To Örebro University

This thesis explores the social construction of birth by analyzing the interaction between the participants present in the delivery room. The data is drawn from 79 video recordings of birth. Six are unedited research recordings and the remaining 73 were edited for pedagogical, documentary and entertaining purposes. The theoretical and analytical perspective is Conversation Analysis. With this microanalytic method, a detailed insight is given to the interaction in the delivery room which should be of linguistic, anthropologic and midwifery interest.

The thesis demonstrates how different situations are shaped during labor and the first 15 minutes after birth. It reveals how the identities child, girl, boy, mother, father, woman and man are constructed and negotiated in the unfolding interaction between the participants. In this sense, the thesis uncovers the construction of family roles in the delivery room during a delicate interaction between the private persons and the institutional representatives. The latter are charged with the complex task of safeguarding the physical wellbeing of mother and child while also promoting the development of parental identities. The thesis highlights the existence of a social birth work; the institutional interactants make use of a range of linguistic resources to demarcate the progression from second stage labor to birth and to position the newborn as an endeared social creature. Birth is an important liminal situation and is therefore forcefully spoken forth, and, as the thesis shows, enhanced with more or less ritual utterances and actions. Birth is also a matter of bodies, the body in labor, the supporting body of the partner and the appearance of the body of the newborn. The thesis gives insight into how these bodies are managed and stylized in interaction. Further the thesis makes visible the midwife’s use of interactional resources to instill strength into the body of the woman in labor. The results are discussed in light of the socio-cultural circumstances for hospital birth in Sweden.

The study examines the phenomenon of speaking through others in the specific context of labor and delivery at the birth clinic. Speech through a fetus or a newborn child is analyzed as a social act, receiving its meaning from the interactional and situational context. The data are drawn from a corpus of Scandinavian television documentaries. Previous research about speech through others has highlighted its function as face-work. This study shows that speech through fetuses and newborn children also can be regarded as a form of face-work, for instance as an indirect way of exhorting a woman in labor to mobilize more strength, or as an indirect way for finding out if a mother in the after-math of bearing-down contractions is ready to hold her newborn child. However, speech through fetuses and newborns does not merely serve as face-work. Above all it performs birth work: it verbalizes the birth and highlights the human, sociable character of the child. 

Minuterna kring ett barns födelse är ofta dramatiska. Ena stunden kan fyllas av den yttersta smärta och den andra av den yttersta glädje. Födelseögonblicket brukar också medföra att statusförändringar talas fram; det fullgångna fostret ska övergå till människa, föderskan ska bli dess mamma och partnern dess pappa.2 I sammanhanget har förlossningspersonalen i uppgift att synliggöra det nyfödda barnet, stärka utvecklandet av föräldraidentiteter och främja interaktionen mellan föräldrar och barn (Handläggning av normal förlossning 2001:45, 58; Lärobok för barnmor skor 2009:48, 436). Med tanke på dessa åligganden och med tanke på att födsel är en allmänmänsklig erfarenhet, är det anmärkningsvärt att interaktionen vid detta tillfälle är så gott som outforskad. I föreliggande artikel presenterar jag en språkvetenskaplig analys av en videoinspelad förlossning.Syftet är att visa vilka positioneringar som sker i födelseögonblickets närhet och hur de åstadkoms.

Ett missfoster har rest sig ur graven för att förkunna, ett sto har fött människobarn med hästhovar, en man har förvandlats till hund … Det är några exempel på utgångspunkterna i en genre skillingtryck från 1600-talet och 1700-talets början. Sällsamma missbildningar och metamorfoser görs i monstervisorna till offentliga angelägenheter, till speglar av samhällets tillstånd och individens tygellöshet som förorsakat detta tillstånd. Denna koppling mellan samhälle och individ gör monstervisorna intressanta för en retorisk analys. I historievetenskapliga analyser har liknande material använts för att belysa vidare företeelser som svunna tiders syn på abnormitet, estetik och genus. En retorisk analys kan emellertid få monster visan att framträda i sin egen rätt, eftersom en sådan analys innebär en närläsning som sätter visans utformning och processinriktade interaktion med mottagaren i brännpunkt. I föreliggande artikel visar jag hur dessa till synes bisarra visor fungerar som en form av epideiktisk retorik

The general aim of this article is to provide research about rites a new methodological perspective and to reintroduce rite as an analytical concept to linguistics, by showing how conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA) can reveal the rituality of an act from a member’s point of view. CA and MCA give insight into the dependence on the orientations of the participants and their cooperation in constructing an act as a rite. In this sense, the article fulfills the appeal of the sociologist Andrew Roth for a new consideration of the situated and dynamic circumstances of rites.

The specific aim is to investigate how the ritual dimension of the man’s cutting of theumbilical cord is manifested in the interplay between the participants in the delivery room. In Swedish delivery wards fathers are routinely asked whether they would like to cut the umbilical cord of their newborn child. In previous anthropological research, which has been based on interviews and questionnaires, the character of the cut as a paternity rite has been discussed. Yet, there has been no study about what actually happens in the delivery room; there has been no proof that the participants in real time orient to the act as something more than a mere cut. The present study draws on a corpus of 16 videorecordings from the delivery room that captures the interaction surrounding the cut in real time. The linguistic microanalysis shows that the participants, by different means, elevate the man’s cutting of the cord as a valued act that is imbued with symbolism. It is shown that the cutting of the cord is a category-bound activity, reserved for the man and connected to the speaking forth of the category daddy.

That society divides its members into females and males is the point of departure for muchresearch on gender and language yet the situated accomplishment of the primordial sexcategorization of the newborn child has not attracted much scholarly attention. The presentstudy fills this research gap by exploring the social and linguistic organization of sexassignment in a corpus of 67 videorecordings of birth. We present quantitative and qualitativesupport for the idea that sex assignment is a prioritized activity during the first minutes afterchild birth. Contrary to descriptions and assumptions in previous research we find that sexassignment typically engenders extended sequences of talk that requires collaborationbetween parents and medical staff. Furthermore, we find the assignment to be a genderedpractice in that fathers are given primary entitlement to proclaim the sex of their offspring.We conclude the study by situating our research in its socio-cultural context.

Ett referensuttrycks innebörd skapas i ett samspel mellan dess lexikala resurser och den kontext det uppträder i (Norén & Linell 2007:387). Vidare anger varje val av referensuttryck ett visst perspektiv; det konstruerar en viss verklighetsbild och väcker vissa konnotationer att förhålla sig till (jfr Schegloff 1972, Sacks 1992). Till exempel förmedlar en student som refererar till sitt lärosäte med skola en annan bild av det och sin inställning till det, än den som använder universitet.

Föreliggande studie visar å ena sidan hur förlossningspersonalens olika val av referensuttryck anpassas efter deninstitutionella uppgiften för händer och får situationen och barnet att framträda i olika dagrar. Å andra sidan visar den hur föderskans olika val av referensuttryck anpassas efter den fas hon befinner sig i och framför hennes perspektiv på situationen och barnet. Framför allt visar studien hur referensuttrycken och de därtill hörande perspektiven förhandlas under dessa samtalsdeltagares interaktion, hur de bryts mot varandra, sammanfaller eller bygger på varandra.