Sosiale roller og lokale og globale interesser i vurderingen av språksituasjoner

Kommer det samiske språket til å dø ut? Trusler mot det språklige mangfoldet og mulig språkdød er hyppig diskutert i det flerspråklige Nord-Norge. Deltakere i denne diskursen er talere, lokale aktører, forskere og fageksperter, statlige myndigheter, politikere og glo­bale organisasjoner som UNESCO. Denne studien tar utgangspunkt i tre ulike vurde­ringer av den samiske språksituasjonen og språkenes fremtidsperspektiver som ble presen­tert i forskjellige medietekster. Tekstanalysen viser hvordan disse representasjo­nene av språksituasjonen involverer ulike sosiale roller og rollesett, og hvordan evalue­ringene påvirkes av disse. Operasjonaliseringen av rollesett i diskursen kan innebære konflikter mellom ulike interesser og effekter i kommunikasjonsprosessen, blant annet mellom globale og lokale perspektiver. Analysen viser at det er viktig å betrakte den diskursive konstruksjonen av trusler og varsler om truende språkdød i lyset av de ulike sosiale rollene og interessene som på ulike nivå deltar i å lage diskursen

Sosiale roller og lokale og globale interesser i vurderingen av språksituasjoner

Kommer det samiske språket til å dø ut? Trusler mot det språklige mangfoldet og mulig språkdød er hyppig diskutert i det flerspråklige Nord-Norge. Deltakere i denne diskursen er talere, lokale aktører, forskere og fageksperter, statlige myndigheter, politikere og glo­bale organisasjoner som UNESCO. Denne studien tar utgangspunkt i tre ulike vurde­ringer av den samiske språksituasjonen og språkenes fremtidsperspektiver som ble presen­tert i forskjellige medietekster. Tekstanalysen viser hvordan disse representasjo­nene av språksituasjonen involverer ulike sosiale roller og rollesett, og hvordan evalue­ringene påvirkes av disse. Operasjonaliseringen av rollesett i diskursen kan innebære konflikter mellom ulike interesser og effekter i kommunikasjonsprosessen, blant annet mellom globale og lokale perspektiver. Analysen viser at det er viktig å betrakte den diskursive konstruksjonen av trusler og varsler om truende språkdød i lyset av de ulike sosiale rollene og interessene som på ulike nivå deltar i å lage diskursen

Learnings from/about diversity in space and time: discursive constructions in the semiotic landscape of a teacher education building in Norway

This article critically examines the discourses concerning historical and transnational linguistic and cultural diversity in the semiotic landscape of a new teacher education building in Norway. In 2020, this building, housing the Department of Education, opened at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, in the city of Tromsø. Designing, constructing, and decorating a new building for a national teacher education was taken as an opportunity to reflect on and negotiate the institution’s role in relevant contemporary, as well as historical, educational discourses and to mark a current standpoint. Taking a nexus analytical approach, we analyse how linguistic and cultural diversity are represented in the department’s public space and how this is interwoven with the construction of the institution’s position in a multilingual and multicultural environment. Our analysis shows that this diversity is constructed through various contrasts. Sámi identities and regional roots of knowledge are emphasised in the official part of the semiotic landscape – framed as learnings from diversity. However, by analysing meta-sociolinguistic discourses about diversity, we show that this is accompanied by the erasure of other aspects of linguistic and cultural diversity, in particular Kven culture and identity, transnational diversity, and children and their lifeworld

MHC I Stabilizing Potential of Computer-Designed Octapeptides

Experimental results are presented for 180 in silico designed octapeptide sequences and their stabilizing effects on the major histocompatibility class I molecule H-2Kb. Peptide sequence design was accomplished by a combination of an ant colony optimization algorithm with artificial neural network classifiers. Experimental tests yielded nine H-2Kb stabilizing and 171 nonstabilizing peptides. 28 among the nonstabilizing octapeptides contain canonical motif residues known to be favorable for MHC I stabilization. For characterization of the area covered by stabilizing and non-stabilizing octapeptides in sequence space, we visualized the distribution of 100,603 octapeptides using a self-organizing map. The experimental results present evidence that the canonical sequence motives of the SYFPEITHI database on their own are insufficient for predicting MHC I protein stabilization

Tumour-Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TILs) and PD-L1 Expression Correlate with Lymph Node Metastasis, High-Grade Transformation and Shorter Metastasis-Free Survival in Patients with Acinic Cell Carcinoma (AciCC) of the Salivary Glands

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the number of tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and the expression of Programmed Cell Death 1 Ligand 1 (PD-L1) in Acinic Cell Carcinoma (AciCC) of the salivary glands, to enable a correlation with clinico-pathological features and to analyse their prognostic impact. Methods: This single centre retrospective study represents a cohort of 36 primary AciCCs with long-term clinical follow-up. Immunohistochemically defined immune cell subtypes, i.e., those expressing T-cell markers (CD3, CD4 and CD8) or a B-cell marker (CD20) were characterized on tumour tissue sections. The number of TILs was quantitatively evaluated using software for digital bioimage analysis (QuPath). PD-L1 expression on the tumour cells and on immune cells was assessed immunohistochemically employing established scoring criteria: tumour proportion score (TPS), Ventana immune cell score (IC-Score) and combined positive score (CPS). Results: Higher numbers of tumour-infiltrating T- and B-lymphocytes were significantly associated with high-grade transformation. Furthermore, higher counts of T-lymphocytes correlated with node-positive disease. There was a significant correlation between higher levels of PD-L1 expression and lymph node metastases as well as the occurrence of high-grade transformation. Moreover, PD-L1 CPS was associated with poor prognosis regarding metastasis-free survival (p = 0.049). Conclusions: The current study is the first to demonstrate an association between PD-L1 expression and lymph node metastases as well as grading in AciCCs. In conclusion, increased immune cell infiltration of T and B cells as well as higher levels of PD-L1 expression in AciCC in association with high-grade transformation, lymph node metastasis and unfavourable prognosis suggests a relevant interaction between tumour cells and immune cell infiltrates in a subset of AciCCs, and might represent a rationale for immune checkpoint inhibition

