Mocking fakeness

Abstract Phonetic resources, like dialects and accents, are used in ethnic humour to build up a recognisable character that pokes fun at the stereotypes associated with a particular identity, sometimes with critical and political undertones. In this article, we examine the manipulation of one such resource, aspiration, used in performing and mocking one such clichéd character, called the fake Sámi. This character has a contested history in Finnish tourism and marketing practices, and is embedded in a long-standing debate about who can use emblems of Sámi identity for economic purposes. Adopting a sociophonetic language regard and folk linguistics approaches (Preston 2010; Niedzielski & …

Dynamic Multimodal Language Practices in Multilingual Indigenous Sámi Classrooms in Finland

Starting from the premise that dynamic language practices are an emerging property of interaction, and that languages are learnt by participating in language practices, we focus in this chapter on the tensions and creativity that arise from complex, changing, and interconnected multilingual discourses, practices, and experiences in indigenous Sami classrooms. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic and discourse-analytic research on a multilingual indigenous Sami community in Finland, we will examine the strategies and practices that a group of Sami children develop, use, and modify while navigating this complex terrain. We illustrate the various ways in which the children adopt and play with …

Kielikäsitykset vanhustyössä - asukkaiden, hoitajien ja esimiesten käsityksiä hyvästä vuorovaikutuksesta ja kielenkäytöstä

In this article, we apply critical discourse analysis and ethnography to examine conceptionsand experiences of inclusive interaction and language use in the context of eldercare in aretirement home. Our data consist of interviews with residents, nurses and managers intwo bilingual eldercare units, as well as ethnographic observations of communication andlanguage use in these units. Our analysis focuses especially on language ideologies andmetalinguistic aspects of inclusive language in the context of eldercare. On the basis of ouranalysis, we suggest that four elements are particularly central to elderly-centric language: 1)the quality, quantity and tone of interaction; 2) the practices of …

A view from the periphery

Language: A Challenging Resource in a Museum of Sámi Culture

Choices made around using language in museums can either reinforce or challenge existing common sense language regimes and cultural hegemonies. The issues around linguistic choices are particularly pronounced for a museum of indigenous culture in a multilingual minority language community. Using the case of the Siida, the National Museum of the Finnish Sami, located in Inari, in Finnish Samiland, we explore some of the issues involved in using language in the museum. Based on a linguistic landscape analysis, we identify three main functions of language in the museum: managing and controlling visitors; narrating and explaining content and being displayed as content/exhibit. We discuss these …

Indigenous Identity in Print: Representations of the Sami in News Discourse

This article examines news representations of the indigenous Sami people in the Finnish news discourse and the role of the representations in the politics of Sami identity. Through critical discourse analysis of Finnish newspaper texts collected from the leading daily Helsingin Sanomat, I analyse the representations by examining how the journalists utilized textual and linguistic resources available to them, how journalistic practices limited and enabled choices made and, finally, how the textual choices contributed to the representations. The study suggests that a combination of the minority position of the Sami, journalistic practices and an unawareness of or insensitivity towards the re…

Frozen actions in the Arctic linguistic landscape: a nexus analysis of language processes in visual space

Abstract This article examines the linguistic landscape (LL) of seven villages above the Arctic Circle, in the region called North Calotte. The area forms a complex nexus of contested and changing multilingualism, particularly as regards to endangered indigenous Sami languages and Kven and Meankieli minority languages. Viewing LL as a discursively constructed space and consequently signs as ‘frozed actions’ by various actors, and by adopting a Nexus analytical approach we examine three interrelated aspects of Arctic LLs: (1) the synchronic aspect by addressing the question of how languages are used in the landscapes of northern villages in the year 2008; (2) the historical aspect through id…

