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## Introduction: Language use in and about the net drama series SKAM

By guest editors Elisabeth Muth Andersen University of Southern Denmark

Søren Vigild Poulsen University of Southern Denmark

Marianne Rathje Th e Danish Language Council

Th e  Norwegian youth series SKAM took most of the world by storm. Th e series was produced by the Norwegian public service channel NRK and was broadcast for four seasons on Norwegian TV from September 2015 to June 2017.  During  the  same  period,  it  was  possible  to  stream  the  series  on  the Internet.

On January 30 2018, the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark,  hosted  a  symposium  entitled  'Sproget  i  og  omkring  SKAM' ('Th e language in and around SKAM'). Since the series was fi  rst launched in Denmark in 2016, there have been a few research-related events in Denmark about SKAM. Examples of these include: 'SKAM - en norsk public servicesucces' ('SKAM - a Norwegian public service success') at the University of Copenhagen and 'SKAM set med mediebriller' ('SKAM seen through the eyes of the media') organized by the Danish-Norwegian cooperation fund both events having a media focus. At the symposium 'Th e language in and around SKAM', language use in and around SKAM was addressed for the fi  rst time.

At the symposium, seven papers were given by the following researchers and with these (translated) titles:

## Pia Quist and Astrid Ravn Skovse (University of Copenhagen):

Language  inside  and  outside  SKAM:  authenticity  element,  community marker and commodity

## Søren Vigild Poulsen and Elisabeth Muth Andersen (University of Southern Denmark):

' Kødder du?' A multimodal perspective on digital mediated language use in SKAM

## Line Nybro Petersen (University of Southern Denmark):

Language games and play atmosphere for the fans of SKAM

## Ruth Vatvedt Fjeld (University of Oslo):

Words for feelings in SKAM - a Nordic perspective

## Marianne Rathje (University of Southern Denmark):

Serr, SKAM-Norwegian in Danish?

## Karoline Lassen (University of Aarhus):

Interskamdinavian: SKAM's infl  uence on Danish language users' understanding of Norwegian

## Tina Th ode Hougaard (University of Aarhus):

Shame in emojis - emojis in SKAM

Aft  er the symposium, we issued a call on behalf of the journal Scandinavian Studies in Language ,  and two articles were published as a result, namely Jennifer Duggan and Anne Dahl's article Fan translations of SKAM: Challenging Anglo linguistic  and  popular  cultural  hegemony  in  a  transnational  fandom and Elisabeth Muth Andersen and Søren Vigild Poulsen's contribution Viewing, listening and reading along: Linguistic and multimodal constructions of viewer participation in the net series SKAM .

Th e fi  rst article by Jennifer Duggan and Anne Dahl investigates how SKAM fans contribute to diff  using access to the SKAM universe by inviting, providing and discussing translations of scenes in SKAM in the comments section of the offi cial SKAM website. Non-Norwegian speakers needed translations, because subtitles in English were not provided by NRK, since copyright restrictions prevented NRK from distributing the series outside Scandinavia.

As the authors argue, Anglo-American culture dominates mass popular culture,  as  much  fi  lm  and  TV  is  produced  in  English  and  appears  to  take place in Anglo-American cultures. Th erefore, the interest in SKAM outside Scandinavia, despite the lack of offi cial subtitles, provides an interesting subject for the investigation of both online transnational fan culture and linguistic ideologies negotiated between local and transnational fans.

Based  on  1200  entries  posted  for  season  3  of  the  series,  the  authors identity  four  recurrent  themes  related  to  fan  translation  that  reveal  users' approaches to fandom and their understandings of language ideologies.

Building on research on media fandoms (e.g. Hills 2002; Jenkins, Ford & Green 2013), Duggan & Dahl show that the SKAM fans have a collaborative approach to translation, use the demand for translation to create social ties, and use translations as ways to invoke the culture of gift  -giving common to online media fandom.

Duggan  &  Dahl  also  show  how  fans  view  relationships  between languages and identities when they invite and provide translations. Whereas other  studies  on  fan  translation  have  tended  to  investigate  translation  as such,  Duggan  &  Dahl  focus  on  fans'  meta-discussions  of  translation  from Norwegian primarily into English.

When dealing with the demand for English translations of a Norwegian cultural artefact, i.e. the SKAM series, Duggan & Dahl fi  nd that fans' practices and discussions reveal a tension between linguistic and cultural protectionism on the one hand and a sense of pride in the show and a desire to share it with  the  world  on  the  other  hand.  Th is  tension  relates  to  the  fact  that  the language of translation is overwhelmingly English. Duggan & Dahl found that some users view English as a threat to Norwegian (Graedler 2014), but the vast majority of commentators responded positively to requests for English translations.  However,  a  native  speaker  ideal  is  not  prevalent  in  the  data; whereas knowledge of Norwegian is valued, knowledge of complex linguistic repertoires and in multiple languages (Cook 1992) is a required and highly valued subcultural capital that makes fan translations possible in this context. Hence, as argued by Duggan & Dahl, based on a desire to understand and provide others with access to the language used in SKAM, online translation practices contribute to creating a community identity which is dependent on multicompetent fans, i.e. fans who are competent in several languages and willing  to  participate  in  the  distribution  of  translations  to  an  international audience.

