Journal articles on the topic 'Swedish Sign Language'

The study of signed languages allows the dissociation of sensorimotor and cognitive neural components of the language signal. Here we investigated the neurocognitive processes underlying the monitoring of two phonological parameters of sign languages: handshape and location. Our goal was to determine if brain regions processing sensorimotor characteristics of different phonological parameters of sign languages were also involved in phonological processing, with their activity being modulated by the linguistic content of manual actions. We conducted an fMRI experiment using manual actions varying in phonological structure and semantics: (1) signs of a familiar sign language (British Sign Language), (2) signs of an unfamiliar sign language (Swedish Sign Language), and (3) invented nonsigns that violate the phonological rules of British Sign Language and Swedish Sign Language or consist of nonoccurring combinations of phonological parameters. Three groups of participants were tested: deaf native signers, deaf nonsigners, and hearing nonsigners. Results show that the linguistic processing of different phonological parameters of sign language is independent of the sensorimotor characteristics of the language signal. Handshape and location were processed by different perceptual and task-related brain networks but recruited the same language areas. The semantic content of the stimuli did not influence this process, but phonological structure did, with nonsigns being associated with longer RTs and stronger activations in an action observation network in all participants and in the supramarginal gyrus exclusively in deaf signers. These results suggest higher processing demands for stimuli that contravene the phonological rules of a signed language, independently of previous knowledge of signed languages. We suggest that the phonological characteristics of a language may arise as a consequence of more efficient neural processing for its perception and production.

Productive signs in Swedish Sign Language come in many kinds. This paper concentrates on two groups. The first group describes entities in motion, expressing location and movement, like ‘a bird is sitting on a telephone line’ or ‘the boy jumps off a ledge’. I call these signs polysynthetic. The second group describes the size and shape of entities, like ‘a piece of A4 sized paper’. I call these signs size and shape specifying. In polysynthetic signs, which denote entities in movement situations, the manual articulation of the movement denotes the motion itself (e.g. movement or location) and the handshape denotes the entity as a classifier. This paper argues that there are two main types of classifiers used in polysynthetic signs to denote motion situations: agentive and non-agentive. In contrast to polysynthetic signs, in signs that specify size and shape of an object, the manual articulation (movement) denotes the extent of the largest dimension of the entity whereas the handshape denotes the extent of the smallest dimension of the entity being described. This description of classifiers, particularly agentive classifiers, in Swedish Sign Language polysynthetic signs differs from those offered for other sign languages because it is based on the salient properties of the part of the entity that is to be handled. Other descriptions are based on the entity’s appearance. Another difference is that I offer my own description of the dimensionality of entities (inspired by Bierwisch 1967). I will show how a handshape with different orientation denotes different dimensions. I will demonstrate that the agentive classifier handshapes in polysynthetic signs and the handshapes in size and shape specifying signs are chosen according to the same dimensions.

The Swedish Sign Language Corpus (SSLC) was compiled during the years 2009–2011 and consists of video-recorded conversations with 42 informants between the ages of 20 and 82 from three separate regions in Sweden. The overall aim of the project was to create a corpus of Swedish Sign Language (SSL) that could provide a core data source for research on language structure and use, as well as for dictionary work. A portion of the corpus has been annotated with glosses for signs and Swedish translations, and annotation of the entire corpus is ongoing. In this paper, we outline our scheme for gloss annotation and discuss issues that are relevant in creating the annotation system, with unique glosses for lexical signs, fingerspelling and productive signs. The annotation guidelines discussed in this paper cover both one- and two-handed signs in SSL, based on 33,600 tokens collected for the SSLC.

In this paper, we investigate frequency and duration of signs and parts of speech in Swedish Sign Language (SSL) using the SSL Corpus. The duration of signs is correlated with frequency, with high-frequency items having shorter duration than low-frequency items. Similarly, function words (e.g. pronouns) have shorter duration than content words (e.g. nouns). In compounds, forms annotated as reduced display shorter duration. Fingerspelling duration correlates with word length of corresponding Swedish words, and frequency and word length play a role in the lexicalization of fingerspellings. The sign distribution in the SSL Corpus shows a great deal of cross-linguistic similarity with other sign languages in terms of which signs appear as high-frequency items, and which categories of signs are distributed across text types (e.g. conversation vs. narrative). We find a correlation between an increase in age and longer mean sign duration, but see no significant difference in sign duration between genders.

Sign language interpreting of dialogues shares many features with the interpreting of dialogues between non-signed languages. We argue that from a cognitive perspective in dialogue interpreting, despite some differences between the two types of interpreting, sign language interpreters use many of the same processes and handle similar challenges as interpreters between non-signed languages. We report on a first exploration of process differences in sign language interpreting between three novice and three experienced Swedish Sign Language interpreters. The informants all interpreted the same dialogue and made a retrospection of their interpreting immediately after the task. Retrospections were analyzed using tools for identifying reported processing problems, instances of monitoring, and strategy use (see Ivanova 1999). Furthermore, the interpreting products (both into Swedish Sign Language and into Swedish) and their differences were qualitatively analyzed. The results indicate that there are differences between the two groups, both in terms of the retrospective reports and in terms of the interpreting product. As expected, monitoring seems to be a factor determined by experience. The experienced interpreters seemed to have more efficient ways of handling turn taking and the internalization of new vocabulary. The study also concludes that to use instruments devised for simultaneous conference interpreting (Ivanova 1999; Tiselius 2013), the instruments need to be adapted to the dialogue setting, even though in the case of sign language interpreting the simultaneous interpreting technique is used even in dialogue interpreting.

The object of this study is a sign glossed index-c, a point toward the signer’s chest, and its use in Swedish Sign Language. The sign has often been referred to as the first person pronoun of Swedish Sign Language, and it has been claimed that index-c is only used for non-first person reference in reported speech (Wallin 1987; Ahlgren 1991; Simper-Allen 1999). In the analyzed material, however, index-c is also used for non-first person reference when the actions and thoughts of a referent are rendered. A closer look also made it clear that there are actually two different forms of index-c, with different distribution, and that there appears to be an indefinite pronoun in Swedish Sign Language. What is presented here is thus an analysis of the use and meaning of two forms of the sign that was initially glossed index-c.

In this paper, we present a comparative study of mouth actions in three European sign languages: British Sign Language (BSL), Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), and Swedish Sign Language (SSL). We propose a typology for, and report the frequency distribution of, the different types of mouth actions observed. In accordance with previous studies, we find the three languages remarkably similar — both in the types of mouth actions they use, and in how these mouth actions are distributed. We then describe how mouth actions can extend over more than one manual sign. This spreading of mouth actions is the primary focus of this paper. Based on an analysis of comparable narrative material in the three languages, we demonstrate that the direction as well as the source and goal of spreading may be language-specific.

The evolution of spoken languages has been studied since the mid-nineteenth century using traditional historical comparative methods and, more recently, computational phylogenetic methods. By contrast, evolutionary processes resulting in the diversity of contemporary sign languages (SLs) have received much less attention, and scholars have been largely unsuccessful in grouping SLs into monophyletic language families using traditional methods. To date, no published studies have attempted to use language data to infer relationships among SLs on a large scale. Here, we report the results of a phylogenetic analysis of 40 contemporary and 36 historical SL manual alphabets coded for morphological similarity. Our results support grouping SLs in the sample into six main European lineages, with three larger groups of Austrian, British and French origin, as well as three smaller groups centring around Russian, Spanish and Swedish. The British and Swedish lineages support current knowledge of relationships among SLs based on extra-linguistic historical sources. With respect to other lineages, our results diverge from current hypotheses by indicating (i) independent evolution of Austrian, French and Spanish from Spanish sources; (ii) an internal Danish subgroup within the Austrian lineage; and (iii) evolution of Russian from Austrian sources.

AbstractIn a few universities around the world courses are offered where the primary language of instruction is a national sign language. Many of these courses are given by bilingual/multilingual deaf lecturers, skilled in both national sign language(s) and spoken/written language(s). Research on such deaf-led practices in higher education are lacking, and this study will contribute to a greater understanding of these practices. Drawing on ethnographically created data from a higher education setting in Sweden, this case study examines the use of different languages and modalities by three deaf lecturers when teaching deaf and hearing (signing) students in theoretic subjects. The analysis is based on video-recordings of the deaf lecturers during classroom activities at a basic university level in which Swedish Sign Language (SSL) is used as the primary language. The results illustrate how these deaf lecturers creatively use diverse semiotic resources in several modes when teaching deaf and hearing (signing) students, which creates practices of translanguaging. This is illustrated by classroom activities in which the deaf lecturers use different language and modal varieties, including sign languages SSL and ASL as well as Swedish, and English, along with PowerPoint and whiteboard notes. The characteristics of these multimodal-multilingual resources and the usage of them will be closely presented in this article.

This eclectic volume represents a selection of 17 papers from the Seventh Congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language held in Trieste in 1993. They cover a wide range of languages, including Swedish, Italian, German, Spanish, a group of Bantu languages, Polish, Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN), Hebrew, American Sign Language (ASL), and English, and a wide range of topics and frameworks. Although almost all the papers can be mined by SLA researchers, I will mention five papers that might be of particular interest.

