Category Archives: Aiheeton

From Standardization to Linguistic Discrimination

|

I am working on a chapter on language attitudes for my book-in-progress for Routledge. I just wrote the following section, trying to explain how a language moves from having a standard form to having full-blown language-based discrimination. Is this too grossly over-simplified? The book is intended for students.

1) A standardized variety of a language emerges in the collective minds of a community of language users, based on the written form, and often (not always) related to the notion of a nation state.

2) The standard becomes associated with social prestige. As the standardized variety grows in stature and recognition in the collective minds of its users, ideologies emerge relating to the standard. These ideologies are based on who uses the standard and how these users perpetuate the perceived importance of the standard. Discourse about language emerges. The stature of the standard is discursively reinforced over time. Importantly, the ideals of the standard are applied not only to written language, but to spoken language, as well.

3) People whose speech (and writing) is perceived as being too distant from the standard are negatively viewed and denigrated for their language use. Their use of language is perceived by those within Standard Language Culture as a personal affront; that is, non-standard users are seen are refusing to play by the “self-evident” rules of language. Language use has shifted from being a property of the collective community of speakers to being in the hands of an elite group. Negative attitudes emerge towards those who do not conform to the norms of the elite.

4) The perceived rules of language use become so collectively engrained for an elite group of users that they form a perimeter around them. People who do not use language in the same way they do are effectively shut out from all sorts of social and public functions. Linguistic discrimination is in effect, but because the elite group perceives their language use as the only way of using language, language-based discrimination goes largely undetected, unaddressed, and dismissed.

my book exams in the 2017-2018 academic year

|

Five students in two days have asked about my book exams, so I’ll go ahead and post the information here. 

 

 

 

Monday 23th October 2017 at 12-16, U40 sali 1 (Mid-Autumn 2017 Reading Week) 

 

Basic Studies (Old Syllabus) 

Eng117 English linguistics (4 sp)

Reading:

Clark, Urszula. 2007. Studying Language: English in Action. Palgrave Macmillan. Read chapters 1, 2, and 4. 

Johnstone, Barbara. 2008 (2nd edition). Discourse Analysis. Blackwell Publishing. Read chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7.

 

Intermediate Studies (Old Syllabus) 

Eng225 Global and regional (3 sp) 

Reading:

Schneider, Edgar W. 2011. English Around the World: an introduction.Cambridge University Press. 

 

Tuesday 6th March 2018 at 12-16, U40 sali 1 (Early-March 2018 Reading Week) 

 

Basic Studies (Old Syllabus) 

Eng117 English linguistics (4 sp)

Reading:

Clark, Urszula. 2007. Studying Language: English in Action. Palgrave Macmillan. Read chapters 1, 2, and 4.

Johnstone, Barbara. 2008 (2nd edition). Discourse Analysis. Blackwell Publishing. Read chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7.

Intermediate Studies (Old Syllabus) 

Eng225 Global and regional (3 sp)

Reading:

Schneider, Edgar W. 2011. English Around the World: an introduction.Cambridge University Press. 

KIK-EN116 Topics in English Linguistics I (5 sp)

Reading:

Clark, Urszula. 2007. Studying Language: English in Action. Palgrave Macmillan. Read chapters 1, 2, and 4.

Johnstone, Barbara. 2008 (2nd edition). Discourse Analysis. Blackwell Publishing. Read chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7.

KIK-EN211 Language Variation and Change (5 sp) 

Reading: TBA

 

Monday 7th May 2018 at 12-16, U40 sali 1 (Early-May 2018 Reading Week)  

Intermediate Studies in English (New Syllabus) 

KIK-EN211 Language Variation and Change (5 sp)

Reading: TBA

 

And I’m like, dude, pick on someone your own size

|

Last month, this article in the UK’s Observer got under my skin enough that I sat down and wrote a response in the form of a letter to the editor. There are so many linguistic misperceptions and downright falsehoods in the piece that, frankly, I had a hard time knowing where to start. Likewise, I had a hard time fitting all of my beef with the piece into the 300-word maximum specified for letters to the editor.

I chose to focus on what bothered me most, and that is that this man, who I am aware is a “very important person” in Britain, started the entire tirade by complaining about his granddaughter. Like, what kind of person does that? As if teenage girls don’t have enough self-esteem issues without their grandfather complaining about them in a newspaper which is read by millions of people around the world.