Duggan & Dahl's study, therefore, contributes with insights about how transnational  fan  cultures  that  are  dependent  on  competencies  in  several languages  may  develop  and  how  linguistic  ideologies  may  be  negotiated between them.

Th e  second  paper  by  Elisabeth  Muth  Andersen  and  Søren  Vigild  Poulsen explores  how  viewers  are  positioned  in  relation  to  interactions  between fi  ctional characters in SKAM.

Previous language and media studies have, among other things, pointed to degrees of mediation, viewers' sense of co-presence and their experience of authenticity in the fi  ctional world of SKAM as characteristic dramaturgical eff  ects.  Th is  study  aims  to  elaborate  on  this  research  by  showing  how  the features of mediation and sensed co-presence are accomplished by integrating cinematic resources and discursive strategies that the web series provides to its viewers.

Th e  paper  combines  social  semiotic  multimodality  theory  (Kress  & van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; Kress, 2010) for the analysis of the interaction of resources for communication with Goff  man's (1981) work on participation frameworks,  i.e.  the  various  ways  of  participating  in  co-present  and/or mediated communication. Furthermore, the study uses Dynel's (2011) twolevel  model  of  communication  in  TV  discourse.  Th e  fi  rst  level  concerns communication between the fi  ctional characters and the second level includes the use of cinematic and discursive strategies by members of the fi  lm crew including, for example, scriptwriting, editing and shooting.

Focusing on a specifi  c scene in the fi  rst season as a case example, the analysis shows how the viewer is represented as though physically present in the  interactional  space  of  the  depicted  fi  ctional  characters  using  cinematic resources such as camera placement, distance, height and focus, and how the viewer is invited to interpret the characters' employment of specifi  c semiotic resources to organize and monitor their interactions in the shared space of the schoolyard of a high school in which the scene occurs, using shift  s in shots, close-ups etc.

Th ereby  a  so-called  fi  ctitious  participation  slot  (Brock  2015:32)  is constructed for the viewer. Th e study also shows how the access provided to characters' fi  ctional interactions mediated by their mobile phones by indicating text  bubbles  on  the  viewers'  screen  supports  these  viewers'  positioning  in a particular scene. Th us, the paper seeks to ground previous fi  ndings in an empirical study of the complex multimodal ensemble of fi  lmic resources in SKAM.

Based  on  these  fi  ndings,  Andersen  and  Poulsen  argue  that  SKAM  is remarkable in the way the web series exploits and integrates fi  lmic resources, especially  related  to  speech,  writing  and  embodiment,  enabling  diff  erent viewer  positions  with  distinct  access  to  interactions  between  characters and information about the individuals. By employing multiple resources of communication in and across the communicative framework of the fi  ctional characters  and  the  communicative framework between the TV production and  the  viewers  as  recipients,  these  positionings  work  to  create  a  sense  of presence and identifi  cation for the viewer. In addition, by paying attention to the communicative functions of written (digital) language, spoken language and  embodied  resources,  respectively,  the  study  documents  the  complex construction of viewer positions in TV discourse. In addition, the analysis highlights how representations of digitally mediated communication (writing) on  the  viewer's  screen  expose  how  the  digitally  mediated  communication space of one of the characters is integrated with the digitally mediated viewing space of the viewer.

By  combining  multimodal  analysis  and  participant  frameworks,  this study  shows  how  SKAM  provides  diff  erent  viewer  positions  and  how  the web series orchestrates these, thereby complementing existing linguistic and media studies.

## References

- Brock, A. (2015). 'Participation frameworks and participation in televised sitcom, candid camera and stand-up comedy', in M. Dynel & J. Chovanec (Eds.), Participation in public and social media interactions, John  Benjamins, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, pp. 27-47.
- Cook, V. (1992). 'Evidence for multicompetence' , Language Learning , Vol. 42 No. 4, pp. 557-591.  doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1992.tb01044.x
- Dynel,  M.  (2011).  ''You  talking  to  me?'  Th e  viewer  as  a  ratifi  ed  listener  to  fi  lm discourse' , Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 43 No. 6, pp. 1628-1644.
- Goff  man, E. (1981). Forms of talk, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
- Graedler, A.-L. (2014). ' Attitudes towards English in Norway: A corpus-based study of attitudinal  expressions in newspaper discourse' , Multilingua , 33 ,  pp.  291-312. doi: 10.1515/multi-2014-0014.
- Hills, M. (2002). Fan cultures, Routledge, London, England.
- Jenkins, Ford, H. S. & Green, J. (2013). Spreadable media, New York University Press, New York, NY.
- Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication . Routledge, London.
- Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design . 1 st  edition. Routledge, London.
- Kress, G. & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication . London: Arnold Publishers.