{"id":844,"date":"2008-03-08T09:07:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-08T15:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=844"},"modified":"2008-12-20T19:12:42","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T19:12:42","slug":"when-to-keep-your-mouth-shut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/03\/when-to-keep-your-mouth-shut\/","title":{"rendered":"When to keep your mouth shut"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span> tale to sour the lingenberries on your meatballs (yes, Scandinavian story coming up). From the Guardian<\/span> News Blog<\/a>: <\/p>\n

The Telegraph<\/span><\/a> reports that academics in Denmark found the furniture chain [Ikea] was naming its cheaper products after Danish towns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe researchers claim to have discovered a pattern where more expensive items, such as beds and chairs, have been named after Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian towns whereas doormats, draught excluders and runners are named after Danish places,\u201d says the paper.<\/p>\n

Klaus Kj\u00f6ller, of the University of Copenhagen, apparently \u201canalysed\u201d (rather than browsed) the Ikea catalogue. He said it \u201csymbolically portrays Denmark as the doormat of Sweden, a country with a larger economy and population.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then, in the Comment is Free<\/strong><\/a> section: <\/p>\n

The only problem is that there never was any research … A Danish journalist from Nyhedsavisen<\/a><\/span>, a free Danish tabloid paper, called Kj\u00f6ller a few weeks ago asking if he had noticed the use of Danish town names in the Ikea catalogue.<\/p>\n

Kj\u00f6ller had not, but he happily played along and for fun lampooned the Swedes. He was very surprised to see the story blown up on the cover of the newspaper the following day, but even more surprised by what happened next.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last week I have had calls from all sorts of media companies who wanted to interview me about Ikea\u2019s symbolic imperialism,\u201d he says. \u201cBelgian and German papers have called, as has BBC World, and they were all disappointed that I had to deny the reports. Still the story has now featured in numerous papers around the world, it makes you wonder why no one has bothered to check out the facts of the story before printing it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But if you follow the link above, Kj\u00f6ller seems to have played along rather well…<\/p>\n

Det er ikke et tilf\u00e6lde, mener lektor og kommunikationsekspert Klaus Kj\u00f8ller fra K\u00f8benhavns Universitet.<\/p>\n

\u00bbDet er alt for regelm\u00e6ssigt til at v\u00e6re et tilf\u00e6lde, for IKEA er jo et dybt professionelt foretagende. Det kan kun v\u00e6re drilleri mod Danmark,\u00ab siger han.<\/p>\n

Og de danske navne er ubetinget mindre v\u00e6rd end de svenske og norske, mener leder af journalistuddannelsen p\u00e5 Syddansk Universitet Troels Mylenberg.<\/p>\n

\u00bbDet er ligesom, hvis man f\u00e5r opkaldt en vej efter sig. S\u00e5 vil man ogs\u00e5 hellere have Strandvejen end vejen ved siden af lossepladsen. Navngivning er noget af det mest identitetsskabende, og en d\u00f8rm\u00e5tte er ubetinget noget man t\u00f8rrer sine sko af i. Det siger noget om IKEA’s humor,\u00ab siger han.<\/p>\n

Klaus Kj\u00f8ller er enig.<\/p>\n

\u00bbD\u00f8rm\u00e5tter, sm\u00e5 t\u00e6pper og gulvunderlag er tredje klasse, hvis det ikke er sjette eller syvende klasse i boligindretning. Kan man overhovedet komme l\u00e6ngere ned end at v\u00e6re et gulvunderlag?\u00ab sp\u00f8rger Kj\u00f8ller.<\/p>\n

Om der i virkeligheden er et decideret had til Danmark fra den store m\u00f8belkoncern, tvivler Klaus Kj\u00f8ller dog p\u00e5.<\/p>\n

\u00bbMan kunne sige, at det viser, at IKEA i virkeligheden er en slags svensk imperialistisk foretagende over for danskere. De tr\u00e6der os under fode, her n\u00f8jagtig 350 \u00e5r efter vi mistede Sk\u00e5ne Halland og Blekinge. Det er dog nok at l\u00e6gge for meget i det. Men m\u00e5ske sidder der en klike i navngivningsafdelingen, som f\u00f8rer terrorvirksomhed mod Danmark,\u00ab siger Klaus Kj\u00f8ller.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wonder what terrorvirksomhed<\/span> means?<\/p>\n

Quick summary: a Danish newspaper spots something funny. A reporter makes a couple of calls to obliging authority figures to pump it up. They go a little over the top, regret it and the joke palls in re-telling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tale to sour the lingenberries on your meatballs (yes, Scandinavian story coming up). From the Guardian News Blog: The Telegraph reports that academics in Denmark found the furniture chain [Ikea] was naming its cheaper products after Danish towns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[15,2115,2111,2114,2108,2110,2113,2410,2112,1566,2109],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-bbc","tag-british-broadcasting-corporation","tag-cheaper-products","tag-danmark","tag-denmark","tag-furniture-chain","tag-klaus-kjoller","tag-media","tag-sweden","tag-the-guardian","tag-university-of-copenhagen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2416,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions\/2416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}