”See there I’m stuck now!” Samtalsdeltagares orientering mot att tala svenska i amerikasvenska dialektintervjuer

Abstract

This thesis is a qualitative investigation of a communicative project called tala svenska (speak swedish) in American Swedish dialect interviews. The aim of the study is to analyze and describe the communicative project. Based on this aim the study investigates the interviews as activities with accompanying frames, roles and phases. Interactional resources and how those are being used in doing the communicative project, and the activity, are also a part of the analysis. The material consists of audio and video recordings of American Swedish dialect interviews and the analysis is based on 12 recordings with 10 interviewees/participants and 6 interviewers. The participants are of different ages and have different reasons for speaking Swedish. Some of them have visited Sweden and speak Swedish on a regular basis, while some do not have anyone to talk Swedish to and have never visited Sweden. The analysis of the interviews, and the speakers’ usage of the interactional resources, show that in doing the joint communicative project of speaking Swedish, the participants and the interviewers use different strategies. Based on activity roles, the participants orient themselves toward achieving speaking Swedish, while the interviewers act toward the participants’ speaking by using intentional passivity. In the American Swedish dialect interviews the communicative project, i.e. speaking Swedish, is made visible through the participants use of the interactional resources code alternation, repair, meta comments and metalinguistic comments. Through marked and unmarked code alternation and through side sequences made by code alternation the participants orient themselves toward the communicative project of speaking Swedish as a part of the activity American Swedish dialect interviews. Repair and metalinguistic comments are being used to mark code alternation and that makes the communicative project tala svenska visible by speakers focusing on speaking Swedish. Code alternated side sequences that are meta comments or side sequences that do a different activity than the ongoing dialect interview, make the communicative project tala svenska visible by speakers uttering them in another code, i. e. leaving the inner frame and inner activity both by action and code.