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Lately, there has been massive media coverage of gang-related criminality in 'exposed areas' in Sweden. Politicians have blamed the illegal drugs trade without questioning the country's prohibitionist drug policy. This study analyzes how cannabis is constructed in Swedish newspaper articles that mention both organized crime and cannabis. We ask how the drug and its buyers and sellers are described, what discourses are drawn upon, and discuss the relationship between media coverage and drug policy. We analyzed recent (2021) articles from four newspapers (n = 71) through Critical Discourse Analysis. Cannabis was constructed as a commodity linked to violence and deviance. Agency was attributed to people with power and status (e.g. gang leaders), and recreational cannabis users were described as guilty of feeding organized crime. A combination of economic and moral discourses was used to make the reported events meaningful, and to motivate both prohibition and decriminalization/legalization. The study shows that assumedly neutral journalistic voices emphasized the link between cannabis and violence and problematized cannabis buyers and sellers. This homogenous media coverage will probably contribute to keep the question of cannabis law reform discursively lifeless in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses significant changes in the political rationality underpinning Sweden's official reading policy between the 1940s and 1980s. Using official inquiry reports as empirical material and drawing on a discourse analytical method, we examine policy changes regarding ideal readers (what reading should result in) and administrative practices (what policy actions could be used) and the kinds of academic knowledge that was used to justify specific measures. It is found that official reading policy ceased to be limited to distributing literature and expanded to include active reading promotion. The replacement of sociological perspectives by cognitive viewpoints as constituting knowledge is also noted. It is concluded that changes in the political rationality had consequences for how the individual reader was construed, from a subject with the potential to change society to a subject who had to adjust to society. We argue that the cultivation of readers evident in reading policy constitutes a specific technique of governance not sufficiently considered in previous cultural policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When #MeToo reached Sweden in the fall of 2017, it gave rise to nearly 80 industry-specific petitions that demanded a stop to sexual misconduct in the workplace, some with their own hashtags. This article examines the discourse of #MeToo on Twitter in Sweden in relation to these petition hashtags. Focusing on how #MeToo, petition hashtags, and other hashtags are co-articulated in Tweets, it maps the emergent network of hashtags using SNA and explores the resulting interpretative frames using discourse analysis. By co-articulating the MeToo and petition hashtags with hashtags related to Swedish politics and feminism, and by utilising the @-mention function to call out responsible politicians and industry executives, Twitter users extended the initial #MeToo frame beyond individualised problems and solutions common in connective action networks. We suggest that Twitter users utilise platform affordances to perform framing work in relation to political hashtags, not unlike framing work performed in traditional social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This study aims to identify and evaluate e-scooters' controversial reputation in Sweden. • We use a mix method approach based on a news item analysis and a quantitative survey. • The local press portrays e-scooters as a problem; there are around five negative comments for every positive one. • Users and non-users have different perceptions but are all concerned about e-scooters' safety, cost, health and eco-friendliness. • Even non-users see e-scooters as fast, convenient and pleasant services; this triad can be the basis for an image-reshaping. E-scooters, one of the most rapidly growing forms of micromobility globally, entered our cities as an innovative first and last-mile travel mode looking to complement public transit and reduce short car trips. However, there are many voices openly suggesting that e-scooters, despite representing still a very low modal share, have instead been the source of traffic accidents, transport system disruption and public space anarchy. Despite a wealth of e-scooter research appearing lately, knowledge gaps about e-scooters' current reputation and how this matches actual user and non-user perceptions do exist. Our two-phase mixed method approach means to fill in these gaps by examining the intriguing context of Sweden, a country hosting more than 30 million e-scooter trips on an annual basis but recently enforcing new stricter rules for their regulation. This paper contributes to the state of the art by contextualising the current reputation of e-scooters in Sweden through a discourse analysis of local press items and by analysing an attitudinal survey that ran in Stockholm and Gothenburg with almost equal numbers of e-scooter users and non-users. First our news item analysis identifies six reputation-defining themes: cityscape fit; traffic safety and irresponsible user behaviour; rules, regulations and exploits; business; sustainability; and convenience and concludes that e-scooters' portrayal in Sweden is very negative. There are approximately five negative comments in the press for every positive one. Our survey offers statistical evidence that there are significant differences in the evaluations of users and non-users when it comes to seven perceived e-scooter qualities (s afety; speed; eco-friendliness; cost; convenience; fun; health and wellbeing) and two policy practicalities (regulations clarity; and parking provision). Users' perceptions are always more positive from those of non-users, but they do agree with them that safety, eco-friendliness, cost, health and wellbeing are areas of concern for e-scooters. Both groups see value in enhanced regulation clarity and better parking provision. Non-users however, to some degree, do recognise that e-scooters offer fast, convenient and pleasant mobility services making this the tripole where image change and positive rebranding could start from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has dominated the global media since 2020. To a large extent, it is via the news media that the public has learned about the risks, levels of danger, governmental regulations and mandatory actions. This article highlights the subject positions constructed by the Swedish news media from January 2020 to February 2021 in reports about the pandemic. The result shows that citizens can be active-passive or solitary solidarity, these positions appeal to individual accountability, thus potentially shaping and fostering citizens in line with the Swedish government's wider response to the pandemic. The news media's images are of self-regulated citizens who govern and discipline themselves and others according to the current discourses, all of which simultaneously evoke fear, togetherness and hope. The ideological dilemmas for citizens are whether to be active-passive or, if necessary, switch to the solitary solidarity subject position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares Swedish and German social work, including policy documents, and discusses the policies of these two countries regarding the implementation of children's rights in social work practice. The analysis focuses on two main concepts that are used in social work practice: the concept of a child perspective in Sweden and the concept of participation in Germany. This study aims to investigate the ideas, values and guidelines mediated by political institutions to social workers in the field. The results showed that both the Swedish and German policy documents gave the distinct impression that the concepts had been properly implemented and formed part of child welfare practice. In the Swedish context, the idea of both making children visible and the formal aspects were highlighted, whereas in Germany, participation was related to an educational discourse. However, it is argued here that the discourses suggest that there is unequal relationship between children and adults, and we conclude that social workers must contribute to the child's status as an active subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When negotiating sensitive and taboo topics language needs to be used carefully so as not to cause offence or disrupt the interlocutors' relationship. One way to do this is through the use of