And another great example of English for symbolic purposes — and then some — by this Swedish band called Panik Disco.
In this online news article (see below), the band’s lead singer, a Swedish woman, explains that Finnish just “sounds good” in this context, and she wanted to use the language she knows from her Finnish mother.
If you make it through the video, you’ll also notice that the singing style incorporates features of African American Vernacular English as a means of expressing an urban sensibility. Gotta love these examples of making English local, global, expressing and creating an identity, and so much more — all at the same time. After all, it’s just a language. After all, it’s LANGUAGE.
(Thanks to Malin Löfström for sharing this great example with me. Tack!)