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This paper discusses the impact of life history and everyday life in the context of training unskilled adults for social work in Denmark. It describes origins of these two texts used as empirical material: a discussion by a group of long-term unemployed skilled adult male workers who went through a 2-year training program to obtain permanent employment as wardens in a psychiatric hospital (traditionally a man's job), and an interview with a mixed gender group of adult workers in youth clubs who completed a 2-year part-time program designed to match their jobs which they kept only if they completed the training. Analysis focuses on "uncouth" outbursts of aggression--on collectively agreed statements about others that were surprising and disquieting in the relaxed, permissive context of research interview and discussion. A passage from the male group is named one of many where the perception of women becomes the discussion's theme and men speak of women who talk about women's things and do their job poorly and about oppression and humiliation of men by women. A passage of the mixed gender group interview is an example of participants' aggressive labeling of student colleagues. The verbal abuse is demonstrated to be rooted in adult students' wish for personal and societal recognition. Finally, the paper elaborates on the underlying understanding of one medium of communication--language. (Contains 42 references.) (YLB)

The relationship between life history, gender, and the discourse of modernization was examined from the perspective of a researcher with extensive experience performing evaluations about modernization within human services in Denmark. Three stories about site-based management in two human service institutionsa youth center and a boarding school for autistic childrenwere presented to illuminate fragments of the complex condition that modernization represents. One story, which was told by a female superintendent, reflects feelings of skepticism and professional pride and discusses modernization in terms of development. A second story, which was told by a male superintendent, stresses the challenges and criticism encountered during modernization. In analyzing the stories, the author explored the following themes: (1) the discourse of modernization; (2) pre-existing or interpretive narratives; (3) the notion of the dialectical, liberated, and dispersed subject and the various theoretical forms in which life histories emerge; (4) the concepts of subject and surface and their relationship to the discourse of life history and modernization; (5) fluent and fixed icons of life history; (6) lost virginity and floating space as images of modernization; and (7) rituals of passage, storytelling, imagination, and the researcher's voice. (Fourteen endnotes and 27 references are included.) (MN)

Two papers on linguistic theory are presented. The first examines the relationship between two subsystems of Danish grammar: (1) the morphology and meaning of the two passives (a morphological passive and a periphrastic passive); and (2) the word order rules and meanings attached to indefinite subjects, irrespective of voice. It is claimed that despite traditional analyses and views, these two subsystems are intimately related in their content structures. Some implications for other Scandinavian languages are also found. The second paper suggests the need for refining the concept of paradigmatic structure in functionally-oriented linguistics, with the addition of paradigms. The history of the mediopassive structure is examined to illustrate the structure-boundness of grammaticalization processes and the dynamic character of any synchronic state of a language. A structural, content-based view of grammaticality and of grammaticalization processes is proposed, with the inclusion of semantically significant word order phenomena into grammar. Each paper contains references. (MSE)

A collection of essays on European language policy, each by one or both of the authors, are: "Lessons for Europe from Language Policy in Australia"; "English Only Worldwide, or Language Ecology"; "Minority Workers or Minority Human Beings? A European Dilemma"; "Educational Language Choice--Multilingual Diversity or Monolingual Reductionism?"; "Linguicide and Linguicism"; "A Historical Outline of British Policy for the Spread of English"; "Is India Throwing Away Its Language Resources?"; reviews of two publications on language policy; reviews of Normand Labrie's "La construction linguistique de la Communaute europeenne" and Christina Bratt Paulston's "Linguistic Minorities in Multilingual Settings"; and "Language Policy," a proposed 5-year policy plan for Denmark, written in Danish. Each of the papers was written as part of a project on language policy in contemporary Europe, supported by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities. Some are papers presented at conferences worldwide, and others were written for publication. (MSE)

Problems in determining the origins of Sumerian, an ancient language, are described, and an alternative approach is examined. Sumerian was spoken in southern Iraq in the third millennium B.C. and later used by Babylonian and Assyrian scribes as a classical language. While early texts in Sumerian are considered a better reflection of the original language than are more recent texts, they offer no compelling evidence of the language's identity and the cuneiform in which they are written gives limited information about grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. The language was also linguistically isolated despite its historical importance. It is proposed that the Sumerian language may have evolved from a creole language in southern Iraq in the mid- to late fourth millennium B.C. Supporting evidence is drawn from written Sumerian text forms and from the evolution of other pidgins and creoles. Specific aspects of pidginization and creolization considered include common patterns in phonology, lexicon, sentence structure, gender and animacy, noun and nominal chain, adjectives, ergativity, verbs, and a number of minor features. Evidence of a pre-Sumerian form is also considered. This perspective is offered not as a final solution but as providing some insight into interpretation of Sumerian. (Contains 79 references.) (MSE)

