Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?: New and Old Language Diversities 9781783096060

Table of contents :
Contents
Contributors
Introduction to New and Old Language Diversities: Language Variation and Endangerment in Changing Minority Communities
Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication? Old and New Linguistic Diversity
1. Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community: Growing Variation at the Threshold of Language Shift
2.What’s Up Helsinki?: Linguistic Diversity Among Suburban Adolescents
3. Varieties of Erzya–Russian Code-Switching in Radio Vaygel Broadcasts
4. Udmurt on Social Network Sites: A Comparison with the Welsh Case
Part 2: Standardising Languages and Ethnicities: Mission Impossible?
5. A Tale of a City and Its Two Languages: A History of Bilingual Practices in the City of Bilbao
6. Nationalising Fluid and Ambiguous Identities: Russia, Western Ukraine and Their Ukrainian and Russian Minorities, Diasporas and ‘Compatriots Abroad’
7. Emergent Sámi Identities: From Assimilation Towards Revitalisation
8. Localising the Global in the Superdiverse Municipalities of the Arctic: The Case of Inari
Part 3: Language Revitalisation: Protection Standards or Tolerance for Variation
9. Russia’s Minority Education and the European Language Charter
10. Metadiversity, or the Uniqueness of the Lambs
11. Division of Responsibility in Karelian and Veps Language Revitalisation Discourse
12. Standard Language Ideology and Minority Languages: The Case of the Permian Languages
Index

Citation preview

Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS Series Editor: Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Consulting Advisory Board: François Grin, Université de Genève, Switzerland Kathleen Heugh, University of South Australia, Adelaide Miklós Kontra, Károli Gáspár University, Budapest Robert Phillipson, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark The series seeks to promote multilingualism as a resource, the maintenance of linguistic diversity, and development of and respect for linguistic human rights worldwide through the dissemination of theoretical and empirical research. The series encourages interdisciplinary approaches to language policy, drawing on sociolinguistics, education, sociology, economics, human rights law, political science, as well as anthropology, psychology, and applied language studies. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS: 14

Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity? New and Old Language Diversities

Edited by Reetta Toivanen and Janne Saarikivi

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Toivanen, Reetta, editor. | Saarikivi, Janne, editor. Title: Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?: New and Old Language Diversities/Edited by Reetta Toivanen and Janne Saarikivi. Description: Bristol; Buffalo: Multilingual Matters, [2016] | Series: Linguistic Diversity and Language Rights: 14 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016011330| ISBN 9781783096053 (Hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783096060 (Pdf) | ISBN 9781783096077 (Epub) | ISBN 9781783096084 (Kindle) Subjects: LCSH: Language and languages--Variation. | Endangered languages. | Code switching (Linguistics) | Historical linguistics. Classification: LCC P120.V37 L514 2016 | DDC 417/.7--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016011330

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-605-3 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2016 Reetta Toivanen, Janne Saarikivi and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services Limited. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

Contents

Contributors

vii

Introduction to New and Old Language Diversities: Language Variation and Endangerment in Changing Minority Communities Reetta Toivanen and Janne Saarikivi

1

Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication? Old and New Linguistic Diversity 1

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community: Growing Variation at the Threshold of Language Shift Niko Partanen and Janne Saarikivi

21

2

What’s Up Helsinki?: Linguistic Diversity Among Suburban Adolescents Heini Lehtonen

65

3

Varieties of Erzya–Russian Vaygel Broadcasts Boglárka Janurik

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4

Udmurt on Social Network Sites: A Comparison with the Welsh Case Christian Pischlöger

Code-Switching

in

Radio

108

Part 2: Standardising Languages and Ethnicities: Mission Impossible? 5

A Tale of a City and Its Two Languages: A History of Bilingual Practices in the City of Bilbao Hanna Lantto

v

135

vi

6

Contents

Nationalising Fluid and Ambiguous Identities: Russia, Western Ukraine and Their Ukrainian and Russian Minorities, Diasporas and ‘Compatriots Abroad’ Oksana Myshlovska

7

Emergent Sámi Identities: Revitalisation Erika Katjaana Sarivaara

From

Assimilation

Towards

8

Localising the Global in the Superdiverse Municipalities of the Arctic: The Case of Inari Reetta Toivanen

159

195

221

Part 3: Language Revitalisation: Protection Standards or Tolerance for Variation 9

Russia’s Minority Education and the European Language Charter Konstantin Zamyatin

10 Metadiversity, or the Uniqueness of the Lambs Johanna Laakso

249

284

11 Division of Responsibility in Karelian and Veps Language Revitalisation Discourse Ulriikka Puura and Outi Tánczos

299

12 Standard Language Ideology and Minority Languages: The Case of the Permian Languages Svetlana Edygarova

326

Index

353

Contributors

Svetlana Edygarova (PhD 2010, University of Tartu), is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her recent research is about morphosyntactic variation in the Permian languages. Boglárka Janurik (MA 2009, University of Szeged) is a PhD student at the University of Szeged, Hungary and a Hungarian teacher at the University of Tartu, Estonia. She is interested in Finno-Ugric languages, language contact, minorities, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics. Johanna Laakso (PhD 1990, University of Helsinki). Since 2000, she is professor of Finno-Ugric studies at the University of Vienna. Her research interests include historical and gender linguistics, morphology (especially word formation), language contact and multilingualism phenomena. Hanna Lantto (PhD 2015, University of Helsinki). She is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. Her major interests include Basque, language contact, minorities and minority languages, language ideologies and linguistic power relations. Heini Lehtonen (PhD 2015, University of Helsinki) is a post-doctoral researcher of sociolinguistics at the University of Helsinki. She is interested in the sociolinguistics of globalisation, multilingual interaction, language and ethnicity, social indexicality of language, as well as language learning and acquisition. Oksana Myshlovska (PhD 2011, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies) is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research focuses on memory and identity politics, minorities, instrumentalisation and teaching of history. Niko Partanen (MA 2013, University of Helsinki) works as a researcher and technical developer at Hamburger Zentrum für Sprachkorpora (University

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viii

Contributors

of Hamburg). His special interests are sociolinguistics, dialectology and language contact. Christian Pischlöger (Mag. Phil. 1999 in Finno-Ugric and Slavonic Studies at the University of Vienna) is a PhD student at the University of Vienna and currently works in Yoshkar-Ola (scholar of Erasmus Mundus Aurora, coordinated by the University of Turku) and Izhevsk, Russia. He is interested in the linguistics and sociolinguistics of the Volga-Kama region. Ulriikka Puura (MA 2007, University of Helsinki) is a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki currently working on a joint project between the University of Helsinki and ELTE University Budapest, funded by the Academy of Finland, called ‘Multilingual Practices in FinnoUgric Communities’. She is interested in language endangerment and revitalisation, language policies and sociolinguistics. Janne Saarikivi (PhD 2006, University of Helsinki) is a fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in Helsinki. His interests include historical and comparative linguistics, toponymy, substrates and sociolinguistics of Finno-Ugrian languages spoken in the Russian Federation. Erika Katjaana Sarivaara (PhD 2012, University of Lapland) is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lapland (funded by Kone Foundation) on Inari Sámi Language Technology project which is led by Arctic University of Norway. She is interested in language revitalisation, indigenous identity, sociolinguistics, Sámi education and consciousness raising. Outi Tánczos (MA 2009, University of Helsinki) is a doctoral student at the Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. She is interested in language attitudes and ideologies, multilingualism and minority language maintenance. Reetta Toivanen (PhD 2000, Humboldt University Berlin) is an Academy of Finland research fellow and adjunct professor for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki, Finland. She is interested in human rights, minorities, power, identity politics and ethnography. Konstantin Zamyatin (PhD 2014, University of Helsinki) is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. His scientific interests are in the fields of Finno-Ugrian studies, Russian and East-European studies, ethnicity and nationalism, language policy, linguistic rights and minority rights in international law.

Introduction to New and Old Language Diversities: Language Variation and Endangerment in Changing Minority Communities Reetta Toivanen and Janne Saarikivi

Language Endangerment and New Linguistic and Cultural Diversities This volume is about linguistic variation and language endangerment, as well as the sociopolitical and cultural contexts in which people use languages in the present-day world. The authors of the book discuss the different multicultural and multilingual realms currently emerging in various minority language and culture communities and ask whether we are facing the perspective of an immense wave of language death, new remarkable linguistic variation, or both simultaneously. In particular, they investigate the new types of ethnic and linguistic variation that are emerging around the globe in connection with urbanisation, spreading literacy and media use, raising standards of education and the centralised attempts to standardise ethnic and linguistic identities as well as language use. In the chapters of this book, the perspectives of language endangerment and death combine with those of linguistic variation and change, revitalisation and diversity and attempts to regulate diversity. The point of departure for the authors is the idea that the circumstances in which the speakers of minority languages of the world live today are different from those in which these languages emerged. The living conditions of languages have dramatically changed through literacy, formal education, standardisation of languages, mass media, social media, urbanisation, changes in livelihoods, increased mobilisation, centralised states and nationalist identities uniting people living hundreds or thousands of kilometres apart. Consequently, the linguistic and cultural variation in (post)modern societies is also likely to be different from the kinds of

1

2

Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?