This study focuses on a Swedish Sign Language (STS) interpreting education, in which the students learn a second language (L2) that is expressed in the visual-gestural modality instead of the auditory-vocal one. Due to the lack of research on sign language L2 instruction, the teachers have limited scientific knowledge and proven experience to lean on in their work. Therefore, an action research-based project was started with the aim to enhance teachers’ knowledge about effective ways of teaching STS as an L2, and to examine how teaching can lead to students making good progress and attaining deep knowledge in STS. The article presents results from one of the projects’ sub-studies, Initial teaching through different primary languages, where a hearing STS L2 teacher’s approaches are examined when teaching the hearing students the new language in another modality than their previous language(s). The results show how this teacher uses her own knowledge from learning STS as an L2 and how she, through using spoken Swedish, provides rich metalinguistic knowledge that contributes to the students’ deeper theoretic knowledge about STS in addition to their practical STS learning. This had pedagogical implications for the further development of the instruction at the interpreting program.

Linguists have suggested that non-manual and manual markers are used in sign languages to indicate prosodic and syntactic boundaries. However, little is known about how native signers interpret non-manual and manual cues with respect to sentence boundaries. Six native signers of British Sign Language (BSL) were asked to mark sentence boundaries in two narratives: one presented in BSL and one in Swedish Sign Language (SSL). For comparative analysis, non-signers undertook the same tasks. Results indicated that both native signers and non-signers were able to use visual cues effectively in segmentation and that their decisions were not dependent on knowledge of the signed language. Signed narratives contain visible cues to their prosodic structure which are available to signers and non-signers alike.

This article examines the Swedish L2 development of deaf children by testing the validity of Processability Theory on deaf learners of Swedish as an L2. The study is cross-sectional and includes written data from 38 pupils (grades 5 and 10) from a school for deaf and hearing-impaired pupils in Sweden. The primary language used by the pupils is Swedish Sign Language with Swedish being considered their L2. The Swedish data have been analyzed through the lens of Processability Theory (PT). The results show that the grammatical development of deaf learners is similar to hearing learners of Swedish as an L2. The results therefore suggest that PT is applicable even for deaf learners of L2 Swedish.

AbstractThe present study describes how Swedish Sign Language (SSL) interpreters systematically use signing space and movements of their hands, arms and body to simultaneously layer iconic expressions of metaphors for differences and for time, in ways previously not described. This is analyzed as the interpreters embodying metaphors, and each of the conceptual metaphors they embody seems to be expressed in a distinct manner not noted before in accounts of the structure of signed languages. Data consists of recordings of Swedish-SSL interpreting by native SSL signers. Rendering spoken Swedish into SSL, these interpreters produce complex sequences making abundant use of the circumstance that in signed language you can express several types of information simultaneously. With little processing time, they produce iconic expressions, frequently using several underlying conceptual metaphors to simultaneously layer information. The interpreters place individual signs in relation to time lines in order to express metaphorical content related to time, and use movement’s of their bodies to express comparisons and contrasts. In all of the analyzed sequences, the interpreters express the metaphor difference-between-is-distance-between. In addition, they layer metaphors for difference and time simultaneously, in some instances also expressing the orientational metaphor pair more-is-up and less-is-down at the same time.

Tactile sign language is a variety of a national sign language. Tactile signing among persons with deafblindness also includes some minor variations. Early analyses of tactile Swedish Sign Language (e.g. Mesch 1998, 2001) show how interactants use both their hands in tactile communication in two different positions: dialogue position and monologue position. This paper examines the signing variations that partially or functionally blind signers encounter when using one hand to communicate with each other in a conversation dyad in what is one of the most advanced types of sign language communication. In tactile one-handed signing, the signer uses her right hand both for producing and receiving signs, while the addressee uses her left hand not only for receiving but also for producing signs after turn-taking, even though it is the non-dominant hand and, therefore, is not normally used to produce one-handed signs. In this study, conversation analysis was conducted on the discourse of four groups.The results show that some variations depend on the linguistic background of individuals and their everyday communication. A com-parative study of a two-handed and a one-handed system is then presented, focusing on issues of simplicity, flexibility, turn-taking, and feedback. Some results showing changes in the sign structures of both communication types are also presented

The possibilities young pupils have to express themselves by using verbal, written and aesthetic languages depend on the multilingual discourse at school. In this presentation, multilingualism is defined as languages with roots in different nations and cultures, linked to aesthetic languages (music, fine arts, literature, theatre, film and dance). The term multimodality is used to highlight the variety of communicative forms used by people to utilize and develop knowledge (Selander & Kress, 2010). Although people increasingly communicate by the use of different modalities in today’s society (Kress, 2003), the written language holds a unique position in Swedish as a school subject, and the aesthetic means of expression could be said to be marginalized. The study presented is a qualitative, comparative study based on close reading of curricula for the subject Swedish from 1969 (Lgr 69) to 2011 (Lgr 11). The purpose is to make clear how aesthetic perspectives of Swedish appear in the different curricula, starting with the didactic questions on what students are expected to learn, how this is told to be executed and why. Among the analysed curricula, the curriculum from 1980 (Lgr 80) represents an empirical, multimodal, communicative, democratic and creative approach to the subject Swedish, where aesthetic forms of expressions are emphasized. The analysis shows that the importance of these communicative forms is reduced in later curricula, leaving the aesthetical aspects in the background. The possibilities represented by a variety of modalities and sign systems decrease. Instead a skill oriented school subject increase that weakens the bridges between different expressions of multilingual language. The discussion, has a focus on the problems that the curriculum implicates, when young, multilingual students are not given the possibilities to use their different sign systems and communicative capacity, and therefore not the possibility to learn with their full potential.

The question of why deaf children have difficulties in learning mathematics is the basis of this study. The aim of the study is to illuminate deaf children’s concept formation in mathematics by describing how some deaf children express themselves and act on their way towards understanding two basic concepts: the concept of multiplication with whole numbers and the concept of length.Theories developed by Feuerstein are used in order to describe how deaf children develop concepts, and to investigate possibilities to help deaf children develop their cognitive potential in a more effective and adequate way. Concept maps illustrate steps and pathways taken by the pupils. The importance of language in concept formation, with focus on sign language is illuminated.The children in this study were pupils in a School for the Deaf, a bilingual school with the languages Swedish Sign Language and Swedish. Seven 11-year-old pupils, all the pupils in one group in grade 4, were studied. Video recordings were made of pupil-teacher interactions in problem solving situations in sign language only, with paper and pencil, with learning materials, and with real things.A large variability in the pupils’ ability to solve the problems was found depending on different factors identified by Feuerstein, e.g., self-confidence, looking for meaning, search of challenge, intention to finish the work, and use of known facts. No difference was found concerning the steps towards comprehension of the concepts for the deaf pupils in the study compared to those of hearing pupils. In accordance with earlier studies, it was found that the deaf pupils needed more time to learn mathematics than hearing pupils normally do. As a consequence, they may learn certain concepts at a later age, and the pathways towards comprehension may vary compared to those of hearing pupils. The structure of sign language and the lack of an established terminology in mathematics are also of importance.The bilingual situation for deaf pupils is a reason for developing methods of teaching mathematics to deaf pupils alternative to methods used today.

Abstract This study describes how temporal discourse content is expressed in signing space in Swedish Sign Language (SSL) and identifies and describes the differences between L1- and L2-interpreters’ signed target language output. The study found that L1-interpreters systematically use complex simultaneous combinations of lexical signs and various hand, arm and body movements on and along time lines. The L2-interpreters stand more still, and their use of body movements differs from that of the L1-interpreters. Though the L2-interpreters in the study often succeed in showing that two or more entities/events are separate, they are less successful in showing the more specific, temporal and/or other, relationship(s) between them. This crucial aspect of idiomatic signed language production, therefore, should be included in interpreter training to improve the quality of interpreted target language output.

Abstract Parents and prospective parents who speak a language other than English in New Zealand are in something of an information desert when it comes to how and why they might go about raising their children bilingually. While the official languages, Te Reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, have special status among the languages of New Zealand, other languages are viewed very much as the responsibility of ethnolinguistic communities. To support the intergenerational transmission of minority languages in New Zealand, research-informed material has been created for dissemination in a website, an associated Facebook page and a series of lecture-workshops for parents and professionals which have been made available in digital form in this website. Workshops continue to be offered to professionals such as speech-language therapists, early childhood educators, midwives, doctors, and nurses who work with families with young children. Questions asked during these workshops help to select the myths about multilingualism we need to address in this outreach to irrigate and green the information desert. Already, a bilingual French class and a Swedish playgroup have been set up as direct results of the parents’ workshop events. Individual parents have reported feeling empowered to persevere in their efforts to raise their children as speakers of their language. Invitations to contribute to education programs for the professionals who work close to young children are beginning to arrive.

