Søren Sandager Sørensen

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Fuck syntax and fucking syntax in the borrowing of swearwords for assessments in Danish. Nordic Journal of Linguistics. ISSN 0332-5865. 48(2), s. 164–188. doi: 10.1017/s033258652510053x. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article examines the use of "fuck" and "fucking" in Danish, with a focus on their interactional functions for assessing. Data consist of 76 cases found in informal Danish conversations, analyzed within the framework of Interactional Linguistics. "Fuck" functions as a reactive interjection that prefaces various types of clauses. However, "fuck" followed by a copula clause develops an assessment out of a telling. Followed by "hvor" ‘how’ and an adjective, "fuck" performs agreeing assessment. "Hvad fuck" ‘what the fuck’ may occur in questions. "Fucking" is commonly used in copula clause assessments but also within noun phrases when no response is elicited. The study concludes that the use of "fuck" and "fucking" in Danish differs from their use in English, but also from the Danish swearword "fanden" ‘the devil, damn’. The conclusions indicate that interactional functions and constructions are an important factor for understanding the pragmatics of borrowing and swearing.

• Steensig, Jakob; Jørgensen, Maria; Lindström, Jan; Suomalainen, Karita & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Discussion: Where are we now and what are the next steps toward an Interactional Grammar? I Steensig, Jakob; Jørgensen, Maria; Lindström, Jan; Mikkelsen, Nicholas; Suomalainen, Karita & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (Red.), Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027244895. s. 421–438. doi: 10.1075/slsi.37.14ste. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The chapters of this volume have taken important first steps toward the ultimate goal that all contributors to this volume share: The creation of comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction in specific languages, which are based on, and true to, how language is used in interaction. In this discussion chapter, we extract the main new findings of the contributions to the volume, discuss how these findings might challenge received notions used in grammars, and make suggestions about the next steps that should be taken toward a truly interactional grammar.

• Steensig, Jakob; Jørgensen, Maria; Lindström, Jan; Mikkelsen, Nicholas; Suomalainen, Karita & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Grammar in action: Social interaction as a basis for a comprehensive grammar? I Steensig, Jakob; Jørgensen, Maria; Lindström, Jan; Mikkelsen, Nicholas; Suomalainen, Karita & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (Red.), Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027244895. s. 1–24. doi: 10.1075/slsi.37.01ste. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In this chapter, we introduce the background for the studies in this volume. We review the treatment of grammar in Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics and introduce the basic concepts in this analytical approach. We then discuss how interactional perspectives may relate to grammar writing, with examples from previous research and implications for future studies. We conclude this introduction with an overview of the chapters.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Copula variation in Danish and the intertwined nature of grammar. I Steensig, Jakob; Jørgensen, Maria; Lindström, Jan; Mikkelsen, Nicholas; Suomalainen, Karita & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (Red.), Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027244895. s. 301–331. doi: 10.1075/slsi.37.10sor. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This chapter explores constructions with the copula verb "er" ‘is’ in Danish. Practices employing zero copula assessments, stressed copulas and cases where syntax requires overt copula are described. Data are informal Danish interactions. The constructions are analyzed using Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. It is found that in reduced or zero copula clauses, the features of the action may depend on the predicate phrase rather than the copula. Stressed er marks a turn as asserting or contrasting with something that came before. The syntactic context requiring overt copula may project turn-ending. The aim is to discuss how the constructions studied are intertwined with other aspects of grammar and how they may fit into an interactional grammar like the Danish project Samtalegrammatik.dk.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager; Emborg, Christina & Bruun, Andrea (2025). Hva fanden ('what the devil'): A conversation analytic investigation of swearing and stance in questions and quotation. Gesprächsforschung. 26, s. 1–24. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This study investigates the use of the swear word expression "hva fanden" ('what the devil') in Danish talk-in-interaction by analysing 17 cases using Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. "Hva fanden" occurs in information-seeking actions, which include repair (i.e., word search and other-initiated repair) and requests for information. "Hva fanden" conveys the speaker’s non-access to certain information, in word search without stance-taking but in other functions displaying a negative stance to e.g. a referent. "Hva fanden" also occurs in quoted usage, where it performs assessment by framing some conduct as worthy of a response with a negative stance, with variation in their responses (i.e., immediate or none). Through detailed analyses of interaction, the study contributes to knowledge on swearing in interaction.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2023). Exclamative clauses with "hvor", "hvilken" and "sikke" in Danish: Insubordination and phrasal discontinuity. Skrifter om Samtalegrammatik. ISSN 2445-7256. 9(1), s. 1–29. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In this study, I describe exclamative constructions with certain question words in Danish, with a focus on their word order, and relate this to their status as potentially insubordinate constructions. Previous studies of exclamatives have studied semantic aspects of such clauses, while recent studies focus on syntactic properties. Exclamatives have also been considered an instance of insubordination (Heine et al. 2020). Danish is interesting in this aspect because some of the exclamative markers have peculiar, but known diachronic origins, that might shed light on some of the claims and questions made in previous literature. This article will first specify the possible exclamatives based on which question word is used, and then describe the syntactic patterns (primarily word order) used with hvor ‘how’, hvilken ‘which’ and sikke ‘what a’ occurring in exclamative constructions. In section 2, I explain central concepts, previous descriptions, and perspectives on the relationship between exclamative constructions and other constructions, such as questions and insubordinate constructions. In section 3, I provide information on the availability of different sentence types relevant for exclamatives in Danish and discuss the distribution of question words and other features. In section 4, I analyze the possible word orders and syntactic contexts that exclamatives with hvor, sikke and hvilken occur in based on corpus data. In section 5, I discuss the implications that the Danish constructions have for theories about the grammaticalization and structuring of exclamative constructions. Section 6 is the conclusion, followed by an epilogue with reflections and interactional perspectives.