linguistic variation most described in the history of linguistic science, i.e. areal and social variation. The ways that people today use languages and think about languages are notably different from how they were used and conceived of in communities that existed only a couple of generations ago. The new language situation often leads to the death of languages that are not considered suitable for use in new social networks and domains. On the other hand, it also produces new kinds of language varieties, cultural identities and diversities of language use. Accelerated language extinction can be considered a result of colonisation, modernisation and globalisation, but so can many new creoles, intertwined and mixed languages, new ethnic identities, new groups of urban dwellers or migrant groups, all with their own distinct cultural traits. In the history of linguistic sciences, speech communities have often been described as if they existed in isolation. This is reflected in the disciplinary division of linguistics into English, Germanic, Romance, Indo-European or Finno-Ugrian studies, to name just a few examples of traditional scientific branches. Simultaneously, scholars have always been aware of bi- and multilingual individuals, communities characterised by multilingual and multicultural networks, intensive borrowing, codeswitching and fluctuation of ethnic and linguistic identities. This has been especially obvious in historical linguistics, which is methodologically based on the identification of waves of interlingual influences following one after the other. The study of linguistic diversity, or language variation and change, is thus nothing new. However, the kinds of diversities in societies characterised by schooling, linguistic standards and languagerelated professions are different from the predominantly oral societies with mostly local identities and physical work as a main form of labour. Whereas language variation in traditional communities is caused predominantly by areal distance or language contact, in the new linguistic communities, it also exists alongside factors caused by different types of standards, for instance, models of language use transmitted by schooling and media, often over long distances. Without a doubt, the phenomenon of language death has become much more common in the 20th century than it was in the previous centuries, and the pace of language demise is only increasing, probably threatening some 50% to 90% of the world’s languages, according to different estimates. In linguistic and social sciences, language death and language endangerment have become a centre of attention and concern, especially from the perspectives of diversity and human rights (cf. Crystal, 2003; Grenoble & Whaley, 1998). Many scales of language endangerment, such as the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS; Fishman, 1991), the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS; Lewis & Simons, 2010), the UNESCO Framework (2003) and, most recently, the European Language Vitality Barometer (EuLaViBar; Laakso et al., 2016), have been

Introduction

3

proposed to assess and measure the exact nature of language endangerment in the case of individual languages and to identify which measures are needed for the revitalisation of a language. The mere fact that so many different tools have been proposed for measuring language endangerment demonstrates the complex nature of the phenomenon of language loss. As language is a socially transmitted and learned system of symbols, multiple social forces affect its fate, among these different types of power relations, fashions, cultural values, changing economic frameworks and livelihood patterns, community structures, ecology of the language environment, family models and patterns of marriage. This is also the reason that despite the multiple tools for assessing language endangerment, there would still seem to be relatively little room for generalisations in predicting the fates of languages (see also Laakso et al., 2016). Modern societal developments, most notably, centralised states with schooling infrastructure, have resulted in a dichotomous and hierarchical understanding of languages. There are languages used by minorities and languages used by majorities. The power imbalance resurfaces in the idea of the protection of the human rights of minorities, stipulating that speakers of smaller languages should enjoy added protection against the hegemony of majority languages. Some authors speak about killer languages that occupy space in mass media, global economy and politics, pointing out that even languages with a hegemonic majority status, such as the languages of nation states, may eventually become endangered (cf. Phillipson, 2003; Rapatahana & Bunce, 2012). Even more obviously, languages spoken by small-numbered peoples without any established societal position are in need of special protection. Without a doubt, the emergence of these new forms of linguistic diversity is also influenced by the increased mobility of people, both in the physical, as well as the social and virtual senses. Mobility has a twofold effect in that it disperses the old language communities and creates new ones. In many communities, traditional multilingual and dialectal diversity disappears due to urbanisation, standardisation of language use, increased educational standards and changing forms of media use. In the research concerning language extinction, one can observe some contradictions that prove to be crucial for the chapters in this book. Some scholars stress the urgency of taking action in order to preserve the linguistic heritage of the world and express concern about the perceived shift to uniform models of linguistic behaviour (Crystal, 2003; Nettle & Romaine, 2002; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). Others consider the ongoing linguistic changes to be an inevitable development and diversification of the language situation of the world based on many local linguistic resources (Mufwene, 2005). The extreme forms of the deconstructive school of language variation even question the existence of languages as systems and stress the fluid character of language practices and use, postulating that

4

Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?

all languages are ‘invented’, i.e. social constructs (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007). Self-evidently, in such a framework, language death is also not too relevant for linguistics. Those communities labelled as linguistically ‘superdiverse’ by some scholars (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011) resemble the traditional multilingual communities of hunter-gatherers in the sense that they represent multiple voices, but are simultaneously dissimilar in that much of the language use happens not in oral conversation but in virtual media. Although there is vast variation in the language use of such communities, they exist within a social sphere dominated by formal education and elaborated media, and much of the variation is likely developing towards the standard variants of state and global languages. Thus, there seem to be grounds to suggest that the linguistic heritage of the present world is simultaneously more endangered and more diverse than earlier. It may well be that much of the current diversity is likely to be short-lived, but some of it may be attached to social meanings and turn out to be long-lasting. Many languages disappear in the wake of the rapid modernisation processes around the globe whereas other language forms find a new social niche in seemingly similar circumstances, for instance, as an ethnic emblem of a marginal group. Such language forms survive in the new conditions of community life, albeit as vehicles for new kinds of linguistically expressed identities and in new functions, such as literary use in modern professions.

Sources of New Variation: Borrowing, Mixing and Standardisation It is thus important to put both language endangerment and new forms of plurilingualism in their historical contexts. The weakening and disappearance of minority languages is, in many respects, an expression of the changing ‘language ecology’ that is also conveyed through new forms of linguistic variation. In traditional communities, language variation was overwhelmingly areal and dependent on livelihoods and natural ecological boundaries, such as river basins, mountain ridges or vegetation zones functioning as a basis for different types of livelihoods (for instance, [primordial] trade centre vs. agricultural community vs. nomadism and hunter-gathering). Alongside this kind of variation there was also social variation, often represented by different social classes using different languages, or different languages being used for speaking and writing (if writing was known in the communities under consideration). There are, indeed, many recorded cases of plurilingualism in such communities (cf. Lüpke & Storch [2013] on some extreme forms of variation in Africa).

Introduction

5

In modern societies, languages are used as instruments for communication in expert professions, popular culture and social networking, and new language varieties arise constantly for the purposes of communities that are not necessarily geographically confined. These include different types of professional jargons, youth slangs, mixed codes used in popular entertainment and also world Englishes used in international communities. The newness of the situation is not that people are coming into contact with multilingual spheres, but that the linguistic sources of the variation are different: media, standard languages and education. Also, there is much more room for individual identity creation than in traditional communities. Elaborate language skills are required for working life, which is both central to modern identity as well as largely conducted with language instead of physical force. Another important difference is that in the new multilingual situation, monolingualism in the dominant state language is promoted at school attended by almost everyone, and alongside this, multilingualism in a few dominant global languages, most notably, English, is encouraged at the expense of the multilingual resources that exist in the local communities. Despite much rhetoric regarding the benefits of multilingualism, countries do not seem to be openly promoting multilingualism, even though minority languages are protected by almost all countries in some form (cf. Laakso et al., 2016). In mainstream sociolinguistics, a recent attempt has been made to create a typology for the linguistic changes that make a language more or less complex based on parameters such as the characteristics of the language learning situation (childhood vs. adult), the size of a community (small languages tend to be more complex) and the number of non-native speakers (Trudgill, 2011). However, such a typology largely leaves aside those language forms that are the most likely to emerge in the present contact situations: mixed and intertwined codes characteristic of most of the plurilingual communities across the globe. Such new linguistic forms have been investigated linguistically in the frameworks of creole and codeswitching studies (Matras & Bakker, 2003; Mufwene, 2000; Thomason & Kaufman, 1988). The authors of this book also describe the sources of new language diversities, i.e. intensive borrowing, code-mixing of different languages and different variants of a single language, or the employment of linguistic resources of multiple origins. As already mentioned briefly, in the study of plurilingual communities, some scholars have replaced homogeneous entities of studies of historical and social variation, such as languages and speech communities, with more dynamic concepts such as multilingualism, ‘plurilingualism’ or ‘linguistic resources’. For instance, Blommaert and Rampton (2011) question the existence of languages, speech communities and ethnolinguistic groups. Some other scholars working on linguistic variation have proposed that people do not speak ‘languages’ but instead

6

Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?

