Euphemism: Sweet Talking or Deception?

The aim of this paper is to shed light on euphemism in two different senses: sweet talking and deception. I shall treat euphemism from two different perspectives: the usual use of euphemism, sweet talking, in which it is used to maintain one's face and the orthophemistic sense, deception, where 'torture' is referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques". I shall analyze examples, taken from religious, cultural, political backgrounds, on each case. Moreover, I shall talk about taboo since it is usually associated with euphemism. I shall talk about the referential (semantic) and expletive (pragmatic) aspects of swearing expressions. In this essay, I shall show that euphemism can be used in two different senses: sweet talking and deception.

Sex, a one mans show : Perceptions and experience of sexuality, contraceptives, unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion among young people in Kisumu, Kenya – A qualitative study

This study aimed to explore perceptions and experiences concerning sexuality, contraceptives, unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion among young people in Kisumu, Kenya. The design of the study was inductive with a qualitative approach using personal in-depth interviews. Eight participants (four female and four male) were asked to describe their perceptions and experience concerning sexuality, contraceptives, unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortion. The result showed that culture and norms, misconceptions and gender based power in sexuality are factors that impact Sexual Reproductive Health among young people in Kisumu today. Unwanted pregnancy was described as a shame, a burden and a destroyed life which lead to many unsafely induced abortions. The findings indicate that youth interventions are important, such as engaging young men in unwanted pregnancy and thus unsafe abortions and to empower young women.

Svensklärares arbete : om villkor för gymnasieskolans svenskämne

The aim of this didactic study is to understand the terms of work, education and teaching of Swedish in a period round 2000. The research questions focus on how teachers at upper secondary school in conversations describe and construct their work, values in society and school, structures of power and relation to time. With the help of tools related to story and storytelling, and by connecting the empirical material to a late modern society, I caninterpret and understand the description of their work. With the help of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory I can see how values, power and relation to time are expressed in different ways when teachers of Swedish talk about their work and education.The results show that when teacher talk about work in school is it related to ideals in a global economy. Decentralization and individualization get new meanings when those words are placed in school environment and activity. Effectiveness, flexibility and individualization are words related to economy and they seem to have an effect on education and subjects of Swedish. I can also understand teachers’ work when it is related to power and values on the educational field. I can see how a diffuse power acts on the field and how harmony is a dominant value and a term that influences teachers’ work. New terms also form new identities related to teaching. New terms form new subjects of Swedish that in time and practice will form newhabitus connected to subjects. I call it ämneskonceptionella habitus.

Förståelse, bedömningar och hjälpinsatser : Socialarbetares arbete med män som våldsoffer

This report outlines the background to, and presents the results from the Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority funded project "Social Workers' understanding of men as victims of crime". The project aimed at describing and analyzing how social workers understand and work with male victims of violence. More precisely, the research has focused on how social workers describe men's vulnerability and how they understand men's needs for assistance, what assistance that is provided and the way the constellations of perpetrators and victims of different gender and contexts in which the violence occurs in affect the understanding of male victims of violence. The study has also been devoted to the question of whether the Support Centers for young crime victims in Sweden provide different types of and different amount of help to young men and women afflicted of violence. The project was conducted in three substudies. The results from substudy 1 show that more young men than women seek support from the Support centers studied. Men predominate in number of cases and in the different categories of crime. The results also show that young men on average receive less assistance over a shorter average duration than young women. This applies irrespective of the category of offense that the vulnerability applies to. Furthermore, the young men, compared to the women, proportionally receive fewer interventions characterized as support and a greater proportion of interventions in the form of information. The results also show that the young men are referred on for further action to a lesser extent than is the case for women. The results from substudy 2 show that social workers tend to focus on whether, and to what extent, young men who are victims of violence themselves have behaved provocatively before the violence incident and if they have put themselves in a social situation that could be interpreted as having contributed to an escalation of the violence they have been subjected to. The results from substudy 2 also show that social workers talk about the men as active in the violent situations they have been involved in and dwell on the extent to which the young men's own actions have contributed to the violence. The results also show that young men who are victims of violence are described as "reluctant" victims who are trying to cope with their situation on their own without the involvement of professional or other helper. The young men are also described as reluctant to talk about their feelings. The results of substudy 3 show that social workers believe that young men, when they become victims of violence, risks losing their sense of autonomy, initiative and decisiveness, that is, attributes that are often linked to the dominating cultural image of masculinity. Furthermore, the results show that social workers estimate that men's practicing of their masculinity, but also the response that men who are traumatized get from society, creates difficulties for them to get help. The results from substudy 3 also shows that attributes and actions that can be connected to the masculinity of young men's, as well as a lack of such attributes and actions are considered to be adequate explanations for the violence the men has suffered. When it comes to violence in public places it is the masculinity that explains the violence and its escalation. When it comes to domestic violence it is the lack of expected male attributes and actions that are used as explanations for the violence that have occurred. The discussion is devoted to the question of how the results should be understood based on the concepts of self-performance, interpretation, negotiation and categorizations, and the consequences the results obtained should have for gender sensitive social work given to abused men.

