Volume 2007, Issue 187-188

Finland is sparsely populated; an area of 338,000 km 2 (cf. projection in Figure 1) is inhabited by only 5.3 million people (Statistics Finland 2005).

This article offers a broad comparative overview of four countries that recognize two or more legally equal official languages. Beginning with the historical foundations for language pluralism, it compares selected social structural dimensions: the size, stability, and geographical distribution of language groups; the interface of language divisions with other social cleavages; and foreign influences on domestic language situations. The article discusses intergroup attitudinal studies and emphasizes intergroup sympathy levels as a factor in language planning. A core section then examines constitutional guarantees and ordinary laws on language usage or language rights, including both substantive provisions and the loci of decision-making in each country. A final section touches briefly on how these countries deal with resource allocation among language groups. Among the four countries, Finland stands out from the others for higher linguistic instability, more flexible adjustment of language boundaries, a unitary (i.e. non-federal) form of government, and some recent indications of transition towards a more pluralistic linguistic model.

In this article a sociolinguistic as well as a demographic perspective is used in order to present the historical background of the Swedish language in Finland and of the users of this language. The first part describes the evolution of the Swedish language as it developed into a complete language, serving the needs of the Finnish society. This description primarily deals with issues at the macro level, whereas social and dialectal variations at the micro level only are touched upon en passant . In the latter part of the article, the development of Finnish society at the macro level is discussed by means of demographic and linguistic statistical data. Issues dealt with here concern the spread of bilingualism in the course of various periods and in different parts of the country via marriages between partners with different mother tongues.

The political organization of the Swedish-speaking Finns, the Swedish People's Party (SFP), was founded on the principle of cultural autonomy. The party is thus closely connected to unilingually Swedish organizations. We argue that the SFP is dependent on the support from the network of Swedish-speaking voluntary associations that functions as a recruitment base for the SFP and enhances an awareness of the importance of language. We describe the declining electoral support for SFP over time and argue that this decline reflects the transgression of the field of Swedish-speaking voluntary associations that has become increasingly bilingual. We show that bilingual voluntary associations tend, in practice, to turn into unilingually Finnish ones and test the assumed connection between language choice in activities in civil society and support for the SFP among Swedish-speaking and bilingual youth in Finland. Membership in unilingually Swedish organizations was strongly associated with the support for SFP and with emphasizing the importance of language in political behavior, while membership in bilingual or Finnish-speaking organizations was not. We argue that bilingual voluntary associations cannot be considered part of the Swedish cultural autonomy and that their increased proportional representation within the field of Swedish voluntary associations weakens the basis of the cultural autonomy and the position of the SFP.

The Swedish-language media landscape in Finland is exceptionally rich. It forms one of the institutions that underpin the cultural position of the Swedish-speaking Finns and the use of Swedish in Finland. This example has yet, however, been given only little attention in sociolinguistic research. Based on secondary data of mass-media audience research, this article analyzes the situation of Swedish media in Finland with regard to production and reception in relation to ethnolinguistic vitality and offers conceptual tools for linking the analysis of media consumption to sociolinguistic concepts. The nine daily newspapers, two radio stations, and Swedish-language television channel put at the service of this relatively small population provides an ideal test case for how extensive media supply interacts with linguistic vitality. The role of minority media has been rapidly and significantly changing over the past decades due to the fragmentation of media spaces and diversification of media reception. With the complexity of hybrid identities, factors such as age, gender, class, and regional and language identities are taking on increasing importance. In this new media environment, the viability and relevance of Swedish-language media will be determined by the degree to which the presence of Swedish language is a criterial attribute of the identity of the Swedish-speaking Finns.

The percentage of pupils fluent in both Swedish and Finnish in Swedish-speaking schools in Finland has grown and now includes a third of all pupils. This article focuses on the linguistic classroom discourse in a Swedish-speaking school in a strongly Finnish-dominated area. The purpose is to increase the understanding of how linguistic norms are maintained, and what these norms imply for the participation of bilingual pupils in classroom interaction. Videotaped lessons were analyzed by means of conversation analysis focusing on the interaction between the teacher and the bilingual pupils as well as on language-related sequences. The results show that the bilingual pupils cannot be regarded as victims of a language policy governed from above, but that they actively contribute to the construction and maintenance of a monolingual norm in the classroom. When using Finnish, they at the same time point at the “other-languageness” of the code-switched words. Monolingualism as a norm means a limitation restraining the pupils with gaps in their Swedish from participating with full competence in the classroom conversation. Between pupils, occasional Finnish words are used in an unproblematic manner. Code-switching in these cases works as a means to keep one's position on the conversational floor. By violating the monolingual norm, pupils can lodge a protest against the agenda of the teacher.

