Nordic Perspectives on the Discourse of Things

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction

   • Catharina Nyström Höög, Henrik Rahm, Gøril Thomassen Hammerstad

   Pages 1-15Open Access

3. Texts as Cultural Artefacts: Theoretical Challenges to Empirical Research on Utterances and Texts

   • Kjell Lars Berge, Per Ledin

   Pages 17-44Open Access

4. Texts Complying with Societal Pressures: Changing Genres in Finnish Companies’ CSR Reporting

   • Merja Koskela, Mona Enell-Nilsson, Cecilia Hjerppe

   Pages 45-69Open Access

5. Digital Discourse Networks: Digital Media as a Socio-material Condition for Access and Circulation

   • Jack Andersen

   Pages 71-91Open Access

6. Sheep, Watch Dogs and Wolves: How the Master in Non-Fiction Writing Formed Actors for the Field of sakprosa in Norway

   • Iben Brinch, Siri Nergaard

   Pages 93-115Open Access

7. Crisis Communication on Social Media: Informalization in the Hour-by-Hour Struggle for Information

   • Gunilla Almström Persson

   Pages 117-137Open Access

8. Concluding Remarks: The Power and Potential of the Concept Sakprosa (CPS): A Guided Tour Through Five Topoi

   • Johan Tønnesson

   Pages 139-163Open Access

9. Back Matter

   Pages 165-166

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This open access book deals with the role of written texts in an increasingly diverse and dynamic society, bringing together a series of studies anchored in the Scandinavian research tradition of sakprosa, which roughly translates as ‘subject-oriented prose’ or ‘professional communication’. The authors examine the written text’s capacity to transcend contextual boundaries, as a crucial factor in the importance of capturing and maintaining content as a manageable entity. The  chapters each deal with a text type that manages complex content in a specialized way, including genre shifting in CSR reports, discourse networks in modern digital culture, digital and social media crisis communication, and epistemic positions in non-fiction. This book is relevant to fields such as text research, professional/digital communication, discourse analysis and literacy studies, and may also be of interest to disciplines such as history, rhetoric, organization studies, media studies/journalism, and linguistics. 

• non-fictional prose
• subject-oriented prose
• professional communication
• genre analysis
• discourse analysis
• Open Access

• Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

  Catharina Nyström Höög

• Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

  Henrik Rahm

• Centre for Academic and Professional Communication, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

  Gøril Thomassen Hammerstad

Catharina Nyström Höög is Professor of Swedish at the Department for Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research interests include plain language, genre and discourse analysis, organizational discourse, stylistics and text linguistics. 

Henrik Rahm is Associate Professor in Scandinavian Languages at the Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Sweden. Examples of previous research are diachronic journalistic discourse, legitimation strategies of registered nurses and clear language. His latest research includes language use in working life, discourses of state-owned enterprises, language of accounting and ritualization of corporate annual meetings.

Gøril Thomassen Hammerstad is Professor in Applied Linguistics and Head of the Centre for Academic and Professional Communication at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. Her research interests include language and communication across a variety of professional practices.