vague language. In this study, we provide an in-depth, qualitative analysis of vague, euphemistic language, which may be perceived as marginally 'figurative', that is used to negotiate taboo and sensitive topics concerning culture, immigration, race and class. We use the term figurative to include metaphor and metonymy. The paper's focus is on linguistic strategies that employ content words which are in turn, ambiguously figurative, vague and de-emphasising, as well as emphatic qualifiers, and hedging signals, that distance the speaker from their words or prepare the listener for figurative language to come, as tuning devices. The data used in the study are from the METCLIL (Alejo-Gonzalez et al., 2021) corpus and comprise two classes of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) students in Sweden studying international marketing in a post-graduate program. After a detailed discourse analysis, we show how L2 users exploit the vagueness inherent in ambiguously figurative language (i.e. language that we perceive to be "on the fringes of metaphor") to discuss complex topics in a pragmatically sensitive manner in ways that expand previously established categories for VL and collapse others. • EMI L2 users employ a sophisticated combination of vague language (VL) and figurative language (FL). • This use is non-prototypical, on the "fringes" of metaphor, and provides nuance for sensitive topics. • VL and FL interact dynamically: FL may introduce VL (and vice versa) or constitute its use. • Two VL categories (de-intensifiers/vague categories) may be collapsed: both decrease tone. • L2 users can make nuanced use of language to discuss complex topics in a pragmatically sensitive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and official statistics alike identify women from racial minorities as a high-risk group for racial hate crime. Still, the construction of women in racial hate crime remains largely unstudied and the current knowledge on racial hate crime against women can at best be described as fragmentary. Therefore, aim of the present study is to explore the constructions of race and gender from the perspective of female victims of racial hate crime. The study draws on intersectional theory and consists of a discourse analysis based on nine interviews with women who have been targets of racial hate crime. The results show that the construction of race in hate crimes targeting women differs distinctively from the construction of race in hate crimes targeting men. The female victims of racial hate crime often find themselves entangled in racial power struggles between men: a power struggle in which men may show their status vis-á-vis out-group men by sexually controlling or abusing women. Thereby, women's bodies are used as a tool in racial status conflicts between groups of men, as identities, scripts, and stereotypes found primarily within conservatism and right-wing ideology are enacted on the bodies of the victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to investigate how articulations of women's relation to the welfare state and modes of political agency has changed in Sweden between 1977 and 2017; a period characterized by the introduction and implementation of a neoliberal political rationality. By way of discourse analysis, the article highlights the reciprocal relationship between the construction of the welfare state and women. To this end, it analyses the debates following two films that problematize women's relation to the welfare state, Summer Paradise (1977) and Beyond Dreams (2017). The article argues that: (a) childcare as a structuring factor for women's work is replaced by a focus on the responsibility of the individual to provide for herself; (b) gender as a structuring principle is replaced by gender as an attribute of the individual, and; (c) the relation between women and the state is individualized. As a result, the state becomes articulated as an individualized collectivity, which aims to serve the individual's self-preservation as opposed to the state being an arena for solving societal and collective problems. We argue that the neoliberal turn has changed women's political subjectivity from a focus on collective action to an atomization of agency against systemic gender inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how an Immigrant identification affects musicians’ possibilities to perform in Sweden. This is investigated through a discourse theoretical analysis of interviews with seven musicians. The analysis shows several intersections where an Immigrant identification has affected the informants’ lives and careers, hence contributed to shaping their working conditions. For example, the Immigrant identification can be related to the informants’ possibilities of being granted access to the stage. Several informants have experienced discrimination because of their appearances and as a result taken preemptive measures to fit envisioned expectations by changing name or by avoiding performing at certain music venues. The Immigrant identity is also shown to be closely connected with music genres and ideas about authenticity, which limits the availability of musical pathways. This occurs, for example, when an artist considers which genre to engage in because of how the genre relates to an Immigrant identity. The study shows that when musicians’ careers coincide with an Immigrant identification, participative conditions often prove immutable and hegemonic. There are however expressions of change and resistance toward prevailing participative conditions among the informants, but they do not perceive these conditions to be given enough attention in society or by the music industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweden is known to be one of the most gender‐equal societies in the world. Thus, it remains as an enigma why a large discrepancy continues to exist regarding the gender balance in career choice and progression in many professions. Drawing on Hirdman's (1988) theory of gendered systems, in this paper, we explore the role of career resilience in the career progression of women who choose to work in the male‐dominated IT sector. We draw attention to how the day‐to‐day process of practicing career resilience in a gendered workplace tends to evolve as women progress in their careers. Based on an interview study with 50 female IT professionals as well as a discourse analysis of 502 newspaper articles on women in this sector, we develop a process model of career resilience in gendered professions, outlining different coping strategies that allow women to develop and enhance such resilience over time. We conclude the paper by providing some practical recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns assessors' use of predictions of applicants' ability to learn when assessing admission tests for specialist music teacher education in Sweden. The data consist of stimulated-recall interviews with video-recorded admission tests as stimuli, and the analyses are based on discourse psychology with a focus on the variations, functions, and effects of the assessors' statements about learning opportunities. The results highlight several ways of talking about applicants' learnability, based on the view that learnability is a matter of teacher help, learning time, applicant age, and talent. Based on these results, learnability can be considered a selection tool, legitimised with reference to the assessors as experts able to foresee and make decisions about applicants' future development opportunities. In this sense, the test contexts can be seen as permeated by educational traditions in which discourses about learnability govern the assessors'/masters' decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on Swedish home care for older people, this article explores the discursive (re)production of home care as an institution. Equality and universal service provision have been described as defining features of the Nordic care regime. At the same time, Nordic research has highlighted a shift in social care policy, from a focus on universalism and egalitarian ideals towards a focus on freedom of choice, diversity and individualised services. This article takes as a starting point that home care for older people is formed by different and potentially conflicting ideas. We understand home care as a contested formation and define institutional change in terms of ongoing discursive struggles. The analysis draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with key informants, including politicians, local authority officials and representatives of interest organisations. Informants were engaged in policy making, implementation or advocacy related to care for older people. We examine the meanings attached to home care for