities are being reorganised and responsibility for terminology work is distributed between several actors. A new main actor is the government agency known as the Institute of Language and Folklore (Isof). Finally, we discuss future visions for terminology work in Sweden.

INTRODUCTION:Health Technology Assessments (HTAs) and policy papers are generally written in academic style using industry jargon — pharmaceutical, medical, or scientific terminology — with a generous use of abbreviations. Transforming technical or biomedical data into easily understandable text is a necessity and a challenge for all of us if our goal is to facilitate HTA collaboration beyond borders and integrate HTA into healthcare practice. Many countries have legislated for plain language (PL), and organizations globally are beginning to recognize how it helps in the uptake of information, whether geared to healthcare professionals and all those interested in HTA, or the lay public.METHODS:A preliminary, informal online search for legislative and supporting guidance on PL was conducted, and a query sent out to forty-eight International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment (INAHTA) members.RESULTS:•The United States Plain Writing Act of 2010 has legislated that federal agencies use “clear Government communication that the public can understand and use” (1). Of the twenty-one respondents from INAHTA Listserv, seven use plain language in either their knowledge transfer tools (such as executive and research summaries, booklets and fact sheets, and patient or lay material).•The Government of Canada promotes plain language in all of its communications (2).•McMaster University's 2014 Health Forum on strengthening public and patient engagement in HTA in Ontario supported “clarity and consistency in the use of public- and patient-engagement terminology” in HTAs.•A growing number of international health-related and HTA organizations promote PL in their reports and HTAs to help with their health literacy.•Many pharmaceutical companies encourage PL communication in their writing (3).•Of the eighteen INAHTA responses received, eight reported that they use PL in their report summaries, knowledge transfer materials, and/or patient education tools.CONCLUSIONS:Adopting the practice of clear, straightforward writing and editing in all biomedical communication — including HTAs and journal articles — encourages interaction and engagement among patient, public, and healthcare stakeholders invested in HTAs, and their desire to have measured decision making based on comprehensive, informed, and easily understandable information. However, it remains to be seen if PL will be embraced by organizations worldwide. This preliminary, informal inquiry as to its use suggests that the adoption of PL by governments, HTA organizations, and the scientific community worldwide has not yet been fully embraced.

The paper accounts for the early implementation of Lean in two Swedish public sector organisations justifying Lean as a remedy for the negative consequences of New Public Management (NPM). But is Lean radically different, or rather yet another NPM reform? We use a social constructivist approach and focus on the role of language in influencing employees’ minds and subjective perceptions, and thereby mobilising new patterns of governance. The concept of ‘language work’, comprising three organisational levels, is suggested for analysing the meaning and consequences of the Lean efforts studied. The analysis reveals that the first level of Lean language work largely mirrors typical NPM ideals, including entrepreneurship, empowerment and customer orientation. In contrast, there are more salient differences at the second level about labels used for organisational classifications having both empowering and disempowering effects on categorised people. At the third level of analysis targeting the day-to-day practice, we see a return of NPM performance measurement–oriented practices and their (often-unintended) consequences discussed in research on NPM reforms, although they surface in somewhat new ways, including communicative symbols and other linguistic expressions. The main contribution lies in the conceptualisation of language work widening the scope of the constitutive role of language to include the levels of political programmes and technologies of government as well as organisational classifications.

The article argues for the importance of an open, reflexive-methodological approach when switching between studying text, context and researcher activity. Close linguistic analysis can benefit from being linked with the researcher’s contextualisation of his empirical material as well as with more distanced readings. The more specific starting point for this article is that school development, like other similar terms such as school improvement and the like, makes use of linguistic building blocks with which whole narratives about today’s and tomorrow’s schools can be constructed. The subject of the study is a short text issued by the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (Skolinspektionen). Government language changes according to the authorities’ role in society and their own definitions of their functions, and an important aspect here is the legitimacy of the authorities’ texts. By means of various kinds of close linguistic analysis, the above-mentioned text is studied with regard to choice of categories, hierarchies of modalisation and the rhetorical effects of different types of formulations in a broader political-social landscape. The article concludes with a reflective discussion on the relationship between government language and irony as a stylistic device – a device that is based on the results of the close empirical analysis.1

Abstract This article focuses on how common-sense knowledge is enacted by middle managers in order to make sense of contemporary public administration. Specifically, the article demonstrates how managerialization and market logics is embedded in actors’ perceptions of public administration and becomes manifested through understandings and legitimations. The article presents an analysis of conversational data from middle management positions within a Swedish government agency. The analysis demonstrates how actors categorize a traditional hierarchy together with contemporary ideas of consumerism. It is also demonstrated how actors draw on legitimations of authority and mythopoesis in order to make sense of and to understand their managerial role within the agency. As such, the article contributes to contemporary public administration literature and its discussion regarding the effects of embedding marketization logics on actor and organizational levels as well as to ethnomethodologically informed literature within the social science and humanities.

This article is about the implementation of a literary module in a large scale Swedish professional development programme for teachers called the Reading Lift, which was introduced in 2014 in response to alarming PISA results. While the government-assigned preparatory work stressed the importance of literature and literary didactic methods, this area was reduced significantly in the hands of the National Agency for Education. For upper secondary school, the Agency did not initially plan for any literary content. This article examines what happened when L1 teachers demanded a literary module. Specifically, we study how the module was implemented and how literature is viewed. The study is based on interviews with researchers who contributed with content on behalf of the Agency and qualitative content analysis of the literature module. Results show that the module represents a focus on knowledge and art, unlike the instrumental and skills focused perspectives on literature for compulsory school, explored in an earlier study. One explanation for this, is that the influence of street-level agency bureaucrats was reduced due to various circumstances. The result was to the benefit of literary education but at the same time a high-risk route for the Agency’s requirements for measurability.

Informal care of the elderly (often given by a relative or a spouse) plays an important role in most societies. This article describes the situation and support for carers that exist in Sweden today and how this may develop in the future. The description is partly based on the results from the evaluation of a government supported project (‘Anhörig 300’) aimed to develop support for carers in the county of Kronoberg as well as from information and documents. Four different typical situations for carers are identified and indicate how very different situations for carers can be. During the 21st century the Swedish Government has given great attention to support for carers, mainly through changes in the legislation and through economic grants to the municipalities. In the future the support for carers must be given even greater attention and be developed further. The National Development Plan for Nursing and Care of the elderly in Sweden, from 2005, suggested increased support for carers as a complement to the public sector elderly care. From 2009 the Social Services Act has been changed in accordance with this plan. A key issue is to involve voluntary organisations to alleviate isolation and loneliness among carers. An earlier version of the following article was first published in Japanese in Chiiki Fukushi Kenkyu (Studies of Community Welfare), 2008; 36; 72-83. It has since been revised and updated for publication in an English language journal.

This study examines the reception of the Swedish film I am Curious (Yellow) in America. As a mixture of political satire and a chronicle of a sexual affair, with fictional and documentary material, the film was referred to by a U.S. government official as “the most explicit movie ever imported” when it arrived in America in 1968 and was released only after a federal appeals court reversed a lower-court verdict that had found it legally obscene. Although cleared for importation, I am Curious (Yellow) continued to be dogged by whether its sex scenes violated local and state obscenity laws. While the legal actions at times impeded distribution of the film, they also generated publicity for it, eventually making it one of the most profitable foreign-language films in U.S. motionpicture history. This paper discusses several court cases where the film’s social value—or lack thereof—was the factor deciding whether it could be shown, and it also looks at critical reaction to the film. Noting that all popular-culture products are products of the societies they spring from, the paper also looks at how the film was received in Sweden.