Abstract Video relay interpreting (VRI) enables communication between a signed language user, remotely connected to an interpreter by videophone, and an interlocutor in spoken contact with the interpreter by telephone. Both users of the service are physically separated from each other and from the interpreter, who is in a studio. Essential technical components of the system include such items as videophones, telephones, computers, software, and a headset. This article explores how the interpreter orients towards the headset, turning it into an interactional resource. Examples of how this is done are identified in extracts from a corpus of VRI conversations between users of Swedish Sign Language (SSL) and spoken Swedish. Ethical approval and all participants’ consent were obtained. Three practices were identified: pointing towards the headset, orienting towards it in other ways (positioning, gesturing, direction of gaze), and holding it. All these practices have concrete pragmatic implications for the various steps in communication, such as establishing reference, repairs, and turn allocation. Enhancing VRI interpreters’ awareness of how equipment like a headset helps to organize the interaction is important, with a view to ensuring that the available technology is used to best effect for purposes of communication.

This study explores the interpreter’s positioning in a Video Relay Interpreting (VRI) service that offers bimodal mediation between people using Swedish Sign Language (SSL) and people using spoken Swedish. Positioning subsumes the ways in which interpreters orient themselves to the contingencies of the setting on a moment-by-moment basis, in relation to the impact of technology, participants’ knowledge asymmetries (e.g., prior experience of VRI), their physical separation, and the need for two arenas (visual and auditive). The interpreting is bimodal, each of the two users being in direct contact with the interpreter through a different medium (telephone for one, videophone for the other). Nine excerpts from two calls within the VRI service serve as examples to show how the interpreter’s positioning emerges dynamically in relation to contingent variables of the setting, such as the initial importance of briefing users on the service, temporary loss of sound and image, the perceived need to inform either user of extralinguistic items, or situational awareness that it is time to conclude the interaction. This new research perspective on VRI can afford a better understanding of its moment-by-moment complexity and specificities, thus helping improve it and train interpreters better for it.

Visuality is a concept that crosses boundaries of practice and meaning, making it an ideal subject for interdisciplinary research. In this article, we discuss visuality using a fragment from a video meeting of television producers at Swedish Television’s group for programming in Swedish Sign Language. This example argues for the importance of recognizing the diversity of analytical and practice-derived visualities and their effect on the ways in which we interpret cultures. These different visualities have consequences for the methods and means with which we present scholarly research. The role of methods, methodology, and analysis of visual practices in an organizational and bilingual setting are key. We explore the challenges of incorporating deaf visualities, hearing visualities, and different paradigms of interdisciplinary research as necessary when visibility, invisibility, and their materialities are of concern. We conclude that in certain contexts, breaking with disciplinary traditions makes visible that which is otherwise invisible.

Based on an extensive corpus study, this paper presents an overview of control patterns in Swedish infinitives and sketches a CxG account of the data. To capture the variety of control relations encountered, the approach combines elements of traditional CxG, Frame Semantics, and Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Three basic mechanisms are distinguished: control by selection, where the controlled element is coinstantiated with an argument of the selecting head; control by feature percolation, where the interpretation is determined by the syntactic and pragmatic context; and arbitrary “control”, which is treated as non-control, where the understood subject argument is specified for generic or arbitrary reference and, hence, needs no controller. More specific control patterns, including such issues as control shift and pragmatic control, are treated as specific variants of these three basic types.

The article is devoted to the analysis of a sarcastic evaluation of a person, which leads to their discrediting in media texts. Sarcastic evaluation is considered in terms of linguistic praxeology: the language and compositional means of nomination, description, and actions are analyzed. In a media text, these means interact with the means of expressing the category of deviance and forming semantic nodes. The category of deviance can manifest itself, on the one hand, in exuberance or the absurd, while on the other, in simplification or insufficiency of the sign revelation. Also, specific sarcastic speech techniques are identified. They are based on the discrepancy of referent and illocutionary meanings in the person’s speech portrait. The study of Russian media discourse about Swedish eco-activist Greta Thunberg revealed the active use of linguistic means expressing sarcastic evaluation to demonstrate the opposing viewpoint in relation to the transmitted semantic position of “Other”. When the media represents Greta in the totality of her disadvantages, this enters into a polemic against those who support the ideas of this person. With the help of sarcasm, the media shows the absurdness and failure of these ideas. In this case, a sarcastic evaluation becomes an instrument of discrediting not only the person him/herself, but also his/her views and associates. Linguistic means of sarcastic evaluation are widely represented in discrediting media texts. The most important of them are means such as absurdity, hyperbole, alogism, simplification, etc.

Abstract In general, the majority of native or near-native speakers of a certain language can easily identify a sentence as a proverb. They are able to do this due to different structural features, among others. These specific syntactic structures appear quite frequently in proverbs and serve as a warning sign that the particular text is deviant from the surrounding discourse and is, most probably, a proverb. The so-called proverbial formulae, e.g. Better X, than Y; When you X (you) Y; No X, no Y etc., are considered to be one of the most easily recognizable proverbial characteristics. They often serve as basic syntactic models and lend themselves readily for the insertion of new contents (cf. Taylor 1985: 16). In his study Structural Aspects of Proverbs, Mac Coinnigh has shown that proverbs from different languages, for instance English, Estonian, Finnish, German and Swedish, share the same or a very similar syntactic architecture (Mac Coinnigh 2015: 117–120). The Irish linguist, however, did not consider examples from the Bulgarian language. Therefore, one of the main aims of the present paper is to investigate which of the structural models recorded in previous paremiological works (Kuusi 1987 (1966); Röhrich and Mieder 1977; Permjakov 1979; Mieder 2006a and 2012 etc.) can be identified in traditional Bulgarian proverbs and in what frequency. Moreover, the study intends to test the widespread hypothesis that humorous proverb innovations and variations (anti-proverbs) are often created based on proverbial formulae (Litovkina 2015: 333). For the purposes of the study, two corpora of 649 proverbs and 370 anti-proverbs were analyzed. The corpora have been previously built by Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Gotthardt (Hrisztova-Gotthardt 2006 and 2010b; Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Gotthardt 2011 and 2012). The qualitative analysis has shown that 14 out of the 16 structural formulae listed by Röhrich and Mieder (1977) and Mieder (2006a and 2012) can be found in Bulgarian proverbs. The most common formula was He who Xs, Ys, serving as a syntactic model for 48 different commonly used proverbs. In case of anti-proverbs, the present structural model could be clearly identified in 30 out of 370 texts. The most prominent formulae were He who Xs, Ys, X is Y and Better X than Y.

Climate change is one of the hottest topics lately. Global emissions are reaching record levels and showing no sign of peaking. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary-General invited all leaders to join Climate Action Summit in New York, 23rd September 2019. This summit also featured the participation of business leaders, indigenous people, youth, and many others. The star of the showed Greta Thunberg a Swedish teen activist who sailed to New York for the event from Sweden on a zero-emissions sailboat. This research aimed to reveal how presupposition and entailment were used in the speech and how they were contributing to the context of the speech. The research used a descriptive qualitative method for analyzing her speech which involved document and material analysis to collect the data. The results showed that this research found out that the most commonly used presupposition is existential presupposition. The function is to emphasize, to draw attention and sympathy toward the listeners. While the most used entailment is one-way entailment. This type of entailment is commonly used to deliver the ideas through the utterance by adding some more details of the main idea. Existential presupposition and one-way entailment led to the referential function of language which aimed to send information or the speaker's idea to the audience. It can be concluded that the presuppositions of the speech must be entailed by the global context, which means the global context or common ground knowledge entails that presupposition. In a word, both presupposition and entailment hence become a strategy to make the audience become more focused in the context of the speech. Keywords: Presupposition, Entailment, Speech

The article attempts to identify the stereotypic idea of widespread domestic animals (a tomcat and a cat) on the material of similes of Russian and Swedish languages that characterize humans. The objective of the study is to identify the dominant characteristics of the “tom-cat” and “cat” in the Russian language picture of the world, which serve to assess a person, against the Swedish background. The sources of the material were dictionaries of Russian similes, the Swedish Phraseological Dictionary, data of the Russian National Corpus and the Swedish National Corpus. The main methods used in the study are methods of complete and directed material sampling, lexicographical, contextual and comparative analysis. This is an ideographic classification of Russian idioms, which allows to reveal comparison signs relevant for the Russian language picture of the world. The article identifies the dominant comparison bases in each group, indicating the importance of the corresponding attribute for native speakers. It analyzes gender distinctions in the use of Russian phraseological units with the “tom-cat” and “cat” reference standards, and peculiarities of using Russian similes in fiction contexts. A contrastive analysis is carried out with Swedish comparative phraseologisms with the standard “en katt”. The novelty of the study is to identify similar and different characteristics that allow to make a “portrait” description of domestic animals that serve as standards of similes, to identify relevant features for Russian and Swedish language pictures of the world. The study vector is directed from the standards of similes to their bases. As a result of the study, conclusions are drawn about the greater nominative density of idioms with “tom-cat / cat” components in Russian compared to Swedish, differences in gender relatedness due to the lack of generic differentiation of the Swedish standard of comparison, despite the fact that in Russian the replacement of the component “tom-cat” by “cat” leads to a change in the meaning of the phraseological unit, more detailed stereotypical representations in the Russian language particularly in such ideographic groups of similes as characteristics of appearance and behavior and to a greater peyorativity of Russian phraseological units compared to Swedish ones. The identified equivalent units in two languages, as well as the presence of the same ideographic groups of similes are due to the centuries-old observation of the peoples-speakers of languages for the universal features of the appearance and behavior of animals.