older people and the analysis reveals three different discourses – on choice, needs and equality. By comparing and contrasting discourses, we reveal silences, conflicts and tensions, and highlight the politics involved in (re)creating home care as an institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Previous research has shown that migrants in Sweden are disadvantaged in terms of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). SRHR policies might play a crucial role in shaping migrants' SRHR outcomes. The purpose of the study was to critically examine: a) how migrants were represented in the discourses embedded within Swedish SRHR-related policies, and b) how migrants' SRHR-related issues were framed and addressed within these discourses. Methods: Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used to analyze a total of 54 policy documents. Following Jäger's approach to CDA, discourse strands and entanglements between different discourse strands were examined. Results: Our findings consisted of three discourse strands: 1) "Emphasizing vulnerability", 2) "Constructing otherness", and 3) "Prioritizing the structural level or the individual level?". Migrants' representation in Swedish SRHR-related policies is often associated with the concept of vulnerability, a concept that can hold negative connotations such as reinforcing social control, stigma, and disempowerment. Alongside the discourse of vulnerability, the discourse of otherness appears when framing migrants' SRHR in relation to what is defined as honor-related violence and oppression. Furthermore, migrant SRHR issues are occasionally conceptualized as structural issues, as suggested by the human rights-based approach embraced by Swedish SRHR-related policies. Relevant structural factors, namely migration laws and regulations, are omitted when addressing, for example, human trafficking and HIV/AIDS. Conclusions: We conclude that the dominant discourses favor depictions of migrants as vulnerable and as the Other. Moreover, despite the prevailing human rights-based discourse, structural factors are not always considered when framing and addressing migrants' SRHR issues. This paper calls for a critical analysis of the concept of vulnerability in relation to migrants' SRHR. It also highlights the importance of avoiding othering and paying attention to the structural factors when addressing migrants' SRHR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes lay people's use of nutritionistic discourse in written correspondence with the Swedish Food Agency, an authority responsible for dietary advice. Examining 60 food related written digital messages, we apply a critical discourse analysis to parse the lexical items and grammar people use when constructing "food" in scientific terms. The findings show how message writers place nutrients at the discursive center. Message writers' grammatical constructions instrumentalize food and eating. This is reinforced by the message writers' frequent use of terms that indicate preciseness, such as numbers and amounts. Messages therefore emphasize the what, but not the how, of eating, implying a focus on food as subject to regulation and control. As such, eating is discursively reduced to an act of ingesting nutrients that can be decontextualized and managed in isolation--as entities to increase or avoid separately. These discursive features preclude the conceptualization of food choice and eating as subjective experiences of feelings, taste, and tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare professionals have a major responsibility to protect patients from harm. Despite vast efforts to decrease the number of adverse events, the progression of patient safety has internationally been acknowledged as slow. From a social construction perspective, it has been argued that the understanding of patient safety is contextual based on historical and structural rules, and that this meaning construction points out different directions of possible patient safety actions. By focusing on fact construction and its productive and limiting effect on how something can be understood, we explored the discourses about healthcare professionals in 29 written reports of adverse events as reported by patients, relatives, and healthcare professionals. Through the analysis, a discourse about the healthcare professionals as experts was found. The expert role most dominantly included an understanding that adverse events were identified through physical signs and that patient safety could be prevented by more strictly following routines and work procedures. We drew upon the conclusion that these regimes of truth brought power to the expert discourse, to the point that it became difficult for patients and relatives to engage in patient safety actions on their terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on a study exploring how men who purchase sex in Sweden experience and navigate risk. The focus is on individual assessments of risk in relation to experiences of crime, exploitation and stigma. Based on interviews with 30 Swedish men who purchase sex, an inductive thematic analysis has been applied. The participating men had different strategies to avoid crime and exploitation and they navigated in relation to stigma when purchasing sex. Their risk assessments and conceptualizations of purchasing sex were based on own experiences and on the normative discourse on commercial sex in Sweden. Their fields of action were structured through discipline, governing and responsibilization, and they tried to distance themselves from being defined as 'sex buyers' and to purchase sex in 'good' ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to discuss the difficulties that may be encountered by the Saami truth and reconciliation commissions examining abuses against Saami indigenous peoples in Norway, Finland and Sweden. This is a significant and very recent problem, and as such, has hardly been researched in the international academia. There is rich literature on the truth and reconciliation commissions in general as well as on specific cases, but not on the Saami commissions. The research method adopted is that of legal-institutional analysis as well as content analysis of relevant literature (discourse analysis). The article examines general characteristics of truth and reconciliation commissions also from a historical-philosophical perspective supported by the developments of international law, and against this background it analyzes the establishment of Saami truth and reconciliation commissions, their regulations, functions as well as the potential difficulties. Conclusions will indicate potential benefits coming from the Commissions' work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last few years, there has been a growing concern for environmental justice within international social work. This article connects to such concerns and aims to present and discuss environmental injustices faced by local communities in Mauritius, Peru and Sweden. Primary data were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with a total of 25 key representatives of local communities in the three countries. Secondary materials were combined with the primary data in ATLAS-ti v.8.3 for a deductive critical discourse analysis. The findings describe the substantive, distributive and procedural environmental injustices faced by local communities in the three case studies. The article then considers the implications of the findings for international social work interventions in promoting environmental justice. The article concludes on the need for international social workers to continue their efforts and practices towards achieving environmental justice for all, in promoting global sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind power production is expanding globally and with this comes social resistance. In this article, we study controversies concerning the expansion of wind power in Sweden between 2009 and 2022. To this end, we study national press coverage and local press coverage from Sweden's 290 municipalities. Despite previous studies showing that Swedish people are generally in favour of expanding wind power, our results show that this policy is controversial and often is met with significant local resistance. We identify a clash between two environmental concerns: developing national policies to mitigate the effects of climate change and local opinions calling for the preservation of natural landscapes, which are often coupled with concerns about whether expansion of wind power leads to positive climate effects. We analyse national and local discourses through a multi-level governance perspective, a view that argues Sweden's market-oriented and decentralized wind power planning