An attempt to compare Russian Tsar Alexander I was the head of the Grand Duchy of Finland, which the Russian army captured in 1809 as a result of the Russo-Swedish war. The final act of the Congress of Vienna of June 1815 decided to establish the Kingdom of Poland. Beside the title of Grand Duke of Finland tsar, Alexander I was awarded the title of the King of Poland. From that moment on, for over one hundred years, the fate of the Grand Duchy of Finland and the Kingdom of Poland was intertwined during the rule of five Russian tsars. The aim of this paper is to answer the question whether two different ways on the road to independence – romantic Polish way with national uprisings, and pragmatic Finnish, relative loyal to the Russian tsars – had an impact on their policy towards both nations. The Kingdom of Poland and the Duchy of Finland were autonomous, were in a personal union with Russian tsars, had their own constitutions, parliaments, armies, monetary systems and educational structures, and official activities were held in Polish (Polish Kingdom) and Swedish (in the Grand Duchy of Finland). Both countries also had their own universities. The first national uprising in the Kingdom of Poland, which broke out in November 1830, resulted in a wave of repression. The Constitution was replaced by the so-called The Organic Statute, the Sejm (the Parliament) and the independent army were liquidated. The Kingdom was occupied by the mighty Russian army, and in 1833 martial law was introduced. The second national uprising of January 1863 led to another wave of repression and intensive Russification of Polish territories. In 1867, the autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland, its name and budget were abolished. From 1872 the Polish language was only an optional choice. After 1863, the policy of the Russian authorities changed towards the Grand Duchy. A session of the Finnish parliament (Eduskunta) was convened for the first time since 1809, the new parliamentary law allowed the dissemination of the Finnish language. After the deadly assault on Alexander II in 1881, his son Alexander III made attempts to limit also Finland’s autonomy. The years 1899–1904 were called the first period of Russification in Finland (“the first period of oppression”). The Manifesto of June 1900 introduced obligatory Russian language in correspondence of officials with Russia. In 1901, the national Finnish army was liquidated. In Russia this was the beginning of the process of the empire’s unification into one cultural, political and economic system. After a short thaw as a result of the 1905 revolution in Russia, the Grand Duchy of Finland, the so-called “second period of oppression” and anti-Finnish politics took place. During the great war of 1914–1918, the Grand Duchy was on the side of Russia. The territories of the former Kingdom of Poland were under German rule since 1915. After the outbreak of the revolution in Russia, the Eduskunta (on 6 December 1917) passed a Declaration of Independence. After a short period of regency, on 19 July 1919, the Finns adopted the republican system with a parliamentary form of government. On 11 November 1918 Germany surrendered on the Western Front. On that day, the Regency Council in Warsaw handed over military authority to the Polish Legion commander Józef Piłsudski. Although Poland still had to fight for the final shape of the state, the 11th of November 1918 is considered the first day of recovered Polish independence.

A Review of: Zhang, Li. "Citation Analysis for Collection Development: A Study of International Relations Journal Literature." Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services 31.3-4 (2007): 195-207. Objective – To determine primary type, format, language and subject category of research materials used by U.S. scholars of international relations. Also, to investigate whether research method, qualitative or quantitative, can be correlated with the type and age of sources that scholars use. Design – Citation analysis. Setting – Research articles published in three journals on international relations with high impact factors: International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and World Politics. Subjects – A random sample of cited references taken from the 410 full-length research articles published in these journals from 2000 to2005. Cited references of articles written by authors of foreign institutions (i.e., non-American institutions), as well as cited references of editorial and research notes, comments, responses, and review essays were excluded. Methods – Cited references were exported from ISI’s Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) to MS Excel spreadsheets for analysis. Data was verified against original reference lists. Citations were numbered and identified by source format, place of publication (foreign or domestic), age, and language used, if other than English. The author used a random number generator to select a random sample of 651 from a total of 29,862 citations. Citations were randomly drawn from each journal according to the proportion of the journals’ citations to the total. These citations were analyzed by material type and language. The author also used the Library of Congress Classification Outline to identify the subject category of each book and journal citation in the sample. A separate sampling method was used to investigate if there is a relationship between research methodology and citation behaviour. Each of the original 410 articles was categorized according to research method: quantitative, qualitative or a combination of the two. Two articles representing qualitative research and two representing quantitative research were randomly selected from each of the three journals for each of the six years. Subsequently, five citations from each of the resulting pool of 72 articles were randomly selected to create a sample of 360 citations. These citations were analyzed by material type and age of source. Main Results – Analysis of the citation data showed that books (including monographs, edited books, book chapters and dictionaries) made up 48.2% of the total citations; journals (including scholarly and non-scholarly titles) made up 38.4% of the citations; and government publications made up 4.5% of the citations. Electronic resources, which primarily refer to Web sites and digital collections in this study, represented 1.7% of the citations. Other sources of citations included magazines (1.1%), newspapers (1.1%), working papers (1.1%), theses (0.9%), conference papers not yet published as articles (0.6%), and a miscellaneous category, which included items such as committee minutes, radio broadcasts, unpublished materials and personal communications (2.5%). The average age of book citations was 14.3 years and the median age was 8 years. Foreign language citations represented 3.7% of the 651 total citations. The top ranked foreign languages were German (7), French (5), Russian (4), Spanish (3), Korean (2) and Swedish (number not given Subject analysis of the citations revealed that 38% of all citations were from international relations and two related disciplines, political science, political theory, and public administration. Subject areas outside international relations included social sciences (23.4% - including economics, commerce, industries and finance), history (16.3%), sociology (6.2%), and law (5.9%). Citations from philosophy, psychology, military science and general works together made up 7.3% of the total citations. Citations from science, linguistics, literature, geography and medicine made up less than 2% of the total. Authors of qualitative research articles were more likely to cite books (56.7%) than journals (29.4%) while authors of quantitative research articles were more likely to cite journals (58.3%) than books (28.9%). Authors of qualitative research articles were also more likely to cite government publications and electronic resources than those of quantitative articles. However, authors of quantitative research articles were more likely to cite other materials, such as dissertations, conference papers, working papers and unpublished materials. The age of cited materials for both qualitative and quantitative research articles is similar. Citations to recent materials up to 5 years old were most frequent, followed by materials 6 to10 years old, materials 11 to15 years old, and those 26 or more years old. The least frequently cited materials were 16 to 20 and 21 to25 years old. Conclusion – Scholars in international relations primarily cite books, followed by journals and government publications. Citations to electronic resources such as Web sites and digital collections, and to other materials are far less common. Scholars primarily cite English-language materials on international relations and related subjects. Authors of qualitative research articles are more likely to cite books than journals, while authors of quantitative research articles are more likely to cite journals than books. Recent materials are more frequently cited than older materials, though materials that are more than 26 years old are still being cited regularly.

