Dynamics of inflation expectations in the euro area

The present study examines empirically the inflation dynamics of the euro area. The focus of the analysis is on the role of expectations in the inflation process. In six articles we relax rationality assumption and proxy expectations directly using OECD forecasts or Consensus Economics survey data. In the first four articles we estimate alternative Phillips curve specifications and find evidence that inflation cannot instantaneously adjust to changes in expectations. A possible departure of expectations from rationality seems not to be powerful enough to totally explain the persistence of euro area inflation in the New Keynesian framework. When expectations are measured directly, the purely forward-looking New Keynesian Phillips curve is outperformed by the hybrid Phillips curve with an additional lagged inflation term and the New Classical Phillips curve with a lagged expectations term. The results suggest that the euro area inflation process has become more forward-looking in the recent years of low and stable inflation. Moreover, in low inflation countries, the inflation dynamics have been more forward-looking already since the late 1970s. We find evidence of substantial heterogeneity of inflation dynamics across the euro area countries. Real time data analysis suggests that in the euro area real time information matters most in the expectations term in the Phillips curve and that the balance of expectations formation is more forward- than backward-looking. Vector autoregressive (VAR) models of actual inflation, inflation expectations and the output gap are estimated in the last two articles.The VAR analysis indicates that inflation expectations, which are relatively persistent, have a significant effect on output. However,expectations seem to react to changes in both output and actual inflation, especially in the medium term. Overall, this study suggests that expectations play a central role in inflation dynamics, which should be taken into account in conducting monetary policy.

Non-Gaussian Cosmological Perturbations from Hybrid Inflation and Preheating

This thesis consists of four research papers and an introduction providing some background. The structure in the universe is generally considered to originate from quantum fluctuations in the very early universe. The standard lore of cosmology states that the primordial perturbations are almost scale-invariant, adiabatic, and Gaussian. A snapshot of the structure from the time when the universe became transparent can be seen in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). For a long time mainly the power spectrum of the CMB temperature fluctuations has been used to obtain observational constraints, especially on deviations from scale-invariance and pure adiabacity. Non-Gaussian perturbations provide a novel and very promising way to test theoretical predictions. They probe beyond the power spectrum, or two point correlator, since non-Gaussianity involves higher order statistics. The thesis concentrates on the non-Gaussian perturbations arising in several situations involving two scalar fields, namely, hybrid inflation and various forms of preheating. First we go through some basic concepts -- such as the cosmological inflation, reheating and preheating, and the role of scalar fields during inflation -- which are necessary for the understanding of the research papers. We also review the standard linear cosmological perturbation theory. The second order perturbation theory formalism for two scalar fields is developed. We explain what is meant by non-Gaussian perturbations, and discuss some difficulties in parametrisation and observation. In particular, we concentrate on the nonlinearity parameter. The prospects of observing non-Gaussianity are briefly discussed. We apply the formalism and calculate the evolution of the second order curvature perturbation during hybrid inflation. We estimate the amount of non-Gaussianity in the model and find that there is a possibility for an observational effect. The non-Gaussianity arising in preheating is also studied. We find that the level produced by the simplest model of instant preheating is insignificant, whereas standard preheating with parametric resonance as well as tachyonic preheating are prone to easily saturate and even exceed the observational limits. We also mention other approaches to the study of primordial non-Gaussianities, which differ from the perturbation theory method chosen in the thesis work.

A Cointegration Approach to Topics in Empirical Macroeconomics (summary section only)