The main findings from a contact-linguistic case study from 2003 on language attitudes among 16–18-year-old Swedish-speaking Finns (Finland) and Sorbs (Germany) are presented. The former can be regarded as a (in many respects) privileged minority, if a minority at all, while the latter is often classified as a threatened minority. Due to the highly different sociohistorical contexts, many differences between the groups were expected, but also similarities existed. The study is based on a language attitude model in which the minority language is embedded in its specific sociohistorical context. In order to make a comparison feasible, the sociohistorical context is described, using the socioprofile method (literature review, interviews with privileged witnesses, survey, analysis, conclusions/recommendations). The clearest differences between the two groups can be found in the language proficiency and language use in official domains. However, the similarities are more numerous than the differences: the frequent minority language use in private and semi-official domains, majority language preference in official domains, and the importance of the majority language and English in youth culture domains. Further similarities include a strong affinity with and an integrative, but also instrumental, orientation toward the minority language and extremely low affinities with the languages in the neighboring countries.

We studied the relative importance of objective local ethnolinguistic vitality (EV), the individual's network of linguistic contacts (INLC), and the individual's perceived language competences (in Swedish, i.e., L1 and in Finnish, i.e., L2) for ethnolinguistic identity among Swedish-speaking youth in three cities in southern Finland ( N = 291). All adolescents were ninth-grade pupils at one of three schools in Ekenäs ( N = 118), Borgå ( N = 97), or Esbo ( N = 76). We found that the identities studied — identification with Swedish-speaking Finns, with bilinguals, and with Finnish-speaking Finns — were predicted differently by local EV, INLC, and perceived L1 and L2 competence. Local EV had only a weak impact on ethnolinguistic identity. Regardless of the EV, perceived L2 competence did not subtract from identification with the Swedish-speaking Finns, while perceived L2 competence and a predominantly Finnish INLC increased identification with Finnish speakers and bilinguals, contributing to multiple ethnolioguistic identities. The different dimensions of ethnolinguistic identity studied, including national identity, were complexly interrelated in a pattern characterized by additive rather than by subtractive ethnolinguistic identities.

In this article we present some results from a study of Swedish language proficiency among young Swedish-speaking Finns and Swedes. The aim of the study was to find potential signs of language loss in the Swedish-speaking community in Finland. The participants were first-year university students representing four educational programs. We measured language proficiency using two different tests: an idiomatics test and a cloze test. In both tests the Swedish-speaking Finnish students showed poorer results than the students from Sweden. The results in the idiomatics test for the students from Finland were dependent on the variables language use, bilingualism, and geographical region. These variables show that a more extensive use of Swedish and more opportunities to use the language lead to a better mastery of idiomatic language. Some Swedish-speaking Finns living in areas dominated by Finnish do not automatically get these opportunities to develop their language skills in Swedish. Our conclusion is that there are signs of language loss within the Finland-Swedish minority group.

Markku T. Hyyppä: Elinvoimaa yhteisöstä : sosiaalinen pääoma ja terveys [Vitality from the community: social capital and health among Finnish and Swedish speakers in Finland]. Keuruu: PS-Kustannus, 2002. ( Fjalar Finnäs )

This article reports on the sociolinguistic situation of towns in the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico, where the Nahuatl language known locally as Mexicano is spoken by a rapidly diminishing group of speakers. Ongoing ethnographic research in the indigenous region that skirts the Malinche (Malintsi) volcano in Central Mexico on language shift and linguistic ideology shows varying degrees of language retention and shift. Here I focus on the nature of code restriction to particular social spheres, contrasting language use contexts that are intimate, sometimes “private,” with more power-laden ones, locally viewed as “public.” I consider the types of contexts in which Mexicano and Spanish are spoken, including the disjuncture that can occur when private, intimate family languages are brought into the institutional, public sphere such as schooling for language revitalization purposes.