‘are languaging’, i.e. using pieces of languages or linguistic resources to construct social identities (Jørgensen et al., 2016). However, one should note that many contact languages, i.e. different types of pidgins, creoles, intertwined and mixed codes that emerge in a multilingual situation on the basis of such influential lexifier languages as English, French or Spanish, typically develop towards the standard variety of the corresponding lexifier language. For instance, Paunonen (2006) has described the evolution of stadin slangi, a Helsinki working-class-related vernacular consisting of Finnish mixed with multiple Swedish and Russian elements, from a variety that was almost completely unintelligible to the speakers of traditional varieties of Finnish at the time of its emergence, into a modern variety of Finnish, through the gradual loss of most of its characteristic borrowed lexicon. At the same time, there are examples of creoles which have gained new social functions as languages emblematic of particular communities and even countries, such as Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea (cf. Romaine, 1994) or Jamaican creole in Jamaica, which would seem to have gained more ground at the expense of standard English (Sand, 1999: 73–74). Many of the chapters of this book also note that attempts to promote minority protection by standardising minority identities and creating language planning and education regimes for them can result in increased linguistic variation. Minority languages that have been predominantly used as languages of local communities typically lack much of the vocabulary or stylistic resources characteristic of languages used in education, mass media and administration. Insecurity among speakers of many minority languages regarding language norms, as well as the feeling of inferiority regarding the resources of the minority language in comparison with the majority tongue, lead to attempts to use minority tongues in a new way, by imitating styles and genres of the majority tongue, or by using intensive code-switching with it. The incomplete learning of many small languages by community members due to changing social networks and intergenerational ties, and the attempts to replace their social meaning with the resources of the majority language, create situations where there is more variation in an endangered language community than there would be in a stable and primordial community. To use a metaphor, linguistic variation turns into a red giant star that shines its brightest just before it burns out. An even more insidious danger to the linguistic diversity of the world may be the fact that international communication, increased translation and copying of forms of cultural expression brings the conceptual realms associated with different languages ever closer (cf. Cronin, 1998). Many of the unique conceptualisations and metaphors of the world’s languages related to areally confined, endangered cultural traditions are currently under threat (Idström & Piirainen, 2012). They are being replaced by

Introduction

7

widespread conceptions of communities and individuals, emotions and human relations. In the absence of great cultural differences and with the need for communication over language boundaries, a few global or important regional languages are easily favoured in communication in different contexts. This creates additional challenges for smaller national languages and especially for those thousands of minority languages which are traditionally associated with predominantly oral forms of culture. However, one should also stress the fact that in those contexts where minority languages have undergone a successful revitalisation process and continue to function in the new circumstances, this development often takes place through a change in the linguistic environment of the language community, typically a conscious creation of new functional domains for the use of the minority language (cf. the modernisation of the Inari Sámi language [Olthuis et al., 2012; Pasanen, 2015]; a number of similar cases have also been described by Hinton and Hale [2001]). It remains to be seen how much of the cultural knowledge and identities embedded in a particular language form will survive these processes, yet it is clear that only those language forms that are conclusively dead are immune to evolution and change.

Changing Language Communities: Progress or Decay? While linguists and social scientists agree in principle that the disappearance of languages is both an ongoing as well as a regrettable process, they disagree somewhat about whether the many social changes related to language death are desirable, unavoidable or harmful (Mufwene, 2005). The question of whether one is inclined to consider the present linguistic situation of the world in negative or positive terms from the point of view of diversity would seem to be related to attitudes towards modernisation and globalisation of societies. Those scholars who have an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards different types of social changes and modernisation of human communities view the change in the language situation of the world as inevitable and stress the richness of the new variation emerging in new types of contemporary societies. Other scholars, in turn, who are more sceptical, remark that those communities disappearing due to globalisation successfully guaranteed social well-being, solid identities and protection for their members, and that the loss of languages may mean loss of cultural and human diversity. The authors of the book argue that many of those forces behind language endangerment are related to the changing role of language and linguistic identities in the modern world. Thus, it is not so much the question of languages being endangered, but rather languages being used for new purposes in a new social reality that requires different language skills than were needed in the old communities. If the languages in

8

Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?

primordial agricultural and hunter-gatherer communities were primarily the means of everyday communication and secondarily the cultural emblems of corresponding groups, in a (post)modern, literary culture they become tools of work, learning and habitus creation (cf. also Saarikivi & Toivanen, 2015). The social networks of an individual, based on literary language use, electronic and social media, now reach far beyond the local communities that function as the social base for the world’s old linguistic diversity. At the same time as the new networks weaken the old areallybased diversity by introducing new identity choices, linguistic repertoires and entire languages that replace the old diversities, they also bring in novel sources for new variation. Probably the most important single factor causing change in the modern language environment of the world is that schooling and education can only be acquired using a relatively small number of the world’s languages (cf. Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). This seriously affects the cultural and social frameworks that have previously supported the smaller languages. Formal state-controlled education, in principle, is often about the standardisation of world views, conceptual realms and also language use. However, many chapters of this volume (cf. Edgarova, Partanen & Saarikivi, Pischlöger) also demonstrate the confusing role of language norms, which create new variation, especially when the learning of the standard has not been successful. Self-evidently, schooling in majority languages causes language shift to these dominant tongues, especially when combined with increased mobility and urbanisation, but it also accelerates language change and increases variation within the minority languages through code-copying and translation. Obviously, schooling also has a role as a vehicle transmitting knowledge and values, which may have a positive effect on language skills and maintenance. Schooling is often considered a key objective of development aid projects, for instance, while considerably less attention is paid to the fact that such a complex process as acquiring elaborate skills in symbolic systems such as language use often also means a profound cultural change in the conceptual and value systems of traditional communities. This threatens their cultural heritage while simultaneously offering possibilities for development, integration and self-protection. Obviously, no simple solution is available for this contradiction, but a wide array of contextsensitive means has to be developed around the globe to foster valuable cultural traditions and diversity of world views while simultaneously providing everyone with opportunities to receive education. Changes in linguistic identities are related to changes in economic and ecological frameworks for language use. In the First World, nationalism united large swathes of people under the symbolic concepts of shared nationhood and language as early as the second half of the 19th century (Anderson, 1983). These nation states blurred and uprooted much of

Introduction

9

the European ethnic and linguistic diversity. In the postcolonial cultural situation, they then further turned to more individualistic, urbanised communities that represent worldwide diversities (Blommaert & Rampton 2011). Similar processes have since occurred in various cultural frameworks around the globe. These changes in the role of languages are, in the first place, related to the widespread literalisation of oral cultures, beginning from the 19th century when printed products became affordable enough to be read by practically everybody, and followed by subsequent changes in ideas related to knowledge and myth, fact and fiction, memory and learning (cf. Hiltunen, 2012: 279–282; Ong, 1982). There has traditionally been a wide consensus among social scientists that literacy and increased opportunities for education among minorities are something positive. Yet, it is also clear that literacy and, alongside it, the spread of concepts, discourses, facts, mythologies and indeed, entire realms of knowledge, most drastically bring the different communities of the world closer to each other (cf. Ong, 1982). It is also likely that literacy and modern education diminish the diversity of perception and world views by forcing upon diverse communities fixed ideas of facts and fiction, true and false information, memory and observation. In modern societies, literalisation has enabled more activities to be conducted within language than was possible in primordial communities. Education itself, probably the single most important reason for language endangerment, is overwhelmingly conducted through reading, memorising and creating texts, and it functions as a vehicle for changing identities and developing cultural knowledge. Working in modern professions typically requires elaborate language skills, an ability to produce the standardised form of language in writing and to integrate through the medium of written text into various networks of professional experts nation- or worldwide. The other types of media, i.e. television, radio, the internet and social media have similar effects on traditional cultural concepts, while also creating large communities crossing the borders of local identities and networks. They have also fundamentally changed the social habits of past-time consumption and thus broken many of those social ties that kept the local minority language communities vital (see, i.e. Lakhi et al., 2013). Currently, various types of social media are, quite likely, bringing about even more fundamental changes in social relations and thus also in linguistic identities by enabling almost instant community creation over long distances and for various purposes.

Human Rights, Activism and Language Maintenance Minority cultures and languages are not maintained nor revitalised without people who can be defined as activists, ethnic entrepreneurs and cultural brokers. In this volume, the issue of the central and delicate

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Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?

role of minority rights activists working on behalf of minority languages and cultures is discussed in the background of some chapters, while for others it is the central theme of their contribution. It seems important to note that the global stream of ideas and ‘best practices’ pertaining to the maintenance and revitalisation of languages also have an enormous influence on the ideas about which kinds of people ‘deserve’ minority rights or the rights of indigenous peoples. The global human rights discourse meets the local situation in which some people actively work towards language maintenance and others are ignorant or even negative towards the whole minority language, which creates further diversification of ethnic and linguistic identities. The local situation plays a crucial role in the interpretation of what global ideas become transplanted and translated. Languages live within people and speech communities. People have, due to historical, political, social and family reasons, not only differing levels of language competences but also different attitudes towards the languages they use for communication. Globalisation and the fast movement of ideas and practices do not solely create a uniform world and homogenise the ideals of humankind. They also create a new kind of variety, new options for identification and new interpretations of old cultural norms. A person speaking a language defined as a minority language, or minoritised language as defined by Grillo (1989), is not on equal footing with a person belonging to a majority, to make decisions regarding the maintenance of her or his language and cultural identity. This is where the human rights to culture and language step into the discussion. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), all human persons are to enjoy the same rights regardless of their background, ethnicity, origin, sex, gender, status, religion or any other difference (including language). Human rights are universal, which means that it is not up to governments to decide who is allowed to enjoy them. Minority rights are part of the international human rights regime and their aim is to guarantee that people who are in the weaker position in society or who are less able (due to their small number or non-dominant position) to enjoy the same rights are brought up to the same standards as the majority or dominant people in the state (de Varennes, 1996). They offer added protection for members of minorities (Scheinin, 2003). Minorities may have another mother tongue, be culturally different, follow a different lifestyle or practice another religion than the dominant population, but they are still entitled to the same rights to protection and promotion (Thorberry, 1993). Indigenous peoples’ rights are part of the minority rights regime paying additional attention to those people who are often referred to as first people, native people, aboriginal or indigenous people, people who were conquered by colonisation or assimilation practices by the dominant people in their own territories (May, 2011; Skutnabb-Kangas & Dunbar, 2010).