Mikael Juselius’ doctoral dissertation covers a range of significant issues in modern macroeconomics by empirically testing a number of important theoretical hypotheses. The first essay presents indirect evidence within the framework of the cointegrated VAR model on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor by using Finnish manufacturing data. Instead of estimating the elasticity of substitution by using the first order conditions, he develops a new approach that utilizes a CES production function in a model with a 3-stage decision process: investment in the long run, wage bargaining in the medium run and price and employment decisions in the short run. He estimates the elasticity of substitution to be below one. The second essay tests the restrictions implied by the core equations of the New Keynesian Model (NKM) in a vector autoregressive model (VAR) by using both Euro area and U.S. data. Both the new Keynesian Phillips curve and the aggregate demand curve are estimated and tested. The restrictions implied by the core equations of the NKM are rejected on both U.S. and Euro area data. These results are important for further research. The third essay is methodologically similar to essay 2, but it concentrates on Finnish macro data by adopting a theoretical framework of an open economy. Juselius’ results suggests that the open economy NKM framework is too stylized to provide an adequate explanation for Finnish inflation. The final essay provides a macroeconometric model of Finnish inflation and associated explanatory variables and it estimates the relative importance of different inflation theories. His main finding is that Finnish inflation is primarily determined by excess demand in the product market and by changes in the long-term interest rate. This study is part of the research agenda carried out by the Research Unit of Economic Structure and Growth (RUESG). The aim of RUESG it to conduct theoretical and empirical research with respect to important issues in industrial economics, real option theory, game theory, organization theory, theory of financial systems as well as to study problems in labor markets, macroeconomics, natural resources, taxation and time series econometrics. RUESG was established at the beginning of 1995 and is one of the National Centers of Excellence in research selected by the Academy of Finland. It is financed jointly by the Academy of Finland, the University of Helsinki, the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, Bank of Finland and the Nokia Group. This support is gratefully acknowledged.

Modeling and Forecasting Implied Volatility: Implications for Trading, Pricing, and Risk Management

Modeling and forecasting of implied volatility (IV) is important to both practitioners and academics, especially in trading, pricing, hedging, and risk management activities, all of which require an accurate volatility. However, it has become challenging since the 1987 stock market crash, as implied volatilities (IVs) recovered from stock index options present two patterns: volatility smirk(skew) and volatility term-structure, if the two are examined at the same time, presents a rich implied volatility surface (IVS). This implies that the assumptions behind the Black-Scholes (1973) model do not hold empirically, as asset prices are mostly influenced by many underlying risk factors. This thesis, consists of four essays, is modeling and forecasting implied volatility in the presence of options markets’ empirical regularities. The first essay is modeling the dynamics IVS, it extends the Dumas, Fleming and Whaley (DFW) (1998) framework; for instance, using moneyness in the implied forward price and OTM put-call options on the FTSE100 index, a nonlinear optimization is used to estimate different models and thereby produce rich, smooth IVSs. Here, the constant-volatility model fails to explain the variations in the rich IVS. Next, it is found that three factors can explain about 69-88% of the variance in the IVS. Of this, on average, 56% is explained by the level factor, 15% by the term-structure factor, and the additional 7% by the jump-fear factor. The second essay proposes a quantile regression model for modeling contemporaneous asymmetric return-volatility relationship, which is the generalization of Hibbert et al. (2008) model. The results show strong negative asymmetric return-volatility relationship at various quantiles of IV distributions, it is monotonically increasing when moving from the median quantile to the uppermost quantile (i.e., 95%); therefore, OLS underestimates this relationship at upper quantiles. Additionally, the asymmetric relationship is more pronounced with the smirk (skew) adjusted volatility index measure in comparison to the old volatility index measure. Nonetheless, the volatility indices are ranked in terms of asymmetric volatility as follows: VIX, VSTOXX, VDAX, and VXN. The third essay examines the information content of the new-VDAX volatility index to forecast daily Value-at-Risk (VaR) estimates and compares its VaR forecasts with the forecasts of the Filtered Historical Simulation and RiskMetrics. All daily VaR models are then backtested from 1992-2009 using unconditional, independence, conditional coverage, and quadratic-score tests. It is found that the VDAX subsumes almost all information required for the volatility of daily VaR forecasts for a portfolio of the DAX30 index; implied-VaR models outperform all other VaR models. The fourth essay models the risk factors driving the swaption IVs. It is found that three factors can explain 94-97% of the variation in each of the EUR, USD, and GBP swaption IVs. There are significant linkages across factors, and bi-directional causality is at work between the factors implied by EUR and USD swaption IVs. Furthermore, the factors implied by EUR and USD IVs respond to each others’ shocks; however, surprisingly, GBP does not affect them. Second, the string market model calibration results show it can efficiently reproduce (or forecast) the volatility surface for each of the swaptions markets.