Recently, the newspapers and journals were bubbling with articles and editions devoted to various kinds of millennium and Y2K perspective. Some were retrospective and others prospective; some simply comprised lists of ‘greatests’. Interpreting the past with accuracy and insight is challenging, as is predicting the future. Fortunately, many others have already done that. So, instead, I will look at our discipline, cell biology, defined very broadly and to include molecular biology, both prospectively and retrospectively in the context of some perhaps prosaic but pertinent questions about the discipline that are surfacing as the centuries change. Many greats: One approach to summarizing the past is through lists of the greatest participants or classic papers in a given area. These lists appear frequently in areas like physics and mathematics, where progress is, or at least was, heavily influenced by heroic individuals who opened or sustained a field. In these areas, most participants and observers would develop a very similar list of the ‘greatests’, and nearly everyone working in the discipline would know what their contribution was. Is this true in cell biology? Are there names that everyone would know, or a canon of papers that everyone has read? Did the cell biology of the last 50–100 years evolve because of heroic individuals? Or were there only some insightful pioneers, followed by a large number of important accomplishments that occurred in many different laboratories? Interestingly, none of the major journals has compiled a ‘greatest’ list or even a “classic papers” list in cell biology. This is revealing. Perhaps it tells us that there were no great cell biologists - i.e. that the recent, great progress that we have witnessed didn't require great individuals. More likely, however, there are too many - that is, the advances in cell biology tend to be incremental, with many more bright sparks and contained blazes than forest fires. Seminal observations are frequent and arise in unexpected places. Progress may be better measured as the integral of many important contributions and contributors. Thus, cell biology is the product of many many great scientists, who interact, synergize and stand on each other's shoulders. The attractiveness of cell biology lies in this open, frontier culture. And the result is that the pie of success is large and that many have been rewarded. An interesting consequence of our frontier culture is that it is too exciting and fast paced for anyone to take the time to develop a sense of history and accomplishment. Sidney Brenner makes this point in his review of a book entitled ‘The lac Operon: A short history of a genetic paradigm’, by Benno Muller-Hill (Nature 386, 235). Brenner writes: “This book opens with the lament that for young molecular biologists history does not exist, and that they have no interest in the long struggle that has made the subject what it is today. I hold the weaker view that history does exist for the young, but it is divided into two epochs: the past two years, and everything that went before. That these have equal weight is a reflection of the exponential growth of the subject, and the urgent need to possess the future and acquire it more rapidly than anybody else does not make for empathy with the past.” A few years ago I read a list of the names of biomedical Nobel Laureates to some colleagues. They knew only a handful of the names and what their contributions were. It seems that so much is being accomplished so quickly it is hard for individuals to stand out. And the consequent focus on the collective achievement is what makes our discipline so rewarding for so many. But how long will this frontier culture last? The emergence of big biology, through government and private-foundation initiative, is changing the landscape. The rate of progress continues to accelerate. Will one soon require a very big lab to survive? Will creative minds find cell biology fertile territory? There are answers to big science. Most important is to embrace what it produces and look ahead. Another is to develop multi-institutional collaborative networks in which the product can far exceed the contributions of single individuals. And, finally, there are always trails to blaze and syntheses to make. They require little more than hard work, organization, good sense, perseverance, and some luck. Is it almost over? Extrapolating the rapid progress that we are witnessing, can one realistically predict what our discipline will be like over the next few decades? Will the questions that we are investigating now be answered or passe, and, if so, how soon? How long will cell biology continue to be on the center stage? Will there be new, fundamental, concepts or a paradigm shift? What ‘unexpecteds’ might we expect? At meetings over beer and at dinner tables with seminar speakers, the question “Is it almost over?” creeps in with increasing frequency. The concern is that the big picture will be in place soon - that is, the outlines of the fundamental cellular processes will be largely understood at a molecular level. This concern, of course, reflects the depth with which one wants to understand the cell. Clearly, we now know vastly more than we did even a decade ago. There is an emerging sense that a rudimentary understanding of the most basic cellular processes is in sight; one sees this even in the undergraduate cell biology textbooks. Of course, progress will continue. However, the questions about fundamental processes will become increasingly refined, and the answers more detailed - more likely to occupy space in specialty treatises than in undergraduate cell biology texts. The approaches and concepts will become more deeply linked to chemistry and physics, eventually focusing on subtleties of mechanism and structure. Some of these details will change our basic concepts dramatically; but the frequency of such occurrences will dwindle. These details are also necessary for the applications of cell biology that are beginning to emerge and for a true marriage of cell biology with the molecular world. This level of inquiry and detail, or increasing reductionism, may not sustain the interest of or resonate well with many of our colleagues. However, for others, it's just the beginning and is opening doors for a cadre of new colleagues trained in physics and chemistry to enter with fresh ideas, insights and technologies. Will it ever end? But is it almost over? Do we really know how cells do what they do? How is the thicket of seemingly redundant pathways and networks, molecules, and supramolecular assemblies coordinated spatially and temporally? Which of the many pathways and redundant mechanisms revealed in culture are utilized in vivo. How are cellular phenomena, as revealed in the spatial and temporal coordination required for cell division or migration, for example, integrated? How do groups of cells integrate and coordinate to effect tissue function, embryonic development, and pathology, for example? As we begin to observe cellular phenomena in situ, they can appear very different from those observed in culture. The compensation and redundancy seen in knockout, transgenic or mutated organisms also reveals a diversity of possible mechanisms. It seems that the cell has different ways of doing the same thing. How does the cell do it normally, and when, if ever, are the other mechanisms used? We have tended to focus the majority of our efforts on a few cell types. What about the other cells? How do they do it? These questions are especially pertinent in developmental biology and pathobiology, where the cellular environments are changing; they also point to a class of challenging, important new avenue of investigation. As the canon of cellular phenomena becomes understood at an increasingly refined level, it provides the basis for explaining integrative phenomena. It also becomes the source of interesting and important practical applications. In this way, cell biology can become the language for understanding complex integrative phenomena like learning and memory, behavior and personality - areas in which the genome project and genetics might merge to provide unique insights. In addition, cell biology is the source of endless practical applications and, in some sense, sits in the center of a booming biotechnology industry that includes novel therapeutic strategies, designer animals and plants, tissue replacements, biomaterials and biosensors. The possibilities here seem endless. What does genomics bode for cell biology? A great deal of opportunity. Do sequences, homologies, binding interactions, changes in expression, and even knockouts provide a satisfactory understanding of function? Isn't the genomic bottleneck the assignment of cellular functions to different genes? In its essence, gene function can be viewed as a cell biological issue and perhaps not fully amenable to high-throughput analysis. Thus, the genome project promises to keep cell biology on the center stage. And maybe, therefore, we will have too much to do. The devil is in the detail: A major product of the successes in cell biology is a mind-numbing number of facts, particulars, data and details. The volume of information and detail that we are generating in genome studies and cell signaling, for example, unsettles some. Will the molecular paradigm, which has been so successful and brought us here, lead us to the next level? In the reductionist paradigm, the cell can be viewed as a complex chemical system that obeys the laws of physics and the principles of chemistry. In this view, one needs to know the relevant chemical properties for all of the cellular components. Once this is known, the cellular dynamics and equilibria can be computed, and ultimately cell behavior modeled. For small systems and isolated processes, this has had an important predictive value and has been insightful and revealing. Most importantly, it uses the principles of chemistry, which is a common language that is known and understood by nearly all participants. Can this approach be usefully extrapolated to a highly complex system like an entire cell? It may take a while, as it poses some interesting challenges. How many complex differential equations, which must cover both temporal and spatial distributions, would be involved? How accurately will the concentrations and rate constants need to be measured? How does one deal with the non-ideal nature of the cell interior and exterior? The differential equations required to describe the systems of interacting pathways or networks found in a cell will necessarily be very complex and contain many terms. How does the error in measurements of the rate constants and concentrations, for example, propagate - that is, given any reasonable measurement error, can one derive anything that is meaningful and useful? The situation is complicated further by the nature of the cell. What are the effective concentrations (the activities) of the components? How does one address reactions that are occurring on surfaces or macromolecular assemblies that can be dynamic? These are formidable challenges. Chemistry faces them continually, as do other sciences that deal with complex phenomena. Natural phenomena have strong roots in the principles of physics and the concepts of chemistry. Yet the mathematics that backs them up does not readily yield to highly complex phenomena. Maybe different approaches - perhaps one based in the complex-systems theory that is so familiar to engineers - will provide an alternative. Where's the big picture? Are there other ways of dealing with our flood of details and particulars? There is a call for mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers and/or theorists to help bring order to this information flood. Can they make sense of this complexity? Are there overarching and unifying concepts that will allow us to think in generalities, rather than in particulars? There may already be some unifying concepts. One is the genetic paradigm, which views a cell's behavior as a consequence of its expressed genes. The geneticist's point of view has already provided an important, empirical and quantitative way of looking at cellular and organismal phenomena. This view of a cell or organism, or even a disease like cancer, differs greatly from that of a biochemist, which focuses on mechanisms and specifics. In some respects, it shifts attention away from the particulars and sticky mechanistic issues, and thus can be simplifying. Genetics has been a very powerful driver in many areas, not only as a tool to determine function but also as a way of looking at a process. The marriage of genetics with developmental biology is only one of many examples. A number of other examples derive from modeling. The Hodgkin-Huxley equation is one prominent and useful example. It models the axon as an electrical entity. For other purposes, the cell has been likewise treated as a mechanical entity and modeled in the jargon of mechanics. There are other ways of modeling the cell and its component processes - for example, through signal and systems theory, network and graph theory, Boolean algebra, and statistics. Each of these treatments can be meaningful and useful to those well versed in that particular discipline. But are these useful to those not versed in them? Is there a unifying theory or model that avoids a proliferation of models. How does one connect them to our chemical roots? In physics, the simplest is accepted as correct. Cell biology has a different reality. It is derived evolutionarily, and therefore, the simplest model may not be correct or even useful. Perhaps, in the future, there will even be a synthesis - like the periodic table or quantum mechanics for physics and chemistry - that allows us to deal with the mega-detail that we are generating. Big surprises in small packages: To date, cell biology has progressed rapidly because of its qualitative nature. Differences in localization are often characterized by fluorescence intensities that are described qualitatively as brighter or dimmer or as more or less localized. Similarly, differences in expression are often characterized by the intensity of bands on western blots or SDS gels; these are often described as bigger or smaller. Many changes are, in fact, very large, and this level of characterization is likely to be adequate. But have we missed anything? Is there a need for more quantitative measurements? When differences in expression are analyzed by gene array, where does one draw the line? Is a tenfold change more significant than a 2–3-fold change? Many measurements would not detect changes that are only 2–3-fold, and in others we have tended to ignore them. We wouldn't see such a small change in fluorescence intensity by eye, for example, nor would we readily identify changes in concentration that arise from differences in localization rather than expression. Ignoring small changes assumes that biological readouts are not highly poised. But is this true? Systems that have interacting components, undergo conformational changes or enzymatic modifications, or are part of amplifying cascades, for example, can be highly poised. Thus 2–3-fold changes in expression or in substrate/ligand concentration can have effects that are very large. Of course, the converse follows as well. Large changes might have only modest consequences - for example, if one is well removed from the Kd. Examples of small changes having large effects and vice versa are common features of complex systems and are now beginning to appear in the cell biology literature. It seems likely there will be many more as our measurements become increasingly quantitative. Downstream signals: What can one make of all of this? (1) This is a very, very good time for cell biology. Questions that have loomed for decades and centuries are becoming understood in a meaningful way. The progress is breathtaking; it wasn't this easy only a couple of decades ago. (2) Many are participating in the success; they are all contributing to something useful and important. (3) The devil is in the detail but so are the opportunities. (4) Big science is here to stay - perhaps a consequence of our success. As investigators, we need to embrace it and look ahead. (5) The only constant in our research will be change. We will need to be flexible in our approaches and questions. (6) We must translate our progress to the public through education and the popular press in ways that sustain their interest and support and attract new minds to our discipline. (7) The surge in new technology will continue to drive our progress, which will come to nearly anyone who works hard, chooses a good problem, and takes a reasonable approach. (8) We need to develop strategies to deal with the information flood; it won't ebb soon. And the anticipated simplifications from the mathematicians, computer scientists and modelers may take quite a while. (9) Enjoy your successes. This might be about as good as it gets.