This study shows that utterances ending in an extra-clausal response particle provide interesting evidence in favor of the hypothesis that theme-rheme articulation in Norwegian utterances is grammatically underdetermined. First, a review of the approach used in the study of the functions of Norwegian intonational phrasing is provided. In this approach, the concept of focus is inextricably tied to the appearance of the feature [+foc] in intonational phonology and in surface syntax. [+foc] is a property of intonational phrases (IPs) and their righthand heads, and of syntactic counterparts of IPs called focus domains. In spoken Norwegian conversation, a syntactic element tends to be focused, in the sense of being prosodically highlighted by focal phrase accent, if it is not previously activated in the discourse. From an information-structural point of view, there are two types of unactivated discourse items: there are thematic items setting the frame within which the main prediction holds, and there are rhematic items indicating what is predicted of the item that the speaker has selected as theme. The hypothesis that theme-rheme articulation in Norwegian utterances is gramatically underdetermined, as set forth in this paper, accounts for the absence of a fixed theme-rheme order in Norwegian, and for the absence of other conventional theme-marking, or rheme-marking devices, including fixed intonation contours whose partial function is to separate rheme and theme in an utterance. (VWL)

This report focuses on the communication that takes place between nurses and patients in a hospital setting. Nurses have for years been accused of talking at patients rather than talking to them. They have also been accused of using a language that patients do not know. The problem is partly a result of individual roles within the medical profession hierarchy and a specialized language. To discuss this problem, specific sections address the following: the nursing profession; communication in general; conversations in general; hospitalization conversations (between nurse and patient); and hospitals and patients. Four conversations between nurses and patients at Roskilde hospital in Denmark are analyzed, and to conclude, the results of the conversations are discussed. (VWL)

A description is provided of foreign language and related cultural education (English, French, and German) in Denmark since the 1950s. The first section gives an overview of the development of Danish society in general since the second world war, and more specifically, of developments in foreign language teaching. The second section briefly defines the humanistic and social aspects of culture in foreign language teaching. Research and debate in connection with cultural education is discussed in the third section, focusing on efforts before the 1970s, educational policy, educational strategies, and the different directions taken in the three languages concerned. The fourth section outlines the official guidelines for the languages, and the fifth presents analyses of the content and design of instructional materials used at the elementary and intermediate/advanced levels. Two subsequent sections look at recent educational and pedagogical reforms and the current teaching situation. Finally, the Danish situation is examined in relation to those of Britain, West Germany, and France. A bibliography of over 60 items, most in Danish, is included, and charts of the Danish educational system and a list of text titles are appended. (MSE)

The four articles in this issue of a series of working papers focus on the promotion of culture in foreign language instruction. The first article, "The Promotion of Culture in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden," looks at language instruction in French, English, and German in the school systems of these countries since the 1950s, and how the teaching of culture today is related to each of these countries' social histories. The second article, "The Promotion of Culture in Beginning Foreign Language Books: Newer Tendencies," discusses how textbooks and teaching materials have shifted, since the 1950s, to a cultural orientation rather than focusing just on grammar, dialogues, idioms, anecdotes, etc. The third article, "Promoting Culture, Learning Culture, and Teaching Culture," attempts to provide a clearer notion of the definition of "kulturformidlingen," the promotion or emphasis of culture, in relation to the learning and teaching of culture. The last article, "Foreign Language and Global Awareness," focuses on the role of foreign languages in the development of global awareness. (VWL)

Two studies are reported that investigated the views of Danish secondary school students studying German. The first, an observational study, revealed that the vast majority of questions Danish students posed during German lessons concerned grammar and vocabulary. The second study was a questionnaire that revealed that the Danish students were studying German for largely practical reasons. It is concluded that Danish students want more information on today's Germany, rather than its historical past or its culture, and that German instruction in Denmark needs to be more connected with the present reality of the students. (DMK)

The three papers in this publication analyze a newspaper article on "economic politics," or more specifically, the devaluing of the Danish kroner. The papers all examine some linguistic or structural feature of the language used in writing the article. Specific focus is on relevance theory and relevance in the article, the use of text analysis in looking at relevance, the function of the language used in the article, and the intention of the writing (e.g., how the writing of the article is used to shape the opinions of readers). (VWL)

