Sanna Skärlund

I am an Associate Professor (Docent) in Swedish and currently serve as Director of Studies for the subjects Swedish and Nordic languages (Danish and Icelandic).

In the autumn of 2017, I defended my doctoral dissertation, which examined the historical development of the generic pronouns man, en, and du in Swedish, spanning the period from 1225 to the present day.

My research interests encompass all aspects of language, with a particular fascination for language change in Swedish, both in contemporary usage and from a historical perspective. While my dissertation focused on historical linguistics and grammar, my subsequent research has primarily engaged with text analysis and sociolinguistics.

Among other topics, I have studied English elements in Swedish public service radio, the use of quotation marks in newspaper headlines, the applicability of language change models to real-world data, code-switching in 18th-century drama, gender-neutral personal designations in Swedish newspaper texts, and contemporary media discourses on dialects. My research interests are thus broad, with a particular emphasis on various forms of linguistic change.