At any rate, it is clear that the letter will not be published elsewhere (no doubt there are bigger fish to fry than some linguist complaining about self-important men complaining about the demise of English), so I’ll publish it here.

Dear editors,

With reference to Peter Preston’s concerns about his granddaughter’s English (“The Americans are coming — but we’re like, whatever,” 30.07.2017): I assure Mr. Preston with 100 percent certainty that his granddaughter does not speak American English. Ask a hundred British people to assess her speech compared to an American teenager, and they will tell you the same thing: his granddaughter speaks British English. It is not the same British English that Mr. Preston speaks, and it won’t be the same English spoken in the UK in 50 years, but it is unmistakably British English. Unlike Mr. Preston’s claims, British English will never be “absorbed” by American English.

 

How do I know this? Because I am a scientist who studies language systems. My statements are based on 150 years of research in the field of linguistics, not on opinion. Mr. Preston’s complaints offer nothing new or enlightening, nor for that matter anything grounded in science. Contrary to popular belief, the influence of television and other forms of media remains relatively negligible when it comes to language contact and change. As Mr. Preston points out, vocabulary items such as you guys, like, and awesome may drift into everyday speech, but these are just words. Changes in how sentences are put together, changes in pronunciation – that’s a different story. The effects of media influence in these core areas is a growing field of inquiry: note, for example, Professor Jane Stuart Smith’s work on changes in the pronunciation of Glaswegian English in connection with the EastEnders series.

Decades of research shows that teenage girls are trendsetters when it comes to language change, and, no, people like Mr. Preston do not like it—after all, they are teenage girls, a most maligned segment of our population.

But really, picking on his own granddaughter?

Sincerely yours,

Elizabeth Peterson, PhD

University Lecturer, English Philology

Department of Modern Languages

Unioninkatu 40, Box 24

University of Helsinki, Finland 00014

Keep up the good work

|

Now I have to brag a bit about my MA students. The name of the course is “English in Finland,” which of course can be interpreted quite widely — that was the point. The students are all completing their MA theses in the Department of Modern Languages in the English program. They are an incredible group!

At this point, there are eight brave souls who have stuck with it. I want to to tell you about their topics. At the outset, I think it is worth mentioning that there are some advantages to studying a language at a distance from its native speakers, or what might be considered its “home.” This psychological distance is very important for the students in our program, opening up opportunities for research that simply would not be possible in, say, the US or the UK. They just don’t have all that baggage. You’ll soon find out what I mean.

Without naming any student names, here are the topics:
1) The role of English for Middle Eastern asylum seekers in Finland, based on interview data
2) The use of prepositions in written English by native speakers of Finnish, based on a corpus of essays from upper secondary school students
3) English-Finnish codeswitching in a community of Finnish snowboarders, based on recorded conversations
4) How the word yes has been appropriated into Finnish (written as jees, in case you are wondering): what it means in Finnish compared to English, who uses it, and why, based on online data
5) How children at an English language daycare in Finland self-regulate, how they create patterns of use, who monitors their language
6) A comparison of the total amount of spoken language of African American actors vs actors of other backgrounds in 13 Oscar-winning “Black” films (I bet you can guess the student’s results…)
7) A comparison and account of the terms refugee, asylum seeker and migrant in English-language press in Finland, before and after the current immigrant changes
8) A survey evaluation of Finnish and Swedish speakers’ attitudes and social understanding of ethnic terms in English (including some very derogatory ones!): African-American, American Indian, Black, Chinaman, Cracker, Eskimo, Jap, Jew, Jewish, Kike, Mulatto, Native American, Nigger, Paki, Redskin, and White trash. I understand that this list has a lot of shock value; rest assured that the goal of the study is to make sure that students are taught which of these terms are OK to use and which ones are not–and why.

“I love your accent!”

|

Last week, while travelling in the UK, I experienced a first:

“I love your accent,” the man working at a cafe said to me when I ordered my drink.

I blinked at him in confusion.

“You love my accent?” I asked, looking around behind me to make sure he wasn’t talking to someone else.

I’m American. Furthermore, I am from the American West, which is by many considered to be a linguistic wasteland — look at any dialect map of the United States, and you will see a vast expanse of nothing, stretching (depending on the map and the features it illustrates) from either the Atlantic coast or at least from the Midwest, all the way to the Pacific Coast. My variety of American English is as general as general gets.

