January 2018

Dear SLICE friends

My archives tell me that it is exactly a year since the last issue of SLICE End of the month News. It is about time to reveal signs of life.

I am pleased to be able to forward Jan-Ola Östman’s message below.

And let me add a message to us all: Don’t hesitate to send me any stuff you consider to be of relevance for SLICE News.

Best wishes from Copenhagen
Tore
https://lanchart.hum.ku.dk/research/slice

From Jan-Ola Östman:
Dear SLICErs 

The Finland-Swedish fraction of SLICE is alive and well, and this is particularly the case on February 9, 2018 - starting at noon, at Fabiansgatan/Fabianinkatu 26 - when Jenny Stenberg-Sirén is publicly defending her University of Helsinki PhD thesis on language ideology and changes in the standard Finland Swedish heard and seen in the news on the radio and on tv.

The defence takes place in Swedish, with Lars-Gunnar Andersson as the officially appointed opponent. This is a public event, so you're more than welcome to join us.

The thesis – Språk och språkideologier i radio och tv - is available here.

Here's Jenny's English abstract:
The object of this sociolinguistic study is the language and the language ideologies in Finland-Swedish broadcast news from 1970–2009.

The focus is on the pronunciation in the news readings and on the opinions and attitudes of the journalists. I analyze the journalists’ views on different language varieties and media language norms. The phonological variation analysis is based on the pronunciation guidelines used within the Swedish section of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), called Svenska Yle ‘Swedish YLE’, and the study is descriptive as well as diachronically comparative.

The study shows that the pronunciation in the news readings follows the pronunciation recommendations closely. For example, the final phoneme /t/ in definite nouns (e.g. bordet ‘the table’) and non-finite verb forms (e.g. hoppat ‘[has] jumped’) is pronounced clearly, whereas it is almost always left out in everyday speech and in dialects. In addition, the study shows a shift towards a more formal pronunciation in the 1990s and 2000s also for short function words, such as efter ‘after’ or vid ‘by’.

Furthermore, the study shows changes in two features that are characteristic of Finland-Swedish quantity. The Swedish rules of quantity require either V:C or VCC – for example /va:ra/ ‘to be’ – but the short form /vara/ is a normal feature in many dialects and in everyday speech in Swedish spoken in Finland. The study shows that this feature has increased slightly in the news readings. The other socially distributed quantity feature is the combination of a long vowel and a long consonant, for example in the word baka ‘to bake’, which in the Helsinki region can be pronounced /ba:kka/. The frequency of this Helsinki trait has decreased markedly in the news readings during the 1990s and 2000s.

My results show that the pronunciation has become closer to the norm for some variables, while other variables have become regionally and socially more neutral. This interpretation is supported by the strong standard language ideology that journalists at Swedish YLE express. Even though many journalists would like to have a wider range of varieties on air, the standard language ideology still dominates their views, and they link this to the quality associated with public service values. The changes in the pronunciation in the news readings can be interpreted as a sociolinguistic neutralization of the standard language.

The pronunciation is closer to the norms in some cases but simultaneously closer to everyday speech. Especially the changes in the socially marked quantity features have made the standard language in the news readings regionally and socially more neutral, which can lead to a wider acceptance of the standard. I interpret this as a sign of a continuous standardization process of the Finland-Swedish standard language.