ABSTRACTS by session
too much to cope with on a personal level? We will look at the complexity of helping, is it possible, difficult or even impossible? Professional ethics is intended to protect the rights of clients and their freedom of choice. Should professional ethics also protect the workers? We question whether a professional approving the vulnerability of the other, could increase understanding and enhance collaboration so that working on a humane level can persist? Minna Sorsa, R.N., MNSc, University of Tampere Minna.Sorsa@staff.uta.fi
PhD-student,
Faculty
of
Social
Sciences
(SOC),
/ Sociolinguistic vulnerability. The case of academic publishing Josep Soler, University of Stockholm The main purpose of this paper is to attempt a reading of the concept of vulnerability in sociolinguistic terms. In short, the goal is to discuss how language creates opportunities for inclusion and exclusion, and to see how, particularly in the context of academia, publishing for academic purposes constitutes a system where some actors have more agentive power and more affordances than others. Empirically, in the paper I analyse the discourse of what has been termed predatory open-access journals with a corpus of scam emails sent to scholars by hitherto unknown publishers. Framed against the background of a sociolinguistics of mobility, these emails become interesting objects of analysis because of their different indexical values. In particular, beyond issues of ordered indexicalities, I argue that these texts point to the seriously flawed nature of the field of academic publishing and the associated inequalities that are currently present in this field. Examining such inequalities based exclusively on the native/non-native English speakers divide, as has been traditionally done in sociolinguistic debates, is not useful, nor is it enough to simply raise awareness against such predatory publishers. Instead, I argue in favour of a more sociologically informed analysis of academic publishing, something that I see as necessary if we wish to enhance more democratic means of access to key resources in publishing. Josep Soler is Assistant professor of English at the University of Stockholm josep.soler@english.su.se
/ From individual characteristics into challenging life situations Marjo Kuronen, Suvi Liuski & Elina Virokannas The concept of vulnerability is widely used in social scientific research as well as in policy making, health and social care services, and in social work, but it is rarely theoretically defined. It is often used in a stigmatising way referring to individuals or groups associated with victimhood, deprivation, dependency or pathology. It is also used for example to justify rights for benefits or entry into special services or treatment. The aim of our ongoing research project is to use vulnerability as a critical concept. We argue that