Tala om att tänka – om processer och projekt vid användning av orden tänka och tanke i tre samtal

Abstract

This thesis is a qualitative investigation of how the Swedish verb "tänka" and the noun "tanke" are used in three radio phone-in counseling conversations (the words are comparable with, but not equivalent to, the English verb "think" and the "noun" thought). The aim of the study is to explore in detail what the participants talk about when they use these two words. The investigation focuses on two roles, referred to as the thinker and the thought, representing someone who is thinking and something that is thought. A systemic-functional analysis of the processes containing the words "tänka" and "tanke" shows that the thinker and the thought are engaged in an emergent interplay which can be described as a pattern of material, verbal and relational processes, rather than the expected mental processes. Furthermore, an activity analysis of these processes in terms of communicative projects shows that talking about the thinker and the thought contributes in a critical way to a successful outcome of the ongoing counseling activity. Following Harvey Sacks’ seminal article On doing “being ordinary” (1984), the study proposes that the uses of the words "tänka" and "tanke" support, grammatically and interactionally, an interpretation in which the speakers cooperatively are doing “being thinking”. The combined description of process types and communicative projects in languaging turns out to be a fruitful method for exploring the dialogical and dynamic aspects of human sense-making.