The Swedish-speaking population in Finland constitutes a linguistic minority in numbers,but has equal constitutional rights with the Finnish-speaking majority. In theJ 9th century, Swedish was the dominant language af government, business and culture.At present, though, the two language groups have almost the same distributionsby industry and socioeconomic position at the national level. Generally, the differencesbetween regions are wider than between the two language groups. The laborforce participation rate is also very much the same. The unemployment rate, however,is clearly lower among Swedish speakers and retirement at an early age (i.e. disabilitypension) less common. These disparities remain also after a great number ofbackgroundvariables have been controlled for.

I en fungerande demokrati måste myndighetstexter vara begripliga för alla. Under senare år har myndigheterna därför satsat på att utveckla skriftspråket. Trots dessa satsningar tenderar myndighetsskribenter emellertid fortfarande att använda ett onödigt krångligt fackspråk. Det beror på att skribenterna oreflekterat tar efter ett förlegat juridiskt fackspråk i gamla mallar när de utformar sina texter. Man tror också att ett sådant språk är nödvändigt för att sätta sig i respekt och visa att man kan sitt ämne. För att åstadkomma verklig och varaktig förändring av myndighetsspråket krävs att myndigheterna bedriver ett systematiskt arbete med språkfrågor över tid. Det räcker inte med punktinsatser och engångsjippon. SummaryIn a well-functioning democratic state governed by the rule of law, official texts should be understandable for all citizens. Most of the Swedish authorities have therefore made efforts to develop their written language in recent years. Despite these efforts, there is still a tendency for employees writing official texts to use unnecessarily complicated language for specific purposes (LSP). This is because the employees unthinkingly copy obsolete legal jargon from old templates when formulating their texts. They also believe that such language is necessary to gain respect and to show that they know their subject. To accomplish genuine and lasting change in the way official texts are written, the authorities should work systematically on these issues over time. Selective measures and other types of disposable effort are not enough.

Abstract Roma communities remain Europe’s most marginalized and disadvantaged population, facing increasing discrimination, especially after the 2015 refugee crisis. European media often portrays them as criminals or anti-social, furthering misunderstanding and social exclusion. This article examines Swedish news media’s representation of Roma, which, at a surface level, appears much less negative. Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we analyze two Swedish newspapers’ coverage of the controversial law which sought to criminalize begging, which targeted Eastern European Roma migrants. Our findings reveal that ‘Swedish exceptionalism’–a discourse of human rights, equality, colorblindness, characterized by limited racial literacy–serves to obscure and act as a disclaimer for anti-Roma sentiment and government actions which in fact resemble those criticized in other EU countries.

The recent forced migration to Europe has created more challenges for the labor market integration. However, the Swedish government encourages unemployed immigrants to seek employment in the farming, gardening, and forestry industries. Thus, this article focuses on the matching process in the Swedish agricultural sector by using an exploratory, qualitative, in-depth interview with representatives involved in the matching process. Immigrants experience challenges of Swedish language proficiency, lacking a driving license and adapting to new cultures in the workplace, while employers attribute challenges of effective hiring process and the absence of evidence of immigrants’ work experience. Furthermore, the employment service offices struggle with scant knowledge of agricultural employment that needs to be combined with limited contact with employers and the bureaucratic delays caused by requirements of qualifications validation. The paper concludes with a Labour Market Matching Model, which focuses on critical aspects before, during, and after the matching process.

This special issue focuses on the Sami struggle for cultural survival. The articles deal with strategies and initiatives going on in Sápmi today during a time of threats and challenges - a time that is also marked by resistance and mobilization. During the fall of 2013, the Swedish government has been criticized both by the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, and by the Swedish Discrimination Ombudsman for its actions against the Sami population. The UN criticism was directed against a planned mine in Rönnbäcken, in the region of Västerbotten. Exploitation in Northern Sweden, not least the mining boom, is among of the biggest challenges in Sápmi today. Sami identity markers such as reindeer herding, land, language and oral traditions are examples of expressions that are highlighted in the battle to claim rights to land and water, to language, and to participation in decision making.

AbstractInternet fraud remains a problem in Ghana and thus attracts the attention of teachers, researchers, civil society organisations, the state and policymakers. Existing studies on Internet fraud focused on the reasons, combat strategies, cyber spiritualism, the impact of Internet fraud on individuals and the country, and the inadequate legal frameworks for handling such cybercrimes. Despite efforts by the government and other interest groups in fighting the menace, the phenomenon continues to increase among youth in Ghana. Applying Paul Willis’ theory of ethnographic imagination, this study examined how Internet scammers—Sakawa boys—in the northern region of Ghana use their bodies and other cultural materials to express their identity and make meaning. The study reveals that Sakawa boys express their identities and make meaning using language—slang and jargon; conspicuous consumption of material goods; ostentatious lifestyle; techno-religiosity; and gender cyber-fraud collaboration. Thus, it offers a basal understanding of emic dimension of relationship between children and youth in cybercrime, unsuspected victims, and preventive measures. The study also gives theoretical contributions to research in understanding the broader socio-cultural milieu of children and youth in crimes and possible practical measures towards containment.

Through their work, lawyers are privy to certain insights into how their clients understand and react to verdicts – insights that may prove useful in the plain language work with court texts. In my presentation I first described the results from a smaller interview-based study I conducted on this theme at the request of the so called Förtroendeutredningen (the Swedish Government Official Report on trust, SOU 2008:106, “Increased trust in courts of law – strategies and suggestions”). I then discussed the pros and cons of using interviews with lawyers to capture clients’ understanding of court texts, and outlined a possible continuance study based on my results. In the article “Lawyers and clients discussing verdicts” I follow the same disposition, but look at the possible follow-up study in greater detail. Could the intelligibility of court texts be investigated by analyzing the discussions between lawyer and client from a learning by interaction-perspective?