Perfectionist Philosophy as a (an Untaken) Way of Life

I am honored to respond to Paul Guyer’s elaboration on the role of examples of perfectionism in Cavell’s and Kant’s philosophies. Guyer’s appeal to Kant’s notion of freedom opens the way for suggestive readings of Cavell’s work on moral perfectionism but also, as I will show, for controversy. There are salient aspects of both Kant’s and Cavell’s philosophy that are crucial to understanding perfectionism and, let me call it, perfectionist education, that I wish to emphasize in response to Guyer. In responding to Guyer’s text, I shall do three things. First, I shall explain why I think it is misleading to speak of Cavell’s view that moral perfectionism is involved in a struggle to make oneself intelligible to oneself and others in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions for moral perfection. Rather, I will suggest that the constant work on oneself that is at the core of Cavell’s moral perfectionism is a constant work for intelligibility. Second, I shall recall a feature of Cavell’s perfectionism that Guyer does not explicitly speak of: the idea that perfectionism is a theme, “outlook or dimension of thought embodied and developed in a set of texts.” Or, as Cavell goes on to say, “there is a place in mind where good books are in conversation. … [W]hat they often talk about … is how they can be, or sound, so much better than the people that compose them.” This involves what I would call a perfectionist conception of the history of philosophy and the kinds of texts we take to belong to such history. Third, I shall sketch out how the struggle for intelligibility and a perfectionist view of engagement with texts and philosophy can lead to a view of philosophy as a form of education in itself. In concluding these three “criticisms,” I reach a position that I think is quite close to Guyer’s, but with a slightly shifted emphasis on what it means to read Kant and Cavell from a perfectionist point of view.

Using Swedish in the EFL-classroom : An Interview Study on Swedish Upper Secondary Students’ Attitudes towards Teachers’ L1 use in the EFL-classroom

There is very little focus in previous research on first language (L1) use by teachers in the upper secondary English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom from the students’ perspective. In this context and from a Swedish perspective, this thesis examines what attitudes students in the Swedish upper secondary school have towards their teachers’ use of L1 (Swedish) in the EFL-classroom. The method used was qualitative semi-structured interviews, where nine students in total were interviewed. The collected data was then coded, thematized and categorized. The results show that the students mainly believed Swedish should be used when teaching vocabulary, when teaching grammar and for classroom management. They did not believe the L1 should be used by them in questions and answers and in general talk in the classroom. They also endorsed an overall judicious use of Swedish by their teachers and that their use of this language should be adjusted to the specific teaching group. Finally, it can be concluded that further research is needed on how the L1 can be used judiciously in particular situations and on what attitudes students of varying proficiency and age, as well as students who do not have Swedish as their L1 have towards teachers’ L1 use in the EFL-classroom.