The Plasmodium Export Element Revisited

We performed a bioinformatical analysis of protein export elements (PEXEL) in the putative proteome of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. A protein family-specific conservation of physicochemical residue profiles was found for PEXEL-flanking sequence regions. We demonstrate that the family members can be clustered based on the flanking regions only and display characteristic hydrophobicity patterns. This raises the possibility that the flanking regions may contain additional information for a family-specific role of PEXEL. We further show that signal peptide cleavage results in a positional alignment of PEXEL from both proteins with, and without, a signal peptide

“The working language is Norwegian. Not that this means anything, it seems”: when expectations meet the new multilingual reality

Linguistic and cultural diversity in Northern Norwegian working life has increased dramatically in the twenty-first century. Based on a series of telephone interviews with company representatives, this article presents an overview of the new multilingual reality in many workplaces and analyzes how managers and administrators position their expectations and experiences of it. Participants’ responses suggest that many workplaces are linguistically segregated. Though most participants said their companies did not have explicit workplace language policies, they expressed clear perceptions of how things should be in their workplaces, and these were often in conflict with their descriptions of the status quo. We also show how multiple contextual conditions in and out of workplaces, both ideological and practical, informed participants’ accounts of multilingual practices in their workplaces. Static and normative ideological positions are challenged by employees’ language choices, practices, and developments on a societal level, particularly those of the labour market, which regulates companies’ access to workers. Our study reveals the need for applicable knowledge about multilingual practices and sociolinguistic relations in workplaces

Sosiale roller og lokale og globale interesser i vurderingen av språksituasjoner

Kommer det samiske språket til å dø ut? Trusler mot det språklige mangfoldet og mulig språkdød er hyppig diskutert i det flerspråklige Nord-Norge. Deltakere i denne diskursen er talere, lokale aktører, forskere og fageksperter, statlige myndigheter, politikere og glo­bale organisasjoner som UNESCO. Denne studien tar utgangspunkt i tre ulike vurde­ringer av den samiske språksituasjonen og språkenes fremtidsperspektiver som ble presen­tert i forskjellige medietekster. Tekstanalysen viser hvordan disse representasjo­nene av språksituasjonen involverer ulike sosiale roller og rollesett, og hvordan evalue­ringene påvirkes av disse. Operasjonaliseringen av rollesett i diskursen kan innebære konflikter mellom ulike interesser og effekter i kommunikasjonsprosessen, blant annet mellom globale og lokale perspektiver. Analysen viser at det er viktig å betrakte den diskursive konstruksjonen av trusler og varsler om truende språkdød i lyset av de ulike sosiale rollene og interessene som på ulike nivå deltar i å lage diskursen

Workplace Multilingualism in Shifting Contexts: A Historical Case

This article investigates linguistic diversity, migration, and labour in the case of a nineteenth-century copper mine in the multilingual northern periphery of Norway. Taking a historical perspective on workplace multilingualism, it reveals the dynamic relationships between the economic interests and policy-making of an industrial enterprise and the political and sociolinguistic development in a multilingual region, at a time when national authorities introduced assimilation policies. Owned and managed by British industrialists, the mine recruited almost exclusively migrant workers to a remote fjord in the Norwegian periphery, many of them Kven from northern Finland and Sweden. In a multi-layered approach, the study sketches multilingual work practices, policy-making, and the discursive positioning of diversity, and explores the company's management of the relationships between capital, community, and nation-state. It reveals the company's flexible approach towards diversity governed by economic interest

Tromsø som samisk by? – Språkideologier og medienes rolle i språkdebatten

This article presents a critical analysis of the discursive practices in the public debate on Sámi language in Tromsø. The conflict around the political plan of Tromsø municipality to join the administrative area for the Sámi language lasted for about one year and was largely carried out in the local newspapers, which had established themselves as an arena and broker in the conflict. The focus of this study is, on the one hand, on the role of the media in the debate and, on the other hand, on the socially constructed relations between Sámi and Norwegian language and social meanings, which get expressed in a highly ideological picture of language and local identity and form the ground for the language conflict. The analytic strategy is twofold: as a first step, the study focuses on the reproduction of language ideologies in letters to the editor and readers’ contributions to the local papers’ discussion pages. The identification of the three semiotic processes of iconization (rhematization), fractal recursivity, and erasure reveals how the writers’ expressions of opinion are anchored in a language ideology that connects Sámi language with certain social values and ignores a larger linguistic and cultural diversity in the town of Tromsø. As a second step, the analysis explores the journalistic treatment of the multitude of conflicting voices in the debate and critically sheds light on the construction of a journalistic voice. Although the journalists claim to construe a seemingly neutral ground for their reports (or independent comments), the analysis shows that journalists use the representation of various voices in their texts to construe a positioned, evaluating, and ideologically anchored journalistic voice. In face of the highly ideological character of the language debate in Tromsø, I argue that local journalism has failed in countering the ideological picture of language and society through information and independent journalism