• Steensig, Jakob; Jørgensen, Maria; Mikkelsen, Nicholas; Suomalainen, Karita & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2023). Toward a Grammar of Danish Talk-in-Interaction: From Action Formation to Grammatical Description. Research on Language and Social Interaction. ISSN 0835-1813. 56(2), s. 116–140. doi: 10.1080/08351813.2023.2205304. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

Se alle arbeider i NVA

• Steensig, Jakob; Jørgensen, Maria; Lindström, Jan; Mikkelsen, Nicholas; Suomalainen, Karita & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027244895. 440 s. doi: 10.1075/slsi.37. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  "Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction" investigates the possibility of writing comprehensive grammars of languages based on analyses of interaction. The volume combines two traditions in language studies that have hitherto been separate: Interactional Linguistics, which analyzes instances of language use in naturally occurring interactions, and Descriptive Grammars, which describe the grammatical regularities of languages. The authors are skilled researchers in Interactional Linguistics. They analyze interactional phenomena in Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian and Swedish, making concrete proposals about how grammatical phenomena might be described in a comprehensive interactional grammar. The volume also proposes solutions to problems that an interactional grammar faces, for instance, the written language bias, the role of prosody and the body in the grammar, how to approach different target audiences, and how a web-based grammar could be useful for rendering the complexities of grammar in interaction.

Se alle arbeider i NVA

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager; Rathje, Marianne & Korsholm, Søren (2026). »Nå«. Med to bogstaver kan du komme alle følelserne rundt. doi: https:/politiken.dk/podcast/Bj_rnetjenesten/art10991247/%C2%BBN%C3%A5%C2%AB.-Med-to-bogstaver-kan-du-komme-alle-f%C3%B8lelserne-rundt. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Nårrrh! Nånå. Nå! Og derfor siger vi det rigtig tit. For med et ’nå’ kan vi vise interesse, overraskelse, irritation. Det kan være en afvisning eller en invitation. Og fordi det er en sproglig schweizerkniv, er det et af de ord, vi bruger allermest, når vi taler sammen. I dag siger Bjørnetjenesten ‘nå’ sammen med samtaleforsker Søren Sandager Sørensen. Vi undersøger, hvad ordet egentlig betyder – og hvorfor det kan så meget. Nå er nemlig et af de ord, vi vil have sværest ved at undvære på dansk. Med skarp konkurrence fra ordet ’ja’.

• Brautaset, Live-Susann Myklebust; Svennevig, Jan & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2026). Småprat og relasjonsbygging i norske politiavhør. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  I politiets retningslinjer kan uformelle samtaler i dag bli sett på som en ulovlig praksis på bakgrunn av at dette tidligere ble misbrukt for å «berede grunnen for en tilståelse» (Rachlew et al., 2020, s. 167). Samtidig understreker retningslinjene at det bare er rettsrelevante fakta som skal være av interesse under avhøret (Riksadvokaten, 2016, s.2). På den andre siden legger den norske KREATIV-modellen vekt på at avhøret skal være preget av empati og interesse (Bjerknes & Fahsing, 2024, s. 278), og naturlig småprat blir nevnt som en positiv del av kontaktetableringen (Rachlew et al., 2020, s. 169). Dette gjør at avhørere må forholde seg til motstridende hensyn når det gjelder småprat. Likevel viser nyere forskning at den mest benyttede teknikken for relasjonsbygging under avhør innebærer nettopp å diskutere felles interesser gjennom småprat (Vallano et al., 2015, s. 376). Det vi derimot vet lite om er hvordan dette viser seg i faktiske politiavhør. Med bakgrunn i dette, har denne studien tatt sikte i å belyse hvordan relasjonsbygging gjennom småprat manifesterer seg i praksis. Ved å gjennomgå en rekke autentiske avhør av mistenkte personer i Norge har vi funnet ulike eksempler på tilfeller av småprat. Studien har hatt som mål å avdekke hvordan politibetjenter selv legger opp til denne typen prat, hvordan de avhørte behandler denne praten, og hvilke relasjonelle funksjoner denne småpraten har. Våre foreløpige funn er at småprat særlig forekommer i kontaktetableringsfasen, men vi ser også at den viser seg i ulike faser av avhøret. Funnene viser også at det er stor variasjon i hvor ofte og hvordan politibetjenter legger opp til småprat, og om invitasjonen til småprat tas imot eller ikke. Det vi også ser er at småpraten ofte begynner med spørsmål og svar som er institusjonelt motivert, men som utvikler seg til mer detaljerte beskrivelser om den avhørtes historie og bakgrunn. Kilder: Bjerknes, O.T., & Fahsing, I.A. (2024). Etterforskning: prinsipper, metoder og praksis (2.utg). Fagbokforlaget. Rachlew, A., Løken, G.E., & Bergestuen, S.T. (2020). Den profesjonelle samtalen: En forskningsbasert intervjumetodikk for alle som stiller spørsmål. Universitetsforlaget. Riksadvokaten (2016). Politiavhør (Nr.2/2016). [Rundskriv] . https://www.riksadvokaten.no/document/politiavhor/ Vallano, J. P., Evans, J. R., Schreiber Compo, N., & Kieckhaefer, J. M. (2015). Rapport-Building During Witness and Suspect Interviews: A Survey of Law Enforcement. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(3), 369–380. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3115

