Anna Vogel, Stockholm University
The political role of the nonprofit sector in the Swedish welfare state is currently being negotiated. Since the introduction of New Public Management, nonprofit organizations are expected to play a greater part in welfare reforms (Lundberg, 2020). However, Swedish nonprofit organizations providing welfare services, e.g. schools and health clinics, form a contested issue (Johansson et al. 2015).
My interdisciplinary study studied this negotiation on a local plane, more specifically within a nonprofit organization. The purpose of my study was to investigate the negotiation regarding identity in Save the Children Sweden, where I was an embedded researcher during the timespan of my research (February 2020-February 2022). To reveal the negotiation on political identity that took place underneath the surface of the debate on welfare services, I operationalized my purpose into three research questions: RQ#1) How were “we” described? RQ#2) What metaphors were used about the organization? RQ#3) What stories were told about the organization’s origin?
Departing from Busse (1997) and Halliday (2014) I analyzed all “we” about the organization to see what the pronoun referred to, and what kind of verb (material, relational or mental) it was connected to in the clause. I then used MIPVU-methods (Nacey et al. 2019) to analyze metaphors, and at last, by the help of narrative analysis (Greimas 1966, Labov 1972), I searched for stories. My results on RQ#1showed that advocates of the idea that Save the Children Sweden would perform welfare service used “we” in an inclusive way about the organization, and mostly in connection to action verbs (material processes). The opponents of the idea of welfare services instead used “we” both in an inclusive and exclusive way – either embracing all Swedish citizens/the whole Swedish civil society, or only referring to a group of members of Save the Children Sweden. No certain verb type stood out, instead the use was balanced. My interpretation was that the advocates cared about its brand and wished to appear potent, while the opponents rather stressed how the organization belonged to a greater context and gave attention to the member federation. Regarding RQ#2, the advocates used metaphors relating to SOURCE-PATH-GOAL, highlighting their determinedness, while the opponents instead used metaphors relating to PERCEPTION (e.g. “see”), thereby giving their analytical capacity prominence. Concerning RQ#3, the advocates made use of a strong narrative, legitimizing the idea of welfare services, whereas the opponents lacked any such narrative.
References
Busse, Dietrich (1997). Das Eigene und das Fremde. Annotationen zur Funktion und Wirkung einer diskurssemantischen Grundfigur. In Matthias Jung, Martin Wengeler, & Karin Böke (Eds.), Die Sprache des Migrationsdiskurses. Das Reden über Ausländer in Medien, Politik und Alltag (pp. 17-35). Westdeutscher Verlag.
Greimas, Algirdas. J. (1966). Sémantique structurale: recherche de méthode. Hachette.
Halliday, M.A.K. (2014), Introduction to functional grammar. Revised by Christiand M.I.M. Matthiessen. 4th ed. London and New York: Routledge.
Johansson, Håkan, Arvidsson, Malin, & Johansson, Staffan (2015). Welfare mix as a contested terrain: Political positions on government – non-profit relations at national and local levels in a social democratic welfare state. Voluntas, 26(5), 1601-1619. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-015-9580-4
Labov, William (1972). Language in the inner city. Studies in the black English vernacular. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lundberg, Erik (2020). Toward a new social contract? The participation of civil society in Swedish welfare policymaking 1958-2012. Voluntas, 31, 1371-1384.
Nacey, Susan, Greve, Linda, & Johansson Falck, Marlene (2019). Linguistic metaphor identification in Scandinavian. In Susan Nacey, Aletta G. Dorst, Tina Krennmayr, & W. Gudrun Reijnerse (Eds.), Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world (pp. 138-158). John Benjamins.