Martha Sif Karrebæk
Biographic Data
| ID | 200356 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martha Sif Karrebæk |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martha Sif |
| FAMILY NAME | Karrebæk |
| SIGNATURE | KARREBÆK M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7742-3077 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 133 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
National healthcare under pressure
This article examines the interaction between the welfare state and the nation state in Danish parliamentary politicians’ discourse on migrants. The focus is on public healthcare. Drawing on Critical Sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, we look at two debates in the parliamentary health committee, and we examine how the two categories of migrants patients and doctors are represented discursively. We show that migrant patients are por…
The language of smoked fish
Recently, the Danish island of Bornholm has earned international fame for its food. In this article, we analyze how the meaning and value of the phenomenon of 'Bornholmian food' is transmitted and transformed through discursive processes, moving from the island to other locations. Through analysis of photos and audio-recordings from Bornholmian restaurants on Bornholm, in Copenhagen, and in Brooklyn, New York, we focus on recurring elements and n…
No puedes hablar ahora
In interpreter-mediated encounters, one participant's contributions are multivoiced, other participants' contributions are collectively produced, as the interpreter mediates their words. It is interesting what mediation does to their voice, and even more relevant if participants speak in ways deviating from local norms. This paper offers a case study of an interpreter-mediated court meeting. I discuss how a courtroom interpreter handles the accus…
Chaos in court
This paper discusses a disturbance to the Danish legal system, a cornerstone in the state of law. We focus on 'expressions of upset' during a reorganization of Danish legal interpreting, which was followed closely by the Danish media. We analyze these expressions as 'communicative uptakes' and we discuss how they made different elements of the interpreting affair salient. The elements include assumptions about what legal interpreting is or should…
Interpreting as creating a potential for understanding
According to a widespread norm among legal representatives, legal interpreters should translate verbatim, or at least as close to the source utterance as possible. Yet, sociolinguists have shown repeatedly that the absence of verbatim translation is not inherently problematic. Differences between source utterances and their translations may in fact facilitate understanding. On the basis of a corpus of audio-recordings from a court in Denmark, we …
Pigs and Pork in Denmark
This article engages with contemporary meaning and meaning changes within the porcine semantic field in Denmark. More specifically, I argue that pork is acquiring the meaning of Danishness. Analytically, I focus on the relation between language usage in different settings and on how situational usage relates to nationwide, mediatized discourses. The porcine field lends itself readily to such analyses, as pork has been the center of much political…
L’interprétation d’informations implicites. Le cas de la requête de recours à la visioconférence dans les audiences préliminaires danoises
Dans cet article, nous analysons des interactions interprétées dans un tribunal de première instance au Danemark. Nous employons une approche sociolinguistique interactionnelle et nous focalisons sur une séquence récurrente, où certaines informations ne sont pas explicitement adressées par le procureur, probablement parce qu’elles peuvent être inférées par les représentants institutionnels, mais sont inconnues du prévenu. Les interprètes font des…
Language ideologies, the soft g, and parody in the Turkish mother tongue classroom
Although not often discussed, complementary (‘mother tongue’) classrooms comprise participants who differ substantially in a number of ways. Differences comprise, e.g. participants’ orientations to and understandings of the indexicalities of linguistic registers, which may have been brought along from the presupposed country of origin. It has local consequences when students and teacher do not share normative models, and students refuse the teach…
The illusion or the truth?' - Back stage constructions of authenticity in an up-market restaurant
Mother tongue instruction in Sweden and Denmark
This article investigates mother tongue instruction (MTI) in Sweden and Denmark in a historical, comparative perspective, with a view to accounting for key differences in language policy enacted in educational fields. Whereas in Sweden, MTI is offered to linguistic minority children irrespective of their linguistic and ethnic backgrounds, in Denmark the right to state-sponsored MTI has been abolished for children of non-European descent. Moreover…
Food and Language
We interrogate the many ways that language and food intersect. Food and its uses provide setting and structure for language, just as language and its uses constrain and inform food activities. We illuminate where and how food and language co-occur and how they are dynamically co-constitutive, foregrounding the potential for food-and-language scholarship to contribute to understandings of political economic processes and structures. We organize ou…
The very sensitive question
