Thursday 20 March 2008

Switching to English, BTW


So the last post was probably the last in Swedish for a while. I have been thinking a lot about cosmopolitanism, global civil society, the global public sphere and the like for a while, and I came to the conclusion that it would be ridiculous to keep blogging in Swedish with a research agenda like that.

At numerous occasions I have found myself frustrated trying to read blog posts that seem interesting in languages I don't understand (thanks to Global Voices, I manage to understand a bit more). I made the final decision to switch to English talking to an Indian friend (a car dealer, as it happens) yesterday.

For my old Swedish speaking readers (I don't know who you are as I haven't got a tracking device yet, but I have my suspicions): stop whining. Of course you can English. For any newcomers from other language areas: you are most welcome!

As readers of this blog probably have noticed, posting has been sparse and irregular. There is no blogroll. Etc. One of the main reasons for this is that I did not figure out what my target audience was. Academic colleagues? Polisci students? Friends? The Interested Public? Was I going to write only about my own research or about other things as well? As a result of my not knowing what this blog was for, I wound up not being able to write at all, even though I wanted.

I have now decided to cut myself some slack. From now on, this blog will be about many things, research related or not, accessible to all. And as always, my socialist rantings will be confined to erlanderbrigaderna (in Swedish).

And the target audience? Myself and anyone who happens to pass by.

2 comments:

Fredrik Fischer said...

Hi Nils,

great to see you progress so great to see you progressing so nicely with the blogging. And good to hear that you won't be as discriminating concerning bloggable subjects in the future.

However, it might be an idea to change the language of the blog's templates as well, as your blog has now suddenly become very international indeed with heading dates in Swedish, headlines and posts in English and then signatures and other such information in Swedish again. I don't really remember where you do this change, but my guess is "Basic settings" under your blog settings (whatever the name is in Swedish...).

Keep up the good (and very interesting) work!

Oh, and by the way, check this out.

Yours,
Fredrik

Nils said...

Thanks! Of course, the tags will be in French, the dates in Mandarin and the headlines in Tagalog.

(I realise that Swedes chatting in English has a bit of je ne sais quoi to it, but the potential audience is now way over a billion!