Shaping discourses of multilingualism through a language ideological debate: The case of Swedish in Finland
Author
Summary, in English
The ideological (re)construction of the position of Swedish in Finland is examined as it took shape during a major year-long debate about the role of Swedish in Finnish education. Data were collected through archival research of the leading national newspapers in the two official languages of Finland: Helsingin Sanomat (Finnish) and Hufvudstadsbladet (Swedish). Circulating and intersecting discourses in newspaper texts are traced in order to examine how these discourses facilitate the negotiation of tensions about the status of Swedish in Finland. Analysis demonstrates how ideological space was opened for destabilizing dominant perspectives about the relative value of languages in Finland. Moreover, it is shown that (re)interpretations of the discourse of ‘Swedish as mandatory’ in education became a fulcrum for leveraging a wider debate about the ‘Finland as bilingual nation’ discourse, which has long been part of the national consciousness.
Department/s
- English Studies
- Language Acquisition
- Language, Cognition and Discourse@Lund (LCD@L)
Publishing year
2014
Language
English
Pages
1-20
Publication/Series
Journal of Language and Politics
Volume
13
Issue
1
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Topic
- Languages and Literature
Keywords
- education policy
- Finnish
- Finland
- language ideological debate
- media
- societal multilingualism
- Swedish
Status
Published
Research group
- Language Acquisition
- Language, Cognition and Discourse@Lund (LCD@L)
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1569-9862