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2026). Detaljerede fysiske beskrivelser i afhøringer af mistænkte for seksualkriminalitet. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  I politiafhøringer kan deltagerne være nødt til at tale om ubehagelige emner. Sager om seksualkriminalitet berører emner som generelt ses som meget personlige (Jackson 2016), og sagstyperne kan nødvendiggøre en grænseoverskridende detaljeringsgrad og indeholde voldelig adfærd. At afhøringer er institutionaliseret interaktion og typisk foregår mellem fremmede, bidrager også til at gøre det udfordrende. Jeg vil præsentere en undersøgelse af sekvenser i afhøringer hvor fysiske detaljer introduceres eller bliver spurgt ind til i sager om seksualkriminalitet, f.eks. voldtægt og seksuelle overgreb. Ved hjælp af konversationsanalytisk metode analyserer jeg hvordan politiet og den mistænkte forhandler beskrivelsens detaljeringsgrad og håndterer evt. modvilje om at dele relevante eller søgte detaljer. Data består af uddrag fra ca. 38 norske afhør af mistænkte. En række sekvenser hvor fysiske beskrivelser præsenteres eller efterspørges, er blevet identificeret for at undersøge hvilke praksisser der bruges til at indlede dem. Fysisk beskrivelse af seksuel aktivitet kan opstå flere steder i en afhøring, og at det kan forstås i forhold til afhøringens faseopdeling (Bjerknes & Fahsing 2024). Det kan forekomme tidligt som en del af den mistænktes frie forklaring, eller blive introduceret gennem opfølgende spørgsmål til forklaringen eller ved fremlæggelse af vidneudsagn el.lign. Senere præsentation kan virke mere abrupt og fremkalde modvilje. Beskrivelsen af disse sekvenser og deres sproglige resurser bidrager til evalueringen af afhøringer om “ubehagelige” emner. Det bidrager med viden om hvordan emnerne kan indledes (Halvorsen et al. 2025), og hvad man kan gøre for at de evt. opleves som mindre ubehagelig og dermed minimere ubehaget som forhindring for informationsindsamlingen. Studiet bidrager til beskrivelsen af afhøringsmetoder der undgår konfliktoptrapning (Izotovas et al. 2021). Referencer Bjerknes, O. T. & I. A. Fahsing. 2024. Etterforskning: Prinsipper, metoder og praksis. 2. udg. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Halvorsen, M. N., Lukasse, M., & Landmark, A. M. (2025). More Than a Question: A Conversation Analysis of Midwives’ Approaches to Addressing Violence in Antenatal Care. Sociology of Health & Illness, 47(7), e70081. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.70081 Izotovas, A., C. Kelly & D. Walsh. 2021. The Domains of PEACE: Examining Interviews with Suspected Sex Offenders. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 36(4): 743–757. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09465-8.

• Jørgensen, Maria; Suomalainen, Karita; Sørensen, Søren Sandager; Lindström, Jan & Steensig, Jakob (2026). Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction: Suggestions, challenges, and next steps. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  For languages with long written traditions, the “written language bias” (Linell 2005) poses a significant challenge in grammar writing. Even for grammars that take a functionalist or usage-based perspective on language, systematicities and regularities of talk-in-interaction are often overlooked. This bias affects comprehensive grammars aimed at linguists, and, as a consequence of this, school grammars for L1 speakers and textbooks for L2 learners. In the newly published book “Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction” (Steensig et al. 2025), the authors attempt to rise to this challenge by suggesting and discussing concrete ways of treating specific practices of talk-in-interaction in a comprehensive grammar. Each chapter of the book tackles a different interactional practice or phenomenon in a certain language, offering an Interactional Linguistic (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 2018) analysis of it, then discussing how it could be represented in a comprehensive interactional grammar of that language. Ultimately, the book argues for writing comprehensive grammars of interactional language that not only take interaction seriously but take it as their point of departure. This talk will evaluate the potential idea of such a comprehensive grammar, and how it is implemented in, e.g., Samtalegrammatik.dk ‘Grammar of Danish talk in interaction’ (2025), a web-based grammar of Danish talk-in-interaction. The structure of the grammar is informed by interactional analyses of specific practices in Danish talk-in-interaction, and it is continuously updated as new discoveries and analyses are made. These analyses are based on over 60 hours of video and audio-recorded data of naturally occurring Danish talk-in-interaction. Samtalegrammatik.dk and its approach to grammar writing inspired much of the work in the book “Grammar in Action”, offering theoretical contributions to the way ‘grammar’ is conceptualized and how interactional phenomena can be accounted for systematically. Two phenomena in Danish talk-in-interaction representative of this work will be discussed in our presentation as they offer a particular model for accounting for interactional phenomena: specifying wh-questions and answers (cf. Fox & Thompson 2010), and embodied-only directives. A specifying wh-question is a request for a specific, limited piece of information (e.g., how far up the canyon are you; ibid.), and in Danish, the response indexes the question as either part of an ongoing trajectory or as initiating a new trajectory through its grammatical format as either phrasal or clausal, respectively. Embodied-only directives are requests for action, delivered and responded to only through non-verbal resources and thus contrastive and in paradigmatic relation with other (verbal) request formats. These practices offer a basis for the conceptualization of the units and types of formats that could be relevant to describe in a comprehensive interactional grammar. Furthermore, we will propose an approach to syntax which takes both the order of elements in clauses and sentences, and the sequential order of utterances, into account, as we analytically move from instantiations of action to observed regularities of practice to formulation of (constructional) action formats. We show how this approach can be used to account for the structure of the phenomena in focus, and we discuss the use and usefulness of representing interactional phenomena in models of formats to take description of interaction seriously. Most importantly, however, we want to discuss the possibilities, challenges, and limitations of writing comprehensive grammars based on interactional data, and we want to ask: Where do we go from here? What issues does such a goal face, and how can these issues be tackled? What is the audience of such a grammar, and how can the insights we have gained so far inform both the grammar writing project of Samtalegrammatik.dk, and grammar writing in other languages? These questions matter for understanding the relation between linguistic form and interactional meaning, and the role of linguistic structures and embodied action in (accounts of) interaction. References Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth & Margret Selting. 2018. Interactional Linguistics: Studying language in social interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Linell, Per. 2005. The Written Language Bias in Linguistics. London: Routledge Fox, Barbara A., & Sandra A. Thompson. 2010. Responses to Wh-Questions in English Conversation. Research on Language & Social Interaction 43(2), 133–56. Steensig, Jakob, Maria Jørgensen, Jan K. Lindström, Nicholas Mikkelsen, Karita Suomalainen, & Søren S. Sørensen (eds.). 2025. Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction (SLSI 37). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Samtalegrammatik.dk. 2025. https://samtalegrammatik.dk/en/