Public language is generally considered to have become more informal in the Western world in the past few decades. The same holds true for Swedish public language and the language of Swedish newspapers in particular. However, two former studies of opinion articles in five Swedish newspapers revealed that the language used in this genre was surprisingly unchanged during the time period 1945–2000. This article replicates the two former studies by analysing 36 Swedish opinion articles from 2015 from a quantitative perspective. The results of the analysis are then compared to those of the earlier studies to see if, and to what extent, tendencies of informalization have now become noticeable in the opinion articles. It is demonstrated that there are indeed signs of informalization in the articles from 2015. Words and sentences have become shorter, colloquial expressions (such as swear words) are used, and both incomplete sentences and personal pronouns in first and second person are more frequent than before. On the other hand, subordinate clauses are more common in the articles from 2015 than in 1985–2000. Since subordinate clauses in former studies of Swedish have been considered a formal trait, this is quite unexpected. In the article, it is argued that the connection between subordination and formal language is more complex than has sometimes previously been acknowledged –, and that subordinate clauses have different functions, not all of them characterizing a formal style.

A multiple methods approach was applied to the study of morphology on the processing of lexical items in Swedish. Data from slips-of-the-tongue, agrammatic speech production, agrammatic oral reading, and lexical decision experiments were used. The results indicate that whole word processing as well as morphological processing takes place in the different types of tasks. The type of processing seems to vary along a continuum, with whole word processing as the most commonly applied type in automatized and relatively simple processing (such as lexical decision for common Swedish words), whereas signs of morpheme-based processing appear less often, and perhaps in less automatized tasks (such as agrammatic speech production).

AbstractThis article reports on a linguistic study examining the use of real space blending in the tactile signed languages of Norwegian and Swedish signers who are both deaf and blind. Tactile signed languages are typically produced by interactants in contact with each other’s hands while signing. Of particular interest to this study are utterances which not only consist of the signer producing signs with his or her own hands (or other body parts), but which also recruit the other interactant’s hands (or another body part). These utterances, although perhaps less frequent, are co-constructed, in a very real sense, and they illustrate meaning construction during emerging, embodied discourse. Here, we analyze several examples of these types of utterances from a cognitive linguistic and cognitive semiotic perspective to explore how interactants prompt meaning construction through touch and the involvement of each other’s bodies during a particular type of co-regulation.

This article analyzes strategies and practices among Swedish Humanities scholars in relation to the demands of “internationalization” and in a framework of academic capitalism. The article is based on 30 qualitative interviews with scholars in philosophy, Romance languages and history. There are signs of cognitive dissonance, with conflicting set of norms. Benefits for the academic CV, along with a discipline’s ideals, traditions and its perceived role in society are the main context in which internationalization is understood, implemented and contested, with individual variations in international practices as e.g. international mobility, networking or publication strategies.

Kokkuvõte. Käesolevas artiklis käsitletakse rootsi modaaltegusõna böra kasutust autentsetes tekstides ning erinevaid strateegiaid, mida on eesti keeles selle tegusõna oleviku vormi bör ja lihtminevikuvormi borde tähenduste tõlkimisel kasutatud. Uurimuse empiiriliseks aluseks on tõlkekorpus, mis koosneb rootsikeelsetest originaaltekstidest ning nende eestikeelsetest tõlgetest. Modaaltegusõnade analüüs lähtub van der Auwera ja Plungiani (1998) modaalsuste mudelist, mille põhjal modaalsus jaotatakse episteemiliseks, deontiliseks, mittedeontiliseks ja dünaamiliseks. Uurimuse tulemused näitasid, et kuigi modaaltegusõna böra olevikuvormi bör ja lihtminevikuvormi borde leidus tekstides võrdsel määral, esineb nende kasutuses mitmeid erinevusi. Kui bör’il on siinse korpuse materjalis valdavalt deontiline tähendus, siis borde esineb kõigis modaalkategooriates. Uurimuse tulemuste põhjal võime väita, et bör’i kasutus on kitsam ning ilmutab ka žanrilise spetsialiseerumise märke, kuivõrd seda kasutatakse tihti juhendites. Tõlkevastete analüüsist selgus, et rootsi modaalverbid bör ja borde on tõlgitud valdavalt modaalverbidega pidama, tulema, tohtima, võima, saama. Kõrvalekaldeid modaalsuse edasiandmisel esines vähesel määral, enamasti eitust sisaldavates lausetes, kuid kõige keerukam aspekt tõlkimisel näib olevat bör’i ja borde vahelise kraadierinevuse edasiandmine, mille puhul eesti keeles kasutatakse vaheldumisi indikatiivi ja konditsionaali vormi.Abstract. Anu Laanemets and Helena Mihkelson: Translating modality – the Swedish modal verb böra and its Estonian translation equivalents. Based on a Swedish-Estonian translation corpus, the current article examines the use of the Swedish modal verb böra (should, ought to), more specifically its present tense form bör and preterite form borde, and the strategies that have been used to translate this modal verb into Estonian. The analysis is based on the semantic map of modality by van der Auwera and Plungian (1998). The results reveal that although the occurrence of bör and borde in the Swedish texts has approximately the same frequency, their usage differs in several respects. Namely, borde covers a broader spectrum of modality, occurring in epistemic, deontic, non-deontic and dynamic usage, whereas bör mostly conveys deontic modality. Moreover, bör shows signs of genre specificity as it can often be found in instructions. The analysis of the Estonian translation equivalents reveals that the most common translation of the Swedish bör/borde is an Estonian modal verb. There are not many cases of changed modality but translators find it hard to convey the subtle difference between bör and borde in the Estonian language as this difference is only a matter of degree. The tendency seems to be that borde is most often translated with Estonian verbs in the conditional mood as the latter could be said to have the same attenuating effect as the Swedish preterite form, while the indicative mood is much more frequently represented among the equivalents of bör. However, this usage is rather unsystematic as a significant proportion of the equivalents of bör is still in the conditional mood.Keywords: modality; modal verbs; comparative research; translation corpus; translation; Swedish; Estonian

Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe procedural changes in hospital incident investigations and show the consequences of these changes over time.Methods: A two-stage method was used. First component of the study was a content analysis of 87 incident investigation sconducted 1995-2014 by the regulatory authority after adverse events in a Swedish university hospital. Second component was conducting semi-structured interviews with 11 investigators from all regulatory authority regional offices in Sweden.Results: In a minority of incident investigations, where further demands for action were required by the regulatory authority, a major portion of these were aimed at the micro-level. A plan for follow-up was expressed in only one tenth of the investigations. All investigators had a background from the healthcare system and saw this as advantageous. Their personal memory was claimed to be the only tool when referring to previous cases. Less fieldwork, more office work and more uniformity of language were recognised changes in comparison over time. The role of doing “auditing” was the most common description by the investigators themselves.Conclusions: The micro-level focus of the investigations reflected an organisational structure within the regulatory authority. We saw signs of parallel system weaknesses within the Swedish healthcare system with a clear absence of formalised organisational memory and a malfunctioning follow-up system of incident investigations. This can be seen both regarding the healthcare providers and the regulatory authority. The reports from the qualitative interviews data indicated that “auditing at the office” was considered the main occupation in incident investigations conducted by the regulatory authority.

AbstractThe automatic interpretation of sign languages is a challenging task, as it requires the usage of high-level vision and high-level motion processing systems for providing accurate image perception. In this paper, we use Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and transfer learning to make computers able to interpret signs of the Swedish Sign Language (SSL) hand alphabet. Our model consists of the implementation of a pre-trained InceptionV3 network, and the usage of the mini-batch gradient descent optimization algorithm. We rely on transfer learning during the pre-training of the model and its data. The final accuracy of the model, based on 8 study subjects and 9400 images, is 85%. Our results indicate that the usage of CNNs is a promising approach to interpret sign languages, and transfer learning can be used to achieve high testing accuracy despite using a small training dataset. Furthermore, we describe the implementation details of our model to interpret signs as a user-friendly web application.

Abstract This article deals with L2 acquisition of a sign language, examining in particular the use and acquisition of non-manual mouth actions performed by L2 learners of Swedish Sign Language. Based on longitudinal data from an L2 learner corpus, we describe the distribution, frequency, and spreading patterns of mouth actions in sixteen L2 learners at two time points. The data are compared with nine signers of an L1 control group. The results reveal some differences in the use of mouth actions between the groups. The results are specifically related to the category of mouthing borrowed from spoken Swedish. L2 signers show an increased use of mouthing compared to L1 signers. Conversely, L1 signers exhibit an increased use of reduced mouthing compared with L2 signers. We also observe an increase of adverbial mouth gestures within the L2 group. The results are discussed in relation to previous findings, and within the framework of cross-linguistic influence.

Abstract Sign language research is important for our understanding of languages in general and for the impact it has on policy and on the lives of deaf people. There is a need for a sign language proficiency measure, to use as a grouping or continuous variable, both in psycholinguistics and in other sign language research. This article describes the development of a Swedish Sign Language Sentence Repetition Test (STS-SRT) and the evidence that supports the validity of the test’s interpretation and use. The STS-SRT was administered to 44 deaf adults and children, and was shown to have excellent internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.915) and inter-rater reliability (Intraclass Correlation Coefficient [ICC] = 0.900, p < .001). A linear mixed model analysis revealed that adults scored 20.2% higher than children, and delayed sign language acquisition were associated with lower scores. As the sign span of sentences increased, participants relied on their implicit linguistic knowledge to scaffold their sentence repetitions beyond rote memory. The results provide reliability and validity evidence to support the use of STS-SRT in research as a measure of STS proficiency.