regime feeds the controversy. In conclusion, the dispersal of power throughout the planning system facilitates scaling up of local resistance to an energy policy issue of national concern, creating significant uncertainty about the expansion of wind power in Sweden. • Material on the debate on wind power resistance in the case of Sweden is analysed focusing on national and local actors. • A national opinion in support for wind power development is challenged by local resistance towards the same energy source. • The controversy threatens climate objectives as well as the electrification of Swedish industry and transportation sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) is an umbrella term covering a range of conditions related to prenatal alcohol exposure. In Sweden, only the most severe of these conditions, Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), is used as a medical diagnosis. The aim of this study was to analyze the Swedish discussion on whether or not FASD conditions (other than FAS) should be actively diagnosed/identified. The data consisted of a webpage material from a FASD interest organization and a report from a Swedish authority. The analysis was informed by Fairclough's critical discourse analysis and strived to pay attention to which discourses that were drawn upon, and how these discourses related to each other, and to a broader social context. The discussions on whether or not FASD should be actively diagnosed/identified were structured by three main discourses. These were: a scientific discourse, a pragmatic discourse, and an ethical discourse, with the scientific discourse taking a special position, often being present also when other discourses were drawn upon. Taken together, there is not yet any consensus around what the status of the FASD conditions should be in Sweden, neither regarding the usefulness of diagnosing/identifying, nor regarding the causality between prenatal alcohol exposure and FASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study concerns discursive mobilisations of race and racism in the Swedish debate on equality data, in the case of a controversial statement made by a Swedish Green Party MP. In March 2019, female Muslim MP Leila Ali Elmi argued publicly for introducing equality data in Sweden, in opposition to prevailing colour‐blind and antiracialist norms. Her statement was controversially formulated in terms of 'registering' people 'by race', leading to forceful criticism in the mainstream press and on social media, particularly on Twitter. In a material representing this criticism, we analyse discourse participants' argumentative strategies, focusing on mobilisations of race and racism as acts of subject positioning, performative of a moral identity. Participants positioned themselves as morally righteous, liberal antiracists by virtue of their own antiracialism (Goldberg, 2009, The threat of race. Wiley‐Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ) and colour‐blindness (Bonilla‐Silva, 2010, Racism without racists. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MA), while constructing equality data as a racist practice, and as a threat to a liberal order. They also constructed advocates of equality data, and specifically Ali Elmi herself, as being irrational race ideologues, to be morally condemned for espousing a return to racial thinking comparable to that of German Nazism or scientific racism. The findings point to the exceptional status and character of what we call a colour‐blind antiracialism in Sweden, and further show how far 'liberal arguments for illiberal ends' can go in reinforcing a moral status quo and counteracting antiracist reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: To examine how gendered discursive norms and notions of masculinity and femininity were (re)produced in professional conversations about users of long‐term municipality psychiatric care. Focus is on the staff's use of language in relation to gender constructions. Background: Psychiatric care in Sweden has undergone tremendous changes in recent decades from custodian care in large hospitals to a care mainly located in a municipal context. People who need psychiatric care services often live in supporting houses. In municipal psychiatric care, staff conduct weekly professional meetings to discuss daily matters and the users' needs. Official reports of the Swedish government have shown that staff in municipal care services treat disabled women and men differently. Studies exploring gender in relation to users of long‐term psychiatric care in municipalities have problematised the care and how staff, through language, construct users' gender. Therefore, language used by staff is a central tool for ascribing different gender identities of users. Design: The content of speech derived from audio recordings was analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. The COREQ checklist was used in this article. Results: The results indicate that by relying on gender discourses, staff create a conditional care related to how the users should demonstrate good conduct. In line with that, an overall discourse was created: Disciplined into good conduct. It was underpinned by three discourses inherent therein: The unreliable drinker and the confession, Threatened dignity, and Doing different femininities. Conclusion: The community psychiatric context generates a discourse of conduct in which staff via spoken language (re)produces gendered patterns and power imbalances as a means to manage daily work routines. Such practices of care, in which constant, nearly panoptic, control despite the intention to promote autonomy, urgently require problematising current definitions of good conduct and normality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being rated as some of the world's most gender equal countries, Sweden and neighboring Nordic nations show high rates of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW). As the news media contribute to the shaping of public attitudes, this article pursues a two-step discourse analysis of how IPVAW was represented in seven Swedish newspapers during 2018. Although an individualistic discourse on IPVAW was found to be most prevalent, articles where perpetrators were presented as non-Swedish more frequently contained a structural framing of IPVAW. This confirms previously noted tendencies toward individualization and othering of IPVAW in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to analyse how the patient is constructed and socially positioned in Swedish patient information. Corpus‐assisted critical discourse analysis methodology was utilised on a sample of 56 online patient information texts about cancer containing a total of 126,711 words. The findings show an overarching discourse of informed consent guided by specific features to produce a patient norm that we name "the reasonable patient", who is receptive to arguments, emotionally restrained and makes decisions based on information. Through the discourse of informed consent, the norm of the reasonable patient emerges, apparently to even out the imbalance of power between patient and professional, but in reality, more likely to construct a patient who is easily controlled and managed. When the self‐responsibility towards health is incorporated into the everyday domestic spaces via digital health technologies, the ideas and concepts of the patient role need to be reconsidered based on these new conditions. We conclude that it is important for nursing researchers to broaden the research on patients to include the relationship of power created through language. This study demonstrates both methodological and empirical possibilities to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how recently arrived students are positioned and position themselves in the Language Introduction Programme in upper secondary school in Sweden using a combination of position theory with nexus analysis. The material used consists of official national documents and local school documents, observations, interviews and photographs. Circulating discourses are analysed through discourses in place, historical bodies and interaction order. The analysis revealed ambiguous and conflicting discourses at the school, where students in the Language Introduction Programme are positioned both as having rights and as being deficient, lacking what is here termed Swedishness. While principals place the responsibility on students themselves to use Swedish in social situations, official documents emphasise the duty of the principals to ensure that education is relevant. Students' voices do not appear to be important, and their agency is mainly restricted to their own learning. The identities that were made possible relied on their mastery of Swedish. Conflicting discourses circulate regarding the rights of students and their weaknesses and responsibilities. The combination of these two factors may mean that students run the risk of being positioned as having few opportunities to be successful at school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Engineering education must prepare students to assume professional and ethical responsibility for the societal impacts of technology, but most engineering students do not receive adequate ethics teaching. In fact, engineering education has been described as characterized by a "culture of disengagement" in which ethical and societal concerns are constructed as different from and less important than purely technical concerns. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study explores how a culture of disengagement is discursively constructed and perpetuated in engineering education by analyzing the discursive construction of ethics and ethical reflection in an introductory engineering course in Sweden. Design/Method: The study is based on extensive ethnographic data in the form of field notes, lecture recordings, interview data, and course documents. The data are analyzed using a discourse analytic approach rooted in discourse theory. Results: The results illustrate five processes through which ethics and ethical reflection are articulated as not the responsibility of the specific field of engineering, irrelevant for the profession, of low quality and status, and not very important for the engineering degree. Conclusions: The results contribute to understanding how a culture of disengagement may be perpetuated in engineering education. The results also point toward pedagogical tools and strategies that instructors and program managers can use to construct ethics and ethical reflection as an advanced skill that is an important and integral part of engineering and engineering education—and thus better prepare future engineers to become responsible professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• There is more to genre pedagogy than the teaching learning Cycle. • Genre pedagogy in the Swedish school contexts lacks the linguistic cornerstone. • Substantial professional learning is needed to make genre pedagogy happen. In Sweden, genre pedagogy is repeatedly put forward as influential. However, there is little research on how it is understood and applied in practice. This article is an attempt to get to grips with how genre pedagogy has been recontextualised in the Swedish school context. This is done by discourse analyses of curriculum and syllabuses, a professional development programme on literacy and teacher guides claiming to draw on genre pedagogy. We conclude that the recontextualisation of genre pedagogy is a simplification, primarily focusing on the pedagogical know-how through a student-centred application of the Teaching and Learning Cycle, while knowledge about language and the underlying ideology aiming at redistributing educational capital is downplayed or absent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this study is to analyse how recurrent health hindrance themes in the firefighter discourse, identified by firefighters themselves, relate to a set of policies about diversity, preventive work and education of firefighters. The intention is further to discuss the implications of these policy initiatives and the resistance against them in terms of firefighters' health and well-being at work. Method: Firefighters from three different rescue stations in Sweden, participated in either a focus group discussion or individual interviews. Different themes in firefighter discourse that were described as hindrances to the health and well-being of firefighters were identified. A strategic sample of policy documents that relate to the very same themes was also chosen for analysis and here we combined critical discourse analysis (CDA) with critical policy analysis. Results: The health hindrance themes regarding diversity, preventive work and education that firefighters identified have in common that they relate to changes in work culture and the firefighter profession. Conclusion: In conclusion, we argue that the most important challenge for the rescue service to tackle in the future, is how to transform firefighting to be more inclusive and yet maintaining the good health and well-being that exists among the vast majority of today's firefighters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across politics and public discourse, feminism is experiencing a global renaissance. Yet feminist academic work is divided over the burgeoning use of the term, particularly in reference to economic and international development policy. For some, feminism has been co-opted for neoliberal economic ends; for others, it remains a critical force across the globe. This article explores the nascent feminist foreign policies of Sweden and Canada. Employing a discourse analysis of both states' policy documents, it asks what the term "feminist" meant in preliminary attempts at constructing a feminist foreign policy. It argues that although both use the term "feminist," they understand the term very differently, with Sweden centering it in domestic and international commitments to change, while Canada places greater emphasis on the private sector. This suggests that this policy agenda is still developing its central concepts, and is thus ripe for intervention on the part of policymakers and civil society organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: To examine how gendered discursive norms and notions of masculinity are (re)produced in professional conversations about men cared for as patients in forensic psychiatric care, with a particular focus on the centrality of language and gender. Background: During verbal handovers and ward rounds, care staff converse to share information about patients and make decisions about their mental status. Spoken language is thus a pivotal tool in verbal handovers and ward rounds, one able to reproduce discourses and gender norms. Design: Qualitative. Data collected from audio recordings of verbal handovers and ward rounds in a forensic psychiatric clinic were subjected to discourse analysis. The COREQ checklist was used. Results: While discussing patients, staff subordinated them by reproducing a discourse typical of heteronormative, family‐oriented care. The overarching discourse, which we labelled subordinated masculinities, was supported by three other discourses: being unable to take responsibility, being drug‐addicted and performing masculinity. Such discourse was identified as a disciplining practice that subordinate's patients as a means to maintain order, rules and gender norms. Conclusion: The study reveals a caring practice that position male patients as children or disabled individuals and, in that way, as subordinated other men within a context were staff reproduces a heteronormative family structured care. The process also reveals a practice were downplaying aggressive and deviant behaviour could disempower and reduce patients´ responsibility for personal actions and their possibilities to participate in their care. That finding especially seems to contradict previous findings that patients want to be able to act responsibly and, to that end, want care staff to help them. Relevance to clinical practice: Nurses need to deepen their understanding of how language (re)produces discursive norms of gender and masculinity in forensic care and that process's consequences for such care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse on the highly sensitive child as a mode of individual coming-into-being is transforming notions of good motherhood. Mothering a child is weighted with practical challenges, normative expectations, and moral implications, all of which can be accentuated when parenting a child that appears to differ from the average. How mothers address themselves to a highly sensitive child can reveal much about contemporary currents in family life. Through analysis of the online discussions in a Swedish forum, I examine mothers' discourse regarding categorization of highly sensitive children, elaboration on the behaviors that constitute this category of protean individuality, and the negotiation of motherhood norms. Three themes are identified: the way in which participants established entitlement to the application of the highly sensitive child label through a process of "enlightenment" based on observing their children and scrutinizing their own childrearing practices; discourse on the "allure" of the highly sensitive child since it depicts the children as super-normal and themselves as mothers called to the custodianship of a "different child"; and finally, how the highly sensitive