Price Inflation, Unemployment and Devaluations: The Finnish Experience of the 1990s

In this paper I provide some empirical answers to important questions such as the determinants of price inflation and the role of inflation polices. The results indicate that monetary policy is surprisingly impotent as a device for controlling inflation and there is little support that it influences the real variables. The low inflation after the Finnish devaluations in the beginning of 90s is foremost due to a previous imbalance in the labor markets and depressed aggregate demand.

Maximum Loss Calculation using Scenario Analysis, Heavy Tails and Implied Volatility Patterns

The objective of this paper is to improve option risk monitoring by examining the information content of implied volatility and by introducing the calculation of a single-sum expected risk exposure similar to the Value-at-Risk. The figure is calculated in two steps. First, there is a need to estimate the value of a portfolio of options for a number of different market scenarios, while the second step is to summarize the information content of the estimated scenarios into a single-sum risk measure. This involves the use of probability theory and return distributions, which confronts the user with the problems of non-normality in the return distribution of the underlying asset. Here the hyperbolic distribution is used to describe one alternative for dealing with heavy tails. Results indicate that the information content of implied volatility is useful when predicting future large returns in the underlying asset. Further, the hyperbolic distribution provides a good fit to historical returns enabling a more accurate definition of statistical intervals and extreme events.

Unrealized expectations of jumps in volatility: An explanation to the low and time-varying predictive power of implied volatility

The low predictive power of implied volatility in forecasting the subsequently realized volatility is a well-documented empirical puzzle. As suggested by e.g. Feinstein (1989), Jackwerth and Rubinstein (1996), and Bates (1997), we test whether unrealized expectations of jumps in volatility could explain this phenomenon. Our findings show that expectations of infrequently occurring jumps in volatility are indeed priced in implied volatility. This has two important consequences. First, implied volatility is actually expected to exceed realized volatility over long periods of time only to be greatly less than realized volatility during infrequently occurring periods of very high volatility. Second, the slope coefficient in the classic forecasting regression of realized volatility on implied volatility is very sensitive to the discrepancy between ex ante expected and ex post realized jump frequencies. If the in-sample frequency of positive volatility jumps is lower than ex ante assessed by the market, the classic regression test tends to reject the hypothesis of informational efficiency even if markets are informationally effective.