“Yes, I love the way you talk. In fact, your coffee is on the house,” he said emphatically.

I blushed and mumbled something about him making my day.* I am not one to say “no” to a free coffee.

No one “loves” the General American accent. Even Americans don’t love the General American accent. Ask any American about who speaks better, a Brit or an American, and that person will wax on and on about how wonderful British English is (yes, I am generalizing, but studies actually confirm this generalization). Do Brits have the same love for American English that we have for theirs? Heavens no! Pretty much since the time of the Founding Fathers, Brits have been blaming Americans for “ruining” English. (And for a host of other problems, of course.)

We Americans and our accent assault the airwaves and the media of ever corner of the globe. We are so commonplace as to render ourselves mute. No one even hears an American anymore, it seems. It’s all just background noise.

Here is an example.

One day, in downtown Helsinki, I sat with two friends, both from the UK, who were catching up on old times. One of the friends has a London accent, and the other is from Yorkshire. They were going on and on about the time they had studied together, and the four-letter words were flying. I mean, their vocabulary made me cringe. The server at the cafe, a woman in about her twenties, set down our drinks, turned to my friends, who barely stopped long enough to hear her say– and very distinctly only  to them:

“I just love the way you talk!”

I was speaking English too, of course, but my voice didn’t count. Why? Because I am just another American. It didn’t matter if the stream of words coming out of their mouth would make a sailor blush, my friends were speaking British English, and that, in and of itself, made up for any amount of four-letter words. Their speech is “beautiful,” and mine is dull, common, everyday.

Even in places like Finland (where English is widely used as a foreign language) studies show that British English is considered more sophisticated, learned, and eloquent. Yet, oddly, many people, like the students of English at the university, for example, end up speaking English that sounds more American than British, simply for the reason already stated: they get more input in American English through various forms of media. It feels more “natural” for many of them–not all–to speak with an American accent.

And that is the double bind: American English is ubiquitous, which makes it somehow less special.

So of course I had to write a blog entry about the observation from a stranger:

“I love your accent.”

Chances are it is the only time in my life I’ll ever hear those words.

*I should noted that it was pretty clear that the man was not hitting on me; I have reached an age where that sort of thing just doesn’t happen. I really have no reason to believe he did not mean it when he said he loves my accent!

Finnish Parliament (and some words of wisdom from a social welfare state)

|

Today I was lucky to be able to participate in a tour of Finnish Parliament, courtesy of the American Women’s Club of Finland.

We live near this gorgeous building, and I walk by it every day, so it was quite nice to actually see inside it.

photo-2 (2)

We were able to walk through the gallery, which is known for its sparse but elegant Nordic style, as well as its row of busts of past presidents.

Gallery, Finnish Parliament

Gallery, Finnish Parliament

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also got to see where all the action happens. As someone who started out in journalism, it was interesting to see the press area of the voting forum, pictured below. Guess what? Members of the press share lunchroom and even sauna facilities with Members of Parliament. Sounds cozy, doesn’t it?

IMG_2937

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the speaker’s area, with five statues that symbolize the morals and development of Finnish society. The figure in the middle is a female holding an infant. The woman is facing backward, and the infant faces forward. This is meant to symbolize the past and the future. But it turns out that that’s not the whole story. In 1931, when the building opened, it was considered quite risque to portray a nude woman from the front. Yet the men, of course, are shown in all their glory. (Interesting that this is quite the opposite trend that we see today, for example, in Hollywood films. Isn’t there some big media interest right now about Ben Affleck showing his privates on film?)

IMG_2939

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Underneath the right-most statue you can see a blue box. That’s the sign that shows the votes: “yes,” “no,” “abstained,” or “absent.”

One of the women in our group had a good question for our host, Dimitri Qvintus, the Communications Manager for the Social Democratic Party. She asked him to name the three biggest issues the Finnish government is facing today. He said 1) the reformation of the healthcare system 2) the reformation of retirement (both issues having very much to do with the current economic crisis in Finland), and 3) security issues dealing with so much social and political unrest so geographically nearby(e.g., East Ukraine).

