December 2022 (3)

Dear SLICE community,

Thank you, Tore, for the interesting updates!

I’m also happy to spam the list with positive funding news that I received with my team (two post docs, Olli Kuparinen and Kaarina Hippi and journalist Mari Heikkilä) few days ago.

Kone Foundation will fund our project LANGAWARE - Co-investigating and developing societal awareness of linguistic variation and change

2023-2025. 

Translation of the project abstract (In Finnish)

Looking forward to occasions to meet you fellow SLICErs, and wishing you all a peaceful Christmas time.

Seasons’ greetings from (extremely) snowy Helsinki,

Johanna

The LANGAWARE project investigates how Finns of different backgrounds who use Finnish as their first or as a second language perceive variation of Finnish in their everyday life-worlds, in face-to-face encounters and online environments such as instant messaging and social media. In the context of Finland, the project brings a new, perceptual continuum into the study of linguistic variation and change by applying quantitative survey methods and qualitative inclusive methods. The project will on the one hand investigate the relationship of contemporary language users to those linguistic variables on which there is research available since 1970s based on real-time methods. On the other hand, the project gives a voice and agency to the regional language communities by e.g. inviting language users to co-investigate the dynamics of linguistic diversity and variation in their everyday social spaces.

The project will collect (1) nationwide survey data among a limited target group (upper secondary school students) and (2) language experience data sets, which will be co-collected and analyzed in participatory way(s) engaging laypersons, academic researchers and linguistics students.

The project builds on key principles of Citizen Science and contributes to development of participatory research in Sociolinguistics. Science communication (collaboration between science and the media) will also be developed in collaboration with the journalist recruited as a part time collaborator in the project.

As a whole, the project will explore the potential of language awareness and attitude research in the study of language variation and change using quantitative and qualitative methods with an inclusive research ideology. Engaging language users in reflecting on their own linguistic agency and investigating variation and diversity they encounter in their everyday lives can ultimately contribute to language ideological structures in support of pluralism.