Introduction

11

Human rights, including the rights of minorities and of indigenous people, are often referred to as tools of emancipation and empowerment. They are considered tools that are in place to guarantee that people, even those who are different from the majorities, enjoy equality not only on paper but also in fact (Tomasevski, 2005). The special measures provided by minority rights can be either temporary in nature or designed as a permanent structure (Scheinin, 2003). They can mean the protection of minority languages by providing education in smaller non-state languages, support of smaller non-dominant religions, or territorial or non-territorial solutions that support the way of life of minorities and their cultural activities. However, not all diversity is defined in terms of minority-ness. There are certain qualifications that need to be met before a minority rights claim can be made. The same goes for indigenous peoples’ rights. The idea that is sometimes promoted in highly diverse places such as South Africa, ‘we are all indigenous here’ (see the discussion in i.e. Ndahinda, 2011), does not fit into the frame of indigenous rights as understood by international law. There are standards that have to be met and often fought for in order to attain national and international recognition as an indigenous (or even minority) group. But rights that are guaranteed to only a particular group of people, minority community members or the indigenous people, create a need for defining such groups and thus may cause previously non-existing boundaries to emerge within local communities where ethnic and linguistic belonging has not always been an issue of everyday social life. Globalisation is a phenomenon that is often thought of as having mostly economic implications. However, it is precisely due to the globalisation that human rights, too, have been able to travel so effectively even to the remotest places on earth. As ideas travel, they also get adapted to the local circumstances; they are interpreted to suit local needs and understandings. This can be called cultural appropriation or adaptation, or, as Sally Engle Merry (2006) has called it, vernacularisation. The term is well suited to our purposes in this book: vernacularisation is also the term used to describe translation into local languages, dialects and vernaculars. Minority rights have travelled fast and far, but at the same time, the interpretation of what these rights mean has taken on a great variety across the globe (Toivanen, 2012). It also seems to be a global phenomenon that minority rights and indigenous peoples’ rights are travelling independently of the states that have ratified and adopted the international human rights standards concerning minorities (Toivanen, 2012). The international and local activists produce a suitable interpretation and plan of action with which the minority activists, together with their international partners, can take action towards the own government (Wilson et al., 2001). This cooperation is the tangible way in which human rights are brought to governments

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Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?

with demands to take action: change the rights on paper to rights in fact (Toivanen, 2007, 2012). The process is, in our view, rather similar to what linguists call language standardisation: out of streams of many language variants, one stream is defined as the correct one. Still, in order to communicate, speakers will develop variations that correspond with their communicative needs. The minority rights movement and vernacularisation follow a parallel path: whereas the universal rights movement has a strong emancipatory message, it also ends up standardising the arguments that are found to be legitimate and understandable, the ones that best suit the cause. In this process, minorities and indigenous peoples are imagined as entities that are so similar that there can be a standard formula for promoting these rights. At the same time, the local language and culture activists, the minority rights activists on the local level, need to develop a vocabulary that can be communicated to the local members of minorities (Merry & Levitt, 2011). It is a delicate balance that the activists, the ethnic entrepreneurs (Brubaker, 2002), must master in order to advance the human rights of minorities in a way that upholds universal standards, accepts the limits and circumstances of the state concerned and complies with the actual needs of the local community.

Themes of the Individual Chapters The book investigates the characteristics of new and old linguistic diversities in a number of case studies, mostly from Russia and Europe. They focus on emerging new linguistic identities and genres that reflect them, new fields of minority language use in a standardised form or language use in the new media. The underlying assumption by the authors is that the new ‘superdiversity’ connected to the human rights discourse offers an individual a wide range of choices for a desired cultural and linguistic identity but at the same time brings about standardising and constraining effects. The authors take a critical view of the line of research that is willing to deconstruct all traditional linguistic communities and focus on seemingly infinite new variations, and remind the reader that new superdiversity reflects the search for new linguistic and ethnic identities in circumstances where the old ways of life of language communities have become impossible to continue. Thus, regional patterns of plurilingualism disappear and new nationwide or international patterns of plurilingualism emerge. The first part of the book is called Language Communities or Networks of Communication? Old and New Linguistic Diversity. It deals with the general questions of whether we should give up the idea of communities with certain languages or concentrate our analysis on the diversity of networks using several languages in their communications.

Introduction

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The first chapter, authored by Niko Partanen and Janne Saarikivi on the Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community: Growing Variation at the Threshold of Language Shift, deals with the decline of the Karelian language by summing up the results of sociolinguistic fieldwork investigations among the Karelian speakers in Russia. The chapter shows that in a dispersing language community where the use of the minority language is characterised by intensive code-switching, a wide range of new language varieties emerge. These are based on local dialects of the minority and majority languages, as well as the standard forms of the majority languages relevant for language contact (i.e. Russian and Finnish). In addition, attempts to create a new standard for the minority tongue creates further confusion among the speech community and leave discernible traces in the emerging new genres of Karelian. Heini Lehtonen’s chapter, What’s Up Helsinki? Linguistic Diversity Among Suburban Adolescents, takes us to a rather new landscape of multilingualism in the urban Finnish language environment. She explores linguistic diversity in two Helsinki junior high schools, where the pupils speak some 20 different first languages altogether. She compares Eastern Helsinki’s linguistic diversity in the 21st century with what is known about the historical urban linguistic diversity of Helsinki and concludes that multilingualism, language alternation and multiple language varieties are a stable feature of the language use in Helsinki, although the sources of variation, i.e. the contact languages and norms, have changed over time. She analyses the linguistic and stylistic practices of adolescents focusing especially on the social meaning of linguistic resources: how do the adolescents employ their diverse semiotic resources in positioning themselves and each other in the local social categories? She addresses the central question of whether superdiversity really refers to a new kind of diversity or rather to a new kind of starting point for conceptualising linguistic diversity. Boglárka Janurik’s chapter on Varieties of Erzya–Russian CodeSwitching in Radio Vaygel Broadcasts analyses how the language use at the radio station Radio Vaygel varies between an attempted monolingual variety and the mixed varieties of Erzya, a Finno-Ugrian minority language of Central Russia. She discusses the role of the radio station in the language maintenance attempts of the Erzya community and analyses the various mixed language variants of Erzyan and Russian used in the broadcasts. These mixed variants do not represent a single mechanism of codeswitching, but rather different ways to borrow and alternate the language to form a continuum from monolingual Russian speech to monolingual Erzyan speech. Despite this relative openness to different kinds of spoken genres, the radio station promotes ideas of language purity, which might alienate listeners commanding only the mixed variety of Erzya.

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Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?

The fourth chapter by Christian Pischlöger is a comparative study on Udmurt and Welsh on Social Network Sites (SNS). He describes the role of social networking sites in promoting language diversity and maintaining minority languages. The role of SNS for maintaining and revitalising languages is often believed to be of considerable importance, but is still poorly investigated. Research has been carried out on, e.g. the Welsh language. Compared with the apparently normalised and widespread presence of Welsh on the internet, Udmurt on social media is still very much characterised by the language activism of a few individuals. Some positive outcomes of Udmurt activities on the internet can already be observed: an increased visibility of the Udmurt language and culture, a coherence of the Udmurt (online) community (of particular importance to the Udmurt diaspora), a historically unparalleled widespread use of Udmurt as a written language and the emergence of new genres. The second part of the book is called Standardising Languages and Ethnicities: Mission Impossible? The fifth chapter, A Tale of a City and Its Two Languages: A History of Bilingual Practices in the City of Bilbao by Hanna Lantto, discusses the linguistic situation of Bilbao in the Basque Country. Her contribution shows that code-switching and other forms of multilingual practice are not at all a new phenomenon of modernity. The languages of Bilbao, Basque and Castilian Spanish have been cohabiting in the area since the city was founded in the 14th century. The chapter shows how multilingual practices have always been present in the city of Bilbao and how the form of these practices has been affected by and changed according to the surrounding sociolinguistic realities and ideological fashions. Chapter 6 by Oksana Myshlovska on Nationalising Fluid and Ambiguous Identities: Russia, Western Ukraine and Their Ukrainian and Russian Minorities, Diasporas and ‘Compatriots Abroad’ is very topical as it looks at two instances of national assimilation on the post-Soviet space in a comparative perspective: the assimilation of ethnic Russians and Russophones in Western Ukraine and that of ethnic Ukrainians and Ukrainophones in the Russian Federation. Her chapter analyses the ideological and policy contexts of assimilation, the institutional and procedural mechanisms available to national minorities and indigenous peoples to resist assimilation and foreign policy relations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation in relation to assimilationist policies. She concludes that the oft-mentioned idea about the Russian-speaking east and Ukrainian-speaking west of Ukraine is largely a myth, and that most of the Ukrainian residents are, in fact, quite tolerant in their language attitudes. Erika Sarivaara’s chapter, Emergent Sámi Identities – From Assimilation Towards Revitalisation, discusses the phenomenon of language revitalisation and identity based on the narratives of Sámi descents in Finland. Over the past few decades, language revitalisation has aroused