child label deflects the guilt and frustration linked with handling challenging behaviors, in tension with permitting the sensitive child's self-determined development. The article suggests that the mothers' discourse reflects the intensive mothering norms of child-centered parenting that prevail in Western countries such as Sweden. Through the lens of the highly sensitive child, however, motherhood acquires new anticipatory, considerate and susceptible norms, and strategies that constitute a highly sensitive parenting style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is important in shaping professional identity, including how one approaches norms and normalisation. In the analysis presented in this study, nursing students' own constructions of norms and normality from the outlook of their education are highlighted and problematised. To deepen the understanding of these matters, the aim of this study was to explore constructions of norms and normality among students in nursing education. Students studying in a nursing department at a Swedish university college were approached and asked to consider open survey questions targeting their views on norms and normality; 154 of them replied. After a discourse analytic approach to the data, we could see how the students constructed norms and normality as (a) instrumental instructions, consisting of easy‐to‐digest statements grounded in the profession's obvious moral and ethical values, (b) limiting and frustrating obstacles for personal freedom that were important to challenge, (c) rules to be obeyed for the stability of society and (d) a matter of reflection, with each individual being responsible for understanding differences in norms, perspectives and opinions. We conclude that nursing education would benefit from norm‐critical perspectives, problematising students' own positions to norms, power and privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Environmental social work (ESW) is an approach and a perspective in social work focusing on ecological and environmental sustainability and justice within the context of sustainable development (SD). This study aims to analyse students' reflective tasks on challenges for ESW education and practice from a critical theory perspective. The purpose of this study is to discuss the implications of the findings for accelerating the implementation of SD in social work curricula. Design/methodology/approach: The research participants comprised 49 master level students from four different cohorts studying the course "Social Work and Sustainable Development" at the University of Gävle, Sweden. The sample comprised only those students who had completed at least one of the three non-mandatory reflective tasks that were set within the course. The reflective tasks of the research participants were gathered as data for this study. A qualitative methodological approach with the help of ATLAS-ti V8.4 was used to analyse the gathered data. Findings: This study discusses three primary results, which are categorised as "Being Boxed", "Safe and Saviour Sweden" and "Politics and Power". Based on the results, this study argues for a transformative and emancipatory pedagogy (TEP) in the teaching and learning of ESW to accelerate the implementation of holistic SD within the social work curriculum. Research limitations/implications: This study is mainly based on the analysis of "problematic" discourses of some of the students. The majority of the students and their respective discourses are not considered. Moreover, it would have been interesting, and probably enlightening to explore the background of the students (such as gender, ethnicity and religion) and any concomitant beliefs or prejudices (whether consciously held or otherwise) that would need to be addressed for an effective social work outcome. For ethical reasons, the background of the students was not recorded and analysed in this study. Practical implications: Based on the results, this study argues for TEP in catalysing environmentalism within the social work curricula. Social implications: Social workers have a political mandate from their professional ethics to work for the protection of the planet and for the well-being of all – including non-humans. This study therefore argues for ESW education within social work curricula in promoting SD through social work practice. Originality/value: Within the context of SD, there is a global call for social work education to shift from an anthropocentric to an eco-centric paradigm. However, ESW education is still in its infancy stage and very few universities are focusing in this particular area. This study therefore brings an important and well-needed layer of empirical evidence in considering the implications for catalysing environmentalism within the social work curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Swedish news-press, loneliness among older people is presented as a severe problem that needs to be solved. The issue of who is responsible for reducing loneliness and how this responsibility is designated is, however, rarely discussed. In this study, we have analysed how responsibility is designated and constructed in articles from the Swedish news-press. Focus has been on identifying responsibility in discourses proceeding from the concept of subject positions. This concept has enabled analysis on how responsibility is negotiated and who is positioned as a responsible actor with the ability to perform actions that reduce loneliness. Three dominating discourses were found. In the discourse of responsibility within politics and the welfare state , the responsibility is both self-taken and designated to other institutions held responsible for not initiating sufficient measures to reduce loneliness. In the discourse of responsibility within societal and evolutionary perspectives on loneliness , developments beyond the individual's control are considered to contribute to loneliness. At the same time 'we' in 'society' are considered capable of reducing loneliness, thereby constructing individuals as responsible actors. Within the discourses of responsibility within senior organisations , both senior organisations and people who participate in activities are constructed as responsible actors. In conclusion, the responsibility for reducing loneliness is, apart from the discourse on senior organisations, designated to those working with older people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a discourse analysis of French and Swedish legislative debates from 1968 to 2017, this article examines how actors challenge and reinforce dominant ideas about the link between nationality and political rights. We argue that the broader political culture influences which discursive strategies – or 'frames' – are more likely to structure parliamentary debates in different national contexts. However, our analysis also shows that legislators sometimes develop new discursive frames in which they reinterpret dominant norms to make them consistent with their views. Through this incremental process of reinterpretation and reformulation of dominant ideas, debates over non-citizen voting rights have chipped away at the link between nationality and political rights. Our findings suggest that initiatives to enfranchise non-citizens trigger lower levels of conflict when they can be framed as a policy tool for immigrant integration rather than as a matter of popular sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, the Swedish National Agency for Education introduced a new national curriculum. The curriculum contained a number of new terms. One in particular proved problematic for physical educators – complex movement. The confusion surrounding the term could be seen as somewhat unexpected since movement is and has been a central element of practically all physical education (PE) curricula. The specific aim of this paper is to identify how the discourse regarding complex movement is assembled, and by doing so, provide insights into the meaning(s) of complex movement within the context of PE policy in Sweden. Following Englund and Quennerstedt (2008), the study is framed within a Swedish curriculum theory tradition and six policy texts are examined using a discourse analytic methodology. The results suggest three different inferences of complex movement discourse: advanced with a wide meaning; context-dependent and related to sports for older pupils; and knowledge-dependent where different views about knowledge exist. From these results, three discussion points are raised related to: the diversity of possible meanings presented in policy; the connection between knowledge and understanding; and the probability of different audiences reading the texts in different ways. The paper is concluded with a