Vad hende sedan? : En studie om hen i gymnasieskolans svenskundervisning

• Main Authors: Junghagen Öberg, Lena, Norkvist, Tove
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Umeå universitet, Institutionen för språkstudier 2019
• Subjects: genus; språkpolitik; tvåkönsnorm; hen; generiskt hen; specifikt hen; meta-hen; Didactics; Didaktik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-159193

This study focuses on the Swedish gender-neutral pronoun hen in upper-secondary Swedish teaching. Teachers were asked to participate in a survey with questions regarding hen to reveal if and how hen was included in their teaching in one way or another. It was also of interest to see what the teachers thought of hen in general and whether or not they used the word in their language. At the same time, certain parts were analysed in textbooks to see if hen was a part of the material that is distributed to the students. It was found that hen appears in textbooks, however, it was mostly in a meta-context and the textbooks did not have hen instead of double forms such as he/she. It was also found that most of the teachers thought of hen in a positive way, but the results show that teachers are more positive to the generic hen in comparison to the specific hen. A majority of the teachers in this study use hen but it is mostly within their work and not outside of school which indicates a moral usage rather than a natural usage. The results indicate that there is a lack of specific usage of hen in textbooks and also among teachers, but this may be due to the lack of transgender people. There is also a lack of natural usage of the generic hen in the textbooks instead of non gender-neutral pronouns.