• Svennevig, Jan; Diepeveen, Aafke & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2026). “Do you plead guilty?” Legal terminology as a trouble source in police investigative interviews. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Previous research from the United States has shown that L2 users who are questioned by the police may be considered more competent than they actually are because they can talk relatively effortlessly about everyday matters. However, this does not necessarily mean that they understand institutional language characterized by complex syntax and specialized legal terminology (Pavlenko, 2024). It has also been shown that even advanced L2 users do not understand their legal rights in interrogations as they are read to them from standardized formulations (Pavlenko et al., 2020). Against this background, this presentation will examine how legal terms are introduced and used in Norwegian police investigative interviews, and how they are perceived by L2 users. The data is taken from a corpus of more than 100 audio and video recordings of authentic police interviews with suspects conducted in Norway. Using conversation analysis as a method, we seek to analyze how and to what extent the interviewers anticipate problems with the legal terms and how the interviewees show their understanding of the terms. The analysis will focus on a question asked towards the end of the interview about whether the suspect ‘pleads guilty’ (Norwegian ‘erkjenner straffskyld’). This question is well suited to investigate understanding as the suspect must answer it and thus to a lesser extent can feign comprehension (as they may do while being informed about their rights). The interviewers’ anticipation of problems will be investigated by their use of pre-emptive repair techniques (Raymond & Gill, 2025), whereas the interviewees’ understanding will be explored by analyzing how they respond, either producing an answer or initiating repair. The study is relevant for understanding how professional terminology is treated in expert-lay conversations, and for making the police aware of possible sources of problems in communication with L2 users and strategies to prevent them.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2026). Action and sequence in the grammar of single item turns in Danish and Norwegian. doi: https:/societaslinguistica.eu/sle2026/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Early descriptions of turn construction units include turns consisting of an individual item (Sacks et al. 1974). Numerous response tokens and other single item responses, e.g., to certain question types and other actions, have since been described (Bolden et al. 2023, Thompson et al. 2015), sometimes also in formal approaches (Wiltschko 2021). I argue for the need of a unified account of these stand-alone or freestanding items, i.e., individual items (word or other vocalization) with speaker change before and after (excluding turn-initial and -final items). This study asks what the most frequent single item turns are and which functions they have. The study consists of a collection of single item turns in conversational corpora of Danish and Norwegian. Based on this, I present a quantification of the most frequent items and their distribution across word class, morphological form, and function. Functions are analyzed conversation analytically, taking into account the sequential position and action of the turn. Single item turns contrast with both clausal and phrasal structures. Danish and Norwegian are languages without person inflection where a clause is traditionally considered subject and verb. However, single item turns may express propositions, and the way they do so together with other turns matters for understanding the status of clauses in interaction and the role of conversational sequence in grammar. Preliminary results show that adjectives and adverbs are frequent with many high-frequent specific items. They often function as information receipts or assessments but also perform second position actions (e.g., confirmation). For instance, Danish åbenbart (form of åbenbar ‘apparent, obvious’) or selvfølgelig ‘of course, obvious’ are used to confirm while expressing an attitude toward the matter: A: Er der to Strahinja-er i Svendborg? is there two NAME.PERSON-PL in NAME.AREA “Are there two Strahinja’s in Svendborg?” B: Åbenbar-t apparent-N/ADV “Apparently.” Nouns and verbs have more even distributions across items, suggesting that fewer have lexicalized functions. Nouns – the most frequent non-interjection word class – are common as answers to specifying questions, but some also perform assessments (Ono & Thompson 1994, Helasvuo 2019). Verbs – the rarest major word class – may be imperatives, some of which have lexicalized functions (Suomalainen 2025). Participles mostly behave as adjectives. Finite verbs only occur in few specific contexts, such as Norwegian skjønner ‘understands’ in third position as a receipt. Based on such descriptions, I discuss the different processes behind the phenomena. Some convey a proposition through clause-like reconstruction based on the preceding sequential context (Deppermann 2020), while others refer back in less argument-like ways, and some are best considered lexicalized units (possible “discourse markers”). Some functions are comparable to response tokens, while semantics matters for others. The cross-linguistic comparison shows that the interactional functions of cognate items are not necessarily shared between the two languages, suggesting that sequential context can be language-specific and that some degree of grammaticalization takes place. Single item turns, as a basic structure, show how argument structure is minimally implemented across turn construction units, and how grammar matters for action. Sequence is a slot-like structure that builds on argument structure, but also goes beyond known cases of ellipsis. The study also provides perspectives on wordhood and the status of interjections. References Bolden, Galina, John Heritage & Marja-Leena Sorjonen (2023), Polar questions and their responses: Introduction. In G. Bolden, J. Heritage & M-L. Sorjonen (eds.), Responding to Polar Questions across Languages and Contexts (Studies in Language and Social Interaction), 1–39. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.35.01bol. Deppermann, Arnulf (2020), Lean syntax: How argument structure is adapted to its interactive, material, and temporal ecology. Linguistische Berichte (263). 255–294. Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa (2019), Free NPs as units in Finnish. Studies in Language 43(2). 301–328. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.16064.hel. Ono, Tsuyoshi & Sandra A. Thompson (1994), Unattached NPs in English Conversation. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 402–419. https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v20i1.1477. Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff & Gail Jefferson (1974), A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50(4). 696–735. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1974.0010. Suomalainen, Karita (2025), Second-person singular imperatives in Finnish everyday conversations: Multifunctionality and routinization of grammatical formats. In J. Steensig, M. Jørgensen, J. Lindström, N. Mikkelsen, K. Suomalainen & S. S. Sørensen (eds.), Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction, 264–300. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.37.09suo. Thompson, Sandra A., Barbara A. Fox & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (2015), Grammar in everyday talk: Building responsive actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139381154. Wiltschko, Martina (2021), The Grammar of Interactional Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108693707.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2026). Describing sexual activity in detail in interviews with suspects of sexual offences. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2026). Questioning suspects about word definitions during police interviews. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The purpose of a police interview is to collect information. The type of information is tied to the type of possible crime committed. Understanding the terms used to describe the crime thus matters for the information provided by the suspect, as certain kinds of crimes are assessed on the basis of specific details. For this reason, a police interviewer may ask a suspect to define a legal term, or a term that, in the context of a crime, may have special meaning or implications. For instance, a police interviewer can ask “when I say the word violence, what do you consider part of that word?”