This paper engages with ideological difference, education, and expressions of insecurity on the basis of a year-long ethnographic fieldwork in two Farsi heritage language classrooms and the group of Iranian immigrants organized around these classrooms in Copenhagen, Denmark. We show how insecurity and surveillance gave meaning to different space-times, or chronotopes ( Bakhtin 1981 ), evoked by the participants, and to the understandings of commu…
Thai veggies and hair removal products
This contribution investigates practices of meaning making in an urban greengrocery in Copenhagen. It deploys audio-recordings, small-scale ethnographic fieldwork and pictures as data. The paper argues that diversity is treated as an everyday condition, and conviviality as a communicative norm. Analytically, it focuses on the way that space, objects and language are all used as resources by participants. A particular focus is put on space, which …
Punjabi at heart
Pure' Farsi and political sensitivities
This paper presents an insight into two Farsi complementary language classrooms in Copenhagen, Denmark, characterised by political sensitivities. We illustrate a number of characteristic features of the classrooms concerning language use, pedagogical methods and cultural phenomena, which were related to key adults' preferences, and we consider possible interpretations of them as indexical signs. In particular, we emphasise ideological interpretat…
Rye bread and halal
Lasagna for Breakfast
This article examines socialization into healthy food practices in a culturally heterogeneous kindergarten class in Denmark. The study uses linguistic ethnography, an interpretive research approach in which ethnography is combined with micro-analysis of interactional sequences, and both dimensions are compared with macro-social issues. “Healthy food” and “healthy eating practices” are categories embedded in a particular cultural understanding but…
Don't speak like that to her
It is of general interest to the study of language in society how ideologies motivating linguistic hegemony get formulated in the context of increasing diversity. This includes if and how linguistic diversity surfaces under conditions that are clearly disfavouring it, and why or why not it happens. Also, we need to know how ideologies of language surface at the micro-level, and how they are continuously passed on, shared, negotiated or contested.…
What's in Your Lunch Box Today
Much socialization of children into healthy food practices takes place in the educational system. However, teachers' understandings of healthy food may differ from those of students and parents. Furthermore, health is connected to respectability. Thus, food socialization concerns more than nutritional values. This study examines lunchtime interactions between minority students and majority teachers in a Danish classroom. I show that certain tradi…
It farts
Iconicity and structure in codeswitching
With a functional grammatical approach this paper explores how codeswitching data manifest iconicity and structure. Codeswitching is here considered a linguistic mode, and thus a semiotic process. The objective is to place codeswitching within language as such, that is as a systematic, linguistic phenomenon which participates functionally in the grammatical structuring of linguistic constructions. Data comprise Turkish-Danish bilingual teenagers'…
What's in Your Lunch Box Today
Much socialization of children into healthy food practices takes place in the educational system. However, teachers' understandings of healthy food may differ from those of students and parents. Furthermore, health is connected to respectability. Thus, food socialization concerns more than nutritional values. This study examines lunchtime interactions between minority students and majority teachers in a Danish classroom. I show that certain tradi…
Mother tongue instruction in Sweden and Denmark
This article investigates mother tongue instruction (MTI) in Sweden and Denmark in a historical, comparative perspective, with a view to accounting for key differences in language policy enacted in educational fields. Whereas in Sweden, MTI is offered to linguistic minority children irrespective of their linguistic and ethnic backgrounds, in Denmark the right to state-sponsored MTI has been abolished for children of non-European descent. Moreover…
Food and Language
We interrogate the many ways that language and food intersect. Food and its uses provide setting and structure for language, just as language and its uses constrain and inform food activities. We illuminate where and how food and language co-occur and how they are dynamically co-constitutive, foregrounding the potential for food-and-language scholarship to contribute to understandings of political economic processes and structures. We organize ou…
Don't speak like that to her
It is of general interest to the study of language in society how ideologies motivating linguistic hegemony get formulated in the context of increasing diversity. This includes if and how linguistic diversity surfaces under conditions that are clearly disfavouring it, and why or why not it happens. Also, we need to know how ideologies of language surface at the micro-level, and how they are continuously passed on, shared, negotiated or contested.…
Pure' Farsi and political sensitivities
