Linguistic change among bilingual speakers of Finnish and American English in Sweden: Background and some tentative findings (original) (raw)
Applied Psycholinguistics, 1999
This is a courageous book. Published as the author's doctoral thesis, this work strives retrospectively to “determine the significance of age in the acquisition of a second language” (p. 26). It has explicit interdisciplinary ambitions to integrate concepts and practices from various disciplines in which bilingual development is studied: notably, sociocultural theory, developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, text linguistics, and pragmatics. These multifaceted theoretical aims are anchored in an equally broad empirical ground, drawing on various types of data. Not surprisingly, the result is a theoretically intriguing, yet methodologically puzzling, approach to the study of bilingualism and second language acquisition.
The aim of this project is focused on my approach to a bilingual study of the use of English by speakers of other languages through the analysis of text messages between them in a three-month span of time. In this case, the analysis will be focused in a speaker of Swedish and a speaker of Spanish as L1, and they both will use English as an L2. Therefore, the background of both speakers will be explained as well as that of the languages. These will be taken into consideration for the analysis of the data extracted from messages between both speakers as well as literature review on the question of the use of English by Swedes as an L2 and as a lingua franca to communicate with others in the Scandinavian country and the use of Swedish by non-native speakers. It is expected for both speakers to use their L2 in different situations and by different reasons throughout the text messages aforementioned. However, the main focus will be in the Swedish speaker using his L2.
Language survival: A study of language contact, language shift and language choice in Sweden
1985
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Language and Education
This article analyses the construction of linguistic value and recognition of linguistic resources in educational spaces in Finland, where Swedish is the second national language and in Sweden, where Finnish is one of five official minority languages. Drawing on ethnographic methods, critically informed notions of language policy and spatial theorization, we argue that linguistic hierarchies created through language and education policies manifest themselves in the discursive construction of linguistic value in the everyday educational spaces. In Finland, the strong societal and political status of Swedish and the monolingual school institutions enable the recognition of language as a right and a resource but potentially present linguistic diversity as a problem within those spaces. In Sweden, the historical traces of a problem orientation towards Finnish language remain, despite the aimed improvements in educational language rights and the shifting orientation on Finnish being recognized as a resource in the market-oriented educational system. Pupils in both countries mostly considered language as a communicative resource in their everyday social spaces but the negotiation of the societal value of language and bilingualism was rather controversial. Discussing linguistic disadvantage in relation to educational spaces will bring new perspectives to language and minority policies in linguistically diverse societies.
Swedish speech islands in Finland: A sociocultural linguistic perspective
The International Journal – Language, Society and Culture, 2011
In this paper, I discuss so-called Swedish speech islands (linguistic enclaves) in Finland past and present from the point of view of sociocultural linguistics. I do this mainly by focusing on the linguistic history and present-day of the city of Tampere, today the third largest city in Finland. By "Swedish speech islands in Finland" I mean the cities of Tampere (founded 1779) and Oulu (founded 1605) and the towns of Pori (founded 1558) and Kotka (founded 1879), all officially Finnish-speaking cities and towns with a small Swedish-speaking minority (0.2–1.0 % of the population in 2008). At the end of 2008, for example, Tampere, which is the largest of these and the only one located in inland Finland, had 209,552 inhabitants, of whom 1,065 (0.5 %) reported Swedish as their first language. In addition to the four cities and towns, there are, however, some other places in Finland at times referred to as "speech islands" , mainly places with an industrial history (e.g. the town of Varkaus in Eastern Finland). In this paper, I therefore touch on this type of "speech islands" as well, although I do not consider them speech islands in the same sense. – The paper is part of the projects “Linguistic change in an industrial town. Swedishness in Tampere, 1779–2000” (2008–2010) and “Bilingualism and multicultural Finland – best practices and future challenges” (2010–2014).
International Journal of Bilingualism, 2002
The present study aims to characterize the perception of stylistic nuances of lexical items in both Swedish and Finnish among members of the Sweden Finnish minority in Sweden, with special emphasis on Swedish. Data on stylistic perceptions were elicited from 77 bilingual Sweden Finns and from a Swedish and a Finnish control group. The subjects were asked to describe the connotative and stylistic meanings of 14 pairs of synonymous words in Swedish (e.g., polis-snut 'police-cop') and in Finnish, using Osgood's semantic differential. The main issue was to discuss to what extent the Sweden Finns show similarity to the Swedes and/ or Finns regarding their stylistic perceptions. The results of the analysis indicate that the various Sweden Finnish test groups (divided according to sex and generation) have a different level of competence in Swedish regarding the perception of stylistic nuances. Adult men differentiated signif icantly less for all word pairs, while adolescents and women perceived these words largely in the same way as the Swedes in the corresponding subgroups. The results are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate on immigrants and integration, and suggest that a more similar language use may indicate a higher degree of integration.