. Employing Conversation Analysis, my presentation will focus on this type of understanding checks used for legal or crime-relevant terminology in police interviews with suspects speaking Norwegian as a second language. I investigate how the sequences play out in the interest of information-gathering and how they arise, what kind of question type they get treated as, and how they reveal the goals of the information gathering. It turns out that these are common in cases of rape and sexual violence, such as how suspects understand terms like sex and violence. Uncomfortable topics and the level of detail sought by the police seem to be a barrier for further elaboration. The understanding checks may also be seen as treating the second language suspects and their competence in an unfortunate way, beyond the relevant information gathering by requesting specific details. Many sequences work out so that the police ends up offering a definition, and it seems that the interviewer provides their definition even if they also acknowledge the suspect’s definition as sufficient. The practice does not seem to prevent understanding problems. Some definitions may also be affected by different cultural conceptualizations of the term involved.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager; Collin, Winnie; Hansen, Inger Schoonderbeek; Hougaard, Tina Thode & Schriver, Karen (2025). Kopulavariation i dansk. doi: https:/tidsskrift.dk/muds/article/view/163129. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Variation i udtalen af kopulaet "er" (inkl. nulrealisering) er velkendt, men afhænger blandt andet af både det foregående ords fonetiske træk og sætningens syntaktiske struktur, fx i form af ordstilling og tryk (P. A. Jensen 2012, Schachtenhaufen 2012). Fravær af kopula er meget hyppigt, men også udelukket fra bestemte kontekster, fx når det er trykstærkt. Kopula bruges selvfølgelig til meget forskelligt, men i samtaler er vurderinger og lignende handlinger særligt hyppige (J. S. Jensen 2021, Kjær et al. 2020). Variation i brugen af kopula er kendt fra andre sprog. I nogle sprog bruger man slet ikke kopula, mens andre sprog kun bruger det i bestemte typer af sætninger afhængigt af fx person eller tempus (Hengeveld 1992). Det er muligt at man kan formulere en regel om kopulasupport (Dik 1980) for dansk. Et spørgsmål er om nulkopulasætninger er på vej til at blive grammatikaliseret i dansk. I den kontekst vil jeg diskutere forholdet mellem forskellige typer af ytringer og deres funktion i forhold til kopulasætninger. Dette inkluderer andre typer vurderinger end kopulasætninger, fx fritstående adjektiver, citater og eksklamative sætninger, men også de andre ord der indgår i kopulasætninger. Derudover eksisterer der en række andre sætningstyper eller kontekster hvor kopula udelades, som ikke passer med den almindelige reduktion af kopula, fx af typen "din idiot" (Julien 2016). Et andet spørgsmål er hvorfor der er situationer hvor kopula ikke forsvinder. Derudover findes der også reduktion og nulrealisering af ordet "har" (Kristensen et al. 2017; Schachtenhaufen 2012), som deler visse funktioner med er. Lignende fænomener findes også på andre sprog, fx svensk (Bäckström 2020) og engelsk (Labov 1969), men sammenligningen går ikke hele vejen. Der er visse ligheder mellem kopula og "har", men også en del vigtige forskelle. Oplægget tog udgangspunkt i følgende artikel: Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Copula variation in Danish and the intertwined nature of grammar. I Jakob Steensig, Maria Jørgensen, Jan Lindström, Nicholas Mikkelsen, Karita Suomalainen & Søren S. Sørensen (red.), Grammar in Action. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Swearing in interaction: Danish assessments as a perspective on swearwords. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The use of swearing in interaction has only recently started to receive attention. However, several different practices have been described. In this presentation, I will focus on the different turn construction formats that swearwords turn out to appear in, and analyze how that matters for the kinds of assessments that they are used in, in terms of sequential position and how they are responded to. The main words of focus will be “fuck” and “fucking”, with a view towards comparison with others. It turns out that there are regularities between syntactic formats with swearwords and their sequential position, and turn taking in the sense of whether the speaker continues or not. Based on this, I will discuss how the turn construction possibilities relate to the syntax of swearwords and the role of the constructions they appear within. Another aspect is how the study of assessments with swearwords contributes to knowledge about the meaning of swearwords, in terms of the stance and evaluation of assessments, and how they work together with assessment terms such as adjectives, but also other kinds of material and constructions, in achieving a “strong” meaning.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Banneords funksjoner i samtaler: 'fuck', 'fanden' og former derav på dansk. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Studiet av banneord har fokusert på forskjellige aspekter av banning, men man har først nylig begynt å undersøke funksjonene i interaksjon. I dette foredraget analyserer jeg de interaksjonelle funksjonene for noen danske banneord, herunder fuck og fanden og deres relaterte former. Data består av autentiske danske hverdagssamtaler (ofte blant unge) analysert med konversasjonsanalyse. Det viser seg at mange konstruksjoner har funksjoner innenfor vurdering som kan markere sekvensielle egenskaper ved vurderingen, eksempelvis om det er en første- eller annenvurdering, eller om en ny sekvens kan begynne og hvem som muligens starter den. Både i vurderinger og andre samtalehandlinger kan banneord være en del av markeringen av affiliation/alignment eller annen type holdning til den utførte handlingen. Beskrivelsen viser at det er forskjell på ytringer med fuck og fucking, og at ingen direkte tilsvarer bruken av fanden. De interaksjonelle funksjonene sier ikke bare noe om den sosiale relasjonen mellom de talende. I foredraget vil jeg forsøke å drøfte hvordan banneordenes interaksjonelle trekk kan forstås i forhold til noen av de sosiolingvistiske variablene som har fått særlig fokus i studiet av banneord. Dette gjelder blant annet styrken av banneordet, som i samtaler kommer til uttrykk i funksjonen som førstevurdering eller oppgradert vurdering (eller andre perspektiver på plassering) samt vurderingens valens (positiv eller negativ). Tabuiseringen av banneord kan også belyses ut fra disse trekk. Den funksjonelle variasjonen og konteksten for bruk av banneord kan informere utbredelsen av banneord og peker mot fremtidige studier av flere vurderingskonstruksjoner.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Overt copula in Danish talk-in-interaction: Stress, contrast and “modification”. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The languages of the world exert large variation in the implementation of copulas, i.e., expressions like be used for the ascription of properties to entities, among other functions. They are present in many practices. In Danish, the frequent lack of an audible copula verb in copula clauses has been studied as part of various interactional practices (in, e.g., Jensen 2021, Kjær et al. 2020, Kragelund 2015). In this presentation, I come at this from the other side, with an interactional analysis of cases where the copula is clearly present, mainly the stressed cases (which have received comments in previous literature). It turns out that stressed copulas are used for indexing a relation to something previous, either as a contrast or an upgrade. The previous turns often contain a copula relation (including “inaudible” copulas). However, copulas in Danish are also overt when they are placed in certain positions in the turn, traditionally described through the syntax of stress placement. The description feeds various theoretical questions: Are the two overt copula types related? And can we account for both at the same time? This touches on the question of phonology and other features and their role in the grammar of interaction. The notion of “stress” or emphasis is another discussion point, regarding its interactional function. This also opens for a discussion of what, exactly, constitutes a “modified repeat” (Stivers 2005) both in terms of form and function – a term used for various Danish constructions, both with and without any copulas.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Detaljerede fysiske beskrivelser i afhøringer af mistænkte for seksualkriminalitet. