Coordinator: Juhani Härmä
E-Mail: Juhani.Harma [at] helsinki.fi
Description:
The subgroup pragmatic approaches to languages and cultures examines language contacts.
Language contacts in diachrony: The diversity in the use of foreign languages in Finland (before the middle of the 20th century) is shown e.g. by the central position of German as the language of science until the 1960s; especially in the field of natural sciences, German was besides Swedish the most important model in the elaboration of Finnish into a scientific language.
The contexts of use of French were different: in the 18th century, it was not uncommon in the paratexts of academic dissertations which followed the model of Central European dissertations. In the 19th century, French became a lingua franca used by the cultural elite in their correspondence. The knowledge of French was of a surprisingly high level from the 17th to the early 20th century.
Language contacts in synchrony have been studied e.g. from the point of view of bilingualism and linguistic rights (project financed by the Academy of Finland 2006-2009) as well as creoles in the Hispanic world. Oral and written code-switching has been analyzed in Romance languages.
Research on the transfer of grammatical concepts from one culture to another represents a (more) theoretical approach.
In the examination of cultural interaction the focus has naturally been on the ties between Finland and the rest of Europe, but also e.g. on the impact of German culture in Bohemia and Prague. Extensive surveys and translation bibliographies on the reception of German, Swiss, French and Italian literature in Finland have been completed. Research has shown that contemporary Italian drama was much better known in Finland at the beginning of the 20th century than nowadays. Comparative research on opera and song translations (Finnish, Swedish, German) is being carried out.
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