From the ”Zionist occupational government” to ”the Jewish power” – anti-Semitism within the Nordic Resistance MovementThe focus of the study has been on how anti-Semitism is expressed within the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), what language is used, in which contexts it occurs and what changes may have taken place. Anti-Semitism has always been the foundation of the NMR’s ideology, regardless of the name of the organization, or how they have chosen to define their ideology. Over the years, anti-Semitism has been expressed in different ways and with varying degrees of openness. During the 1990s, anti-Semitism was open and activist, but during the 2000s it somehow, diminished in terms of language use. During this period, the organization reverted, to a great extent, to the anti-Semitic code language of the earlier decades. Of course, this does not mean that anti-Semitism in any way lost its significance, only that it was expressed in a different way. During the 2010s, anti-Semitism has again become open, the use of the code language less and less frequent. Anti-Semitism within NMR is also strongly linked to practical activism in the form of various anti-Semitic actions and demonstrations. Although various actions are not at first sight perceived as anti-Semitic, they often are anti-Semitic. This applies, for example, to symbolic actions where various individuals, for example, on placards at demonstrations, are designated as ”traitors”. Some may be Jews, others not, but they are all seen as symbols of a ”Jewish power”, a kind of parade of ”Jews” and ”Spiritual Jews” which symbolize the supposed ”Jewish power” that NMR is fighting. We see here both ideology and practical action. In recent years, NMR has also increasingly returned to its origins, i.e. the Swedish national socialists during the interwar period, this is reflected in the language used and the importance attached to the history of the movement in a wider perspective. The NMR’s anti-Semitism is also an everyday anti-Semitism, in that it permeates the activists’ lives, how they interpret what is happening in the outside world. In the NMR, anti-Semitism is an everyday practice, to reconnect with Fein’s definition of anti-Semitism.

The realisation of an urban design involves many players, such as designers, critics, politicians, journalists, public relations specialists and residents. In order to consult with each other they make use of drawings, but also frequently of words, to be able to interpret the drawn objects in the plans. But are these urbanistic notions used by everyone in the same way? And have there been noticeable changes in their usage or meaning over time? This urbanistic and linguistic doctoral research addresses these questions. The problem statement is as follows. Both during the design and realisation phases of urbanistic plans and during the present-day study of plans from the past, it turns out that the most important urbanistic notions – words that refer to the drawn objects – are not used uniformly (with the same meaning) by the designers, the other actors and contemporary researchers. This lack of clarity on terminology is a hindrance to good planning, design interpretation, communication and project realisation. It is therefore necessary to find out which actors are using which words (linguistic signs) and with which meaning, how these relate to the drawings (visual signs) and ultimately to the reality (built objects), and what changes have taken place since the initial planning phase. To define the scope of the research, words have been selected that refer to concrete, physical design phenomena in three so-called semantic fields: the structure of the city plan (for example, stad [city] and buurt [neighbourhood]), types of public spaces (for example, straat [street] and park [park]) and types of buildings (for example, huis [house] and winkel [shop]). As a further restriction, the use of such words has been investigated in texts written by five types of actors: designers, colleagues, politicians, journalists and (if present) public relations specialists. In order to connect the research to design practice, case studies were carried out on three comparable designs (extension plans) for the city of Amsterdam, each representing a different social context: Plan Zuid (1900-1917), Bijlmermeer (1962-1968) and IJburg (1995-2003). Using theories from semiotics (the ‘study of signs’) a conceptual model is presented which can be used to describe urban design notions. This model is shaped like a rhombus, with the linguistic sign (word) on the left and the visual sign (drawn object) on the right. The meaning is given at the top and the (built) object in reality is at the bottom. The latter is not of particular importance in this study, however the meaning is all the more important: this can be further divided into the physical abstraction on the one hand and the subjective concept on the other. This last component in particular can differ among various actors, for instance due to the actor’s motive and the frame of associations that the word evokes. The method used for the case study comprises four steps per semantic field (and within this per drawn object). Starting from a designed drawn object, it is first investigated which words were used by the designer(s) and with which meanings. This enables insight into the ‘articulate and convince’ mechanism used by the designers, and in many cases the combination of word and drawing provides additional insights into the plans (sub-question 1). Then it is examined to what extent contemporaries – colleagues, politicians, journalists and public relations specialists – applied their own ‘articulate and convince’ mechanism to the drawn object, by ‘accepting or rejecting’ the words used by the designer(s). This gives insight into differences in word use as well as strategic motives (sub-question 2). Finally, the development of the words to date is researched, using historical and etymological dictionaries, and the realisation of the drawn objects is considered. This provides insights into the relationship between object, word and meaning in both the planning period (synchronic, at the same point in time) and in the development between then and now (diachronic, through time); patterns are evident in both cases (sub-question 3). Based on the designers’ use of words (sub-question 1) it can be determined that plan explanations written by the designers (the written language) in all three cases display similarities with their plan drawings (the ‘drawn language’) in terms of structure, focus, detail and progressiveness; while the combination of text and image in particular tells the full story. The designers use different motives to convince other actors, especially in a functional, technocratic or figurative way. Studying the plan explanations also produced many additional insights into the designs, compared with simply analysing the plan drawings. In Berlage’s Plan Zuid, the development of a collective society was central, with ‘worker palaces’ surrounded by monumental, leafy avenues. Based on his ‘Explanatory Memorandum’ and his original plan drawing – which strikingly was not made public due to the amount of detail – Berlage’s written language and his visual language can best be described as precise, functional and comprehensive, and includes a kind of ‘rules for visual quality’ in terms of blokbouw [block construction] and bijzondere bebouwing [special buildings]. The design focused on monumental public spaces, which were drawn in great detail in a geometric network of long lines on four hierarchical levels. The design for the Bijlmermeer was aimed at creating a kind of ‘super collective’: a socially-engineered society made up of identical residents, for which a single ideal home and residential area would suffice, with 90% high-rise buildings in green areas. Nassuth’s and his team’s use of words and drawings can be characterised as abstract, technocratic and sometimes even hermetic (not focused on communicating). The employees of the Urban Development Department drafted their design as though it was a construction drawing for a machine, with strictly separated flows and planes. The plan explanations also read more like technical manuals, including incomprehensible abbreviations, such as I.C.G. (inrichting voor het collectieve gebruik [arrangement for collective use]). In the design for IJburg an attempt was made to strike a balance between diversity and regularity. The written and drawn language of the initial phase of the plan demonstrate how expressive, symbolic and metaphorical it is. Because IJburg was to be constructed on the open IJmeer, the initial plan drawings and explanations had to win over opponents of the project. It is no coincidence that almost all drawings in the ‘Memorandum of Starting Points’ were sketches and the most important drawing - Palmboom’s bird’s eye view - only used the symbolic ‘natural colours’ of blue and green; as if the development of IJburg would make the IJmeer more natural. Metaphorical concepts such as groene tunnel [green tunnel] (in reality neither green nor a tunnel), vizier [visor] (in the sense of ‘openness’), onderwaterlandschap [underwater landscape] and eilandenstad [island city], and positive archetypes such as boulevard, stadsstraat [city street] and laan [avenue], fitted in well with this almost manipulative use of visual language. As far as the use of words by the other actors, their motives and mutual communication is concerned (sub-question 2), it turns out that contemporaries may be attributing alternative meanings to the words that they are copying from the designers, and that they can use alternative words when they reject the ones of the designers. In doing so, colleagues in particular use negative and neutral alternatives to distance themselves, politicians do use the designer’s words but they also sometimes use more concrete alternatives, journalists use well-known but neutral alternatives instead of jargon, and public relations specialists use both the designer’s words and sometimes even jargon. For the relationships between the object, word and meaning (sub-question 3) four synchronic patterns were found (unambiguity, synonymy or variations, polysemy (multiple meanings), and overlap), and four diachronic patterns (continuity, new words, outdated words, and changes of meaning). In historical research urbanistic notions must therefore be seen in their historical context, because they can change in various ways, sometimes even unnoticed, easily resulting in possible misinterpretation. This research has produced various general implications. On a linguistic level it can be said that, among other things, urbanistic linguistic and visual signs refer to a meaning in the head of the person who uses them, just like other signs, but because they also refer to a future object that does not yet exist in reality, the creation process of both types of signs is complicated. In an urbanistic sense, changes within a few pairs of concepts are particularly notable, such as stad [city] and land [country], buurt [neighbourhood] and wijk [district], straat [street] and weg [road], and huis [house] and woning [dwelling]. The research reveals a number of general shifts, such as those between government and market, between urbanistic and architectural design, between urbanism and other fields, and in the role of language and communication. Above all it demonstrates that there is a close relationship between drawing and language, and hopefully, thanks to this research, that relationship has become a little clearer for all actors involved.

