"Do you want to sleep with her first or shall I?" So begins this hilarious story of a Swedish girl who travels the world looking for adventures and romance. She works in England, France and Spain to learn those languages. In California she teaches Swedish to American Army soldiers and meets a Russian, marries him and lives with him and their two children in Japan and in Rome. After ten years, they move to Santa Barbara, California and fifteen years later Kerstin divorces her husband and continuous to travel alone to, among many other countries, China, where she risks being arrested for smuggling. This book is fun and makes you laugh.

Is there a distinctly Swedish national character? Are Swedes truly shy, unemotional, conflict-avoiding, melancholy, and dour? Swedish Mentality, the English translation of the hugely successful book published in Sweden in 1989, considers the reality behind the myth. The author, Åke Daun, is a respected ethnologist who is sometimes referred to as the "guru" of Swedish character. In recent years, it has become popular to discuss Swedishness and Swedish identity. The advent of the European Union and the increasing presence of immigrant refugees in Sweden have fueled public debate on the distinctiveness of Swedish culture. Daun, however, goes beyond stereotype, drawing upon statistics gathered over more than a decade of research. The result is an entertaining and engagingly written book. Throughout, Daun quotes from interviews with native Swedes and immigrants as well as from travel accounts, folklore, and proverbs. We learn why some Swedes might prefer to walk up a flight of stairs rather than share an elevator with a neighbor and why some gain satisfaction from walking alone in the woods or going fishing. Daun describes a range of factors influencing Swedish character, including population composition, rural background, and even climate. He recognizes behavioral variations related to gender, age, class, and region, and he considers subtleties of individual character as well. Swedish Mentality should interest a wide array of readers, whether of Swedish descent or not.

This updated edition remains the basic reference book for all these concerned with speech in any way.

We thank Ekman & Co AB and Gadelius Holding Ltd for their kind and generous support, making this research available online for free. Lottaz and Ottosson explore the intricate relationship between neutral Sweden and Imperial Japan during the latter’s 15 years of warfare in Asia and in the Pacific. While Sweden’s relationship with European Axis powers took place under the premise of existential security concerns, the case of Japan was altogether different. Japan never was a threat to Sweden, militarily or economically. Nevertheless, Stockholm maintained a close relationship with Tokyo until Japan’s surrender in 1945. This book explores the reasons for that and therefore provides a study on the rationale and the value of neutrality in the Long Second World War. Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War is a valuable resource for scholars of the Second World War and of the history of neutrality.

This book introduces a new topic to applied linguistics: the significance of the TESOL teacher’s background as a learner and user of additional languages. The development of the global TESOL profession as a largely English-only enterprise has led to the accepted view that, as long as the teacher has English proficiency, then her or his other languages are irrelevant. The book questions this view. Learners are in the process of becoming plurilingual, and this book argues that they are best served by a teacher who has experience of plurilingualism. The book proposes a new way of looking at teacher linguistic identity by examining in detail the rich language biographies of teachers: of growing up with two or more languages; of learning languages through schooling or as an adult, of migrating to another linguaculture, of living in a plurilingual family and many more. The book examines the history of language-in-education policy which has led to the development of the TESOL profession in Australia and elsewhere as a monolingual enterprise. It shows that teachers’ language backgrounds have been ignored in teacher selection, teacher training and ongoing professional development. The author draws on literature in teacher cognition, bilingualism studies, intercultural competence, bilingual lifewriting and linguistic identity to argue that languages play a key part in the development of teachers’ professional beliefs, identity, language awareness and language learning awareness. Drawing on three studies involving 115 teachers from Australia and seven other countries, the author demonstrates conclusively that large numbers of teachers do have plurilingual experiences; that these experiences are ignored in the profession, but that they have powerful effects on the formation of beliefs about language learning and teaching which underpin good practice. Those teachers who identify as monolingual almost invariably have some language learning experience, but it was low-level, short-lived and unsuccessful. How does the experience of successful or unsuccessful language learning and language use affect one’s identity, beliefs and practice as an English language teacher? What kinds of experience are most beneficial? These concepts and findings have implications for teacher language education, teacher professional development and the current calls for increased plurilingual practices in the TESOL classroom.

Social Development, 2nd Edition provides psychologists with a comprehensive, scholarly, engaging, and up-to-date treatment of theoretical insights and empirical findings in the field of social development. It conveys the excitement of recent advances along with the accumulated knowledge that forms the basis of the field. Psychologists will gain a better understanding of cultural variation, both among societies around the world and within our own society.