Volume 38, Issue 2 - Special issue: Current trends in Icelandic sociolinguistics

Rising public concern regarding the linguistic effects of an increased, digitally mediated English presence in Iceland was one of the factors motivating the research project Modeling the Linguistic Consequences of Digital Language Contact (MoLiCoDiLaCo), in 2016–2019. In public discourse, a causal relationship between digital English input and reduced/incompletely acquired Icelandic had been (and still is) assumed, without scientific evidence. While the MoLiCoDiLaCo project sought to provide evidence for this assumption, the results did not show extensive English input effects on Icelandic linguistic variables. The main results of the project are discussed in the article with reference to a recent shift in the public narrative of perceived threats to the future of Icelandic. The authors show that the focus has in part moved away from digital language contact between English and Icelandic, and toward the rise of English as a lingua franca in the interactions of L1 and L2 speakers of Icelandic. This shift is discussed in terms of recent research on language acquisition, multilingualism, linguistic gatekeeping, and the preservation of globally small languages.

Numbers of first-generation L2 speakers of Icelandic have risen substantially in the past three decades in Iceland, with L2 accents now being perceivable in all parts of society. This development sparks questions as to how those accents are perceived and evaluated by L1 speakers of Icelandic, particularly in the light of the role of the Icelandic language as a key element in the construction and maintenance of Icelandic national identity and Iceland’s ideology of linguistic purism, and the fact that there is little formal variation in Icelandic. Drawing on methods and concepts established by folk linguistics, this qualitative study involved five focus groups with thirty-two participants, employing a semi-structured interview guide. The L1-speaker participants were presented with six verbal guises: one L1 speaker and five L2 speakers of Icelandic. The participants elaborated on their perception of those guises according to the concepts of pleasantness and correctness. Several themes emerged as the data were analysed. Results indicate that evaluations of L2 accent are affected by perceptions of listener effort as to both pleasantness and correctness. Perceptions of familiarity with L2 accents emerged as a significant theme in terms of pleasantness, while the results suggest that the correctness concept might not apply to evaluations of L2 speech in the Icelandic context.

This article is based on a PhD project that addressed the multilingual digital practices of native Icelandic speakers in so-called “computer-mediated communication” (CMC) and more specifically on Facebook. The research draws on new literacy studies as well as linguistic research on multilingualism in the context of digital environments to investigate the digital practices of Icelandic Facebook users. By applying both quantitative and qualitative research methods, the article argues for a mixed-method approach that allows for a more holistic analysis of digital discourse data. It is especially interested in the formal characteristics of Icelandic digital writing and tries to explore what linguistic resources users draw upon and how different communicative functions and contextual factors influence the users’ digital practices. Icelandic forms an interesting test case for the study of digital practices as Facebook constitutes an important communication space for Icelanders. However, the digital practices that can be observed on this social network site are characterised by informality and linguistic forms that may contrast with language regard and language ideology in Iceland.

The aim of the study is to investigate how young Icelanders use Anglicisms in conversation that is shaped by popular culture. The data comprises 4 hours and 30 minutes of recordings: spoken interaction between two fifteen-year-old boys that are playing a computer game, and a conversation between two young women hosting a podcast on fashion, lifestyle, and entertainment. The methodological approach applied in the study is interactional linguistics. The research questions are as follows: 1) What kind of Anglicisms occur in the data in respect to parts-of-speech? 2) What interactional functions do these items have in their context? The study begins by addressing the frequency and distribution of Anglicisms in the data, but the main emphasis is on the qualitative analysis of segments of talk. The study shows that speakers use Anglicisms in a systematic and meaningful way. In the analysis, the functions were categorised as follows: Anglicisms that appear on the screen, Anglicisms that index an international identity, Anglicisms as assessments and comments, and Anglicisms in rituals such as greetings and farewells.

Three major studies on pronunciation were conducted in Iceland over a period of 70 years, including collection of real-time data. One subgroup of participants was interviewed as children in the 1940s, again as adults in the 1980s, and once again in the 2010s. Another subgroup was interviewed twice. By reanalysing raw data on participants in the first study the author was able to compare them with subsequent studies and trace individual developments, and thus examine lifespan changes over a long period. This article focuses on 62 participants from the two subgroups (47 people born in 1927–1932, and 15 born in 1963–1970), all from north-eastern Iceland, and a regional variant called ‘hard speech’ ( harðmæli ), i.e., the use of aspirated rather than unaspirated intervocalic plosives, comparing it with another north-eastern variant, so-called ‘voiced pronunciation’ ( raddaður framburður ), i.e., the use of voiced rather than voiceless sonorants before /p,t,k/. This reanalysis of the data of these seminal studies not only corroborates earlier findings that pronunciation can and does change among adult individuals, it also suggests (a) that such lifespan changes are more likely to happen in the first 2–3 decades of adulthood; and (b) that while ‘hard speech’ is fading as a local variant it shows signs of strengthening among individual speakers over their lifetime. This development takes place concurrently with attitudinal changes towards ‘hard speech’, which has come to be perceived as ‘clear pronunciation’.

In this paper we present selected results from the first data collection phase of the Regional Pronunciation, Attitudes and Real-Time Change (RePARC) research project together with results from two pilot studies that preceded the project. The article focuses on four regional variants of phonological variables, i.e., so-called hard speech and voiced pronunciation, which are primarily associated with the north-eastern part of Iceland, and so-called hv -pronunciation and monophthongal pronunciation, which are regarded as south-eastern features. Informants from two different age groups and three different regions (northern Iceland, southern Iceland, and a so-called neutral area) did a pronunciation test, listened to and gave their attitudinal responses to recordings of speech exhibiting features different from those of their own speech, and answered a questionnaire on their attitudes towards their own pronunciation variants. The results indicate that both voiced pronunciation and hv- pronunciation are fading out, while monophthongal pronunciation and, in particular, hard speech are maintained in their respective core areas. With regard to attitudes, it appears that participants generally consider speech that contains northern features to be clearer than speech that does not. Similarly, participants appear to find these northern features to be more easily recognisable, and at the same time, these features seem to be more closely linked to speakers’ self-identity than other regional features.

Social changes in late modernity have implications for the ways in which variation in Icelandic language use comes to be associated with different modes of communication, and for the labelling of forms in terms of “correctness” or “purity”. While a conception of “standard” still seems to prevail, there is continual transition as regards which particular linguistic traits and practices serve as manifestations of “standard language use”. A diachronic look at official language policies shows a gradual shift away from an ideal of preserving the traditional forms of Icelandic. A change took place around the turn of the millennium, with increased focus on domains of language use and the status of Icelandic as the national language. Currently, language-political discourses yet again suggest a broadened focus so that “the language” is being complemented by “the speakers” with an emphasis on human rights. Conflicts have emerged between the well-established “language-oriented” prescriptive practices, and the more recent “speaker-oriented” language planning efforts. But still the role of Icelandic as a national language and historical treasure seems to prevail, and in both camps, there are concerns that foreign languages pose a threat to Icelandic.