Language universals and linguistic complexity : Three case studies in core argument marking

In this dissertation I study language complexity from a typological perspective. Since the structuralist era, it has been assumed that local complexity differences in languages are balanced out in cross-linguistic comparisons and that complexity is not affected by the geopolitical or sociocultural aspects of the speech community. However, these assumptions have seldom been studied systematically from a typological point of view. My objective is to define complexity so that it is possible to compare it across languages and to approach its variation with the methods of quantitative typology. My main empirical research questions are: i) does language complexity vary in any systematic way in local domains, and ii) can language complexity be affected by the geographical or social environment? These questions are studied in three articles, whose findings are summarized in the introduction to the dissertation. In order to enable cross-language comparison, I measure complexity as the description length of the regularities in an entity; I separate it from difficulty, focus on local instead of global complexity, and break it up into different types. This approach helps avoid the problems that plagued earlier metrics of language complexity. My approach to grammar is functional-typological in nature, and the theoretical framework is basic linguistic theory. I delimit the empirical research functionally to the marking of core arguments (the basic participants in the sentence). I assess the distributions of complexity in this domain with multifactorial statistical methods and use different sampling strategies, implementing, for instance, the Greenbergian view of universals as diachronic laws of type preference. My data come from large and balanced samples (up to approximately 850 languages), drawn mainly from reference grammars. The results suggest that various significant trends occur in the marking of core arguments in regard to complexity and that complexity in this domain correlates with population size. These results provide evidence that linguistic patterns interact among themselves in terms of complexity, that language structure adapts to the social environment, and that there may be cognitive mechanisms that limit complexity locally. My approach to complexity and language universals can therefore be successfully applied to empirical data and may serve as a model for further research in these areas.

History, Transfer, Politics : Five studies on the legacy of Uppsala philosophy

The Uppsala school of Axel Hägerström can be said to have been the last genuinely Swedish philosophical movement. On the other hand, the Swedish analytic tradition is often said to have its roots in Hägerström s thought. This work examines the transformation from Uppsala philosophy to analytic philosophy from an actor-based historical perspective. The aim is to describe how a group of younger scholars (Ingemar Hedenius, Konrad Marc-Wogau, Anders Wedberg, Alf Ross, Herbert Tingsten, Gunnar Myrdal) colonised the legacy of Hägerström and Uppsala philosophy, and faced the challenges they met in trying to reconcile this legacy with the changing philosophical and political currents of the 1930s and 40s. Following Quentin Skinner, the texts are analysed as moves or speech acts in a particular historical context. The thesis consists of five previously published case studies and an introduction. The first study describes how the image of Hägerström as the father of the Swedish analytic tradition was created by a particular faction of younger Uppsala philosophers who (re-) presented the Hägerströmian philosophy as a parallel movement to logical empiricism. The second study examines the confrontations between Uppsala philosophy and logical empiricism in both the editorial board and in the pages of Sweden s leading philosophical journal Theoria. The third study focuses on how the younger generation redescribed Hägerströmian legal philosophical ideas (Scandinavian Legal Realism), while the fourth study discusses how they responded to the accusations of a connection between Hägerström s value nihilistic theory and totalitarianism. Finally, the fifth study examines how the Swedish social scientist and Social Democratic intellectual Gunnar Myrdal tried to reconcile value nihilism with a strong political programme for social reform. The contribution of this thesis to the field consists mainly in a re-evaluation of the role of Uppsala philosophy in the history of Swedish philosophy. From this perspective the Uppsala School was less a collection of certain definite philosophical ideas than an intellectual legacy that was the subject of fierce struggles. Its theories and ideas were redescribed in various ways by individual actors with different philosophical and political intentions.

Assessing organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems : Methodological evidence from studies in nuclear power plant maintenance organizations