The North in the Old English Orosius : A Geographical Narrative in Context

This doctoral dissertation examines the description of the North as it appears in the Old English Orosius (OE Or.) in the form of the travel accounts by Ohthere and Wulfstan and a catalogue of peoples of Germania. The description is discussed in the context of ancient and early medieval textual and cartographic descriptions of the North, with a special emphasis on Anglo-Saxon sources and the intellectual context of the reign of King Alfred (871-899). This is the first time that these sources, a multidisciplinary approach and secondary literature, also from Scandinavia and Finland, have been brought together. The discussion is source-based, and archaeological theories and geographical ideas are used to support the primary evidence. This study belongs to the disciplines of early medieval literature and (cultural) history, Anglo-Saxon studies, English philology, and historical geography. The OE Or. was probably part of Alfred s educational campaign, which conveyed royal ideology to the contemporary elite. The accounts and catalogue are original interpolations which represent a unique historical source for the Viking Age. They contain unparalleled information about peoples and places in Fennoscandia and the southern Baltic and sailing voyages to the White Sea, the Danish lands, and the Lower Vistula. The historical-philological analysis reveals an emphasis on wealth and property, rank, luxury goods, settlement patterns, and territorial divisions. Trade is strongly implied by the mentions of central places and northern products, such as walrus ivory. The references to such peoples as the Finnas, the Cwenas, and the Beormas appear in connection with information about geography and subsistence in the far North. Many of the topics in the accounts relate to Anglo-Saxon aristocratic culture and interests. The accounts focus on the areas associated with the Northmen, the Danes and the Este. These areas resonated in the Anglo-Saxon geographical imagination: they were curious about the northern margin of the world, their own continental ancestry and the geography of their homeland of Angeln, and they had an interest in the Goths and their connection with the southern Baltic in mythogeography. The non-judgemental representation of the North as generally peaceful and relatively normal place is related to Alfredian and Orosian ideas about the unity and spreading of Christendom, and to desires for unity among the Germani and for peace with the Vikings, who were settling in England. These intellectual contexts reflect the innovative and organizational forces of Alfred s reign. The description of the North in the OE Or. can be located in the context of the Anglo-Saxon worldview and geographical mindset. It mirrors the geographical curiosity expressed in other Anglo-Saxon sources, such as the poem Widsith and the Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi. The northern section of this early eleventh-century world map is analyzed in detail here for the first time. It is suggested that the section depicts the North Atlantic and the Scandinavian Peninsula. The survey of ancient and early medieval sources provides a comparative context for the OE Or. In this material, produced by such authors as Strabo, Pliny, Tacitus, Jordanes, and Rimbert, the significance of the North was related to the search for and definition of the northern edge of the world, universal accounts of the world, the northern homeland in the origin stories of the gentes, and Carolingian expansion and missionary activity. These frameworks were transmitted to Anglo-Saxon literary culture, where the North occurs in the context of the definition of Britain s place in the world.

Readers' resposes versus reader-response theories : An empirical study

This study examines both theoretically an empirically how well the theories of Norman Holland, David Bleich, Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish can explain readers' interpretations of literary texts. The theoretical analysis concentrates on their views on language from the point of view of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. This analysis shows that many of the assumptions related to language in these theories are problematic. The empirical data show that readers often form very similar interpretations. Thus the study challenges the common assumption that literary interpretations tend to be idiosyncratic. The empirical data consists of freely worded written answers to questions on three short stories. The interpretations were made by 27 Finnish university students. Some of the questions addressed issues that were discussed in large parts of the texts, some referred to issues that were mentioned only in passing or implied. The short stories were "The Witch à la Mode" by D. H. Lawrence, "Rain in the Heart" by Peter Taylor and "The Hitchhiking Game" by Milan Kundera. According to Fish, readers create both the formal features of a text and their interpretation of it according to an interpretive strategy. People who agree form an interpretive community. However, a typical answer usually contains ideas repeated by several readers as well as observations not mentioned by anyone else. Therefore it is very difficult to determine which readers belong to the same interpretive community. Moreover, readers with opposing opinions often seem to pay attention to the same textual features and even acknowledge the possibility of an opposing interpretation; therefore they do not seem to create the formal features of the text in different ways. Iser suggests that an interpretation emerges from the interaction between the text and the reader when the reader determines the implications of the text and in this way fills the "gaps" in the text. Iser believes that the text guides the reader, but as he also believes that meaning is on a level beyond words, he cannot explain how the text directs the reader. The similarity in the interpretations and the fact that the agreement is strongest when related to issues that are discussed broadly in the text do, however, support his assumption that readers are guided by the text. In Bleich's view, all interpretations have personal motives and each person has an idiosyncratic language system. The situation where a person learns a word determines the most important meaning it has for that person. In order to uncover the personal etymologies of words, Bleich asks his readers to associate freely on the basis of a text and note down all the personal memories and feelings that the reading experience evokes. Bleich's theory of the idiosyncratic language system seems to rely on a misconceived notion of the role that ostensive definitions have in language use. The readers' responses show that spontaneous associations to personal life seem to colour the readers' interpretations, but such instances are rather rare. According to Holland, an interpretation reflects the reader's identity theme. Language use is regulated by shared rules, but everyone follows the rules in his or her own way. Words mean different things to different people. The problem with this view is that if there is any basis for language use, it seems to be the shared way of following linguistic rules. Wittgenstein suggests that our understanding of words is related to the shared ways of using words and our understanding of human behaviour. This view seems to give better grounds for understanding similarity and differences in literary interpretations than the theories of Holland, Bleich, Fish and Iser.