Languages in Motion. Multilingualism and Urban Spaces in Sara Razai’s Jag har letat efter dig and Johanna Holmström’s Asfaltsänglar e article is a study of multilingualism, urban space and mobility/immobility in two Finland- Swedish novels, Sara Razai’s Jag har letat efter dig (”I Have Been Searching for You”, 2012) and Johanna Holmström’s Asfaltsänglar (”Asphalt Angels”, 2013) through perspectives of post-mono- lingualism (Yildiz) and literary urban studies. In Razai’s novel, a Finland-Swedish woman and a refugee forge a relationship in broken Finnish, disrupting the link between mother tongue and language of a ections. In an analogous relationship to the depiction of movement (cold) and keeping still in con ned spaces (warmth, safety), Finnish becomes a small space for the lovers to connect. In Holmström’s novel, room for manoeuvre is restricted by gender and ethnicity, although the main characters manage the tension between suburb and city center in di erent ways. In Asfaltsänglar, Arabic is a sign of parental power and rules, but the language is also associated with a white Finland-Swedish woman, a convert, the girls’ mother. ere is a discrepancy between Arabic’s function in the novel – as a local language – and how it is marked for the reader – as foreign. Trilingual Helsinki slang, on the other hand, becomes a hybrid marker of the Suburb as Heimat. Both novels renew the Finland-Swedish urban prose tradition by bringing in new languages and new kinds of language, and by associating these varieties with di erent kinds of characters.

Deafblindness is a combined vision and hearing disability that restricts communication, access to information, and mobility, thus limiting a person’s activities and full participation in society. Literature on how this might affect the lives of family members is sparse. The aim of this study is to describe the lived experience of family life from the perspective of one parent when the other has deafblindness. Six partners of deafblind parents, four men and two women, agreed to participate. Three were deaf and communicated in Swedish sign language. Qualitative interviews were conducted and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Seven themes were identified during the analysis. When one parent has deafblindness, communication within the family and with people outside the family is affected. The non-deafblind partners tried to integrate deafblindness into everyday family life and constantly strove to compensate for the losses caused by deafblindness. They tried to enhance participation and engagement in everyday family life for the parent with deafblindness by facilitating communication and taking a greater part in some areas of their shared responsibilities at home. The results reveal that these partners often put themselves in second place. They and their families needed support to manage family life. Deafblindness affects the life of the entire family, and the non-deafblind partner has to take considerable responsibility for everyday life. Everyday life can be facilitated by an adapted environment and appropriate support, which should be offered to the entire family.

06–782Baumgardner, Robert J. (Texas A&M U, USA; Robert_Baumgardner@tamu-commerce.edu), The appeal of English in Mexican commerce. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.2 (2006), 251–266.06–783Bunta, Ferenc (Temple U, USA), Ingrid Davidovich & David Ingram, The relationship between the phonological complexity of a bilingual child's words and those of the target languages. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press), 10.1 (2006), 71–88.06–784Christiansen, Pia Vanting (Roskilde U, Denmark), Language policy in the European Union: European/English/Elite/Equal/Esperanto Union?Language Problems & Language Planning (John Benjamins) 30.1 (2006), 21–44.06–785Cook, Vivian, Benedetta Bassetti, Chise Kasai, Miho Sasaki & Jun Arata Takahashi, Do bilinguals have different concepts? The case of shape and material in Japanese L2 users of English. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 137–152.06–786Costa, Albert (U Barcelona, Spain; acosta@ub.edu), Wido La Heij & Eduardo Navarrette, The dynamics of bilingual lexical access. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 137–151.06–787Dagenais, Diane, Elaine Day & Kelleen Toohey (Simon Fraser U, Canada), A multilingual child's literacy practices and contrasting identities in the figured worlds of French immersion classrooms. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 205–218.06–788Dailey-O'Cain, Jennifer & Grit Liebscher, Language learners' use of discourse markers as evidence for a mixed code. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press), 10.1 (2006), 89–109.06–789De Groot, Annette M. B. (U Amsterdam, The Netherlands; a.m.b.degroot@uva.nl) & Ingrid K. Christoffels, Language control in bilinguals: Monolingual tasks and simultaneous interpreting. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 189–201.06–790Finkbeiner, Matthew (Harvard U, USA; msf@wjh.harvard.edu), Tamar H. Gollan & Alfonso Caramazza, Lexical access in bilingual speakers: What's the (hard) problem?Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 153–166.06–791Francis, Norbert (Northern Arizona U, USA), Democratic language policy for multilingual educational systems: An interdisciplinary approach. Language Problems & Language Planning (John Benjamins) 29.3 (2005), 211–230.06–792Glaser, Evelyne (Johannes Kepler U, Austria), Plurilingualism in Europe: More than a means for communication. Language and International Communication (Multilingual Matters) 5.3&4 (2005), 195–208.06–793Hélot, Christine (U Marc Bloch, France) & Andrea young, Notion of diversity in language education: Policy and practice at primary level in France. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Multilingual Matters) 18.3 (2005), 242–257.06–794Hernandez, Arturo E. (U Houston, USA; aehernandez@uh.edu) & Gayane Meschyan, Executive function is necessary to enhance lexical processing in a less proficient L2: Evidence from fMRI during picture naming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 177–188.06–795Herrero, Elba Alicia (New Jersey City U, USA), Using Dominican oral literature and discourse to support literacy learning among low-achieving students from the Dominican Republic. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 219–238.06–796Kroll, Judith F. (Pennsylvania State U, USA; jfk7@psu.edu), Susan C. Bobb & Zofia Wodniecka, Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 119–135.06–797Leung, Constant (King's College London, UK; constant.leung@kcl.ac.uk), Language and content in bilingual education. Linguistics and Education (Elsevier) 16.2 (2005), 238–252.06–798Low, Winnie W. M. (Pentecostal Lam Hon Kwong School of Hong Kong, China) & Dan Lu, Persistent use of mixed code: An exploration of its functions in Hong Kong schools. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 181–204.06–799Lung, Rachel (Lingnan U, Hong Kong, China; wclung@ln.edu.hk), Translation training needs for adult learners. Babel (John Benjamins) 51.3 (2005), 224–237.06–800Maloof, Valerie Miller (Gwinnett County Public Schools, USA), Donald L. Rubin & Ann Neville Miller, Cultural competence and identity in cross-cultural adaptation: The role of a Vietnamese heritage language school. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 255–273.06–801Matiki, Alfred J. (U Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana), Literacy, ethnolinguistic diversity and transitional bilingual education in Malawi. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 239–254.06–802Mills, Jean, Talking about silence: Gender and the construction of multilingual identities. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.1 (2006), 1–16.06–803Montrul, Silvina, On the bilingual competence of Spanish heritage speakers: Syntax, lexical-semantics and processing. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.1 (2006), 37–69.06–804Mooko, Theophilus (U Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana), Counteracting the threat of language death: The case of minority languages in Botswana. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Multilingual Matters) 27.2 (2006), 109–125.06–805Müller-Saini, Gotelind (U Heidelberg, Germany) & Gregor Benton, Esperanto and Chinese anarchism 1907–1920: The translation from diaspora to homeland. Language Problems & Language Planning (John Benjamins) 30.1 (2006), 45–73.06–806Myers-Scotton, Carol (U South Carolina, USA; carolms@gwm.sc.edu), Natural codeswitching knocks on the laboratory door. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 203–212.06–807Napier, Jemina (Macquarie U, Australia; jemina.napier@ling.mq.edu.au), Training sign language interpreters in Australia: An innovative approach. Babel (John Benjamins) 51.3 (2005), 207–223.06–808Park, Hyeon-Sook, Structural characteristics of proper nouns in Korean–Swedish discourse. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.1 (2006), 17–36.06–809Queen, Robin M., Phrase-final intonation in narratives told by Turkish–German bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 153–178.06–810Roelofs, Ardi (Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; ardi@mpi.nl) & Kim Verhoef, Modeling the control of phonological encoding in bilingual speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 167–176.06–811Rosenhouse, Judith, Lubna Haik & Liat Kishon-Rabin, Speech perception in adverse listening conditions in Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 119–135.06–812Salomon, Frank (U Wisconsin–Madison, USA) & Emilio Chambi Apaza, Vernacular literacy on the Lake Titicaca High Plains, Peru. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 41.3 (2006), 304-326.06–813Sandel, Todd L. (U Oklahoma, Norman, USA), Wen-Yu Chao & Chung-Hui Liang, Language shift and language accommodation across family generations in Taiwan. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Multilingual Matters) 27.2 (2006), 126–147.06–814Scott Shenk, Petra, The interactional and syntactic importance of prosody in Spanish–English bilingual discourse. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 179–205.06–815Smith, Daniel J., Thresholds leading to shift: Spanish/English codeswitching and convergence in Georgia, U.S.A., International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 207–240.