Failures in industrial organizations dealing with hazardous technologies can have widespread consequences for the safety of the workers and the general population. Psychology can have a major role in contributing to the safe and reliable operation of these technologies. Most current models of safety management in complex sociotechnical systems such as nuclear power plant maintenance are either non-contextual or based on an overly-rational image of an organization. Thus, they fail to grasp either the actual requirements of the work or the socially-constructed nature of the work in question. The general aim of the present study is to develop and test a methodology for contextual assessment of organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems. This is done by demonstrating the findings that the application of the emerging methodology produces in the domain of maintenance of a nuclear power plant (NPP). The concepts of organizational culture and organizational core task (OCT) are operationalized and tested in the case studies. We argue that when the complexity of the work, technology and social environment is increased, the significance of the most implicit features of organizational culture as a means of coordinating the work and achieving safety and effectiveness of the activities also increases. For this reason a cultural perspective could provide additional insight into the problem of safety management. The present study aims to determine; (1) the elements of the organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems; (2) the demands the maintenance task sets for the organizational culture; (3) how the current organizational culture at the case organizations supports the perception and fulfilment of the demands of the maintenance work; (4) the similarities and differences between the maintenance cultures at the case organizations, and (5) the necessary assessment of the organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems. Three in-depth case studies were carried out at the maintenance units of three Nordic NPPs. The case studies employed an iterative and multimethod research strategy. The following methods were used: interviews, CULTURE-survey, seminars, document analysis and group work. Both cultural analysis and task modelling were carried out. The results indicate that organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems can be characterised according to three qualitatively different elements: structure, internal integration and conceptions. All three of these elements of culture as well as their interrelations have to be considered in organizational assessments or important aspects of the organizational dynamics will be overlooked. On the basis of OCT modelling, the maintenance core task was defined as balancing between three critical demands: anticipating the condition of the plant and conducting preventive maintenance accordingly, reacting to unexpected technical faults and monitoring and reflecting on the effects of maintenance actions and the condition of the plant. The results indicate that safety was highly valued at all three plants, and in that sense they all had strong safety cultures. In other respects the cultural features were quite different, and thus the culturally-accepted means of maintaining high safety also differed. The handicraft nature of maintenance work was emphasised as a source of identity at the NPPs. Overall, the importance of safety was taken for granted, but the cultural norms concerning the appropriate means to guarantee it were little reflected. A sense of control, personal responsibility and organizational changes emerged as challenging issues at all the plants. The study shows that in complex sociotechnical systems it is both necessary and possible to analyse the safety and effectiveness of the organizational culture. Safety in complex sociotechnical systems cannot be understood or managed without understanding the demands of the organizational core task and managing the dynamics between the three elements of the organizational culture.

Socialist Realism instead of Formalism : the Formation and Development of the Soviet Music Control System 1932-1950

Whereas it has been widely assumed in the public that the Soviet music policy system had a “top-down” structure of control and command that directly affected musical creativity, in fact my research shows that the relations between the different levels of the music policy system were vague, and the viewpoints of its representatives differed from each other. Because the representatives of the party and government organs controlling operas could not define which kind of music represented Socialist Realism, the system as it developed during the 1930s and 1940s did not function effectively enough in order to create such a centralised control of Soviet music, still less could Soviet operas fulfil the highly ambiguous aesthetics of Socialist Realism. I show that musical discussions developed as bureaucratic ritualistic arenas, where it became more important to reveal the heretical composers, making scapegoats of them, and requiring them to perform self-criticism, than to give directions on how to reach the artistic goals of Socialist Realism. When one opera was found to be unacceptable, this lead to a strengthening of control by the party leadership, which lead to more operas, one after the other, to be revealed as failures. I have studied the control of the composition, staging and reception of the opera case-studies, which remain obscure in the West despite a growing scholarly interest in them, and have created a detailed picture of the foundation and development of the Soviet music control system in 1932-1950. My detailed discussion of such case-studies as Ivan Dzerzhinskii’s The Quiet Don, Dmitrii Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, Vano Muradeli’s The Great Friendship, Sergei Prokofiev’s Story of a Real Man, Tikhon Khrennikov’s Frol Skobeev and Evgenii Zhukovskii’s From All One’s Heart backs with documentary precision the historically revisionist model of the development of Soviet music. In February 1948, composers belonging to the elite of the Union of Soviet Composers, e.g. Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, were accused in a Central Committee Resolution of formalism, as been under the influence of western modernism. Accusations of formalism were connected to the criticism of the conciderable financial, material and social privileges these composers enjoyed in the leadership of the Union. With my new archival findings I give a more detailed picture of the financial background for the 1948 campaign. The independent position of the music funding organization of the Union of Soviet Composers (Muzfond) to decide on its finances was an exceptional phenomenon in the Soviet Union and contradicted the strivings to strengthen the control of Soviet music. The financial audits of the Union of Soviet Composers did not, however, change the elite status of some of its composers, except for maybe a short duration in some cases. At the same time the independence of the significal financial authorities of Soviet theatres was restricted. The cuts in the governmental funding allocated to Soviet theatres contradicted the intensified ideological demands for Soviet operas.