Counter-figures : An Essay on Antimetaphoric Resistance: Paul Celan's Poetry and Poetics at the Limits of Figurality

Titled "An Essay on Antimetaphoric Resistance", the dissertation investigates what is here being called "Counter-figures": a term which has in this context a certain variety of applications. Any other-than-image or other-than-figure, anything that cannot be exhausted by figuration (and that is, more or less, anything at all, except perhaps the reproducible images and figures themselves) can be considered "counter-figurative" with regard to the formation of images and figures, ideas and schemas, "any graven image, or any likeness of any thing". Singularity and radical alterity, as well as temporality and its peculiar mode of uniqueness are key issues here, and an ethical dimension is implied by, or intertwined with, the aesthetic. In terms borrowed from Paul Celan's "Meridian" speech, poetry may "allow the most idiosyncratic quality of the Other, its time, to participate in the dialogue". This connection between singularity, alterity and temporality is one of the reasons why Celan so strongly objects to the application of the traditional concept of metaphor to poetry. As Celan says, "carrying over [übertragen]" by metaphor may imply an unwillingness to "bear with [mittragen]" and to "endure [ertragen]" the poem. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first consists of five distinct prolegomena which all address the mentioned variety of applications of the term "counter-figures", and especially the rejection or critique of either metaphor (by Aristotle, for instance) or the concept of metaphor (defined by Aristotle, and sometimes deemed "anti-poetic" by both theorists and poets). Even if we restrict ourselves to the traditional rhetorico-poetical terms, we may see how, for instance, metonymy can be a counter-figure for metaphor, allegory for symbol, and irony for any single trope or for any piece of discourse at all. The limits of figurality may indeed be located at these points of intersection between different types of tropes or figures, and even between figures or tropes and the "non-figurative trope" or "pseudo-figure" called catachresis. The second part, following on from the open-ended prolegomena, concentrates on Paul Celan's poetry and poetics. According to Celan, true poetry is "essentially anti-metaphoric". I argue that inasmuch as we are willing to pay attention to the "will" of the poetic images themselves (the tropes and metaphors in a poem) to be "carried ad absurdum", as Celan invites us to do, we may find alternative ways of reading poetry and approaching its "secret of the encounter", precisely when the traditional rhetorical instruments, and especially the notion of metaphor, become inapplicable or suspicious — and even where they still seem to impose themselves.

Nuori konservatiivi : Tuure Junnila ja hänen poliittinen toimintansa vuoteen 1956

Tuure Junnila, PhD (1910-1999) was one of Finland's most renowned conservative politicians of the post-war period. Junnila is remembered primarily as a persistent opponent of Urho Kekkonen, a long-term Member of Parliament, a conspicuous opposition member and a prolific political writer. Junnila's ideologies and political views were conservative, and he is one of the most outstanding figures in the history of the National Coalition Party. Junnila also made an extensive career outside of politics, first as an economist and then as an executive of Finland's leading commercial bank Kansallis-Osake-Pankki. The Young Conservative is a partial biography written using traditional historical research methods, which examines Junnila's personal history and his activity in public life up to 1956. The study begins by investigating Junnila's background through his childhood, school years, university studies and early professional career. It also looks at Junnila's work as an economist and practical banker. Particular attention is paid to Junnila's political work, constantly focusing on the following five often overlapping areas: (1) economic policy, (2) domestic policy, (3) foreign and security policy, (4) Junnila and Urho Kekkonen, (5) Junnila, the Coalition Party and Finnish conservatism. In his economic policy, Junnila emphasised the importance of economic stability, opposed socialisation and the growth of public expenditure, defended the free market system and private entrepreneurship, and demanded tax cuts. This policy was very popular within the Coalition Party during the early 1950s, making Junnila the leading conservative economic politician of the time. In terms of domestic policy, Junnila demanded as early as the 1940s that a "third force" should be established in Finland to counterbalance the agrarian and labour parties by uniting conservative and liberal ideologies under the same roof. Foreign and security policy is the area of Junnila's political activity which is most clearly situated after the mid-1950s. However, Junnila's early speeches and writings already show a striving towards the unconditional neutrality modelled by Switzerland and Sweden and a strong emphasis on Finland's right to internal self-determination. Junnila, as did the Coalition Party as a whole, adopted a consistently critical approach towards Urho Kekkonen between 1951 and 1956, but this attitude was not as bluntly negative and all-round antagonistic as many previous studies have implied. Junnila was one of the leading Finnish conservatives of the early 1950s and in all essence his views were analogous to the general alignment of the Coalition Party at the time: conservative in ideology and general policy, and liberal in economic policy.

