Shakespeare 400 -juhla 21.4.

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Helsingin yliopiston juhlasalissa (Unioninkatu 34) torstaina 21.4.2016 klo 16–18.

William Shakespearen (1564–1616) kuolemasta on tänä keväänä kulunut 400 vuotta. Tervetuloa mukaan juhlistamaan näytelmäkirjailijan työtä sekä hänen merkitystään suomalaiselle kulttuurille: niin teatterille, kirjallisuudelle kuin musiikillekin. Olemme koonneet yhteen joukon merkittävimpiä suomalaisia Shakespearen tulkitsijoita ja tuntijoita jakamaan meille oman kuvansa Shakespearesta.

Kuva: Folger Shakespeare Library

Kuva: Folger Shakespeare Library

Esiintyjät

Näyttelijät:

  • Esko Salminen
  • Elina Knihtilä
  • Ville Sandqvist
  • Chike Ohanwe (TeaK)

Muusikot:

  • cembalotaiteilija ja näyttelijä Elina Mustonen
  • laulaja Mikko Sateila ja säestäjä Jenna Ristilä

Puhujat:

  • Teatterin tiedotuskeskuksen johtaja Hanna Helavuori
  • professorit Hanna Korsberg ja Jyrki Nummi
  • suomentajat Kersti Juva ja Lauri Sipari
  • kustannustoimittaja (WSOY), suomentaja Alice Martin
  • Kansallisteatterin johtaja, teatteriohjaaja Mika Myllyaho

Kunniavieraana Ison-Britannian ja Pohjois-Irlannin suurlähettiläs H.E. Sarah Price

Tilaisuus on maksuton. Tervetuloa!

Tilaisuuden järjestävät Helsingin yliopiston nykykielten laitos ja humanistinen tiedekunta.

HY:n kielitieteet maailman huipulle QS:n vertailussa

Helsingin yliopiston filosofian ja kielitieteen oppiaineet kipusivat tänä vuonna yhä korkeammalle QS:n kansainvälisessä alakohtaisessa vertailussa. Molemmat ovat maailman 50 parhaan joukossa.

Helsingin yliopiston filosofian oppiaine sijoittui tänä vuonna sijalle 30 (viime vuonna 46) ja kielitieteet sijalle 43 (viime vuonna 51).

Nykykielet, Englannin kieli ja kirjallisuus ja historia säilyttivät asemansa 100 parhaan joukossa. Uutena vertailussa oli tänä vuonna mukana arkeologia. Myös se sijoittuu välille 51–100.

Lue lisää

Letters looted by pirates offer invaluable knowledge on everyday language

Asylum seekers from Syria have prompted questions about integration recently, but historical sociolinguistics shows migration is not a new phenomenon and integration is possible.

Linguistic and ethnohistoric data indicate migration has played a large role in much of Europe’s history. Dr. Marijke van der Wal from Leiden University has been studying the effects of migration through language. Looking at these migrants’ language, we can get a glimpse of how they adjusted to their new homes.

It was an honour to have Dr. Marijke van der Wal open the HiSoN Conference 2016 in Helsinki.

It was an honour to have Dr. Marijke van der Wal open the HiSoN Conference 2016 in Helsinki.

Letters as Loot: where pirates save the day

“This time machine­ like collection of letters has value to discover more about migration patterns across Europe” – Dr. Marijke van der Wal.

During the Anglo‐Dutch Wars, English and Dutch pirates seized ships of enemy countries with government support. In order to prove these seizures as legal seizures of enemy ships, correspondence documents transported on the ships were provided as evidence. These letters are to this day held at the British Archives in England.

As most survived historical documents are from men of the upper class or clergy, these “letters as loot” provide invaluable knowledge on the everyday language of not just the upper but also the middle and lower classes of society. These letters, often correspondences between family members, also offer a peek into the lives of women and children.

Family letters from refugee merchants

Dr. van der Wal explains how authors were identified with the help of the Amsterdam marriage register

Dr. van der Wal explains how authors were identified with the help of the Amsterdam marriage register

With so much movement of people from different countries, bilingualism, and even multilingualism, was a normal state of affairs, as it still is today.

Van der Wal presented the case of the merchant family Heusch who immigrated to Hamburg, Germany from the Netherlands in the 17th century to evade war and religious persecution. There, they became an important part of the German trade scene. Such successful integration does not mean complete assimilation. They still wrote to each other in their native language of Dutch with few influences of German present in their written language. Even second generation Heusch’s born and raised in Germany wrote in Dutch.

Turning back to the present day situation of migrant integration, it is then possible to envision a society where migrants become contributing members of society without the need to eliminate their native language and culture.

Population boomed in Amsterdam

Amsterdam’s population grew from 30,000 to 200,000 between 1585 and 1660 purely from an influx of migrant workers. Many of these migrants arrived in the Netherlands looking for better employment opportunities. Many locals were also concerned that the excellent system of poor relief in Amsterdam would attract more migrants. Does this sound familiar?