Vaikuttavuusyhteiskunta : Sosiaalisten olojen arvostelusta vaikutusten todentamiseen

Evaluation practices have pervaded the Finnish society and welfare state. At the same time the term effectiveness has become a powerful organising concept in welfare state activities. The aim of the study is to analyse how the outcome-oriented society came into being through historical processes, to answer the question of how social policy and welfare state practices were brought under the governance of the concept of effectiveness . Discussions about social imagination, Michel Foucault s conceptions of the history of the present and of governmentality, genealogy and archaeology, along with Ian Hacking s notions of dynamic nominalism and styles of reasoning, are used as the conceptual and methodological starting points for the study. In addition, Luc Boltanski s and Laurent Thévenot s ideas of orders of worth , regimes of evaluation in everyday life, are employed. Usually, evaluation is conceptualised as an autonomous epistemic culture and practice (evaluation as epistemic practice), but evaluation is here understood as knowledge-creation processes elementary to different epistemic practices (evaluation in epistemic practices). The emergence of epistemic cultures and styles of reasoning about the effectiveness or impacts of welfare state activities are analysed through Finnish social policy and social work research. The study uses case studies which represent debates and empirical research dealing with the effectiveness and quality of social services and social work. While uncertainty and doubts over the effects and consequences of welfare policies have always been present in discourses about social policy, the theme has not been acknowledged much in social policy research. To resolve these uncertainties, eight styles of reasoning about such effects have emerged over time. These are the statistical, goal-based, needs-based, experimental, interaction-based, performance measurement, auditing and evidence-based styles of reasoning. Social policy research has contributed in various ways to the creation of these epistemic practices. The transformation of the welfare state, starting at the end of 1980s, increased market-orientation and trimmed public welfare responsibilities, and led to the adoption of the New Public Management (NPM) style of leadership. Due to these developments the concept of effectiveness made a breakthrough, and new accountabilities with their knowledge tools for performance measurement and auditing and evidence-based styles of reasoning became more dominant in the ruling of the welfare state. Social sciences and evaluation have developed a heteronomous relation with each other, although there still remain divergent tendencies between them. Key words: evaluation, effectiveness, social policy, welfare state, public services, sociology of knowledge

Moral Professionalism in Interaction : Educators' Relational Moral Voices in Urban Schools

The aim of this study was to investigate educators relational moral voices in urban schools and to listen to what they told about moral professionalism and moral practices in challenging urban schools. Their relational moral voices were investigated through the following three questions: 1. What are the educators moral voices in relation to themselves and other people? 2. What are the educators moral voices in relation to their work and society? 3. What kind of interaction process lies between the educators moral voices and the urban school context? The research data of this study were gathered in four urban schools in Jyväskylä and Helsinki. The research schools were chosen for this study according to the criteria of the international Socrates Comenius project called Leading Schools Successfully in Challenging Urban Context: Strategies for Improvement. This study formed part of this project, which investigated successful urban schools as challenging learning environments in nine European countries and explored the principals success in leadership in particular. The data, which included 37 narratively constructed interviews with four principals and key informants selected by the principals, were gathered in interviews conducted in 2006. In other words, the data comprised three interviews with each of four principals, and interviews with two teachers, two parents, and two pupils from each school. In addition, the school deacon from one school was also interviewed. Furthermore, part of the data from one of the research schools included a medium report of the school deacon s work. This study combined the case study method, the narrative approach and the critical incident technique as the methodological framework. In addition, all of these methods served as practical tools for both analyzing and reporting the data. The educators' narrations and the results of the study appear in the original articles (Hanhimäki & Tirri 2008; Hanhimäki 2008b; Hanhimäki & Tirri 2009; Hanhimäki 2008a). The educators moral voices in relation to themselves and other people emerged through the main themes of moral leadership, the development and evaluation process, moral sensitivity, gender, values, and student well-being. The educators moral voices in relation to their work and society emerged through the main themes of multiprofessional cooperation, families and parental involvement, and moral school culture. The idea of moral interaction connected moral professionalism and the methodological combination of this study, which together emphasized social interaction and the creation of understanding and meaning in this interaction. The main point of this study was to state that the educators moral voices emerged in the interaction between the educators themselves and the urban school context. In this interaction, the educators moral professionalism was constructed and shaped in relation to themselves, other people, their work and society. The loudest relational moral voices heard through the main themes were those of caring, cooperation, respect, commitment, and professionalism. When the results were compared to the codes of ethics which guided these educators moral professional work, the ethical principles and values of the codes were clearly visible in their moral practices. The loudest message from the educators narration could be summarized in the words caring, respect and cooperation: at its best, there is just a human being and a human being with caring, respect and cooperation between them. The results of this study emphasize the need for practical approaches such as case studies and the narrative approach in teacher education to encourage educators to become moral professionals capable of meeting the needs of people of varied backgrounds. In addition, opportunities for moral, religious and spiritual education should be noticed and utilized in the plural interaction of urban schools when nurturing pupils and creating a moral school culture. Furthermore, multiprofessional cooperation and parents as the school s primary cooperation partner are needed to carry out the shared duty of moral education in urban schools. Keywords: moral professionalism, educator, relational moral voice, interaction, urban school