Ylirajaisia suhteita : Helsingin olympialaiset, Armi Kuusela ja ylikansallinen historia

In 1952 Helsinki hosted the Summer Olympic Games and Armi Kuusela, the current “Maiden of Finland”, was at the same time crowned Miss Universe. In popular history writing, these events have been designated as a crucial turning point – the end of an era marked by war and deprivation and the beginning of a modern, Western nation. Symptomatically, both events were marked by Finnish women’s sexual relationships with foreign men. The Olympics were shadowed by a concern over Finnish women’s “undue friendliness” with the Olympic guests, and Armi Kuusela's world tour was cut short by her surprise marriage in Tokyo and subsequent emigration to the Philippines. This study is an inquiry into the Helsinki Olympics and the public persona of Armi Kuusela from the point of view of transnational heterosexuality and the constitution of Finnish national identity. Methodologically the two main components of the study are intersectionality, defined here as a focus on the mutual histories and effects of discourses of gender, sexuality, race and nation; and transnational history as a way of exploring the ways that both nations and sexual subjects are embedded in global relations of power. The analysis proceeds by way of contextual and intertextual readings of various sources. Part one, centering on the Olympics, involves a campaign mounted by certain women’s organizations before the Games in order to educate young women about the potential dangers of the forthcoming international event as well as magazine and newspaper articles published during and after the Games concerning the encounter between young Finnish women and foreign, especially “Southern,” men. It places the debates during the Olympics within the framework of wartime understandings of women’s sexuality; the history of the concept of decency (siveellisyys); post-war population policy; the intersectional histories of conceptions pertaining to race and sexuality; and finally, the post-war concerns over women’s migration from rural areas to the capital city and their potential emigration abroad. Part two deals with the persona of Armi Kuusela and the public reception of her world tour and marriage, based on material from both Finland and the Philippines (newspapers, magazines, advertisements, books and films). It examines the persona of Armi Kuusela as a figure of national import in terms of the East/West divide; the racialized images of different geographic climates and Oriental “Others;” the meaning of whiteness in the Philippines; the significance of class and colonial history for the domestication of sexual and racial transgressions implied by an unconventional transnational marriage; as well as the cultural logics of transnational desire and its possible meanings for women in 1950s Finland. The study develops two arguments. First, it suggests that instead of being purely oppositional to national discourses, transnational desire may also be viewed as a product of these very discourses. Second, it claims that the national significance of both the Olympics and the persona of Armi Kuusela was due to the new points of comparison they both offered for national identity construction. In comparison with the sexualized Southern men at the Olympics and the racialized Orient in the representations of Armi Kuusela’s travels and marriage, Finland emerged as part of the civilized North, placed firmly within the perimeters of Western Europe. As such, both events mark a “whitening” of the Finnish people as well as a distancing from their previous designations in racial hierarchies. At the same time, however, the process of becoming a white nation inevitably meant complying with and reproducing racial hierarchies, rather than simply abolishing them.