Introduction

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interest because of indigenous peoples’ awareness of the significance of language. Currently, there are approximately 1000 people in Finland who have applied for the election rolls of the Sámi Parliament but been denied. Thus, the officialisation and standardisation of the Sámi identity have simultaneously created interest in a Sámi identity and caused obstacles for language revitalisation among those people whose Sáminess does not fit into the legally defined pattern. Reetta Toivanen writes in her chapter on Localising the Global in the Superdiverse Municipalities of the Arctic: The Case of Inari, about the global and transnational networks influencing the local interpretations of universal human rights, especially rights related to the questions of indigenous peoples identity and language use. Her chapter uses material from her research project in three Barents Sea-area municipalities in northern Europe, which each accommodate, historically and today, diversity pertaining to cultures, ethnic identities and languages. In this context, it becomes apparent that the global identity of indigenous peoples has become localised in a way that may harmfully interfere with language revitalisation. The first chapter in the third part of the book, Language Revitalisation: Protection Standards or Tolerance for Variation, is authored by Konstantin Zamyatin. It discusses Russia’s Minority Education and the European Language Charter, evaluating the provisions of minority language education in Russia and analysing the data on the provision of language teaching in the legislations of the Finno-Ugric republics. The chapter demonstrates that international human rights instruments such as the Language Charter have not been able to strengthen the position of smaller languages. It also shows that the existence of one stronger minority language in the region, as a side effect, supports language diversity in contemporary Russia. In such a manner, diversity fosters more diversity, whereas both the national and international legal and standard-based frameworks for the protection of diversity easily turn into objects of manipulation by the authorities. Chapter 10 is written by Johanna Laakso on Metadiversity, or the Uniqueness of the Lambs, and deals with the question of what is meant by the concepts of language diversity or multilingualism. Laakso describes how language diversity is openly proclaimed as a goal of European and global language policies, and many studies indicate how beneficial it is for individuals and societies. However, language diversity as a dimension on a more general level, beyond the status and maintenance of individual languages, still lacks a generally accepted definition. She argues that members of minorities tend to regard themselves as ‘unique cases’ without comparison, which may even lead to assimilation, the ‘silence of the lambs’. In her view, there is an acute need to clarify what language diversity in the real world implies.

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Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?

Ulriikka Puura and Outi Tánczos write in Chapter 11 about the Division of Responsibility in Karelian and Veps Language Revitalisation Discourse and argue that questions of responsibility are central in the discussion on language revitalisation. The answers to these questions in part define the revitalisation policies. In their chapter, they examine how responsibility for minority language maintenance is represented in minority media texts and sociolinguistic interview data and ask who is represented as responsible for language maintenance. They show that certain recurring discourses on language maintenance and revitalisation may be distinguished in the data, and that these discourses restrict the ways in which the revitalisation process and its possibilities are perceived. Svetlana Edygarova’s chapter on Standard Language Ideology and Minority Languages: The Case of the Permian Languages focuses on three minority languages, Komi, Udmurt and Komi-Permyak, spoken in the European part of Central Russia. The main finding of the chapter is that puristic language attitudes have been borrowed from the Russian language tradition by the Permian people, who consider their standard varieties to be the only valuable varieties of the language. Following James Milroy, the author states that for standard language cultures it is typical to regard the standard variety as the whole language and to ignore other language varieties in social life and state institutions. However, the Permian languages function differently from the Russian language, as for most of the Permian-speaking population there are no real possibilities to learn to master the standard properly. In this kind of situation, puristic language attitudes may even bring about the attrition of a minority language.

References Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Blommaert, J. and Rampton, B. (2011) Language and superdiversity. Diversities 13. Online Journal published by UNESCO & MPI MMG. Brubaker, R. (2002) Ethnicity without groups. European Journal of Sociology 43 (2), 163–189. Cronin, M. (1998) The cracked looking glass of servants. Translation and minority languages in global age. The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication 4 (2), 145–162. Crystal, D. (2003) Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Vareness, F. (1996) Language, Minorities and Human Rights. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Fishman, J.A. (1991) Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Grenoble, A. and Whaley, L.J. (1998) Endangered Languages. Language Loss and Community Response. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grillo, R.D. (1989) Dominant Languages: Language and Hierarchy in Britain and France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hiltunen, M. (2012) Alkuperäiskansasta uuslappalaisiin ja kveeneihin – kamppailu Lapin historian tulkinnoista. Faravid 36, 279–296.

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Hinton, L. and Hale, K. (2001) The green book of language revitalization and practice. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Idström, A. and Piirainen, E. (2012) Endangered metaphors. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Jørgensen, J., Karrebæk, M., Madsen, L., and Møller, J. (2016) Polylanguaging in superdiversity. Arnaut, K. et. al.: Language and Superdiversity. Routledge. Laakso, J., Sarhimaa, A., Spiliopoulou Åkermark, S. and Toivanen, R. (2016) Towards Openly Multilingual Policies and Practices Assessing Minority Language Maintenance Across Europe. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Lakhi, L., Stuart C.K. and Roche, G. (2013) Namuyi Tibetans: Electrified change. In Hyytiäinen et al. Ex oriente lumina. Festskrift tillägnad Juha Janhunen på hans 61. Födelsedag. Studia Orientalia. Helsinki: Lewis, M.P. and Simons, G.F. (2010) Assessing endangerment: Expanding Fishman’s GIDS. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 55 (2), 103–120. Lüpke, F. and Storch, A. (2013) Repertoires and Choices in African Languages. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2007) Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Matras, Y. and Bakker, D. (2003) The Mixed Language Debate. Theoretical and Empirical Advances. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. May, S. (2011) Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language. New York: Routledge. Merry, S.E. (2006) Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago, IL: University Press. Merry, S.E. and Levitt, P. (2011) Making women’s human rights in the vernacular: Navigating the culture/rights divide. In D. Hodgson (ed.) Gender and Culture at the Limit of Rights (pp. 81–100). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mufwene, S.S. (2000) Creolization is a social, not a structural, process. In I. NeumannHolzschuh and E. Schneider (eds) Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages (pp. 65–84). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mufwene, S.S. (2005) Globalization and the myth of killer languages. In G. Huggan and S. Klasen (eds) Perspectives on Endangerment (pp. 19–48). New York: Georg Olms Verlag. Ndahinda, F.M. (2011) Indigenous in Africa: A Contested Legal Framework for Empowerment of ‘Marginalized’ Communities. The Hague: Springer. Nettle, D. and Romaine, S. (2002) Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Olthuis, M.L., Kivelä, S. and Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2012) Revitalising Indigenous Languages: How to Recreate a Lost Generation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ong, W.J. (1982) Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing the Word. London & New York: Routledge. Pasanen, A. (2015) Kuávsui já peeivičuovâ - Sarastus ja päivänvalo. Inarinsaamen kielen revitalisaatio. Uralica Helsingiensia 9. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura. Paunonen, H. (2006) Vähemmistökielestä varioivaksi valtakieleksi [from minority language to varying majority language]. In K. Juusela and K. Nisula (eds) Helsinki kieliyhteisönä, (pp. 13–99). Department of Finnish and Finnish literature, University of Helsinki. Phillipson, R. (2003) English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London: Routledge. Rapatahana, V. and Bunce, P. (2012) English Language as Hydra. Its Impacts on Non-English Language Culture. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Romaine, S. (1994) Language and society. An introduction to sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Saarikivi, J. and Toivanen, R. (2015) Change and maintenance of plurilingualism in the Russian federation and the European Union. H.F. Marten et. al. (eds) Cultural and Linguistic Minorities of the Russian Federation and the European Union (pp. 3–29). Heidelberg: Springer. Sand, A. (1999) Linguistic Variation in Jamaica. A Corpus-Based Study on Radio and Newspaper Usage. Tübingen: G. Narr. Scheinin, M. (2003) Minority rights: Additional rights or added protection? In M. Bergsmo (ed.) Human Rights and Criminal Justice for the Downtrodden: Essays in Honour of Asbjørn Eide (pp. 487–504). Leiden/Boston, MA: Martinus Nijhoff. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000) Linguistic Genocide in Education – Or World-Wide Diversity and Human Rights? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. and Dunbar, R. (2010) Indigenous children’s education as linguistic genocide and a crime against humanity? A global view. Gáldu Čála – Journal of Indigenous Peoples Rights, Vol. I. See http://www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org/en/ most_recent_books.html. Thomason, S. and Kaufman, T. (1988) Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics (1st edn). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Thorberry, P. (1993) International Law and the Rights of Minorities. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Toivanen, R. (2007) Linguistic diversity and the paradox of rights discourse. In D. Castiglione and C. Longman (eds) The Language Question in Europe and Diverse Societies – Political, Legal and Social Perspectives (pp. 101–121). Oxford: Hart Publishing. Toivanen, R. (2012) Aneignung von juristischen Begriffen: Kulturelle Ubersetzung von Menschenrechten [Cultural translations of human rights]. In A. Keinz, K. Schönberger and V. Wolf (eds) Kulturelle Übersetzungen [Cultural Translations] (pp. 123–137). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Tomasevski, K. (2005) Has the right to education a future within the United Nations? A behind-the-scenes account by the special rapporteur on the right to education 1998–2004. Human Rights Law Review 5 (2), 205–237. UN General Assembly (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights 217 A (III). See http:// www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Introduction.aspx (accessed 13 March 2015). Trudgill, P. (2011) Sociolinguistic typology. Social determinants of linguistic complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. UNESCO (2003) Language Vitality and Endangerment, document CLT/CEI/DCE/ ELP/PI/2003/1, adopted by the International Expert Meeting on UNESCO Programme Safeguarding of Endangered Languages in Paris, 10–12 March 2003. See http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/cultural-diversity/languagesandmultilingualism/endangered-languages/language-vitality/ (accessed 13 March 2015). Wilson, R.A., Cowan, J. and Dembour, M.B. (eds) (2001) Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part 1 Language Communities or Networks of Communication? Old and New Linguistic Diversity

1 Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community: Growing Variation at the Threshold of Language Shift Niko Partanen and Janne Saarikivi

This chapter discusses language shift, attrition and variation as related features of a community undergoing rapid cultural change, including ethnic and linguistic assimilation. We focus on Karelian, an endangered Finnic minority language relatively closely related to Finnish, from the perspectives of language attitudes, ethnic identities, language shift, social networks, linguistic variation and language change. It is our aim to demonstrate that in a speech community undergoing fragmentation, many linguistic processes occur, such as intensive borrowing, code-switching, copying of codes and emergence of new structures that enhance the linguistic variation. Thus, contrary to the idea of linguistic purism and laypeople’s language attrition discourse, a language under serious threat of disappearance is often richer in variation than a stable language. Much of the new variation differs from the traditional variation, though, and is based on language switching and mixing, as well as intensive borrowings from different types of available linguistic codes.