NB: Artiklen er på dansk, kun resuméet er på engelsk.The appearance of the supernova in 1572 gave rise to a series of publications on the unknown heavenly body’s nature and significance. The most famous is the work by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, De nova stella, in which the author maintained that it must be a question of a new star. But even though Tycho’s observations had far-reaching implications for the history of science, there were other contemporary interpretations of the heavenly phenomenon that attracted greater public attention. Georg Busch, a German painter, was one of the first to write about the phenomenon. According to Busch, it was a comet. He further claimed that it had been created by human sin having generated steam made up of impurities that, condensed into a tight ball, had risen into the air, where it was ignited by oxygen as a comet. Busch’s book was very popular in Germany and in Scandinavia as well, where it was published in a translation by a clergyman, Rasmus Hansen Reravius (Danish was also the written language in Norway at the time) and in a Swedish translation based on Reravius’ work. Reravius, however, published his work after Tycho, to whom Reravius refers indirectly, had made his theory public. As a result, Reravius emphasised the phrase “new start” in his title and preface and is therefore one of the first popularising authors in whose work a spillover from Tycho’s observations is evident. Reravius’ intention was, however, certainly not to make Tycho’s astronomy better known but, on the contrary, to preach repentance and penance to the population, since, for Scandinavian readers, he had put forward Busch’s interpretation of the “comet.” This interpretation, according to which the comet was not only a warning sign from God to humankind but that it had been actually, physically created by sin, does not seem to have spread very far in Europe generally but was apparently particularly appealing to Lutheran society in the 1500s. In any case, it is only in these countries that the theory was proposed, first and foremost through Busch and his Nordic translators. Closer examination of these publications thus gives us not only an insight into how new knowledge was disseminated in the 1500s. In a broader perspective, it also gives an insight into the Protestant world of ideas, in which religious and scientific explanations were interwoven.

This study aimed to investigate online strategies for re-negotiating identity, in terms of stigma management, developed by working-age Swedish Internet users with post-stroke aphasia, i.e., acquired language impairment caused by brain injury. Interviews were conducted with nine individuals (aged 26-61, three men and six women) with post-stroke aphasia. In addition, a total of 1,581 screenshots of online posts (e.g., photos, videos, text, emoticons) created by the same participants were collected. Drawing on social semiotics (specifically the three dimensions of online communication mentioned by Kress (2003), i.e., composition, content and context) and Goffman’s theory of stigma (1963, specifically the concepts of stigma management and passing), qualitative thematic analysis was performed. Regarding composition, three themes emerged: Relying on others or technology, Beyond speaking and writing, and Controlling speed and timing. The participants rarely posted content about aphasia, but some of them used the Internet to raise awareness. Different online contexts had different meaning to the participants in terms of identity. Being open about the aphasia in one forum did not imply the same behaviour in another forum (e.g., dating sites). For the participants to pass (Goffman, 1963), should they want to, they needed to control all three dimensions. If the context or the composition revealed the stigma, controlling the content was not enough to pass. The multimodality of the Internet enabled the participants to manage their stigma in a variety of ways and to choose whether to be perceived as persons with aphasia or not.