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  I politiafhøringer kan deltagerne være nødt til at tale om ubehagelige emner. Sager om seksualkriminalitet berører emner som generelt ses som meget personlige (Jackson 2016), samtidig med at sagstyperne kan nødvendiggøre en grænseoverskridende detaljeringsgrad og indeholde voldelig adfærd. At afhøringer er institutionaliseret interaktion og typisk foregår mellem fremmede, bidrager også til at gøre det en udfordrende interaktion. I min fremlæggelse præsenterer jeg en undersøgelse af sekvenser i afhøringer hvor fysiske detaljer introduceres eller spørges ind til i sager om seksualkriminalitet, f.eks. voldtægt og seksuelle overgreb. Ved hjælp af konversationsanalytisk metode analyserer jeg hvordan politiet og den mistænkte forhandler beskrivelsens detaljeringsgrad og håndterer evt. modvilje om at dele relevante eller søgte detaljer. Data består af uddrag fra ca. 38 afhør af mistænkte. Afhøringerne stammer fra Norge og er optaget på lyd (evt. video). En række sekvenser hvor fysiske beskrivelser præsenteres eller efterspørges, er blevet identificeret for at undersøge hvilke praksisser der bruges til at indlede dem. Det viser sig at fysisk beskrivelse af seksuel aktivitet kan opstå flere steder i en afhøring, og at det kan forstås i forhold til afhøringens faseopdeling (Bjerknes & Fahsing 2024). Det kan forekomme tidligt som en del af den mistænktes frie forklaring, eller blive introduceret gennem opfølgende spørgsmål til forklaringen eller ved fremlæggelse af vidneudsagn el.lign. Senere præsentation kan virke mere abrupt og fremkalde modvilje. Beskrivelsen af disse sekvenser og deres sproglige resurser bidrager til evalueringen af afhøringer om “ubehagelige” emner. En mere trinvis indledning kan opleves som mindre ubehagelig og dermed minimere ubehaget som forhindring og begrænse muligheden for at afhøringen bliver traumatiserende. Studiet bidrager til beskrivelsen af måder at kunne respondere der undgår konfliktoptrapning (Izotovas et al. 2021). Referencer Bjerknes, O. T. & I. A. Fahsing. 2024. Etterforskning: Prinsipper, metoder og praksis. 2. udg. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Izotovas, A., C. Kelly & D. Walsh. 2021. The Domains of PEACE: Examining Interviews with Suspected Sex Offenders. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 36(4): 743–757. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09465-8. Jackson, Clare. 2016. ‘I sort of did stuff to him’: A case study of tellability and taboo in young people’s talk about sex. Narrative Inquiry, 26(1): 150–170. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.26.1.08jac.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Eliciting understanding of terms relevant to a crime during police interviews. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The information-gathering purpose of a police interview is often tied to the type of possible crime committed. Understanding the terms used to describe the crime thus matters for the information provided by the suspect, as certain kinds of crimes are assessed on the basis of specific details. The police interviewer may ask a suspect about their understanding of a legal term, or a term that in the context of a crime may have special meaning or implications. For instance, a police interviewer can ask “when I say the word violence, what do you consider part of that word?”. Employing Conversation Analysis, my presentation will focus on this type of understanding checks used for legal or crime-relevant terminology in Norwegian police interviews of suspects. I investigate how the sequences play out in the interest of information-gathering and how they arise, what kind of question type they get treated as, and how they reveal the goals of the information gathering. It turns out that these are common in cases of rape and sexual violence, such as how suspects understand terms like sex and violence. Uncomfortable topics and the level of detail sought by the police seem to be a barrier for further elaboration. For suspects who speak Norwegian as a second language, the understanding checks may treat them and their competence in a certain way, beyond the relevant information gathering by requesting specific details.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Forståelsen af «hva tenker du» som spørgsmålstype i norske politiafhør. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Den norske KREATIV-model for politiafhør fokuserer på at gøre det muligt at give en forklaring der er så fri som muligt, uden påvirkning fra politiets side. En faktor er brugen af ”åbne” spørgsmål under afhør. Jeg har observeret en relativt hyppig brug af formuleringer med hva tenker du, som er en slags ”åbent” spørgsmål, i data med interviews med mistænkte som taler norsk som andetsprog. Formatet med hva tenker du er også interessant ved at være mindre etableret som spørgsmålstype end fx hva synes du, hvilket bidrager til dets status som ”åbent” spørgsmål. I mit oplæg undersøger jeg formatets brug forskellige steder i et politiafhørs struktur, og hvilken rolle placeringen spiller for forståelsen af formatet. Det forekommer ofte i starten af et interview – fra overgangen fra rettighederne til forklaring – og senere, hvor politiet konfronterer den mistænkte med evidens, men også andre steder i afhør. På den ene side viser det sig at brugen af hva tenker du ofte forstås, og at det sker ud fra de forventninger man kan have til et politiafhørs struktur og formål. På grund af det spiller ”indholdet” af hva tenker du muligvis en mindre rolle end det at formatet giver ordet til den mistænkte. På den anden side opstår der nogle gange forståelsesproblemer, og nogle af forståelsesproblemerne bliver ikke løst særlig effektivt. De forskellige omformuleringer fungerer også som en ramme for forståelsen af funktionen af hva tenker du. På baggrund af dette kan man altså sætte spørgsmålstegn ved brugen af ”åbne” spørgsmål, da det ser ud til at spørgsmål kan være så ”åbne” at de nogle gange bliver svære at forstå. Derimod peger beskrivelsen af formatet på hvor meget konteksten og den mistænktes forventninger til den – uafhængigt af erfaring – betyder for fremdriften i et politiafhør.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2025). Asking for the understanding of specific words during police interviews with suspects. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Securing understanding in police interviews is important for doing fair and valid interviews. Different types of questions are used to secure or establish mutual understanding of the matters discussed. This study focuses on situations where the interviewer asks the suspect how they understand a specific term or word, such as "how do you understand the word 'rape'" or "what do you think about when you say 'hit'". In Norwegian police interviews, two situations where this happens seem particularly salient: "clarificational" and "introductory" contexts. Use for clarification documents or elicits further details of the suspect's account while it is ongoing. It may develop into a longer sequence on the suspect's relation to the topic the word refers to, such as sexual experience. In introductory contexts, the suspect's understanding is requested early, before the suspect's explanation. These understanding checks can part of the presentation of the report to the suspect, for instance, by ensuring that the suspect understands the type of crime they have been reported for. They may also attempt to establish a common language for the following statement to be formulated within. The introductory uses are followed up in different ways, sometimes much later in the interview. In my presentation, I study how the two kinds of sequences play out and structure the interview. An issue is when the general nature of a word understanding in contrast to its relevance in a specific account. The questions may also come across as "known-answer"- questions due to the different epistemic positions.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager & Svendsen, Mette-Marie Møller (2025). Aldrig før er der blevet skrevet en bog med så mange imperativer. NyS, Nydanske Sprogstudier. ISSN 0106-8040. 1(68), s. 73–90. doi: 10.7146/nys.v1i68.160532. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Dansk udtale har fået en masse opmærksomhed på det seneste. Der er udkommet to nye fonetikbøger: Udtalt (Petersen et al. 2021) og Ny dansk fonetik (2. udgave udkom i 2023). Dansk Udtaleordbog (i denne anmeldelse forkortet DUO) er skrevet af bl.a. Ruben Schachtenhaufen, som også har skrevet Ny dansk fonetik. Udtaleordbogen kan dermed blive en slags ledsager til Ny dansk fonetik. Schachtenhaufen står også bag udtaleordbog.dk. DUO er dog ikke bare en trykt udgave af udtaleordbog.dk. Det er et markant anderledes og ambitiøst bud på, hvordan en trykt udtaleordbog kan se ud i dag og hvilke behov den skal dække. Bogen er især praktisk for dansklørnere, og hvad der er særligt gavnligt for dem i sproglæringsprocessen, er det solide samspil med Schachtenhaufens andre resurser som Ny dansk fonetik og udtaleordbog.dk. Brugen af bøjningsformer som separate lemmaer er et spændende tiltag i en fysisk ordbog, som fjerner nogle klassiske benspænd for lørnere med fx at spore sig tilbage til infinitivformen fra et uregelmæssigt bøjet verbum. Den algoritmiske tilgang i værket inspirerer samtidig til fremtidige undersøgelser af vores fælles sprog. Vores kritik af udgivelsen drejer sig især om den algoritmiske tilgang som kilde og dokumentation for det danske sprog i brug. Der er en ubalance i de computergenererede ordformer i lemmabestanden, især når det kommer til inklusionen af imperativer og den reelle brug af dem. Det kunne derfor være gavnligt med en mere detaljeret beskrivelse af processen og dermed forholdet mellem algoritmen og midaldrende og yngre danskeres egentlige sprogbrug