Olla elävän sanat : Roolirunon laji Maila Pylkkösen teoksessa Arvo. Vanhaäiti puhuu runonsa

Maila Pylkkönen (1931 1986) was one of the most important modernist poets in Finland and a central figure in developing the dramatic monologue in Finnish literature. The study examines Pylkkönen s poetic work Arvo. Vanhaäiti puhuu runonsa (Value. An old woman speaks her poem, 1959) as an example of the dramatic monologue, approaching it from three perspectives: its generic features and background, and the poetic framework to which it connects in the context of Pylkkönen s poetry. In addition to methods of literary scholarship, the poetic analysis benefits from a linguistic approach. The study shows that the dramatic monologue genre drives Pylkkönen s first work, Klassilliset tunteet (Classical feelings, 1957), in a context of finding poetic identity, characterised by the expression to be the words of a living creature . The study demonstrates that important generic features of the dramatic monologue, namely, a poem representing a speech-event and a hierarchical structure, are also Arvo s most significant generic features. Arvo s poems as speech-events are examined for their internal progressive, pragmatic unity constructed through single line units; for their function as narratives dealing with the life story of an old woman, Arvo s speaker; and from the perspective of the communication between the old woman and the poems other characters. Arvo s speech-events can also be seen as semantic shifts from one poem to another: the poems construct semantic stages representing different phases of the old woman s life. The study demonstrates that analysis of Arvo s hierarchical structure, that is, the relationship between the speaker and the rhetorical levels, reveals the work s structural and ideological wholeness by focusing on the old woman s emotions: longing, loneliness and alienation from the world. In other words, the contradictions between the explicit level of the speaker and an implied rhetorical level open up the tragedy of an old woman s daily life. Study of Arvo s hierarchical structure also highlights the special position of the reader in the framework of a dramatic monologue. The elements of a dramatic present in which the old woman s emotions are conveyed, an italicized opening poem, and the work s title Value invite the reader to consider Arvo as a structural and ideological whole. The function of Arvo s hierarchical structure is to ask the reader to recognise the hopelessness of the old woman s situation, understand it, and even identify with it.

Toiminta ja tarkoite : Tutkimus suomen pronominista

The study describes the use and meaning of the Finnish demonstrative pronouns, focus being on the pronoun "tämä" (roughly 'this'). The Finnish demonstrative system is a three way one, the other two demonstratives are "tuo" ('that') and "se" ('it'). The data consisted of 12 half hours of video- and tape-recorded face-to-face and telephone conversations. The method for the study was ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA); in addition to CA, the theoretical framework consisted of functional linguistics and linguistic anthropology. First, the study dealt with the syntactic distribution of the three demonstratives. The pronouns were analysed according to whether they are before or after the verb, and whether they compose an NP on their own or are determinants of a lexical NP. The study suggested that the form and the placement of the NP presents the referent as continuous/discontinuous or given/new. Givenness of a referent was defined as "identified adequately for the purposes of the on-going action". The so-called dislocated utterances were considered separately. It was found that left-dislocations are used for inserting referents in a particular relation to the on-going activity. Right-dislocations offer a solution for the sometimes competing motivations of newness and continuity: they are used for securing the identifiability of a referent that is implied to be continuous. Second, the study focussed on analysing the meaning of the pronouns according to three dimensions of reference: referential, indexical and relational. It was found that the demonstratives can organize interactional or spatial context. When organizing interactional context, the demonstrative pronouns express the role of identifying the referent in relation to the on-going activity. The pronoun "tämä" expresses that the referent is referentially open and the characterization of the referent is given in the on-going turn. Furthermore, it expresses asymmetry of the indexical ground: it expresses that the participants of a conversation do not share a mutual understanding of the activity at that particular time. In addition, the referent of the pronoun "tämä" is central for understanding the on-going action. Centrality could be understood as the relational feature of the pronoun. However, it is a consequence of the referential and indexical features of "tämä". The pronoun "tuo" also expresses referential openness, but it implies indexical symmetry. The pronoun "se" implies that the referent is known enough, and implies indexical symmetry. When used spatially, the pronouns may refer to a physical space or to a situation. They express or imply that the speaker is inside or outside the referent. The pronoun "tämä" implies inclusion, and the pronoun "tuo" expresses exclusion.