The topic variable is used in research on disinformation to analyze thematic differences in the content of false news, rumors, conspiracies, etc. Those topics are frequently based on national news agendas, i.e. producers of disinformation address current national or world events (e.g. elections, immigration, etc.) (Humprecht, 2019). Field of application/theoretical foundation: Topics are a central yet under-researched aspect of research on online disinformation (Freelon & Wells, 2020). The research interest is to find out which topics are taken up and spread by disinformation producers. The focus of this research is both on specific key topics for which sub-themes are identified (e.g. elections, climate change, Covid-19) and, more generally, on the question of which misleading content is disseminated (mostly on social media). Methodologically, the identification of topics is often a first step followed by further analysis of the content (Ferrara, 2017). Thus, the analysis of topics is linked to the detection of disinformation, which represents a methodological challenge. Topics can be identified inductively or deductively. Inductive analyses often use a data corpus, for example social media data, and try to identify topics using techniques such as topic modelling (e.g. Boberg et al., 2020). Deductive analyses frequently use topic lists to classify contents. Topics lists are initially created based on the literature on the respective topic or with the help of databases, e.g. by fact-checkers. References/combination with other methods of data collection: Studies on topics of disinformation use both manual and automated content analysis or combinations of both to investigate the occurrence of different topics in texts (Boberg et al., 2020; Bradshaw, Howard, Kollanyi, & Neudert, 2020). Inductive and deductive approaches have been combined with qualitative text analyses to identify topic categories which are subsequently coded (Humprecht, 2019; Marchal, Kollanyi, Neudert, & Howard, 2019). Example studies: Ferrara (2017); Humprecht (2019), Marchal et al. (2019) Table 1. Summary of selected studies Author(s) Sample Values Reliability Ferrara (2017) Content type: Tweets Sampling period: April 27, 2017 to May 7, 201 Sample size: 16.65 million tweets Sampling: List of 23 key words and top 20 hashtags Keywords: France2017, Marine2017, AuNomDuPeuple, FrenchElection, FrenchElections, Macron, LePen, MarineLePen, FrenchPresidentialElection, JeChoisisMarine, JeVoteMarine, JeVoteMacron JeVote, Presidentielle2017, ElectionFracaise, JamaisMacron, Macron2017, EnMarche, MacronPresident Hashtags: #Macron, #Presidentielle2017, #fn, #JeVote, #LePen, #France, #2017LeDebat, #MacronLeaks, #Marine2017, #debat2017, #2017LeDébat, #MacronGate, #MarineLePen, #Whirlpool, #EnMarche, #JeVoteMacron, #MacronPresident, #JamaisMacron, #FrenchElection - Humprecht (2019) Content type: fact checks Outlet/ country: 2 fact checkers per country (AT, DE, UK, US) Sampling period: June 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017 Sample size: N=651 Unit of analysis: story/ fact-check No. of topics coded: main topic per fact-check Level of analysis: fact checks and fact-checker conspiracy theory, education, election campaign, environment, government/public administration (at the time when the story was published), health, immigration/integration, justice/crime, labor/employment, macroeconomics/economic regulation, media/journalism, science/ technology, war/terror, others Krippen-dorff’s alpha = 0.71 Marchal et al. (2019) Content type: tweets related to the European elections 2019 Sampling: hashtags in English, Catalan, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish Sampling criteria: (1) contained at least one of the relevant hashtags; (2) contained the hashtag in the URL shared, or the title of its webpage; (3) were a retweet of a message that contained a relevant hashtag or mention in the original message; (4) were a quoted tweet referring to a tweet with a relevant hashtag or mention Sampling period: 5 April and 20 April, 2019 Sample size: 584,062 tweets from 187,743 unique users Religion Islam (Muslim, Islam, Hijab, Halal, Muslima, Minaret) Religion Christianity (Christianity, Church, Priest) Immigration (Asylum Seeker, Refugee, Migrants, Child Migrant, Dual Citizenship, Social Integration) Terrorism (ISIS, Djihad, Terrorism, Terrorist Attack) Political Figures/Parties (Vladimir Putin, Enrico Mezzetti, Emmanuel Macron, ANPI, Arnold van Doorn, Islamic Party for Unity, Nordic Resistance Movement) Celebrities (Lara Trump, Alba Parietti) Crime (Vandalism, Rape, Sexual Assault, Fraud, Murder, Honour Killing) Notre-Dame Fire (Notre-Dame Fire, Reconstruction) Political Ideology (Anti-Fascism, Fascism, Nationalism) Social Issues (Abortion, Bullying, Birth Rate) - References Boberg, S., Quandt, T., Schatto-Eckrodt, T., & Frischlich, L. (2020). Pandemic Populism: Facebook Pages of Alternative News Media and the Corona Crisis -- A Computational Content Analysis, 2019. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/2004.02566 Bradshaw, S., Howard, P. N., Kollanyi, B., & Neudert, L. M. (2020). Sourcing and Automation of Political News and Information over Social Media in the United States, 2016-2018. Political Communication, 37(2), 173–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1663322 Ferrara, E. (2017). Disinformation and social bot operations in the run up to the 2017 French presidential election. First Monday, 22(8). https://doi.org/10.5210/FM.V22I8.8005 Freelon, D., & Wells, C. (2020). Disinformation as Political Communication. Political Communication, 37(2), 145–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1723755 Humprecht, E. (2019). Where ‘fake news’ flourishes: a comparison across four Western democracies. Information Communication and Society, 22(13), 1973–1988. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1474241 Marchal, N., Kollanyi, B., Neudert, L., & Howard, P. N. (2019). Junk News During the EU Parliamentary Elections?: Lessons from a Seven-Language Study of Twitter and Facebook. Oxford, UK. Retrieved from https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/2019/05/EU-Data-Memo.pdf