Powered by assemblage : language for multiplicity

Abstract Assemblage is one way to examine complexities in today’s world. In Deleuzian thinking, assemblage refers to both the act of assembling diverse elements and the arrangements of these elements for a specific purpose. Importantly, it is the interaction between elements that allows the assemblage to become more than the sum of its parts. Applying this concept to long-term research on Cold Rush – the transformation of the Arctic commons into commodities – I argue that examining the boom, bust, and buzz around the commons can be fruitfully conceptualised and studied with assemblage. This approach brings with it an ontological shift from binaries into multiplicities and multiple temporali…

Reflexivity and small languages

Micro-level language-planning and grass-root initiatives: a case study of Irish language comedy and Inari Sámi rap

The aim of this paper is to examine the increased potential for language change from the micro-level, given the new domains in which minority languages are present in the global era. Drawing on the theoretical notion of sociolinguistic scales this paper presents a comparative account of the changing positions of the Irish and Inari Sami languages. Specifically, this paper is centred on a comparative study of two media personalities, namely an Irish language stand-up comedian, Des Bishop, and an Inari Sami rap artist, Amoc, whose success as language-planning actors stems from their use of the mediated space to influence micro-level language planning. By identifying both Bishop and Amoc as mi…

Transgression, small languages and changing boundaries

Foreign captains in elite hockey markets: mediatized discourses of professionalization between routes and roots

The commercial internationalization of professional ice hockey is shaped by tensions of (re)routing and (up)rooting since it involves (i) crossing geographic, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries to c...

From a school task to community effort: children as authors of multilingual picture books in an endangered language context

Multimodal literacy practices in the indigenous Sámi classroom: Children navigating in a complex multilingual setting.

This article explores multimodal literacy practices in a transforming multilingual context of an indigenous and endangered Sami language classroom. Looking at literacy practices as embedded in a complex and shifting terrain of language ideologies, language norms, and individual experiences and attitudes, we examined how multilingual Sami children navigate and appropriate meaning-making resources available for them while designing their own picture books. We adopted a discourse ethnographic approach to analyse these multimodal picture books and found three different but interrelated orientations to the making of the books, each organising and valuing multimodal resources in his or her own wa…

Minority Languages and Markets

This chapter explores how minority languages figure in economic development and are invested with values of expertise, distinction and authenticity. Drawing on previous research, including the authors’ own studies on minority and indigenous language practices and discourses in peripheral, multilingual Irish and Sami sites, the chapter discusses the changing and expanding role of minority languages in some key economic domains: advertising and marketing, tourism, the media and job markets. It reflects on the conditions and consequences of economic processes for the exchange value of minority languages in changing markets.

Investing in indigenous multilingualism in the Arctic

Abstract This article explores the dynamics between language and identity categories and the boundaries produced in a changing multilingual, indigenous context in the Arctic region of Finland. In this moment of transition, indigenous multilingualism has high stakes. It can be a resource for political and economic development but also for management and regimentation, open to winners and losers. Drawing on a longitudinal critical discourse ethnography of producing language and identity categories in the Finnish Arctic, I discuss three circulating discourses relevant for the ways in which indigenous identity boundaries are made to matter, namely strategic, aspirational and affective multiling…

Voices in discourses: Dialogism, Critical Discourse Analysis and ethnic identity

In this article we attempt to combine the Bakhtinian, dialogical philosophy of language and critical discourse analysis (CDA) with our analysis of ethnic identity. The data we discuss are an interview with a Sami journalist who works in the Sami media. We analyse the interview from the points of view of dialogism and CDA to illustrate how identity must be understood as something which is both individual and social in nature.  We reject the earlier essentialist interpretations of identity which see it as purely individual and psychological in nature. At the same time, we argue that those views of identity that see it as exclusively socially constructed can be misleading as well. We aim to il…

Monikielisyys liikkeessä : monikielisen perheen kielelliset resurssit

This article discusses multilingualism in a family. We introduce a case study of the use and role of different languages in a family of fi ve. The data were gathered with the help of a visual clock activity previously used in literacy studies, and through interviews. Theoretically, we draw on those dialogical and sociolinguistic notions that regard language as a dynamic phenomenon which is heteroglossic in nature, thus stressing the fundamental multilingualism present in language use. The results of this case study show that there is, indeed, a lot of situated variation in the use of different languages and, further, different values and functions given to different languages that also vary…