Two articles highlight different issues on foreign language learning and instruction in Denmark. The first article describes a research project at Roskilde University Center that focuses on group organized and self managed foreign language acquisition. The idea for the project came about as a result of concern over problems related to foreign language instruction, such as student motivation, cuts in funding, and especially the idea that foreign language instruction is too "teacher directed." Five students, between ages 20 and 40 and of various backgrounds, participated in the project. Emphasis was on student management of language learning (e.g., students led classroom discussion while teacher acted as participant). Students read certain materials, recorded their discussion of the materials, and analyzed the recorded discussion for "correctness." Research notes and the texts used for discussion are appended. The second article looks at the status and function of foreign languages in secondary schools. The thesis for the article is the "foreign language crisis," which refers to issues such as a reduction in funding for foreign language education, and the technical and pedagogic difficulties faced by foreign languages in secondary schools. The article discusses where language instruction fits into educational planning, what the central problems are with foreign language instruction, and what resolutions there are to the foreign language crisis in secondary schools. (VWL)

Two papers on "fag(sprog)lig Kommunikation"--languages for special purposes (LSP)--are presented. The first paper, in Danish, presents an alternative to the current structuralist oriented approach to the analysis of LSP as a kind of language in its own right and of texts written in this special kind of language. The approach is based on a more socio-pragmatic theory of communication. An attempt to illustrate the extreme complexity of the LSP communication context and the nature of factors and relationships involved in this type of communication situation are presented in a communication model. The second paper, in English, takes a closer look at one specific aspect of the communication model developed in the first paper, namely the problem of cognitive understanding. Communication strategies employed in a selection of Danish scientific texts are analyzed to illustrate some of the ways that cognitive understanding can be achieved. (VWL)

The purpose of this report is to present work done in the language module projects of the English and German degrees at Roskilde University Center (Denmark). Project work is the essential structuring ingredient of foreign language degrees at the Center. The collection of papers included in this issue attempts to provide information on what has been done in the past at Roskilde University Center. Some students of English and German who have recently completed projects were invited to describe their project work in the form of an article. Each of the articles in this publication gives an in-depth description of what methods were used. The introductory article describes the regulations under which the center operates, and summarizes other projects, so as to present a broader picture of the kinds of topics that have appealed to students. The first article gives an account of the role of schooling in the revival of Irish (Annette Storgaard Jorgensen). The second article, in Danish, describes a study of four female learners of German (Merete Andersen, Esther Gamborg). The third article, "Contra-Reagan," is a discourse analysis of a televised speech of Ronald Reagan's (Mikael Klintorp). (JL)

This study focuses on how different error correction techniques are used in the foreign language classroom. In evaluating these techniques, one specific approach is suggested for classroom use. In this particular approach, the instructor bases his intervention on interpreting the student's current mental state of awareness on a case by case basis. It is suggested that the teacher should not intervene in the student's processing of language if such intervention causes the student to lose concentration in the ongoing production of language. (JC)

This report describes a seminar at Roskilde University Center (Denmark) on project work in foreign languages, which brought together language teachers and theorists from different schools, including universities, business schools, technical schools, merchants schools, and high schools, to discuss their experiences with project work in foreign language instruction. After an introduction, three sections address the experiences of project work at three different schools (two technical schools and one merchants school), and the final section includes excerpts from the closing session of the seminar. (VWL)

The first paper focuses on the study of British working class speech, and highlights research on the topic. It is suggested that a culture is identified through its organizing concept, and that it is necessary to determine how far culture is linguistic. The conclusion is drawn that it is not possible to make fundamental correlations between elements of language and society; language must be considered as a system with its own differential rules. Working class speech does not constitute a totality or express the spirit of the working class itself. It is necessary to consider how class identities are constructed, discursively, by the positioning of subjects within discursive practices. The second paper discusses some of the prerequisites for the construction of a sociolinguistic theory. The goal of such a theory would be a systematic, predictive explanation for the conditions that account for socially motivated differences in language. The establishment of terminology--one of the prerequisites for the theory--is illustrated in the definition of the relationship between "Dialect" and "Standard." Further subcomponents in sociolinguistic theory are proposed, along with the Dialect/Standard dichotomy, in terms of the requirements of the modern workplace. (JC)

Patterns in the speech behavior of women were examined in a number of mixed-sex and single-sex television interviews and discussions, focusing on response to male dominance. Common properties of women's speech style are attributed to their need to respond to the requirements of conversation with men and ensure conversational survival, and are seen as conversational competencies. These properties, which include turn-taking and joining responses, deferential behavior, personal or semantic reference, protecting the opponent from loss of face, and making the opponent's response or agreement easier, are discussed as they occurred in mixed-sex and single-sex conversations and in conversations between individuals of different status, age, or political position. It is proposed that analysis of the patterns occurring in mixed-sex conversations can serve to make speakers aware of the male domination of discourse, and analysis of women's conversations can make women more aware of their competence, both processes rupturing the patriarchal quality of discourse. (MSE)