This paper presents an insight into two Farsi complementary language classrooms in Copenhagen, Denmark, characterised by political sensitivities. We illustrate a number of characteristic features of the classrooms concerning language use, pedagogical methods and cultural phenomena, which were related to key adults' preferences, and we consider possible interpretations of them as indexical signs. In particular, we emphasise ideological interpretat…
Rye bread and halal
The illusion or the truth?' - Back stage constructions of authenticity in an up-market restaurant
Lasagna for Breakfast
This article examines socialization into healthy food practices in a culturally heterogeneous kindergarten class in Denmark. The study uses linguistic ethnography, an interpretive research approach in which ethnography is combined with micro-analysis of interactional sequences, and both dimensions are compared with macro-social issues. “Healthy food” and “healthy eating practices” are categories embedded in a particular cultural understanding but…
It farts
Pigs and Pork in Denmark
This article engages with contemporary meaning and meaning changes within the porcine semantic field in Denmark. More specifically, I argue that pork is acquiring the meaning of Danishness. Analytically, I focus on the relation between language usage in different settings and on how situational usage relates to nationwide, mediatized discourses. The porcine field lends itself readily to such analyses, as pork has been the center of much political…
Thai veggies and hair removal products
This contribution investigates practices of meaning making in an urban greengrocery in Copenhagen. It deploys audio-recordings, small-scale ethnographic fieldwork and pictures as data. The paper argues that diversity is treated as an everyday condition, and conviviality as a communicative norm. Analytically, it focuses on the way that space, objects and language are all used as resources by participants. A particular focus is put on space, which …
The language of smoked fish
Recently, the Danish island of Bornholm has earned international fame for its food. In this article, we analyze how the meaning and value of the phenomenon of 'Bornholmian food' is transmitted and transformed through discursive processes, moving from the island to other locations. Through analysis of photos and audio-recordings from Bornholmian restaurants on Bornholm, in Copenhagen, and in Brooklyn, New York, we focus on recurring elements and n…
Punjabi at heart
Iconicity and structure in codeswitching
With a functional grammatical approach this paper explores how codeswitching data manifest iconicity and structure. Codeswitching is here considered a linguistic mode, and thus a semiotic process. The objective is to place codeswitching within language as such, that is as a systematic, linguistic phenomenon which participates functionally in the grammatical structuring of linguistic constructions. Data comprise Turkish-Danish bilingual teenagers'…
It farts
What's in Your Lunch Box Today
Much socialization of children into healthy food practices takes place in the educational system. However, teachers' understandings of healthy food may differ from those of students and parents. Furthermore, health is connected to respectability. Thus, food socialization concerns more than nutritional values. This study examines lunchtime interactions between minority students and majority teachers in a Danish classroom. I show that certain tradi…
Lasagna for Breakfast
This article examines socialization into healthy food practices in a culturally heterogeneous kindergarten class in Denmark. The study uses linguistic ethnography, an interpretive research approach in which ethnography is combined with micro-analysis of interactional sequences, and both dimensions are compared with macro-social issues. “Healthy food” and “healthy eating practices” are categories embedded in a particular cultural understanding but…
Don't speak like that to her
It is of general interest to the study of language in society how ideologies motivating linguistic hegemony get formulated in the context of increasing diversity. This includes if and how linguistic diversity surfaces under conditions that are clearly disfavouring it, and why or why not it happens. Also, we need to know how ideologies of language surface at the micro-level, and how they are continuously passed on, shared, negotiated or contested.…
Rye bread and halal
Punjabi at heart
Pure' Farsi and political sensitivities
This paper presents an insight into two Farsi complementary language classrooms in Copenhagen, Denmark, characterised by political sensitivities. We illustrate a number of characteristic features of the classrooms concerning language use, pedagogical methods and cultural phenomena, which were related to key adults' preferences, and we consider possible interpretations of them as indexical signs. In particular, we emphasise ideological interpretat…
The very sensitive question
This paper engages with ideological difference, education, and expressions of insecurity on the basis of a year-long ethnographic fieldwork in two Farsi heritage language classrooms and the group of Iranian immigrants organized around these classrooms in Copenhagen, Denmark. We show how insecurity and surveillance gave meaning to different space-times, or chronotopes ( Bakhtin 1981 ), evoked by the participants, and to the understandings of commu…
Thai veggies and hair removal products