Representations of Ethnicity in Journalism

Abstract This article examines ethnic representations in the Finnish news discourse. Adopting a critical discourse analytical framework, the article examines textual manifestations of ethnic representations, the journalistic practices impinging on them and, finally, the significance of ethnic representations in the news. The study suggests that the marginalized position of ethnic minorities, journalistic practices and the insensitivity of the representational power of the news discourse together result in ethnic representations that contribute to the fragmentation of community, rather than to a sense of belonging.

Visual Methods in Researching Language Practices and Language Learning: Looking at, Seeing, and Designing Language

The changing ways of using language and various understandings of what language is have consequences for the way we research language practices and language learning. When engaging in social contact, people use diverse and complex forms, modes, and varieties of language to communicate, and moreover, these resources often include icons, images, and other semiotic ways of meaning making. Visuality thus has a natural position in people’s language practices. In this chapter, we discuss how visual methods have been adopted and used as a methodological tool in researching language practices and language learning. With this focus, attention is geared to the materiality of language, on the one hand…

Kieli-ideologiat arjessa. Neksusanalyysi monikielisen inarinsaamenpuhujan kielielämäkerrasta

Kieli-ideologiat ovat kieltä, sen käyttämistä ja käyttäjiä koskevia diskursiivisia määritelmiä ja kuvauksia. Vaikka kieli-ideologiat ovat juurtuneet historiallisiin käyttöyhteyksiin, ne ovat kuitenkin aina lokaalisesti tuotettuja ja yksilöllisesti koettuja. Ne siis rakentuvat sekä yksilöllisesti että yhteisöllisesti. Tarkastelen tässä artikkelissa saamen kieliin ja monikielisyyteen liittyviä kieli-ideologioita yhden monikielisen inarinsaamenpuhujan kertomana ja kokemana. Artikkelin tavoitteena on myös esitellä yhtä diskurssintutkimuksen uusinta teoreettis-metodista viitekehystä, neksusanalyysiä (Scollon & Wong Scollon 2004), ja sen soveltamista kieli-ideologioiden tarkastelussa. Inarinsaame…

Gifting, service, and performance: three eras in minority-language media policy and practice

Adapting Tom Ricento’s (2006) three-era framework in language policy to the case of the Sami in Finland and Irish in the Republic of Ireland, we identify three key eras in the development of minority-language media: the gifting era, the service era, and the performance era. Each era has its own particular logic and normativities in relation to the value and functions allocated to minoritylanguage media, the key actors involved in these media, and concepts of languages and speakers. Although we observe a chronology in the evolution of these eras, previous eras do not simply disappear with this evolution. We argue instead that they are embedded in any single moment of media engagement in rela…

Discussion : Language in nature resource economies

Putting resources into practice: a nexus analysis of knowledge mobilisation activities in language research and multilingual communities

Recent demand within the academy for language research that bridges different stakeholders renders the social relevance of research a factor in the academic competition for research funds [Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. (2013). Introduction to the thematic issue: Participating in academic publishing – consequences of linguistic policies and practices. Language Policy, 12, 209–213]. This calls for new means and innovations for designing and carrying out knowledge mobilisation activities, with consequences concerning where, how and with whom this type of undertaking can or should be done. In this paper we, a team of (multilingual) researchers working within the fields of multilingualism, minority…

Spatial interaction in Sámiland: Regulative and transitory chronotopes in the dynamic multilingual landscape of an indigenous Sámi village