A political minimalism? That would obviously go against the grain of our current political ideology → in fact, we are in an era of political maximalisation (Roland Barthes 200, arrow in original).Barthes’ comment is found in the ‘Annex’ to his 1978 lecture course The Neutral. Despite the three decade difference I don’t things have changed that much, certainly not insofar as academic debate about the cultural and social is concerned. At conferences I regularly hear the demand that the speaker or speakers account for the ‘political intent’, ‘worth’ or ‘utility’ of their work, or observe how speakers attempt to pre-empt and disarm such calls through judicious phrasing and citing. Following his diagnosis Barthes (201-206) proceeds to write under the title ‘To Give Leave’. Here he notes the incessant demand placed upon us, as citizens, as consumers, as representative cultural subjects and as biopolitical entities and, in this context, as academics to have and to communicate our allegiances, views and opinions. Echoing the acts, (or rather the ‘non-acts’), of Melville’s Bartleby, Barthes describes the scandalous nature of suspending the obligation of holding views; the apparent immorality of suspending the obligation of being interested, engaged, opinionated, committed – even if one only ever suspends provisionally, momentarily even. For the length of a five thousand word essay perhaps. In this short, unfortunately telegraphic and quite speculative essay I want pause to consider a few gestures or figures of ‘suspension’, ‘decline’ and ‘remaining aside’. What follows is in three parts. First a comment on the nature of the ‘demand to communicate’ identified by Barthes and its links to longer running moral and practical imperatives within Western understandings of the subject, the social and the political. Second, the most substantial section but still an all too brief account of the apparent ‘passivity’ of the narrator of Imre Kertész’s novel Fatelessness and the ways in which the novel may be read as a reflection on the nature of agency and determination. Third, a very brief conclusion, the question directly; what politics or what apprehension of politics, could a reflection on stillness and its ‘political minimalism’ offer? 1.For Barthes, (in 1978), one of the factors defining the contemporary intellectual scene was the way in which “politics invades all phenomena, economic, cultural, ethical” coupled with the “radicalization” of “political behaviors” (200), perhaps most notably in the arrogance of political discourse as it assumes the place of a master discourse. Writing in 1991 Bill Readings identified a similar phenomenon. For Readings the category of the political and politically inspired critique were operating by encircling their objects within a presupposed “universal language of political significance into which one might translate everything according to its effectivity”, an approach which has the effect of always making “the political […] the bottom line, the last instance where meaning can be definitively asserted” (quoted in Clark 3) or, we may add, realized. There is, of course, much that could be said here, not least concerning the significant differences in context, (between, for example, the various forms of revolutionary Marxism, Communism and Maoism which seem to preoccupy Barthes and the emancipatory identity and cultural politics which swept through literature departments in the US and beyond in the last two decades of the twentieth century). However it is also possible to suggest that a general grammar and, moreover, a general acceptance of a telos of the political persists.Barthes' (204-206) account of ‘political maximalisation’ is accompanied by a diagnosis of its productivist virility, (be it, in 1978, on the part of the increasingly reduced revolutionary left or the burgeoning neo-liberal right). The antithesis, or, rather, the outside of such an arrangement or frame would not be another political program but rather a certain stammering, a lassitude or dilatoriness. A flaccidness even; “a devirilized image” wherein from the point of view of the (political) actor or critic, “you are demoted to the contemptible mass of the undecided of those who don’t know who to vote for: old, lost ladies whom they brutalize: vote however you want, but vote” (Barthes 204). Hence Barthes is not suggesting a counter-move, a radical refusal, a ‘No’ shouted back to the information saturated market society. What is truly scandalous he suggests, is not opposition or refusal but the ‘non-reply’. What is truly scandalous, roughish even, is the decline or deferral and so the provisional suspension of the choice (and the blackmail) of the ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the ‘this’ or the ‘that’, the ‘with us’ or ‘against us’.In Literature and Evil Georges Bataille concludes his essay on Kafka with a comment on such a decline. According to Bataille, the reason why Kafka remains an ambivalent writer for critics, (and especially for those who would seek to enrol his work to political ends), lays precisely in his constant withdrawal; “There was nothing he [Kafka] could have asserted, or in the name of which he could have spoken. What he was, which was nothing, only existed to the extent in which effective activity condemned him” (167). ‘Effective activity’ refers, contextually, to a certain form of Communism but more broadly to the rationalization or systematization intrinsic to any political program, political programs (or ideologies) as such, be they communist, liberal or libertarian. At least insofar as, as implied above, the political is taken to coincide with a certain metaphysics and morality of action and the consequent linking of freedom to work, (a factor common to communist, fascist and liberal political programs), and so to the labour of the progressive self-realization and achievement of the self, the autos or ipse (see Derrida 6-18). Be it via, for example, Marx’s account of human’s intrinsic ‘capacity for work’ (Arbeitskraft), Heidegger’s account of necessary existential (and ultimately communal) struggle (Kampf), or Weber’s diagnoses of the (Protestant/bourgeois) liberal project to realize human potentiality (see also Agamben Man without Content; François 1-64). Hence what is ‘evil’ in Kafka is not any particular deed but the deferral of deeds; his ambivalence or immorality in the eyes of certain critics being due to the question his writing poses to “the ultimate authority of action” (Bataille 153) and so to the space beyond action onto which it opens. What could this space of ‘worklessness’ or ‘unwork’ look like? This non-virile, anti-heroic space? This would not be a space of ‘inaction’, (a term still too dependent, albeit negatively, on action), but of ‘non-action’; of ‘non-productive’ or non-disclosive action. That is to say, and as a first attempt at definition, ‘action’ or ‘praxis’, if we can still call it that, which does not generate or bring to light any specific positive content. As a way to highlight the difficulties and pitfalls, (at least with certain traditions), which stand in the way of thinking such a space, we may highlight Giorgio Agamben’s comments on the widespread coincidence of a metaphysics of action with the determination of both the subject, its teleology and its orientation in the world:According to current opinion, all of man’s [sic] doing – that of the artist and the craftsman as well as that of the workman and the politician – is praxis – manifestation of a will that produces a concrete effect. When we say that man has a productive status on earth, we mean, that the status of his dwelling on the earth is a practical one […] This productive doing now everywhere determines the status of man on earth – man understood as the living being (animal) that works (laborans), and, in work, produces himself (Man without Content 68; 70-71 original emphasis).Beyond or before practical being then, that is to say before and beyond the determination of the subject as essentially or intrinsically active and engaged, another space, another dwelling. Maybe nocturnal, certainly one with a different light to that of the day; one not gathered in and by the telos of the ipse or the turning of the autos, an interruption of labour, an unravelling. Remaining still, unravelling together (see Harrison In the absence).2.Kertész’s novel Sorstalanság was first published in his native Hungary in 1975. It has been translated into English twice, in 1992 as Fateless and in 2004 as Fatelessness. Fatelessness opens in Budapest on the day before György Köves’ – the novel’s fourteen year old narrator – father has to report for ‘labour service’. It goes on to recount Köves’ own detention and deportation and the year spent in the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald and Zeitz. During this period Köves’ health declines, gradually at first and then rapidly to a moment of near death. He survives and the novel closes with his return to his home town. Köves is, as Kertész has put it in various interviews and as is made clear in the novel, a ‘non-Jewish Jew’; a non-practicing and non-believing Hungarian Jew from a largely assimilated family who neither reads nor speaks Hebrew or Yiddish. While Kertész has insisted that the novel is precisely that, a novel, a work of literature and not an autobiography, we should note that Kertész was himself imprisoned in Buchenwald and Zeitz when fourteen.Not without reservations but for the sake of brevity I shall focus on only one theme in the novel; determination and agency, or what Kertész calls ‘determinacy’. Writing in his journal Galley Boat-Log (Gályanapló) in May 1965 Kertész suggests ‘Novel of Fatelessness’ as a possible title for his work and then reflects on what he means by ‘fate’, the entry is worth quoting at length.The external determinacy, the stigma which constrains our life in a situation, an absurdity, in the given totalitarianism, thwarts us; thus, when we live out the determinacy which is doled out to us as a reality, instead of the necessity which stems from our own (relative) freedom – that is what I call fatelessness.What is essential is that our determinacy should always be in conflict with our natural views and inclinations; that is how fatelessness manifests itself in a chemically pure state. The two possible modes of protection: we transform into our determinacy (Kafka’s centipede), voluntarily so to say, and I that way attempt to assimilate our determinacy to our fate; or else we rebel against it, and so fall victim to our determinacy. Neither of these is a true solution, for in both cases we are obliged to perceive our determinacy […] as reality, whilst the determining force, that absurd power, in a way triumphs over us: it gives us a name and turns us into an object, even though we were born for other things.The dilemma of my ‘Muslim’ [Köves]: How can he construct a fate out of his own determinacy? (Galley Boat-Log 98 original emphasis).The dilemma of determinacy then; how can Köves, who is both determined by and superfluous to the Nazi regime, to wider Hungarian society, to his neighbours and to his family, gain some kind of control over his existence? Throughout Fatelessness people prove repeatedly unable to control their destinies, be it Köves himself, his father, his stepmother, his uncles, his friends from the oil refinery, or even Bandi Citrom, Köves’ mentor in the camps. The case of the ‘Expert’ provides a telescoped example. First appearing when Köves and his friends are arrested the ‘Expert’ is an imposing figure, well dressed, fluent in German and the director of a factory involved in the war effort (Fatelessness 50). Later at the brickworks, where the Jews who have been rounded up are being held prior to deportation, he appears more dishevelled and slightly less confident. Still, he takes the ‘audacious’ step of addressing a German officer directly (and receives some placatory ‘advice’ as his reward) (68-69). By the time the group arrives at the camp Köves has difficulty recognising him and without a word of protest, the ‘Expert’ does not pass the initial selection (88).Köves displays no such initiative with regard to his situation. He is reactive or passive, never active. For Köves events unfold as a series of situations and circumstances which are, he tells himself, essentially reasonable and to which he has to adapt and conform so that he may get on. Nothing more than “given situations with the new givens inherent in them” (259), as he explains near the end of the novel. As Köves' identity papers testify, his life and its continuation are the effect of arbitrary sets of circumstances which he is compelled to live through; “I am not alive on my own account but benefiting the war effort in the manufacturing industry” (29). In his Nobel lecture Kertész described Köves' situation:the hero of my novel does not live his own time in the concentration camps, for neither his time nor his language, not even his own person, is really his. He doesn’t remember; he exists. So he has to languish, poor boy, in the dreary trap of linearity, and cannot shake off the painful details. Instead of a spectacular series of great and tragic moments, he has to live through everything, which is oppressive and offers little variety, like life itself (Heureka! no pagination).Without any wilful or effective action on the part of the narrator and with only ‘the dreary trap of linearity’ where one would expect drama, plot, rationalization or stylization, Fatelessness can read as an arbitrarily punctuated series of waitings. Köves waiting for his father to leave, waiting in the customs shed, waiting at the brick works, waiting in train carriages, waiting on the ramp, waiting at roll call, waiting in the infirmary. Here is the first period of waiting described in the book, it is the day before his father’s departure and he is waiting for his father and stepmother as they go through the accounts at the family shop:I tried to be patient for a bit. Striving to think of Father, and more specifically the fact that he would be going tomorrow and, quite probably, I would not see him for a long time after that; but after a while I grew weary with that notion and then seeing as there was nothing else I could do for my father, I began to be bored. Even having to sit around became a drag, so simply for the sake of a change I stood up to take a drink of water from the tap. They said nothing. Later on, I also made my way to the back, between the planks, in order to pee. On returning I washed my hands at the rusty, tiled sink, then unpacked my morning snack from my school satchel, ate that, and finally took another drink from the tap. They still said nothing. I sat back in my place. After that, I got terribly bored for another absolute age (Fatelessness 9). It is interesting to consider exactly how this passage presages those that will come. Certainly this scene is an effect of the political context, his father and stepmother have to go through the books because of the summons to labour service and because of the racial laws on who may own and profit from a business. However, the specifically familial setting should not be overlooked, particularly when read alongside Kertész’s other novels