These migrants, however, were not leeches of the system but became fully integrated members of society. They often set up family in the Netherlands. Van der Wal suggests that one way of integrating is marriage, because “marrying a local woman was a fruitful strategy for integration and economic success.” Van der Wal has been surprised to find that some immigrants integrated into the Dutch society to the extent that they wrote letters in Dutch even to their non‐Dutch relatives.

The HiSoN (Historical Sociolinguistics network) conference was held at the University of Helsinki, Finland from 10–11 March, 2016. Particular emphasis was placed on the social aspect of historical linguistics this year. Over 50 sociolinguists from 17 countries participated in this year’s conference, with over 20 languages represented in the papers. Dr. Marijke van der Wal opened this event with her plenary talk.

Text: Tina Lin, Anna Suutarla, Iida Hinkkanen. Photos: Anna Suutarla.

Read more

Another blog post from the HiSoN conference: ‘More Trump Than Is Healthy’ – How Political Speeches Have Changed

‘More Trump Than Is Healthy’ – How Political Speeches Have Changed

Dr. Jukka Tyrkkö has been researching the sociolinguistic aspects of political discourse. Up until recently everything seemed to be going pleasantly, but then along came Trump, and skewed all the data.

Tyrkkö’s closing plenary of the HiSoN conference dealt with two corpora. One of them is a small corpus of speeches delivered between 1800 and 2015. Taking a macro approach to language data, this research focuses on the trends and tendencies of features such as sentence length, word length and readability score. The other one is a political Twitter corpus gathered from tweets of the 2016 US presidential primaries.

From the political speech to the political tweet

In the beginning of his talk, Tyrkkö warned the audience that they would get “more Trump than is healthy”.

In the beginning of his talk, Tyrkkö warned the audience that they would get “more Trump than is healthy”.

The nature of political speeches has changed dramatically over time. Technological advancements, like the invention of the radio and television, and more recently the internet and social media, play a major role in these changes.

Whereas political speeches held in the beginning of the 20th century used to consist of long and complex sentences, in today’s social media oriented world political messages have to be short and easy to grasp.

Dr. Tyrkkö explains that the never ending election cycle pushes politicians to focus their message on winning the popular vote and leaves little room for “boring” fact-based politics that requires in-depth understanding of issues.

Add to this a politically passive audience that experience information overload as it is, and you get ideology based argumentation that dilutes complex political issues into an us vs. them set-up and thrives on hyperbole – the art of exaggeration. Everything is the best or at the very least just plain great. Can you already see how Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” fits in with all of this?

Jukka Tyrkkö claims that political messages can now be incomplete ramblings as long as there is something that grabs the listener’s attention.

A different kind of candidate

Donald Trump is a businessman and currently a candidate for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party in the United States.

Over the last 10 years there has been a shift from rational to ideological leadership, and as can be seen from Trump’s election speeches, he successfully exploits this fact. His electorate speeches are often inconsistent ramblings that go off topic and exaggerate, pleading to the emotions of his audience rather than presenting factual arguments.

Worldcloud compiled by Jukka Tyrkkö based on Trump's most recent tweets. The size of the font in the wordcloud increases with the frequency of the word in the tweets.

Worldcloud compiled by Jukka Tyrkkö based on Trump’s most recent tweets. The size of the font in the wordcloud increases with the frequency of the word in the tweets.

Coming back to how Trump has skewed the data of political speeches, it’s useful to consider how his speeches differ from his fellow politicians. Whereas the average word length of politicians of present-day English is five characters in length, the same number for Trump is 3.85. Another characteristic of Trump’s discourse is that he loves to talk about himself and address his audience directly with his top five words being: I, going, you, they, and of course, Trump.

New world, modern tactics

Judging from the tweets of modern day politicians, it might seem like current politicians are simply not intelligent and rational individuals.

Dr. Tyrkkö claims however, that it is more likely that “politicians and their teams are deliberately dumbing down election speeches”. Modern politicians are not more simple or stupid than their predecessors. They have only adapted their tactics to be in line with the rules dictated by the new media.

After listening to the plenary, we fear that if we do not require fact-based argumentation and rational decision-making from our politicians, we may end up with a rabble-rouser for president.

Tyrkkö’s research article on the subject, including full references and detailed statistical data will be published in the near future.

The HiSoN (Historical Sociolinguistics network) conference was held at the University of Helsinki, Finland from 10–11 March, 2016. Particular emphasis was placed on the social aspect of historical linguistics this year. Over 50 sociolinguists from 17 countries participated in this year’s conference, with over 20 languages represented in the papers.

Text: Iida Hinkkanen, Tina Lin, Anna Suutarla. Photos: Anna Suutarla.

Read more

Another blog post from the HiSoN conference: Letters looted by pirates offer invaluable knowledge on everyday language