Finnish and Estonian in Second-Language Acquisition Research
2011
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This article makes a case for studying the perceptions that young people have of the ways of speaking of both themselves and others on the supposition that constructions of ambient sociolinguistic variation have an impact on the language development and use of individual language users. Such a study is particularly relevant in multilingual contexts in which differences with regard to social as well as ethnic and linguistic background may generate signifi cantly different perceptions. In a speaker evaluation study, Swedish speech stimuli from 12 young Stockholmers were evaluated by 343 listeners from different backgrounds. The results show that young people may divide and relate to the linguistic space of Stockholm in very different ways and that they vary in their degree of accuracy regarding linguistic self-perception.
A Dynamic Perspective on Late Bilinguals' Linguistic Development in an L2 Environment.
This paper provides a dynamic perspective on the linguistic development of adult bilinguals in an L2 environment, and an empirical test for the principles formulated within a dynamic systems approach to L1 attrition. It presents a qualitative analysis of the personal narratives of the post-migratory linguistic development of 27 adult German–English bilinguals residing in Ireland, with particular focus on two participants’ stories. Participants responded to a comprehensive sociolinguistic questionnaire, providing self-ratings of current and past language proficiency in all their languages, and reflecting on the processes of and factors impacting on L2 acquisition and L1 attrition in the L2 environment. These data are complemented by proficiency data elicited with a test battery in L1 German and L2 English. Analyses revealed that most participants have succeeded both in acquiring English to a high level, and in maintaining German. However, other L2s as a rule show a pattern of decline. The results are discussed with recourse to dynamic conceptions of multilingual development.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
Standard language cultures are characterised by beliefs in idealised standard forms of the language in question. In this paper, these beliefs are connected to the concepts of referee design and speech community, through analysis of how Swedish adolescents reflect upon and selfassess their language proficiencies. The data consist of interviews where 111 participants self-assess their Swedish, English and additional home languages. During the self-assessment, participants use different points of reference when reflecting on the different languages in their repertoires. Four main categories of answers are found, all relating to an absent referee in some manner: the participants' evaluations of other people's language proficiency compared to their own; their proficiency in other languages; their evaluation of their proficiency in relation to formal grading and feedback given in school; and their own experiences of their limitations and abilities in different situations. When assessing Swedish, participants display attitudes towards 'good' and 'bad' language and contextualise their proficiency in a way that focuses on standard language ideologies and their speech community. The same pattern does not occur when participants reflect on their other languages, indicating the important role that the peer group and speech community have in creating and facilitating these ideologies.
The Language Situation in Finland
Current Issues in Language Planning, 2002
This monograph provides an overview of the language situation in Finland, an officially bilingual country in northern Europe. The national languages, Finnish and Swedish, have equal status, guaranteed in language legislation since 1922. During the 19th century, however, Swedish was still the language of the élite, while Finnish was the language of the common people. Therefore, the main accomplishment during the 19th century was the rapid development of the Finnish language into a language of education and administration, after Finnish was accorded official status in 1863. The beginning of independence (1917-) witnessed a number of language conflicts that gradually subsided and led to a long stable period between the languages. In the 1980s, the linguistic situation changed again in many ways. The former emigrant country became an immigrant country. Even though immigrant minorities in Finland are still small compared with, for example, other Nordic countries, immigration has created a situation where there are several established linguistic minorities. In the 1990s, the status of linguistic minorities was improved through a number of legislative and educational reforms, and in 2001, proposals for the new Language Act and the Saami Language Act were written. Simultaneously, the status of Finnish has changed somewhat. In 1995, Finland joined the European Union. Internationalisation and globalisation have become a part of Finnish society, and the role of English in business, education, media and science has become more accentuated than ever before. In this new situation, the future of Finnish as well as the other national language, Swedish, is discussed from the viewpoint of less widely used languages in a globalising world.