Here were a few more highlights from our discussion with Mr. Qvintus:

  • “In Finnish government, we say that sooner or later, everybody’s sauna burns down.” This means that every political party (or every politician, for that matter), gets their own turn for chaos and defeat.
  • He said that the longer he is in politics, the more he is convinced that it is NOT all about one’s political party. “I think what’s best for our country is also what’s best for our party,” he said. At this point, many of the American women were nodding their heads in agreement, wishing that American politicians could take a page out of his book.
  • Here’s a strong statement: “[The American healthcare system; a private system] is responsible for more deaths of Americans than any terrorist organization.” Ouch. That really stings, but his point rings out loud and clear …

 

English — Finnish — Swedish — what is it?!

|

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.

http://ylex.yle.fi/uutiset/popuutiset/ruotsalaisbandi-kayttaa-suomea-biisillaan-suomi-on-loistava-bilekieli

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!)

 

English for whom?

|

A picture is worth a thousand words, and this picture from downtown Helsinki speaks volumes about the symbolic use of English in Finland

photo(4)

You know what I absolutely love about this window signage in downtown Helsinki (on Kalevankatu, for anyone who really likes the specifics)? I love that it’s in English, but it’s not written for an English-speaking or an international audience, it’s written for Finns — or least for non-Finns who have lived in Finland long enough that they know what narikka means. That’s right, you’re reading along in English — “here is the bar” … OK. Their opening hours. OK, got it … wait a minute: NARIKKA?! What does that mean? And suddenly you know that this is actually an insider’s place. Narikka is one of those classic Finnish words that can’t really be translated — well, it can, be not very neatly or nicely, which is why it’s better to just use the Finnish word, which is what the business owners have opted for here.

This is a narikka:
narikassa

What it means is that you have to pay to check your coat at the door. Usually it’s a fee of something like 2 to 5 euros, and it’s mandatory. It’s part of the Finnish pub tradition, you could say.

But the times are changing, and so is narikka, which apparently is a selling point for this establishment, which is so modern that not only does it use ENGLISH on its window messages, but it doesn’t have a narikka. I love it.

Pliis and kiitos! It’s finally out!

|

Things move slowly in academia. We first started working on this research project in the summer of 2011. Now, finally, almost exactly three years later, we have a publication out! Many thanks to the assistants and especially to the native speakers of Finnish who participated in the study — all 417 of them!

https://www.academia.edu/7659433/Kiitos_and_pliis_the_relationship_of_native_and_borrowed_politeness_markers_in_Finnish

Panel on language contact at IPRA 2015

|

Contact me if you are interested in participating! Abstract deadline is 15 October 2014. The conference is 26-31 July 2015 in Antwerp, Belgium.

Here is the panel proposal:
Linguistic and pragmatic outcomes of contact with English as foreign language

Much of the work on language contact and change has dealt with populations that came to simultaneously share the same environs – due to migration, exploitation, conquest, or other forms of human mobility. Although contact with a non-native language is not unprecedented (note the lexification in certain domains of English from Latin and Greek, for example), the widespread use of English as a lingua franca and foreign language creates ample opportunities for contact with other languages in the current era. In this panel we focus on the widely-reported influence of English. We do not specifically discuss other languages, though the same approach could well be adapted to other languages in future research.

Given its status, it is hardly surprising that English would serve as a lexifier in certain domains: international trade, diplomacy, tourism and travelling, media, information technology, and academia, to name a few. A robust collection of work attests to the incorporation of English terminology within these domains in many of the world’s languages (Hoffman 2011; see also Leppänen and Nikula 2007).

What remains less vigorously studied is the incorporation of non-native elements that are not domain specific. These elements include, for example, in Finnish discourse the use of about as a preposition and the use of jees ‘yes’ as an adjective. Other examples of languages incorporating English elements include expletives, discourse markers such as like and anyway, or politeness particles such as please. An interesting point about many of these features is the pragmatic function they carry and how this is carried over into the receiving language.

With this panel, we propose to investigate more fully the dynamics of language contact with English, a non-native language widely used around the world. In doing so, a particular aim is to focus on non-domain specific elements, especially those that contribute to the pragmatic and social order of a language. This could mean exploring data from any native context and from any variety of sources, including on-line, spoken, or metalingustic data. We also explore theoretical questions concerning contact with English, including transmission of and motivation for borrowing, social meanings, indexicality, and possible grammatical influence.