Introduction -- Making Sense of the (Virtual) World Computer games are never "just games". Computer games are models of reality and if they were not, we would never be able to understand them. Models serve three functions; they capture important, critical features of that which is to be represented while ignoring the irrelevant, they are appropriate for the person and they are appropriate for the task -- thereby enhancing the ability to make judgements and discover relevant regularities and structures (Norman 1993). Despite the inherently unvisualisable nature of computer code -- the flexible material of which all software constructs are built -- computer code is still the most "salient" ingredient in computer games. Less salient are those assumptions that are "built into" the software. By filtering out those parts of reality that are deemed irrelevant or unnecessary, different sorts of assumptions, different sorts of bias are automatically built into the software, reified in the very computer code (Friedman 1995, Friedman and Nissenbaum 1997). Here I will analyse some of the built-in structures that constitute the fabric of a special sort of game, a MUD. A MUD is an Internet-accessible "multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose user interface is entirely textual" (Curtis, 1992). The specific MUD in question is a nine-year old Swedish-language adventure MUD called SvenskMUD ("SwedishMUD") that is run by Lysator, the academic computer club at Linköping University, Sweden. I have done field studies of SvenskMUD over a period of three and a half years (Pargman, forthcoming 2000). How is the SvenskMUD adventure world structured and what are the rules that are built into the fabric of this computer game? I will describe some of the ways in which danger and death, good and evil, courage, rewards and wealth are handled in the game. I will conclude the paper with a short analysis of the purpose of configuring the player according to those structures. Revocable Deaths Characters (personae/avatars) in SvenskMUD can be divided into two categories, players and magicians. Making a career as a player to a large part involves solving quests and killing "monsters" in the game. The magicians are all ex-players who have "graduated" and gone beyond playing the game of SvenskMUD. They have become the administrators, managers and programmers of SvenskMUD. A watchful eye is kept on the magicians by "God", the creator, owner and ultimate custodian of SvenskMUD. My own first battle in the game, in a sunlit graveyard with a small mouse, is an example of a bit-sized danger suitable for newcomers, or "newbies". I correctly guessed that the mouse was a suitably weak opponent for my newborn character, but still had to "tickle" the mouse on its belly (a euphemism for hitting it without much force) 50 times before I managed to kill it. Other parts of this epic battle included 45 failed attempts of mine to "tickle" the mouse, 39 successful "tickles" of the mouse and finally a wild chase around the graveyard before I caught up with the mouse, cornered it and managed to kill it and end the fight. Although I was successful in my endeavour, I was also more than half dead after my run-in with the mouse and had to spend quite some time engaged in more peaceful occupations before I was completely healed. It was only later that I learned that you can improve your odds considerably by using weapons and armour when you fight... Should a SvenskMUD player fail in his (or less often, her) risky and adventurous career and die, that does not constitute an insurmountable problem. Should such a thing pass, the player's ghost only has to find the way back to a church in one of the villages. In the church, the player is reincarnated, albeit with some loss of game-related abilities and experience. The way the unfortunate event of an occasional death is handled is part of the meta-rules of SvenskMUD. The meta-rules are the implicit, underlying rules that represent the values, practices and concerns that shape the frame from which the "ordinary" specific rules operate. Meta-rules are part of the "world view that directs the game action and represents the implicit philosophy or ideals by which the world operates" (Fine 1983, 76). Despite the adventure setting with all its hints of medieval lawlessness and unknown dangers lurking, SvenskMUD is in fact a very caring and forgiving environment. The ultimate proof of SvenskMUD's forgiveness is the revocable character of death itself. Fair Dangers Another SvenskMUD meta-rule is that dangers (and death) should be "fair". This fairness is extended so as to warn players explicitly of dangers. Before a dangerous monster is encountered, the player receives plenty of warnings: You are standing in the dark woods. You feel a little afraid. East of you is a small dark lake in the woods. There are three visible ways from here: east, north and south. It would be foolish to direct my character to go east in this situation without being adequately prepared for encountering and taking on something dangerous in battle. Those preparations should include a readiness to flee if the expected danger proves to be superior. If, in the example above, a player willingly and knowingly directs a character to walk east, that player has to face the consequences of this action. But if another player is very cautious and has no reason to suspect a deadly danger lurking behind the corner, it is not considered "fair" if that player's character dies or is hurt in such a way that it results in damage that has far-reaching consequences within the game. The dangerous monsters that roam the SvenskMUD world are restricted to roam only "dangerous" areas and it is considered good manners to warn players in some way when they enter such an area. Part of learning how to play SvenskMUD successfully becomes a matter of understanding different cues, such as the transition from a safe area to a dangerous one, or the different levels of danger signalled by different situations. Should they not know it in advance, players quickly learn that it is not advisable to enter the "Valley of Ultimate Evil" unless they have reached a very high level in the game and are prepared to take on any dangers that come their way. As with all other meta-rules, both players and magicians internalise this rule to such an extent that it becomes unquestionable and any transgression (such as a dangerous monster roaming around in a village, killing newbie characters who happen to stray its way) would immediately render complaints from players and corresponding actions on behalf of the magicians to rectify the situation. Meta-Rules as "Folk Ideas" Fine (1983, 76-8) enumerates four meta-rules that Dundes (1971) has described and applies them to the fantasy role-playing games he has studied. Dundes's term for these meta-rules is "folk ideas" and they reflect existing North American (and Western European) cultural beliefs. Fine shows that these folk ideas capture core beliefs or central values of the fantasy role-playing games he studied. Three of Dundes's four folk ideas are also directly applicable to SvenskMUD. Unlimited Wealth The first folk idea is the principle of unlimited good. There is no end to growth or wealth. For that reason, treasure found in a dungeon doesn't need a rationale for being there. This folk idea is related to the modernist concept of constant, unlimited progress. "Some referees even 'restock' their dungeons when players have found a particular treasure so that the next time someone enters that room (and kills the dragon or other beasties guarding it) they, too, will be rewarded" (Fine 1983, 76). To restock all treasures and reawaken all killed monsters at regular intervals is standard procedure in SvenskMUD and all other adventure MUDs. The technical term is that the game "resets". The reason why a MUD resets at regular intervals is that, while the MUD itself is finite, there is no end to the number of players who want their share of treasures and other goodies. The handbook for SvenskMUD magicians contains "design guidelines" for creating quests: You have to invent a small story about your quest. The typical scenario is that someone needs help with something. It is good if you can get the story together in such a way that it is possible to explain why it can be solved several times, since the quest will be solved, once for each prospective magician. Perhaps a small spectacle a short while after (while the player is pondering the reward) that in some way restore things in such a way that it can be solved again. (Tolke 1993, my translation) Good and Evil The second folk idea is that the world is a battleground between good and evil. In fantasy literature or a role-playing game there is often no in-between and very seldom any doubt whether someone encountered is good or evil, as "referees often express the alignment [moral character] of nonplayer characters through stereotyped facial features or symbolic colours" (Fine 1983, 77). "Good and evil" certainly exists as a structuring resource for the SvenskMUD world, but interestingly the players are not able to be described discretely in these terms. As distinct from role-playing games, a SvenskMUD player is not created with different alignments (good, evil or neutral). All players are instead neutral and they acquire an alignment as they go along, playing SvenskMUD -- the game. If a player kills a lot of mice and cute rabbits, that player will turn first wicked and then evil. If a player instead kills trolls and orcs, that player first turns good and then saint-like. Despite the potential fluidity of alignment in SvenskMUD, some players cultivate an aura of being good or evil and position themselves in opposition to each other. This is most apparent with two of the guilds (associations) in SvenskMUD, the Necromancer's guild and the Light order's guild. Courage Begets Rewards The third folk idea is the importance of courage. Dangers and death operate in a "fair" way, as should treasures and rewards. The SvenskMUD world is structured both so as not to harm or kill players "needlessly", and in such a way that it conveys the message "no guts, no glory" to the players. In different places in the MUD (usually close to a church, where new players start), there are "easy" areas with bit-sized dangers and rewards for beginners. My battle with the mouse was an example of such a danger/reward. A small coin or an empty bottle that can be returned for a small finder's fee are examples of other bit-sized rewards: The third folk idea is the importance of courage. Dangers and death operate in a "fair" way, as should treasures and rewards. The SvenskMUD world is structured both so as not to harm or kill players "needlessly", and in such a way that it conveys the message "no guts, no glory" to the players. In different places in the MUD (usually close to a church, where new players start), there are "easy" areas with bit-sized dangers and rewards for beginners. My battle with the mouse was an example of such a danger/reward. A small coin or an empty bottle that can be returned for a small finder's fee are examples of other bit-sized rewards: More experienced characters gain experience points (xps) and rise in levels only by seeking out and overcoming danger and "there is a positive correlation between the danger in a setting and its payoff in treasure" (Fine 1983, 78). Just as it would be "unfair" to die without adequate warning, so would it be (perceived