Third-cycle (doctoral) programme in Swedish
At the Department of Swedish, you will encounter a research environment where language is studied in all parts of society — from classrooms and healthcare to courtrooms, government agencies, and business.
Three Specializations
Doctoral education in Swedish is offered with three specializations:
- Swedish, Linguistic Specialization
- Swedish, Didactic Specialization
- Swedish, Multilingualism Specialization
A specialization means that you earn your doctoral degree within that specific track. However, many doctoral projects span multiple fields regardless of specialization.
Research Areas
Our research combines perspectives from critical discourse analysis, rhetoric, sociolinguistics, language education, systemic-functional linguistics, and cognitive studies of language. This includes topics such as language use in schools, multilingualism, literacy, and language acquisition (first and second).
Other areas include language use in professional practices, such as forensic linguistics and communication within government agencies and businesses. We also study how people learn, process, and use language in different life situations.
The department has a strong tradition of studying language in authentic contexts, often using both qualitative analyses and quantitative methods such as:
- Corpus linguistics — analysis of large digital text collections
- Keystroke logging — recording keystrokes to analyze writing processes
- Eye‑tracking
- Neurocognitive measures (EEG/ERP) — measuring how the brain processes language
- AI and machine learning
- Discourse and conversation analysis
Our research has an interdisciplinary profile, where linguists collaborate with researchers in psychology, education, and digital humanities.
Many of our projects are externally funded and conducted in collaboration with schools, government agencies, and other societal actors. This ensures high scientific quality and strong societal relevance.
Linnaeus University Language, Cognition and Culture Lab (LiLa)
At Linnaeus University, there is a lab where students and researchers can conduct instrumental linguistic research. The lab is equipped with advanced instruments for studying, for example, eye‑tracking, reaction time, and the brain’s processing of auditory or visual material.
Examples of doctoral projects
- "Gestures in Swedish pronunciation teaching" (Federica Raschellà)
- "School as a multilingual arena - in policy and practice" (Gabriel Bäck)
- "Language development beyond the classroom – a collaborative study of adult migrants in employment" (Anna Lundström)
- "Language processing: domain general or domain specific? ERP studies of verbal and visual language processing in children with typical and atypical language processing" (Hanna Lindfors)