• Svennevig, Jan; Urbanik, Paweł & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2024). Securing understanding of the suspects' rights in investigative interviews. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In the beginning of each investigative interview in Norway, police officers are required to inform suspects about their right to silence and to have an attorney. To do so, Norwegian police do not use a scripted formula such as the Miranda warnings in the USA but leave it to the individual investigator to find the most appropriate and efficient formulation relative to the addressee. The officially recommended way of securing understanding is to (1) present the rights in a way that is understandable for a given suspect and (2) ascertain that they have been understood correctly (Bjerknes & Fahsing 2018). There is however no guidance on how to secure and ascertain understanding, which is especially important when the suspect is a second language (L2) speaker. The current paper presents an empirical analysis of audio and video recordings of 100 authentic police interviews, 70 with L2 suspects and 30 with L1 suspects. Using Conversation Analysis as our method, we examine how the investigators formulate the rights and check the suspects’ understanding of them. A previous qualitative study identified a set of conversational practices used in order to make the wording of the rights more accessible to L2 speakers, namely decomposition, simplification, term explanation, and reformulation (Authors, 2023). Practices used for checking understanding include polar interrogatives, such as “do you understand?” and question types that elicit a more comprehensive account, such as “can you tell me how you understand your rights?” The current study presents a CA-based quantitative analysis (Stivers 2015) of how often such comprehension strategies are used in L1 vs. L2 interaction. The results will contribute to raising awareness among police investigators about the importance of adapting the formulation of rights to the linguistic proficiency of the suspect and checking understanding.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2024). Kopulavariation i dansk. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Variation i udtalen af kopulaet er (inkl. nulrealisering) er udbredt og afhænger bl.a. af både det foregående ords fonetiske træk og sætningens syntaktiske struktur, fx ordstilling og tryk. Kopula bruges til meget forskelligt, men i samtaler er vurderinger og lignende særligt hyppigt. I min præsentation vil jeg diskutere kopulavariationens grammatik og hvordan forskellige kopulafænomener relaterer sig til andre områder af grammatikken. Et spørgsmål er om det er muligt at formulere en regel om kopulasupport. Et andet spørgsmål er om nulkopulasætninger er på vej til at blive grammatikaliseret. Diskussionen dækker også relationen mellem kopulasætninger og andre typer vurderinger, fx fritstående adjektiver, citater og eksklamative sætninger, men også de andre ord der indgår i kopulasætninger. Derudover findes der andre sætningstyper eller kontekster uden kopula eller verbum. Et øvrigt spørgsmål er hvorfor der er situationer hvor kopula ikke reduceres. Derudover findes der også reduktion og nulrealisering af ordet har, som deler visse funktioner med er, men som også er forskelligt fra det.