This contribution investigates practices of meaning making in an urban greengrocery in Copenhagen. It deploys audio-recordings, small-scale ethnographic fieldwork and pictures as data. The paper argues that diversity is treated as an everyday condition, and conviviality as a communicative norm. Analytically, it focuses on the way that space, objects and language are all used as resources by participants. A particular focus is put on space, which …
Mother tongue instruction in Sweden and Denmark
This article investigates mother tongue instruction (MTI) in Sweden and Denmark in a historical, comparative perspective, with a view to accounting for key differences in language policy enacted in educational fields. Whereas in Sweden, MTI is offered to linguistic minority children irrespective of their linguistic and ethnic backgrounds, in Denmark the right to state-sponsored MTI has been abolished for children of non-European descent. Moreover…
Food and Language
We interrogate the many ways that language and food intersect. Food and its uses provide setting and structure for language, just as language and its uses constrain and inform food activities. We illuminate where and how food and language co-occur and how they are dynamically co-constitutive, foregrounding the potential for food-and-language scholarship to contribute to understandings of political economic processes and structures. We organize ou…
Language ideologies, the soft g, and parody in the Turkish mother tongue classroom
Although not often discussed, complementary (‘mother tongue’) classrooms comprise participants who differ substantially in a number of ways. Differences comprise, e.g. participants’ orientations to and understandings of the indexicalities of linguistic registers, which may have been brought along from the presupposed country of origin. It has local consequences when students and teacher do not share normative models, and students refuse the teach…
The illusion or the truth?' - Back stage constructions of authenticity in an up-market restaurant
Interpreting as creating a potential for understanding
According to a widespread norm among legal representatives, legal interpreters should translate verbatim, or at least as close to the source utterance as possible. Yet, sociolinguists have shown repeatedly that the absence of verbatim translation is not inherently problematic. Differences between source utterances and their translations may in fact facilitate understanding. On the basis of a corpus of audio-recordings from a court in Denmark, we …
Pigs and Pork in Denmark
This article engages with contemporary meaning and meaning changes within the porcine semantic field in Denmark. More specifically, I argue that pork is acquiring the meaning of Danishness. Analytically, I focus on the relation between language usage in different settings and on how situational usage relates to nationwide, mediatized discourses. The porcine field lends itself readily to such analyses, as pork has been the center of much political…
L’interprétation d’informations implicites. Le cas de la requête de recours à la visioconférence dans les audiences préliminaires danoises
Dans cet article, nous analysons des interactions interprétées dans un tribunal de première instance au Danemark. Nous employons une approche sociolinguistique interactionnelle et nous focalisons sur une séquence récurrente, où certaines informations ne sont pas explicitement adressées par le procureur, probablement parce qu’elles peuvent être inférées par les représentants institutionnels, mais sont inconnues du prévenu. Les interprètes font des…
Chaos in court
This paper discusses a disturbance to the Danish legal system, a cornerstone in the state of law. We focus on 'expressions of upset' during a reorganization of Danish legal interpreting, which was followed closely by the Danish media. We analyze these expressions as 'communicative uptakes' and we discuss how they made different elements of the interpreting affair salient. The elements include assumptions about what legal interpreting is or should…
No puedes hablar ahora
In interpreter-mediated encounters, one participant's contributions are multivoiced, other participants' contributions are collectively produced, as the interpreter mediates their words. It is interesting what mediation does to their voice, and even more relevant if participants speak in ways deviating from local norms. This paper offers a case study of an interpreter-mediated court meeting. I discuss how a courtroom interpreter handles the accus…
The language of smoked fish
Recently, the Danish island of Bornholm has earned international fame for its food. In this article, we analyze how the meaning and value of the phenomenon of 'Bornholmian food' is transmitted and transformed through discursive processes, moving from the island to other locations. Through analysis of photos and audio-recordings from Bornholmian restaurants on Bornholm, in Copenhagen, and in Brooklyn, New York, we focus on recurring elements and n…
National healthcare under pressure
This article examines the interaction between the welfare state and the nation state in Danish parliamentary politicians’ discourse on migrants. The focus is on public healthcare. Drawing on Critical Sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, we look at two debates in the parliamentary health committee, and we examine how the two categories of migrants patients and doctors are represented discursively. We show that migrant patients are por…
Sociology (15 works) · Linguistics (14 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (14 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (7 works) · Culinary Culture and Tourism (6 works) · Law (6 works)