Using the example of the linguistic landscape of an indigenous Sámi village in northern Scandinavia, this article explores multilingualism in public signs located in public spaces of the village. Based on long-standing ethnographic and discourse analytical research on multilingualism in the spaces and practices in the peripheral locality of Sámiland, I will focus on the temporal and spatial dimensions of the signs. In this, Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope is applied. Two chronotopes are identified and examined with regard to language change, mobility and multilingualism in public spaces. It is argued that linguistic landscapes often highlight spatial normativity and creativity, as well…

Kieli-ideologioiden teoriaa ja käytäntöä

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan kieli-ideologioiden tutkimusta ja sen teoreettis-metodisia ulottuvuuksia. Kieli-ideologian käsitettä on hyödynnetty erityisesti tutkittaessa, millaisia uskomuksia, arvostuksia, luokitteluja ja neuvotteluja kysymykset kielestä ja kielenkäytöstä herättävät. Artikkeli esittelee erilaisia tutkimusalalla käytettyjä käsitteitä ja keskeisiä tutkimusteemoja ja -kysymyksiä. Lisäksi pohditaan kieli-ideologioiden tutkimuksen ajankohtaisuutta Suomen näkökulmasta. Artikkelissa kuvataan erilaisia tapoja määritellä ja käyttää kieli-ideologian käsitettä eri tutkimuskonteksteissa. Esiin otetaan esimerkiksi ikonisaation, kertautuvuuden ja poistamisen semioottiset prosessit. Huomiot…

Small languages in new circumstances?

Sami in the Media: Questions of Language Vitality and Cultural Hybridisation

Abstract In this paper, I will discuss language vitality and cultural hybridisation as taking place in the indigenous, transnational and partly diasporic Sami community and their media. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data on Sami journalists, children and a rap musician, I focus on two central aspects emerging from the data: the implications involved with Sami-only language policy adopted in Sami media and the impact of globalisation, particularly in terms of transnationalism, on Sami media. As Sami media function in a complex multilingual terrain of language endangerment and revitalisation, and multilingual audience and community, the issues of relative value of languages and identi…

Saamelaislapset kirjailijoina : multimodaaliset tekstikäytänteet monikielisissä saamen luokissa

This article examines children’s multimodal literacy practices in an indigenous Sámi language classroom in Northern Finland, with a speci$ c focus on multimodal picture books designed by the pupils. The position of the Sámi languages in people’s linguistic repertoires has changed dramatically during the past 60 years as they have turned into endangered languages with only few speakers. Consequently, there is very little printed material available and therefore few established literacy practices. By using the term literacy practices we mean here both the text that is produced as well as the values and attitudes rooted in the culture and histories of communities. The data consist of picture b…

Commodifying Sami culture in an indigenous tourism site

Cultural tourism has become an alternative economic activity in many indigenous sites, and local tourist providers compete globally by commodifying their culture in an efficient, attractive manner. This process is not however a straightforward one, because of the need to manage both the multilingual context and the interaction between host and tourists, and this can lead to tensions for all parties. We examine a Reindeer Farm in the indigenous language space of Samiland. Based on a long-term ethnography, we identify different scripts which are used within the tourist encounter to pre-empt and manage tensions around the legitimacy of the host, the collusion and cooperation between host and t…

Multilingual dynamics in Sámiland: Rhizomatic discourses on changing language

Multilingualism in indigenous language communities brings forth tensions and creativity related to language change. In this article, taking dynamic multilingual indigenous Sámi language practices as a focus of ethnographic and discourse analytical research, I examine rhizomatic discourses on changing language in multilingual Sámi spaces. Based on longitudinal research on multilingualism in Sámiland, I will argue that the interlinked discourses of endangerment, commodification and carnivalisation simultaneously circulate across Sámi spaces, and structure language practices and experiences. Furthermore, multilingual dynamics can lead to both contestation and creativity in language practices,…

Regulating Multilingualism in the North Calotte: The Case of Kven, Meänkieli and Sámi Languages

This article examines the dynamics of language relations by investigating the historical, political and ideological processes at play in the minoritization and revitalization of Kven, Meankieli and ...