where, as Madeleine Gustafsson writes, Communist dictatorship is “portrayed almost as an uninterrupted continuation of life in the camp – which in turn [...] is depicted as a continuation of the patriarchal dictatorship of a joyless childhood” (no pagination, see, for example, Kertész Kaddish). Time to turn back to our question; does Fatelessness provide an answer to the ‘dilemma of determinacy’? We should think carefully before answering. As Julia Karolle suggests, the composition of the novel and our search for a logic within itreveal the abuses that reason must endure in order to create any story or history about the Holocaust […]. Ultimately Kertész challenges the reader not to make up for the lack of logic in Fatelessness, but rather to consider the nature of its absence (92 original emphasis).Still, with this point in mind, (and despite what has been said above), the novel does contain a scene in which Köves appears to affirm his existence.In many respects the scene is the culmination of the novel. The camps have been liberated and Köves has returned to Budapest. Finding his father and step-mother’s apartment occupied by strangers he calls on his Aunt and Uncle Fleischmann and Uncle Steiner. The discussion which follows would repay a slower reading, however again for the sake of brevity I shall focus on only a few short excerpts. Köves suggests that everyone took their ‘steps’ towards the events which have unfolded and that prediction and retrospection are false perspectives which give the illusion of order and inevitability whereas, in reality, “everything becomes clear only gradually, sequentially over time, step-by-step” (Fatelessness 249): “They [his Uncles] too had taken their own steps. They too […] had said farewell to my father as if we had already buried him, and even later has squabbled about whether I should take the train or the suburban bus to Auschwitz” (260). Fleischmann and Steiner react angrily, claiming that such an understanding makes the ‘victims’ the ‘guilty ones’. Köves responds by saying that they do not understand him and asks they see that:It was impossible, they must try to understand, impossible to take everything away from me, impossible for me to be neither winner nor loser, for me not to be right and not to be mistaken that I was neither the cause nor effect of anything; they should try to see, I almost pleaded, that I could not swallow that idiotic bitterness, that I should merely be innocent (260-261).Karolle (93-94) suggests that Köves' discussion with his uncles marks the moment where he accepts and affirms his existence and, from this point on begins to take control of and responsibility. Hence for Karolle the end of the novel depicts an ‘authentic’ moment of self-affirmation as Köves steps forward and refuses to participate in “the factual historical narrative of Auschwitz, to forget what he knows, and to be unequivocally categorized as a victim of history” (95). In distinction to Karolle, Adrienne Kertzer argues that Köves' moment of self-affirmation is, in fact, one of self-deception. Rather than acknowledging that it was “inexplicable luck” and a “series of random acts” (Kertzer 122) which saved his life or that his near death was due to an accident of birth, Köves asserts his personal freedom. Hence – and following István Deák – Kertzer suggests that we should read Fatelessness as a satire, ‘a modern Candide’. A satire on the hope of finding meaning, be it personal or metaphysical, in such experiences and events, the closing scenes of the novel being an ironic reflection on the “desperate desire to see […] life as meaningful” (Kertzer 122). So, while Köves convinces himself of his logic his uncles say to each other “‘Leave him be! Can’t you see he only wants to talk? Let him talk! Leave him be!’ And talk I did, albeit possibly to no avail and even a little incoherently” (Fatelessness 259). Which are we to choose then? The affirmation of agency (with Karolle) or the diagnosis of determination (with Kertzer)? Karolle and Kertzer give insightful analyses, (and ones which are certainly not limited to the passages quoted above), however it seems to me that they move too quickly to resolve the ‘dilemma’ presented by Köves, if not of Fatelessness as a whole. Still, we have a little time before having to name and decide Köves’ fate. Kertész’s use of the word ‘hero’ to describe Köves above – ‘the hero of my novel…’ – is, perhaps, more than a little ironic. As Kertész asks (in 1966), how can there be a hero, how can one be heroic, when one is one’s ‘determinacies’? What sense does it make to speak of heroic actions if “man [sic] is no more than his situation”? (Galley Boat-Log 99). Köves’ time, his language, his identity, none are his. There is no place, no hidden reservoir of freedom, from which way he set in motion any efficacious action. All resources have already been corrupted. From Kertész’s journal (in 1975): “The masters of thought and ideologies have ruined my thought processes” (Galley Boat-Log 104). As Lawrence Langer has argued, the grammar of heroics, along with the linked terms ‘virtue’, ‘dignity’, ‘resistance’ ‘survival’ and ‘liberation’, (and the wider narrative and moral economies which these terms indicate and activate), do not survive the events being described. Here the ‘dilemma of determinacy’ becomes the dilemma of how to think and value the human outside or after such a grammar. How to think and value the human beyond a grammar of action and so beyond, as Lars Iyer puts it, “the equation of work and freedom that characterizes the great discourses of political modernity” (155). If this is possible. If such a grammar and equation isn’t too all pervasive, if something of the human still remains outside their economy. It may well be that our ability to read Fatelessness depends in large part on what we are prepared to forsake (see Langar 195). How to think the subject and a politics in contretemps, beyond or after the choice between determination or autonomy, passive or active, inaction or action, immoral or virtuous – if only for a moment? Kertész wonders, (in 1966), ”perhaps there is something to be savaged all the same, a tiny foolishness, something ultimately comic and frail that may be a sign of the will to live and still awakens sympathy” (Galley Boat-Log 99). Something, perhaps, which remains to be salvaged from the grammar of humanism, something that would not be reducible to context, to ‘determinacies’, and that, at the same time, does not add up to a (resurrected) agent. ‘A tiny foolishness, something ultimately comic and frail’. The press release announcing that Kertész had been awarded the Nobel prize for literature states that “For Kertész the spiritual dimension of man lies in his inability to adapt to life” (The Swedish Academy no pagination). Despite the difficulties presented by the somewhat over-determined term ‘spiritual’, this line strikes me as remarkably perspicuous. Like Melville’s Bartleby and Bataille’s Kafka before him, Kertész’s Köves’ existence, insofar as he exists, is made up by his non-action. That is to say, his existence is defined not by his actions or his inaction, (both of which are purely reactive and functional), but rather by his irreducibility to either. As commentators and critics have remarked, (and as the quotes given from the text above hopefully illustrate), Köves has an oddly formal and neutral ‘voice’. Köves’ blank, frequently equivocal tone may be read as a sign of his immaturity, his lack of understanding and his naivety. However I would suggest that before such factors, what characterizes Köves’ mode of address is its reticence to assert or disclose. Köves speaks, he speaks endlessly, but he says nothing or almost nothing - ‘to no avail and even a little incoherently’. Hence where Karolle seeks to recover an ‘intoned self-consciousness’ and Kertzer the repressed determining context, we may find Köves' address. Where Karolle’s and Kertzer’s approaches seek in some way to repair Köves words, to supplement them with either an agency to-come or an awareness of a context and, in doing so, pull his words fully into the light, Köves, it seems to me, remains elusive. His existence, insofar as we may speak of it, lies in his ‘inability to adapt to life’. His reserves are not composed of hidden or recoverable sources of agency but in his equivocality, in the way he takes leave of and remains aside from the very terms of the dilemma. It is as if with no resources of his own, he has an echo existence. As if still remaining itself where a tiny foolishness, something ultimately comic and frail.3.Is this it? Is this what we are to be left with in a ‘political minimalism’? It would seem more resignation or failure, turning away or quietism, the conceit of a beautiful soul, than any type of recognisable politics. On one level this is correct, however any such suspension or withdrawal, this moment of stillness where we are, is only ever a moment. However it is a moment which indicates a certain irreducibility and as such is, I believe, of great significance. Great significance, (or better ‘signifyingness’), even though – and precisely because – it is in itself without value. Being outside efficacy, labour or production, being outside economisation as such, it resides only in its inability to be integrated. What purpose does it serve? None. Or, perhaps, none other than demonstrating the irreducibility of a life, of a singular existence, to any discourse, narrative, identity or ideology, insofar as such structures, in their attempt to comprehend (or apprehend) the existent and put it to use always and violently fall short. As Theodor Adorno wrote;It is this passing-on and being unable to linger, this tacit assent to the primacy of the general over the particular, which constitutes not only the deception of idealism in hypostasizing concepts, but also its inhumanity, that has no sooner grasped the particular than it reduces it to a thought-station, and finally comes all too quickly to terms with suffering and death (74 emphasis added).This moment of stillness then, of declining and remaining aside, represents, for me, the anarchical and all but silent condition of possibility for all political strategy as such (see Harrison, Corporeal Remains). A condition of possibility which all political strategy carries within itself, more or less well, more or less consciously, as a memory of the finite and corporeal nature of existence. A memory which may always and eventually come to protest against the strategy itself. Strategy itself as strategy; as command, as a calculated and calculating order. And so, and we should be clear about this, such a remaining still is a demonstration.A demonstration not unlike, for example, that of the general anonymous population in José Saramago’s remarkable novel Seeing, who ‘act’ more forcefully through non-action than any through any ends-directed action. A demonstration of the kind which Agamben writes about after those in Tiananmen Square in 1989:The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be the struggle for control of the state, but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity) […] [who] cannot form a societas because they do not poses any identity to vindicate or bond of belonging for which to seek recognition (Coming Community 85-67; original emphasis).A demonstration like that which sounds through Köves when his health fails in the camps and he finds himself being wheeled on a handcart taken for dead;a snatch of speech that I was barely able to make out came to my attention, and in that hoarse whispering I recognized even less readily the voice that has once – I could not help recollecting – been so strident: ‘I p … pro … test,’ it muttered” (Fatelessness 187 ellipses in original).The inmate pushing the cart stops and pulls him up by the shoulders, asking with astonishment “Was? Du willst noch leben? [What? You still want to live?] […] and right then I found it odd, since it could not have been warranted and, on the whole, was fairly irrational (187).AcknowledgmentsMy sincere thanks to the editors of this special issue, David Bissell and Gillian Fuller, for their interest, encouragement and patience. Thanks also to Sadie, especially for her comments on the final section. ReferencesAdorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. London: Verso, 1974.Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990.———. The Man without Content. Stanford: Stanford U P, 1999.Barthes, Roland. The Neutral. New York: Columbia U P, 2005.Bataille, Georges. Literature and Evil. London: Marion Boyars, 1985.Clarke, Timothy. The Poetics of Singularity: The Counter-Culturalist Turn in Heidegger, Derrida, Blanchot and the Late Gadamer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P, 2005.Deák, István. "Stranger in Hell." New York Review of Books 23 Sep. 2003: 65-68.Derrida, Jacques. Rogues. Two Essays on Reason. Stanford: Stanford U P, 2005.François, Anne-Lise. Open Secrets. The Literature of Uncounted Experience. Stanford: Stanford U P, 2008.Gustafsson, Madeleine. 2003 “Imre Kertész: A Medium for the Spirit of Auschwitz.” 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/articles/gustafsson/index.html›.Harrison, Paul. “Corporeal Remains: Vulnerability, Proximity, and Living On after the End of the World.” Environment and Planning A 40 (2008): 423-445.———.“In the Absence of Practice.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space forthcoming.Heidegger, Martin. Introduction to Metaphysics. London: Yale U P, 2000.Iyer, Lars. Blanchot’s Communism: Art, Philosophy and the Political. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.Karolle, Julia. “Imre Kertész Fatelessness as Historical Fiction.” Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature. Ed Louise O. Vasvári and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. West Lafayette: Purdue U P, 2005. 89-96.Kertész, Imre. 2002 “Heureka!” Nobel lecture. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2002/kertesz-lecture-e.html›.———. Fatelessness. London: Vintage, 2004.———. Kaddish for an Unborn Child. London: Vintage International, 2004.———.“Galley Boat-Log (Gályanapló): Excerpts.” Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature. Ed Louise O. Vasvári and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2005. 97-110.Kertzer, Adrienne. “Reading Imre Kertesz in English.” Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature. Ed Louise O. Vasvári, and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. West Lafayette: Purdue U P, 2005. 111-124.Langer, Lawrence. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. London: Yale U P, 1991.Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. New Jersey: Melville House, 2004.Marx, Karl. Capital Volume 1. London: Penguin Books, 1976.Readings, Bill. “The Deconstruction of Politics.” In Deconstruction: A Reader. Ed Martin McQuillan. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P, 2000. 388-396.Saramago, José. Seeing. London: Vintage, 2007. The Swedish Academy. "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2002: Imre Kertész." 2002. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2002/press.html›.Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge, 1992.