consideration of the consequences of different inferences concerning complex movement and whether greater consensus is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This corpus-based study examines the widely-used discourse marker well in Chinese-speaking learners' speech and compares its frequencies in native speaker data and Swedish learners. While Swedish learners overuse well, Chinese-speaking learners (predominantly at the upper-intermediate level) significantly underuse it. The positions and functions of well are further examined using a functional framework. One-fourth of the Chinese-speaking learners who use well manipulate its positions in utterances in a similar way to native speakers. In terms of functions, well is employed for speech management much more frequently than for attitudinal purposes. The greater use of the former does not generally create negative effects, but the under-representation of the latter may suggest that Chinese-speaking learners sound too direct in certain contexts. The paper concludes by considering pedagogical implications for different first languages and proficiency levels and their possible applications to the instruction of well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assisted reproduction policies constitute a particularly interesting case for the study of child rights governance as the child here is an intended child. The child's rights are in potential conflict not with the parental, but the reproductive rights of adults. The article aims to analyse the mobilisation of the best interests of the child principle as a rhetorical resource in Swedish assisted reproduction policies and to trace the limits of governance in the name of the rights of the child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swedish media regularly indicate that people's confidence in politicians is low. This distrust in or discontent with politicians is often related to rural politics. This paper focuses on the populist tendencies in the representations of politicians in the Swedish rural press during the parliamentary election year of 2014. A discourse analysis of the press material illustrates three closely related and critical themes; politicians are regarded as being urban centred, as doing anything for power, and as acting in an autocratic manner and misusing their power. The discourse analysis also reveals how the critical press material is linked to a moral geography relating space to a specific moral order. Drawing on theories on rural populism, the article shows how the media's references to a rural‐based victimhood, and to an alleged inequality between urbanity and rurality, can morally legitimate and bluntly express their contempt for 'scandalous' politicians, and they can present their critique as rational and justified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychoactive plant khat has been "made ethnic" in Sweden, as dominant discourses have constructed its use as being exclusive to the Somali ethnic minority. The aim of this article is to analyse how representatives of Swedish-Somali civil society organisations talked through and talked back to dominant discourses about khat use. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with organisation representatives, and the material was analysed within a multi-perspectival discourse analysis framework. The interviewees described khat use as a social problem, but also acknowledged that it can offer users social support. They viewed khat use to be more common among people of Somali background living in Sweden, but tended to view associations between khat use and the Somali ethnic minority as stigmatising. Khat was commonly compared to alcohol, and those who use khat in problematic ways were described as comparable to "alcoholics" or "junkies". Interventions based on cultural competence were not suggested, as khat use was seen as related to socio-economic marginalisation. The interviewees' resistance to making khat use an ethnic problem is notable, and suggests a more complex and nuanced view of dominant discourses about khat use in the West. It also suggests problematic and stigmatising effects of one-dimensionally associating certain drugs to specific ethnic categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking a (critical) discursive psychological approach, the present study explores the identity management of the Finnish and Swedish Prime Ministers (PM) in relation to the "refugee crisis" and their countries' asylum policies. By taking a longitudinal approach and analysing the PMs' accounts of the "refugee crisis" from 1‐year period, we focused on the ways rhetorical devices related to ethos, logos, and pathos were used to manage the issues of stake and accountability, as well as on the ways in which categories were worked up to serve particular functions. Our comparative analysis demonstrated significant similarities in the Finnish and Swedish PMs' talk, especially with regard to the transfer from a discourse of pathos and ethos, describing refugees in terms of individualism and humaneness, to a discourse of logos, emphasizing rationality, justifying sharpened immigration policies, and homogenizing refugees. However, the different historical paths of the two countries' immigration policies and the specific political situation had implications for the PMs' discourse. The Swedish PM could feasibly scapegoat the Sweden Democrats and the political right in opposition, whereas the Finnish PM, with the populist radical right as a government partner, engaged more heavily in distinctions between "real, needing" and "false, undeserving" refugees. We argue for the longitudinal approach in the analysis of political discourse, as such an approach allows to identify the changes and continuities in the discourse, as well as to grasp the dialogical interplay between the discourse and its context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses identity constructions in two manual-based universal parenting training programmes in Sweden, Connect (U) and All Children in Focus (ABC). The analysis was performed with discourse analysis of oral messages during parent training courses. The findings revealed that the parents’ subject positions altered between troubled and good while the children’s subject positions altered between ambiguous and natural in a confessional discourse of uncertainty and competence. Conclusively, pastoral power operated to support parental self-reflexivity and adult control in a process to improve parenting skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore meanings of adulthood and youthfulness in relation to notions of life course, good motherhood, and girlhood among young mothers in Sweden. Our analysis was informed by a discursive psychological approach and was based on interview conversations with 17 mothers who were 13–25 years old at the birth of their first child. In our analysis, we identified two repertoires – the ‘social age’ repertoire and the ‘chronological age’ repertoire. The interviewees invoked the two repertoires to position themselves and others as either responsible adult mothers or as responsible youthful mothers. Meanings of adulthood are central within the idea of motherhood, and by deviating from their expected life course young mothers are often understood as non-adults who are incapable of fulfilling the developmental task of motherhood. Our work suggests that the maternal identity work of young mothers takes place within discourses of both adulthood and youthfulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a restructuring of Swedish healthcare in the 1990s - moving from a welfare model to one inspired by New Public Management - maternity care in Sweden is increasingly centralised to bigger towns. This has led to several units being relocated or forced to close, and to a bigger distance to maternity care for women living in smaller towns and rural areas. In the present article, I analyse the media reporting on the recent closure of the maternity ward in Sollefteå, a small town in Sweden’s northern region. Using intersectional risk theory, I explore how pregnancy-related risks are articulated in Swedish newspapers, and how such articulations relate to power and ideology. Articles from three Swedish newspapers, published during a 4-month period, have been analysed using critical discourse analysis. I conclude that the newspaper articles were most likely to stress the family as the main ‘risk victim’, while the pregnant woman was rarely the focus of risk articulations. When she was, risks were described as ‘worry’ or ‘unworthiness’, and never in medical terms. When such articulations appeared within an individualist ideological discourse, they were naturalised and as such, disconnected from the political