Expanding possibilities for commodification

Languaging in Ultima Thule: Multilingualism in the Life of a Sami Boy

Abstract In this paper we investigate multilingualism as a phenomenon which pervades different social and cultural levels but is manifested in the everyday life of multilingual individuals. As an illustration, we examine multilingualism from the perspective of a young Sami boy, Ante, and explore how different languages function as a complex – but at times problematic – set of resources for him. To capture the complexity and fluidity in the relationships between various languages in his life, we base our theorising on such concepts as ‘linguistic resources’, ‘heteroglossia’ and ‘languaging’. With the help of multimodal data we examine how the linguistic resources present in Ante's daily life…

Broadcasting Indigenous Voices

Ethnic minority media embody much of the multiculturalist, multilingual and transnational changes in the media landscape and in the wider societal frame as well. Often minority media aim at providing relevant information, but also alternative publicity and empowering experiences in regard to their own identity, language and culture. Through an analysis of journalists' interviews and ethnographic data, this article examines how these tendencies, possibilities and limitations are played out in the indigenous Sami media. The findings suggest that the Sami journalists have managed to provide an alternative public space and contribute to linguistic revitalization. Yet, working within translocal …

Assemblage of art, discourse and ice hockey : designing knowledge about work

This article examines speculative design's capacity to co‐produce knowledge about contradictions and potentialities of work in professional ice hockey. Building on the Deleuzian concept of assemblage, speculative design has been used for two purposes: (a) to bring together the perspectives of art, anthropology, discourse studies, and professional sports in co‐constructing knowledge about hockey work; and (b) to analyze and present the key findings of an ethnography on hockey work through an art exhibition of speculative hockey memorabilia. As such, these art pieces showed the intertwined relationships of material, discursive, and affective aspects in hockey work as well as the multiplicity …

Conventional and transactional authenticities in small-culture tourism

Heteroglossia in Action: Sámi Children, Textbooks and Rap

This chapter examines heteroglossia in the complex, continuously evolving multilingual context of Samiland, the historically and culturally central area for indigenous Sami culture and languages. The analytical discussion is of a rap about textbooks, created and performed by a group of Sami children with the help of their teachers and parents that they presented as their petition for more Sami language teaching materials. The rap is viewed as an example of heteroglossic practices, a strategic mobilization, mixture and recycling of multiple meaning making resources that result in a polyphonic performance.

Sociolinguistics from the Periphery

This leading team of scholars presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users. The authors refer to this network of interlinked changes as the new conditions surrounding small languages (Sámi, Corsican, Irish and Welsh) in peripheral sites. Starting from the conviction that peripheral sites can and should inform the sociolinguistics of globalisation, the book explores how new modes of reflexivity, more transactional frames for authenticity, commodification of peripheral resources, and boundary-transgression with hu…

Body, Nature, Language: Artisans to Artists in the Commodification of Authenticity

This article examines processes of authenticating and selling handicrafts at the conjuncture of cultural pride and economic profit in two peripheral sites (Finnish Sámiland and rural Québec), under shared conditions of late capitalism and globalising political economies. These conditions (re)structure traditionalist and modernist discourses about artisans' historical bodies, their connections to the local land (nature), and how they interactionally authenticate and sell their products through language. Under these conditions, the commodification of authenticity pushes artisans and handicrafts beyond being emblems of national belonging and collective tradition, and toward individualised, art…

Interactive Uses of Journalism: Crossing Between Technological Potential and Young People’s News-Using Practices

The article examines the interactive uses of journalism, focusing on the changes brought by new communication technology in the everyday news media uses of young Finns. The study is based on a survey and in-depth interviews. The results indicate that even though young Finns have easy access to new communication technology, journalism is still predominantly used via television and printed newspapers. While nearly all subjects followed news regularly, a fifth of the respondents had taken advantage of participatory activities offered by the news media. Consequently, technology alone does not seem to alter news practices. The interactive usage of journalism thus seems to be individualized ente…