Research Aims In the following, language use in the Karelian village of Tuuksa is investigated from the points of view of language attitudes, ethnic stereotypes, social networks, linguistic variation and, ultimately, language shift and language change. It is our aim to investigate language shift and language change as related phenomena guided by the fragmentation of a minority language community. Instead of attempting to estimate the 21

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Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

extent of language shift, we want to explore the processes that have led to the current situation and continue to maintain it (cf. Grenoble, 2011: 38). The process we are focusing on has been noted also by Don Kulick and Susan Gal, for example, namely that language shift is deeply connected to the ways in which individuals come to interpret the languages, their speakers, and particularly, one another (Kulick, 1992: 9). It is possible to distinguish individual contributing factors to language shift such as urbanisation, modernisation or school. The challenge, however, is to explain how these factors have acquired the significance that eventually changes speech practices on a local and individual level. Gal (1979: 3) emphasises that ‘the process of language shift should be seen within a broader framework of expressively and symbolically used linguistic variation’. In a still broader framework, Schiffmann (1996) writes about linguistic culture, which he defines as a social construct based on language attitudes and myths guiding the linguistic behaviour of people. Linguistic culture is thus made up of ideas related to the appropriate use of languages by different people in different situations, the expected linguistic behaviour and the value of different types of speech. This study is taking the first steps in studying language shift involving Uralic languages spoken in Russia from this perspective by investigating the language change and shift in connection with the changing social reality that interacts with widespread ideas about Karelian and Russian speakers and their origins, age, livelihoods and appearance. For this purpose, we first investigate the language shift from Karelian to Russian in Tuuksa, from the perspectives of intergenerational transmission and language use in different domains. We then continue by demonstrating that the present Karelian-speaking community shows strong ambiguity regarding the identification of Karelian speakers. In the community under investigation, practically everyone can speak Russian, but people are much less aware of who is able to speak Karelian. In circumstances where community life is no longer conducted in Karelian, a fragmentation of the speech community is taking place. It is no longer clear with whom one can speak Karelian, and the language is thus becoming increasingly associated with family relations and the closest social environment of an individual. This feature of a community undergoing language shift causes the split of a Karelian speech community into multiple social networks, and thus creates the conditions for accelerated language change: increased variation and diversity. Simultaneously, family relations guarantee the intergenerational transmission of some local cultural knowledge transcending the language shift and make it possible for a certain integrity of the community to prevail. In the diminishing speech community, multiple new ways of speaking Karelian have emerged. The main sources for innovations in the new forms

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

23

of spoken Karelian are borrowings from Russian and code-mixing with Russian dialects and literary language, as well as the influence of Finnish, the closest language form to Karelian with a full-fledged written standard (cf. also Edygarova [2015] on a somewhat similar situation in connection with the Udmurt language). Further, several abrupt attempts to create a Karelian literary language have caused confusion in the speech community regarding the right ways to speak Karelian. This state of affairs, emerging in the context of the puristic linguistic culture of Russia (cf. Edygarova in this volume) and the fact that the Karelians do not have opportunities to learn to master the standard in their mother tongue through schooling and media, is having an effect on the situation of Karelian (cf. Pischlöger in this volume). Thus, there is often more variation in a language-shifting community – in the form of code-switching, intertwined and mixed codes – than in a stable, ‘primordial’ speech community where the variation is predominantly areal, social and situational. Such increased variation can be viewed as new types of ‘languaging’ or plurilingualism (cf. Blommaert & Rampton, 2011), but it is often also a symptom of an ongoing language shift among the minority language speakers. In communities such as Karelian villages, the new variation is likely to be short-lived and be replaced by relatively uniform majority language use. It is thus not easy to assess such linguistic variation in an endangered language community from the point of view of linguistic diversity; on the one hand, it represents increased diversity when compared with the traditional variation, but on the other, it is a symptom of a process ultimately leading to diminishing linguistic and cultural diversity.

Context Karelian is a Finnic language related to Finnish and Estonian. It shares common roots with the Eastern Finnish dialects, as well as Veps, Ingrian and Ingermanland Finnish. Together, these languages form the Eastern Finnic language group, which derives from ancient Karelian (Fi. muinaiskarjala), the Eastern Finnic early medieval vernacular (cf. Kallio, 2014). This language form is a direct offspring of Proto-Finnic, from which approximately eight to twelve languages derive (depending on the definition of language), including two fully established literary languages, Finnish and Estonian. Today, Karelian is spoken in its core area, the Karelian Republic of Russia, as well as in diasporas that emerged during the 17th century after a new border between Russia and Sweden was formed, most notably in the Tver and Leningrad oblasts (Tikhvin region). There are also many small diasporas in Finland that emerged after World War II. Up until World War II, the Karelian-speaking area was divided between Finland and Russia,

24

Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

but the inhabitants of the Finnish part were evacuated to other regions of Finland due to border relocation in 1939 and again in 1944. Karelian is partly intelligible to Finnish speakers (Northern Karelian more so than Southern) but differs from it in phonematics, morphology, lexicon and syntax alike. Several different variants of Karelian are distinguished, most notably Karelian proper and Olonets Karelian, the southern variant. At its largest, in the 1930s, the number of Karelian speakers was probably about 250,000 in Russia and 40,000 in Finland. With 26,500 reported speakers in Russia in 2011 (the newest census), down from 40,000 in 2002, and 5,000–6,000 speakers in Finland (Sarhimaa, 2010), Karelian is a severely endangered language. It has been losing speakers through assimilation to Russian and Finnish throughout the complete latter half of the 20th century. Ethnologue (Lewis et al., 2014) classifies Olonets Karelian as a developing language, a status apparently connected to the presence of Karelian press and school teaching. However, despite some efforts in schooling and media, there is very little evidence of Karelian being transmitted to children on any larger scale. In the community from which the data for this research have been collected, situated in the Karelian heartland area, only a minority of children learn Karelian as a school subject since it is not compulsory. It is also apparent in our results that Russian is the only language used by young people in their lateral peer networks. As in many other minority language communities, also in the case of Karelian, the number of people with passive knowledge of the language is much larger than the number of those who appear as speakers in population statistics. It has been estimated that in addition to the approximately 6,000 Karelian speakers, there are 20,000 persons with a passive command of Karelian in Finland alone (Sarhimaa, 2010: 1). We can assume that a similar pattern also exists in Russia, meaning that besides the people who appear as Karelian speakers in the statistics, there are a large number of people with less complete language skills (see the end of the chapter). In order to understand the Karelian language situation, it is also important to point out that there are multiple existing Karelian identities. In Finland, there are approximately 500,000 people claiming a Karelian (sub-)identity, but almost all of those are speakers of Eastern Finnish dialects or standard Finnish. In the Karelian Republic of the Russian Federation and its predecessor, the Karelian ASSR, the Karelian language never had an official status, nor was it widely used in schooling, media or by the authorities (not taking into account an abrupt attempt towards standardisation in 1937–1939 [Anttikoski, 2003]; on the Karelian media that has recently emerged, see Puura & Tánczos in this volume). Instead, Finnish was used as a second literary language and in the schooling of the Karelian rural population from the creation of the republic in 1920 up until the 1960s. This was a politically motivated

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

25

choice. The leadership of the republic, in its first stage, was composed of Finnish emigrant communists, who created the region with the goal of fostering not only the culture of the local population but also a leftist revolution in the whole of neighbouring Finland (see Kilin, 2001). This language choice proved especially unfortunate in the southern region, where the dialects least comprehensible to Finns were spoken. Even today, in addition to Russian speakers, the Karelian settlements are also typically home to some Ingermanland Finns. These people typically have a passive knowledge of Karelian, whereas the Karelians of the older generations also demonstrate active knowledge of Finnish.

