Speech to Text: Stenography and Parliamentary Discourse

What politicians say in the parliament is not always what appears in the official records. Although the debates are oral performances, the printed records document the debates as written texts. The stenographers are the key mediators in translating oral statements into written words, guided by language policies and procedural regulations. This presentation examines this cultural transformation, focusing on what is lost and added in the process and how it shapes the preservation, interpretation, and legitimation of parliamentary discourse as historical evidence. Drawing on all digitized parliamentary debates from 1867 onward, as well as archival material from the Swedish Riksdag, it combines qualitative analyses of editorial practices with computational studies of linguistic change over time.

Lunch at 11:45 a.m. for in-person attendees

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About the Speaker

Fredrik Mohammadi Norén is an associate professor in media and communication studies at Malmö University, Sweden. His research interests are geared toward media history, digital humanities, and propaganda history. Mohammadi Norén is PI of the research infrastructure projects: “Swedish Riksdag 1867–2022: An Ecosystem of Linked Open Data” (swerik-project.github.io). He has edited three volumes on different perspectives on propaganda history and is currently working on a jointly authored monograph on the media history of the Swedish parliament.