to be) grossly unfair to seek out and overcome dangerous monsters or situations without being adequately rewarded. And conversely, it would be perceived to be unfair if someone "stumbled over the treasure" without having deserved it, i.e. if someone was rewarded without having performed an appropriately difficult task. Taken from the information on etiquette in an adventure MUD, Reid's quote is a good example of this: It's really bad form to steal someone else's kill. Someone has been working on the Cosmicly Invulnerable Utterly Unstoppable Massively Powerful Space Demon for ages, leaves to get healed, and in the interim, some dweeb comes along and whacks the Demon and gets all it's [sic] stuff and tons of xps [experience points]. This really sucks as the other person has spent lots of time and money in expectation of the benefits from killing the monster. The graceful thing to do is to give em [sic] all the stuff from the corpse and compensation for the money spent on healing. This is still a profit to you as you got all the xps and spent practically no time killing it. (Reid 1999, 122, my emphasis) The User Illusion An important objective of the magicians in SvenskMUD is to describe everything that a player experiences in the SvenskMUD world in game-related terms. The game is regarded as a stage where the players are supposed to see only what is in front of, but not behind the scenes. A consistent use of game-related terms and game-related explanations support the suspension of disbelief and engrossment in the SvenskMUD fantasy world. The main activity of the MUD users should be to enter into the game and guide their characters through a fascinating (and, as much as possible and on its own terms, believable) fantasy world. The guiding principle is therefore that the player should never be reminded of the fact that the SvenskMUD world is not for real, that SvenskMUD is only a game or a computer program. From this perspective, the worst thing players can encounter in SvenskMUD is a breakdown of the user illusion, a situation that instantly transports a person from the SvenskMUD world and leaves that person sitting in front of a computer screen. Error messages, e.g. the feared "you have encountered a bug [in the program]", are an example of this. If a magician decides to change the SvenskMUD world, that magician is supposed to do the very best to explain the change by using game-related jargon. This is reminiscent of the advice to "work within the system": "wherever possible, things that can be done within the framework of the experiential level should be. The result will be smoother operation and greater harmony among the user community" (Morningstar and Farmer 1991, 294). If for some reason a shop has to be moved from one village to another, a satisfactory explanation must be given, e.g. a fire occurring in the old shop or the old shop being closed due to competition (perhaps from the "new", relocated shop). Explanations that involve supernatural forces or magic are also fine in a fantasy world. Explanations that remind the player of the fact that the SvenskMUD world is not for real ("I moved the shop to Eriksros, because all magicians decided that it would be so much better to have it there"), or even worse, that SvenskMUD is a computer program ("I moved the program shop.c to another catalogue in the file structure") are to be avoided at all costs. Part of socialising magicians becomes teaching them to express themselves in this way even when they know better about the machinations of SvenskMud. There are several examples of ingenious and imaginative ways to render difficult-to-explain phenomena understandable in game-related terms: There was a simple problem that appeared at times that made the computer [that SvenskMUD runs on] run a little slower, and as time went by the problem got worse. I could fix the problem easily when I saw it and I did that at times. After I had fixed the problem the game went noticeably faster for the players that were logged in. For those occasions, I made up a message and displayed it to everyone who was in the system: "Linus reaches into the nether regions and cranks a little faster". (Interview with Linus Tolke, "God" in SvenskMUD) When a monster is killed in the game, it rots away (disappears) after a while. However, originally, weapons and armour that the monster wielded did not disappear; a lucky player could find valuable objects and take them without having "deserved" them. This specific characteristic of the game was deemed to be a problem, not least because it furthered a virtual inflation in the game that tended to decrease the value of "honestly" collected weapons and loot. The problem was discussed at a meeting of the SvenskMUD magicians that I attended. It was decided that when a monster is killed and the character that killed it does not take the loot, the loot should disappear ("rot") together with the monster. But how should this be explained to the players in a suitable way if they approach a magician to complain about the change, a change that in their opinion was for the worse? At the meeting it was suggested that from now on, all weapons and shields were forged with a cheaper, weaker metal. Not only would objects of this metal "rot" away together with the monster that wielded them, but it was also suggested that all weapons in the whole game should in fact be worn down as time goes by. (Not to worry, new ones appear in all the pre-designated places every time the game resets.) Conclusion -- Configuring the Player SvenskMUD can easily be perceived as a "blooming buzzing confusion" for a new player and my own first explorations in SvenskMUD often left me confused even as I was led from one enlightenment to the next. Not everyone feels inclined to take up the challenge to make sense of a world where you have to learn everything anew, including how to walk and how to talk. On the other hand, in the game world, much is settled for the best, and a crack in a subterranean cave is always exactly big enough to squeeze through... The process of becoming part of the community of SvenskMUD players is inexorably connected to learning to become an expert in the activities of that community, i.e. of playing SvenskMUD (Wenger 1998). A player who wants to program in SvenskMUD (thereby altering the fabric of the virtual world) will acquire many of the relevant concepts before actually becoming a magician, just by playing and exploring the game of SvenskMUD. Even if the user illusion succeeds in always hiding the computer code from the player, the whole SvenskMUD world constitutes a reflection of that underlying computer code. An implicit understanding of the computer code is developed through extended use of SvenskMUD. The relationship between the SvenskMUD world and the underlying computer code is in this sense analogous to the relationship between the lived-in world and the rules of physics that govern the world. All around us children "prepare themselves" to learn the subject of physics in school by throwing balls up in the air (gravity) and by pulling carts or sledges (friction). By playing SvenskMUD, a player will become accustomed to many of the concepts that govern the SvenskMUD world and will come to understand the goals, symbols, procedures and values of SvenskMUD. This process bears many similarities to the "primary socialisation" of a child into a member of society, a socialisation that serves "to make appear as necessity what is in fact a bundle of contingencies" (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 155). This is the purpose of configuring the player and it is intimately connected to the re-growth of SvenskMUD magicians and the survival of SvenskMUD itself over time. However, it is not the only possible outcome of the SvenskMUD socialisation process. The traditional function of trials and quests in fantasy literature is to teach the hero, usually through a number of external or internal encounters with evil or doubt, to make the right, moral choices. By excelling at these tests, the protagonist shows his or her worthiness and by extension also stresses and perhaps imputes these values in the reader (Dalquist et al. 1991). Adventure MUDs could thus socialise adolescents and reinforce common moral values in society; "the fantasy hero is the perfectly socialised and exemplary subject of a society" (53, my translation). My point here is not that SvenskMUD differs from other adventure MUDs. I would imagine that most of my observations are general to adventure MUDs and that many are applicable also to other computer games. My purpose here has rather been to present a perspective on how an adventure MUD is structured, to trace the meaning of that structure beyond the game itself and to suggest a purpose behind that organisation. I encourage others to question built-in bias and underlying assumptions of computer games (and other systems) in future studies. References Berger, P., and T. Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin, 1966. Curtis, P. "MUDding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." High Noon on the Electronic Frontier. Ed. P. Ludlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1996. 13 Oct. 2000 <http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/virtual-reality/communications/papers/muds/muds/Mudding-Social-Phenomena.txt>. Dalquist, U., T. Lööv, and F. Miegel. "Trollkarlens lärlingar: Fantasykulturen och manlig identitetsutveckling [The Wizard's Apprentices: Fantasy Culture and Male Identity Development]." Att förstå ungdom [Understanding Youth]. Ed. A. Löfgren and M. Norell. Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1991. Dundes, A. "Folk Ideas as Units of World View." Toward New Perspectives in Folklore. Ed. A. Paredes and R. Bauman. Austin: U of Texas P, 1971. Fine, G.A. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983. Friedman, B. and H. Nissenbaum. "Bias in Computer Systems." Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology. Ed. B. Friedman. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1997. Friedman, T. "Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality." Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. S. Jones. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. Morningstar, C. and F. R. Farmer. "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat." Cyberspace: The First Steps. Ed. M. Benedikt. Cambridge: MA, MIT P, 1991. 13 Oct. 2000 <http://www.communities.com/company/papers/lessons.php>. Norman, D. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993. Pargman, D. "Code Begets Community: On Social and Technical Aspects of Managing a Virtual Community." Ph.D. dissertation. Dept. of Communication Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, forthcoming, December 2000. Reid, E. "Hierarchy and Power: Social Control in Cyberspace." Communities in Cyberspace. Ed. M. Smith and P. Kollock. London, England: Routledge, 1999. Tolke, L. Handbok för SvenskMudmagiker: ett hjälpmedel för byggarna i SvenskMUD [Handbook for SvenskMudmagicians: An Aid for the Builders in SvenskMUD]. Printed and distributed by the author in a limited edition, 1993. Wenger, E. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Daniel Pargman. "The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php>. Chicago style: Daniel Pargman, "The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Daniel Pargman. (2000) The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php> ([your date of access]).