Fieldwork and Material There is a long tradition of collecting language samples from Karelian in both Finland and Russia. Although there are few in-depth grammatical descriptions of the language, archived materials are available from most of the Karelian-speaking communities. Karelian is, in fact, probably one of the most widely documented minority languages of its size in terms of recordings made and materials archived. The central results of these activities have been published in dictionaries (KKS) and sample texts (cf. Virtaranta, 1958; Virtaranta et al., 1999, among many others). Some of Pertti Virtaranta’s fieldwork notes have also been published in edited form (Yli-Paavola, 1993). In the period between 2004 and 2015, a series of fieldwork trips were conducted in Russian Karelia by the Department of FinnoUgrian Languages at the University of Helsinki with the explicit aim of interviewing all segments of local speech communities, also taking into account Russified Karelians and non-native speakers. A fieldwork practice by the students of the department has been organized among the Karelian-speakers of Russia. The field trips have been organised throughout the Karelian-speaking area, most notably, in the southern area of Olonets Karelian where the language community is still relatively vibrant. One of the main objectives of the fieldwork has been to shed light on the pace and character of the language shift and the social forces that have caused and still guide the ongoing process while simultaneously documenting language variation. During the expeditions, slightly different questionnaires have been used for the purposes of sociolinguistic investigation. In the Appendix, there is a version in English that covers the content of all questionnaire variants used. As the interviews are semi-structured and the time is always limited, not all topics are present in all interviews. In connection with the interviews, other types of linguistic fieldwork have also been carried out. For the purposes of this study, two one-week-long fieldwork excursions were organised in the village of Tuuksa (approximately 1000 inhabitants)

26

Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

in 2012 and 2013. The village is located in the area of Southern (Olonets) Karelian and is stereotypically considered one of those villages where Karelian is best preserved. The settlement spreads over several kilometres along the river Tuuksa and consists of many small villages that have grown together. The traditional means of subsistence has been agriculture, most notably farming of crops and cattle breeding, accompanied by some fishing, picking berries and mushrooms. These forms of subsistence still remain important in the area, but increasingly people have shifted to modern professions and work in the nearby town of Olonets (approximately 10,000 inhabitants). In the 1970s, Tuuksa, in a similar manner to many other relatively large villages of the Soviet Union, experienced population growth when smaller villages were shut down in accordance with the policies of the time. Following this period, some new neighbourhoods and larger blockhouses were constructed, giving the village centre a semi-urban appearance. The data presented have been collected from a neighbourhood that includes both the traditional Karelian houses along the riverbank and some sections of newer housing. The majority of the informants are connected to one another either as relatives or as neighbours. Many also live in the same households and their relationships are those of close kin, i.e. spouse, daughter, son or grandmother. The data have been anonymised so that the informants are not readily recognisable. All in all, we have transcribed data from 18 speakers out of 43 interviewed, with the number of word tokens totalling slightly over 10,000. The settlement names have not been anonymised, because the village expands to a rather large territory, which makes it impossible to pinpoint which local neighbourhood we are referring to. The investigation into the language use in these social networks was mostly conducted based on the informants’ own descriptions. This may certainly represent a problem from the point of view of reliability, but even with these kinds of data, we were already able to identify the rapid pace of the language shift, as well as several neighbourhood groups and familyinternal relations where Karelian is still used. Besides this, there also seemed to be a large degree of mismatch between the reported language skills and language use, which we think can also partly explain some language choices within the identified networks. In order to gain a better diachronic view on the language shift and change, we have also used archival materials. On the field trip in 1966, ethnomusicologist Erkki Ala-Könni spent one day in Tuuksa. Pertti and Helmi Virtaranta also made recordings in nearby settlements during the same time period. After 50 years, it is still easy to find relatives, friends and acquaintances of the people with whom these researchers worked. The generation of their informants has already died, but we have interviewed their descendants and relatives. Self-evidently, these types of materials are

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

27

valuable from the point of view of the research into language change. The main shortcoming is the gender and age imbalance in the older data, as the informants tended to be older women. The topics have been mainly ethnographical, and in many of our interviews, we have aimed to cover similar themes and topics when possible. The main bulk of the newer data consists of sociolinguistic and toponymic interviews and covers all types of speakers, not only those informants considered ideal in the traditional dialectological framework. Furthermore, the use of archival data collected by Pertti Virtaranta and Erkki Ala-Könni leaves little space for anonymisation, as their whereabouts in the summer of 1968 are part of the historical record and cannot really be made anonymous. The informants, however, have been anonymised by removing identifiable segments from the quotations.

The Big Picture: The Pace of the Language Shift It is currently possible to work with informants who have personally experienced the process of language shift in the surrounding community. Self-evidently, there has been Russian–Karelian bilingualism in the region for decades, or in some cases even centuries. Thus, the time frame of the language shift is very deep and its beginning is beyond our data (cf. Sarhimaa [1995] on historical plurilingualism in Karelia). However, by analysing social networks, it is often possible to pinpoint rather exactly when the intergenerational and community-level shift from Karelian to Russian has occurred. There are clear differences between different Karelian communities, some pointing to an early language shift (1960s) and some having undergone it slightly later (1970s) (Partanen, 2013a). The time frame of the language shift is related to factors such as school reform, which made Russian the main language of schooling instead of Finnish (in 1958), and improved communications, i.e. roads, radio, television, etc., all of which emerged in the 1960s. As in many other contexts around the globe, it is possible to discern between early innovators, the major shift and the late oppositionists in each of the shifting communities. The first group typically consists of people with ties to urban settlements or those associated with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and occupying trustee positions. The oppositionist group continues to speak Karelian to their children even today. Often, those belonging to this group represent families with three generations living together. However, Karelian does not seem to remain anywhere as the main language of communication for all generations, and there is very little use for the language outside the home and family. Table 1.1 shows the data on family-internal language use in Tuuksa as reported by 43 informants interviewed during the expeditions. A very

F

M

F

F

F

1942

1942

1943

F

1941

M

1938

1939

1940

F

F

1934

1937

F

1931

F

F

1930

1937

F

1929

F

M

1928

M

F

1928

1936

M

1927

1936

Sex

Birth-year

olo (olo) + rus

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

vep

vep

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

rus

olo

olo

rus

olo

(olo) + rus

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

Mother

olo

Grand-parents

Languages used by …

Table 1.1 Language use with family members

olo

olo

vep

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

(olo) + rus

olo

rus

olo

olo

(olo) + rus

olo

olo

olo

Father

olo

olo

vep

(olo) + rus

olo

olo

(olo) + rus

rus

olo

(olo) + rus

Sibling

olo

olo

rus

olo

(olo) + rus

olo

(olo) + rus

(olo)

olo

olo

olo

rus

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

Spouse

rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

rus

(olo) + rus (olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

rus

rus

rus

rus

Grand-children Grand-grand-children

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

olo

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

olo

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

olo

olo

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

olo

(olo) + rus

Children

28 Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

F

F

F

M

M

M

F

F

M

M

F

M

M

M

F

F

1948

1948

1949

1949

1950

1950

1951

1951

1953

1953

1954

1956

1959

1961

1963

1963

F

1944

Sex

M

Birth-year

1944

Mother

olo

rus olo + rus

olo

olo olo

olo rus

olo

olo

rus

olo

olo

olo + rus

rus

olo

olo

olo

olo olo

fin

olo

olo

bel

olo

olo

(olo) + rus

olo

olo

olo + rus

olo

Father

olo

fin

olo

olo

fin

bel olo

olo + fin

olo

bel

olo

olo

olo

(olo) + rus

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

Grand-parents

Languages used by …

Table 1.1 (Continued)

olo

olo

olo + rus

olo

fin + rus

olo

olo

olo

olo

olo

Sibling

Spouse

rus

olo

rus

rus

rus

rus

rus

rus

rus

olo

rus

rus

rus

olo

rus

(olo) + rus

olo

olo

Children

rus

olo + rus

(olo) + rus

rus

rus

rus

(olo) + rus

rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

olo + fin

olo

rus + fin

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

rus

(olo) + rus

rus

rus

rus

rus

rus

rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

rus

rus

(olo) + rus

rus

Grand-children

(Continued)

rus

Grand-grand-children

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community 29

F

M

F

F

F

F

F

1968

1972

1975

1976

1981

1994

M

1965

1966

M

1964

Sex

M

Birth-year

1964

olo

olo

olo + rus

olo

olo

olo

Grand-parents

rus

rus

olo + rus

olo

olo + rus

olo + rus

rus olo

olo + rus

olo

olo + rus

(olo) + rus

olo

olo

olo

Father

olo

(olo) + rus

olo

Mother

Languages used by …

Table 1.1 (Continued)

Sibling

rus

(olo) + rus

rus

rus

(olo) + rus

rus

olo + rus

rus

rus

rus

(olo) + rus

rus

olo

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

rus

rus

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

olo

rus

olo + rus

Children

(olo) + rus

Spouse

olo

rus

(olo) + rus

rus

Grand-children

Grand-grand-children

30 Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

31

Table 1.2 Languages marked in tables with their ISO 639-3 codes Belorussian:

bel

Finnish:

fin

Olonets Karelian:

olo

Russian:

rus

Vepsian:

vep

strong tendency is that the younger the informant is, the more likely he or she is to use Russian. This tendency is to be discerned both in the reported language choices of the informants themselves, as well as in their reporting regarding the language choices by other family and community members. One should note, however, that the material may not be entirely representative for the whole language community, as the people who identify as Karelian speakers still dominate in the sample. Especially in the younger age cohorts, there are community members who have passive skills in Karelian, but who do not self-identify as speakers of Karelian and therefore do not figure in the sample (Table 1.2). It was mentioned above that many informants experience their families becoming more and more Russian, both ethnically and in terms of linguistic practices. We have asked whether the informants have experienced that the home used to be more Karelian or Russian speaking. The results of this are presented in Table 1.3. Almost all informants replied that the home used to be more Karelian speaking. However, it is only the generation born in the 1950s that reports the home having been predominantly Karelian speaking. Analysing this question is somewhat complicated, as the referent points used in assessing language use are relative to the informant’s age. Now refers to the present time, the 2010s, but it is arbitrary where before may refer to. However, the clear pattern present in the answers indicates that the question has been understood. Those born after the 1950s have never experienced the home domain as primarily Karelian speaking, but for all age groups the present time is very strongly Russian. Experiences regarding the change in language practices in the neighbourhood do not entirely correspond with the picture at home. The results of this question are presented in Table 1.4. The main difference between this domain and the home is that, somewhat surprisingly, the neighbourhood appears to be a more static environment. In some sense, it is possible to see the family as more dynamic, since it is constantly changing with intermarriage, a new generation emerging and an old generation passing away, whereas the village neighbourhood may be understood as made up of people with whom the informants have interacted all through their lives.