decision to close the maternity ward. My contention is that a feminist perspective is largely missing in the media articles and that a bigger focus on the effect that maternity ward closures have for women living outside urban centres is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of care is determined not only by political decisions but also by how those policies are understood and managed by professionals when put into action. Home care services, the most common form of elder care in Sweden today, should include social support, which is very important for health and wellbeing. And yet, support for social participation seems to be lacking. Understanding prevalent social constructs and their possible impacts on focus and content of social practice in home care could reveal ways to address social support in home care. Therefore, this article highlights how professionals in home care provision talk about older home care recipients' loneliness and social needs, and how these repertoires are related to professionals' opportunities and obligations to support those social needs. The study included 22 persons from different professions in home care provision, from two municipalities in northern Sweden. Nine individual interviews and four group interviews were conducted, recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using a discourse psychology approach. The results show two interpretative repertoires in which notions of otherness and likeness guided definitions and support regarding loneliness, social needs, and social support. This study reveals assumptions that underpin and structure the practices of home care. As the interpretative repertoires provided differing and partly opposing views on how to provide social support and combat loneliness, it seems important to also address the broader issues of professional identities and how loneliness is defined and approached. • Care recipients were positioned as valued 'others', or as like any other person. • Loneliness was constructed with physical or emotional characteristics. • Social support comprised enabling capability or compensating for lack of capability. • Findings are discussed in relation to 'compassionate ageism' and 'active aging'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The aim of this study was to analyse discourses of parenting training in official inquires in Sweden that explicitly deal with the bringing up of children and parental education and how the representations of the problems and their solutions affect parental subject positions in the early welfare state and at the onset of the 21st century. Method: We carried out a discourse analysis of two public inquiries of 1947 and 2008, drawing on theories about governmentality and power regimes. Tools from political discourse analysis were used to investigate the objectives of political discourse practices. Results: Both inquiries referred to a context of change and new life demands as a problem. Concerning suggestions for solutions, there were discrepancies in parents’ estimated need of expert knowledge and in descriptions of parental capacity. In a discourse of trust and doubt, the parents in 1947 were positioned as trusted welfare partners and secure raisers of future generations, and in 2008, as doubted adults, feared to be faltering in their child-rearing tasks. Conclusions: The analysis revealed how governmental problem descriptions, reasoning about causes and suggestions of solutions influenced parents’ subject positions in a discourse of trust and doubt, and made way for governmental interventions with universal parenting training in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss how 'managerialist' and 'leaderist' discourses (O'Reilly and Reed Public Administration 88:960-978, 2010; Organization Studies 32:1079-1101, 2011) are drawn upon in the context of the deregulation of Swedish higher education. As of 2011, there has been new legislation that frames Swedish universities as 'autonomous' and transfers most of the regulative responsibilities from the government level to university vice-chancellors. The aim of this article is to inquire into how tensions within and between managerialist and leaderist discourse are handled in the promotion of New Public Management reforms and the consequences thereof in terms of how leadership in the higher education sector is constructed. We analyse how these discourses are employed in the core documents leading up to the 2010 Riksdag decision to enact most of the proposed deregulations, and the subsequent evaluation undertaken by the social democratic government that took over in 2014. Based in this analysis, we suggest that the texts indeed draw upon notions of leadership and leaders as necessary for Swedish universities to survive and thrive in the future, but that the envisaged practise of this 'strong leadership' can either be characterised as a discursive void or described in terms of de-personalised, instrumental managerial surveillance and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has often been argued that identities have a strong connection to stories and storytelling and thus that life stories should be used to individualize care for people with dementia. A problem with this view is that storytellers are seen as individuals, freely reflecting on, composing, and telling life stories. This view becomes especially problematic when persons with dementia tell stories in institutional contexts where certain information is requested and necessary for decision-making. The aim of this study is to investigate how autobiographical stories are used and what functions they have in assessment meetings involving persons with dementia. Fifteen assessment meetings were audio-recorded and transcribed. Narratives were extracted and analyzed by coding who the narrator or narrators were, what the narrator(s) accomplished by telling this story, and what the consequences were for the ongoing meeting. It was found that all interlocutors told stories about the person with dementia. These stories were found to have three functions: (1) to justify why care services were needed; (2) to describe experiences about previous care; and (3) to provide a good working climate. Thus, not all autobiographical stories are the person's story. For care managers in their everyday work it is important to be aware of this and not only be satisfied with a story that suits the organization's needs. Furthermore, stories told in assessment meetings often positioned the person as dependent on others, which could undermine the identity and sense of self of the person with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The use of traffic risk assessment questions is an understudied area in nursing research. Obstructive sleep apnoea is associated with an increased risk of traffic accidents. Therefore, traffic safety authorities demand adherent continuous positive airway pressure use. Nurses act as coaches to achieve treatment adherence, but they are also obliged to act as state agents by prohibiting obstructive sleep apnoea patients from drowsy driving. Objective To examine how nurses and obstructive sleep apnoea patients manage traffic risk assessment questions in the relation-building context of treatment initiation consultations. Methods To study, in detail, the actual practice of risk assessment, we used conversation analysis of 19 video-recorded initial treatment consultations with nurses and recently diagnosed obstructive sleep apnoea patients. Ethics The study received ethical approval from the Central Ethical Review Board in Linköping (registration number 214/231-32) and follows the ethical guidelines for qualitative research. Results Patients influence how nurses phrase questions about traffic risk by taking a stance to daytime sleepiness prior to the risk question. Nurses ask traffic risk questions in a way that assumes that driving is unproblematic if patients have not previously indicated problems. It may pose a significant problem when nurses, by accepting patients' prior stance when asking about traffic risk, orient to relationship building rather than task focus. Conclusion To clarify the difference between their two potentially conflicting roles, nurses need to refer to existing laws and official guidelines when they raise the issue of risk in treatment initiation consultations. Nurses should also ask risk assessment questions in a problem-oriented communicative environment. Traffic risk assessment is sensitive yet important, as obstructive sleep apnoea is a highly prevalent problem causing excessive sleepiness. It is essential to acknowledge nurses' double roles with regard to coaching continuous positive airway pressure treatment and assessing traffic risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]