• Svennevig, Jan & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2024). Securing Understanding of the Suspect's Rights in Police Investigative Interviews. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In the beginning of each investigative interview in Norway, police officers are required to inform suspects about their right to silence and to legal counsel. To do so, Norwegian police do not use a scripted formula such as the Miranda warnings in the USA but leave it to the individual investigator to find the most appropriate and efficient formulation relative to the addressee. The officially recommended way of securing understanding is to (1) present the rights in a way that is understandable for a given suspect and (2) ascertain that they have been understood correctly (Bjerknes & Fahsing 2018). There is however no guidance on how to secure and ascertain understanding, which is especially important when the suspect is a second language (L2) speaker. The upcoming lecture will present empirical analyses of audio and video recordings of 100 authentic police interviews, 70 with L2 suspects and 30 with L1 suspects. Using Conversation Analysis as our method, we examine two issues: First, how the investigators formulate the rights and check the suspects’ understanding of them, and second, how they establish whether suspects want to invoke their rights. First, we will describe a set of conversational practices that police officers use in order to make the wording of the rights more accessible to L2 speakers, namely decomposition, simplification, term explanation, and reformulation. Practices used for checking understanding include polar interrogatives, such as “do you understand?” and question types that elicit a more comprehensive account, such as “can you tell me how you understand your rights?” We will also present a quantitative analysis of how often such comprehension strategies are used in L1 vs. L2 interaction. The results show that understanding checks are rare, and while the other strategies are overall equally frequent, their use differs between the right to silence and right to legal counsel. The results also show that the rights are not communicated to L2 speakers with consistently more strategies than to L1 speakers, and that in some contexts, low proficiency L2 speakers are communicated to with fewer strategies than high proficiency L2 speakers. There may be a trade-off between reformulation (incl. explanation) and simplification in the sense that where reformulation is more common with L1 speakers and simplification more common with L2 speakers. Second, we will present our analysis regarding how often sus­pects are asked explicit questions about whether they want to exercise their right to silence and/or to legal counsel. We also investigate variation in the design of such questions, concentrating specifically on expressions involving a preference for one response option over the other. We identify formulations used while presenting the rights that may legitimise or inhibit a free and independent decision. The results show that suspects are often not asked to take a stance on their rights, and when they are, such questions often involve a bias towards waiving their rights. And although some officers explicitly inform the suspects that they are free to choose whatever option they like, others provide information about the interview that either presupposes willingness to talk or presents the option of waiving one’s rights as preferable to invoking them.

• Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2013). Sproget og dets situation i vejrudsigter på dansk tv. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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