32

Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

Table 1.3 Language use in the home domain Birth year

Language before

Language now

1927

olo

olo

1928

olo

olo

1929

olo

rus

1929

olo + rus

1930

olo

1931

olo

1935

olo

rus rus olo rus

1936 1937

olo

rus

1938

olo

rus

1939

rus

1940

olo + rus

1941

olo + rus

1941

vep

1942

olo + rus

1942

olo

1943

rus rus rus

1943

olo

rus

1948

olo

olo

1948

olo

(olo) + rus

1949

olo + rus

rus

1949

olo

1950

rus

1950

olo

1951

olo

rus

1951

fin + (rus)

rus

1952

rus

rus

1953

olo + rus

1956

olo + rus

1959

olo + rus

rus

1961

olo + rus

olo

rus

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

33

Table 1.3 (Continued) Birth year

Language before

Language now

1962

rus

rus

1963

olo + rus

olo + rus

1964

olo + rus

rus olo + rus

1964 1965

olo + rus

rus

1968

olo + rus

rus

1974

olo

rus

1982

rus + fin

1993

olo + rus

rus

We also mapped language use in the work environment. Use of a particular language does not seem to correlate well with any particular type of work, but the use of Karelian or Russian in this domain corresponds with age (cf. Partanen, 2013b). To some degree, higher levels of education and higher positions in the working environment seem to be more associated with Russian, but with such a small sample, it is difficult to make conclusions. (Tables 1.1 through 1.5 presented here have been re-evaluated and reproduced from an earlier study [Partanen, 2013b].)

Language Attitudes and Ethnic Stereotypes in Flux through Decades Despite the proximity of the speakers, during our fieldwork we continuously encountered confusion regarding the identification of informants who would be able to speak Karelian. It occurred that the informants would tell us that their neighbour is a Russian speaker and did not know Karelian. However, when encountered, it turned out that he or she was able to speak Karelian very well, but had not used it with the neighbours. Especially those born outside Tuuksa, even spouses of the locals, tended to be considered Russians, despite the fact that they might have been born only a few dozen kilometres away in another Karelian village. The Karelian language is occasionally heard in the village, but Russian now dominates the residents’ interaction. Based on our data, it seems that all children of the village learned Karelian in their peer networks until the late 1960s or early 1970s and that the shift to Russian

34

Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

Table 1.4 Language use in the neighbourhood domain, Tuuksa Birth year

Language before

Language now

1926

olo

olo

1927

olo

olo + rus

1928

olo

olo

1932 1933

olo + rus olo

olo

1934

rus

rus

1936

olo + rus

olo + rus

1936

olo

olo

1937

olo

rus

1938

olo + rus

1939

olo

1941

olo + rus

1942 1943

olo + rus rus

1944

rus olo + rus

1945

olo

1946

olo

1947 1947

olo

olo olo olo + rus

olo

olo

1948

olo

olo

1949

olo + rus

olo + rus

1949

olo + rus

olo + rus

1950

rus

rus

1952

olo

olo

1952

olo + rus

olo + rus

1953

rus

rus

1954

olo + rus

olo + rus

1955

olo

olo

1956 1958

olo + rus olo + rus

rus

1962

olo

1963

olo (Continued)

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

35

Table 1.4 (Continued) Birth year

Language before

Language now

1964

rus

rus

1965

olo

olo + rus

1965

olo

rus

1967

rus

rus

1969

(olo) + rus

(olo) + rus

1974

olo + rus

olo + rus

1975

olo + rus

olo + rus

1992

rus

rus

as the main language of communication with children occurred mainly in the late 1970s. However, the use of Karelian has not entirely ceased even today, but continues in family-internal relations, as well as contact with relatives or, occasionally, Finnish tourists. It is interesting to note that the children of non-Karelian informants have generally adopted the main language of the community also in the Karelian-speaking past, something that demonstrates the relative openness of the community and the central role of communal language use among one’s peers as a defining factor leading to active language skills. Some informants were Russian speakers who moved to the village in the early 1950s. In those days, the village was still predominantly Karelian speaking and at that time, the children of non-Karelian families learned Karelian from their peers. We get a small glimpse of the language practices of that time through the description of this Russian informant: A woman, born in the 1930s, interviewed in 2012 by Niko Partanen and Simonas Noreikis: 1

но где вы выучили карельски, в

Where did you learn Karelian, in

2

Туксе? нет в Туксе тут вот я

Tuuksa? Not in Tuuksa, well, I

3

понимала, что взяла работать,

understand that I came here for work, earlier

4

придёшь, раньше же плохo по-

people spoke Russian badly, one

5

русски говорили, здесь идёшь дак

had to converse with hands and all,

6

по-руками всяка разговорили

7

а потом привыкли, стала уже

but later (who?) got used to, everyone

8

понимали всё.

understood (Russian). (Continued)

36

9

Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

мм, а как вы, когда вы приехали сюда там

Mm, and how you, when you came here everyone spoke in Karelian?

10

все люди на карельском

11

говорили?

12

но они только на карельском,

Well they spoke only Karelian,

13

плохо кто говорил по-русски,

the ones who spoke Russian spoke it badly,

14

а теперь почти все по-русски

but now almost everyone speaks Russian,

15

говорят, у меня дети между

my children spoke Karelian with

16

собой говорили по-карельски

grandmother, and between each other

17

с бабушкой там и между собой

they spoke Russian.

18

сам по русски говорили.

The present situation is very different from the 1950s. Typically, the grandparents use Russian with their grandchildren even if their own Russian is inadequate. The motives and reasoning behind the language choice are still somewhat unclear, but the same pattern repeats itself over. A woman, born in the 1940s, interviewed in 2012 by a student group: 1

Jo harjavu da i brihačču nuoremb hänen poegu, sanot ištoi.

Also the smaller child, her son, you say: sit.

2

I el’l’endäy ištohes, toimittau, a muidu vie vähä midä pagižou, ei pagiže.

And he understands and sits down, proceeds [the sitting], but otherwise he doesn’t speak much.

3

A muide vie vähä midä pagižou, ei pagiže.

Otherwise he doesn’t speak much, doesn’t speak.

4

Hyö, heil on karjalan urokku, hyö dolžen el’l’endiä.

They, they have Karelian classes, they must understand.

5

Enne myö pagižimmo karjalakse školah konzu kävyin, ka školas ei annettu meile paišta karjalakse, čakattih.

We used to speak in Karelian when I went to school, but in school we were not allowed to speak Karelian, we were scolded.

6

A nygöi toine aegu ga, nygöi paistah da kač opastetah.

But now it is a different time, now people speak and also study.

It is worth commenting that very often when language use with the younger generations is mentioned, it is in the context of commands and imperatives (Lines 1–2). On Lines 4 and 6, Karelian is recalled as being taught nowadays and there is mention of the common assumption that the teaching of Karelian as a subject in school would lead to language skills by the youngsters. It is also instrumental to pay attention

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

Table 1.5 Language use in the work domain, Tuuksa Birth year

Language

Profession

1927

olo

1928

olo + rus

1932

olo

Cow milker

1934

rus

Techer

1935

olo + rus

Brigadier Train-station worker

Forest worker

1935

olo

1936

olo + rus

Cow milker Sovkhoz worker

1938

olo + rus

Cow milker

1942

olo + rus

Secretarian

1943

olo

Hay maker

1944

olo + rus

Cow milker

1945

olo + rus

Brigadier

1946

olo

Kolkhoz worker

1948

rus

Teacher

1948

olo + rus

1951

rus

Cook Tractor driver

1952

rus

Teacher

1952

(olo) + rus

Manager

1953

olo + rus

Teacher

1957

olo + rus

Tractor driver

1962

rus

Doctor

1964

rus

Manager

1964

olo + rus

1964

(olo) + rus

1965

olo

Mechanician

1966

rus

Doctor

1967

rus

Tractor dirver

1968

olo + rus

Teacher

1974

(olo) + rus

Teacher

1979

rus

Manager

1982

rus + fin

1995

rus

Electrician Agricultural supplier

Interpreter Student

37

38

Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

to the discourse about changing times. There used to be a time when Karelian was spoken, and that was in different ways discouraged. Now, Karelian is encouraged, and is even present in schools, but less spoken. Whereas the old generations knew the language, the children today have poor language skills and speak almost exclusively Russian. When asked exactly what time the informants consider a better time for the Karelian language, the present or the past, the answers vary a lot and many hesitate to answer. Later, the informant described the neighbourhood and language use with grandchildren: 1

Täs toine taloi on veńäläžet kaht’ii.

In this other house there are Russians.

2

A mučoi on karjalaińe naverna.

But the wife is a Karelian, probably.

3

Täs on karjalažet kai meijän ulić-,

Everyone is Karelian on our street,

4

veńäläžed on, sie on no karjalaštu kedä i veńäläštu ka, yks kai veńäkse pidäy sanoa.

there are Russians, well there are Karelians and also Russians, however, one has to say in Russian.

5

Mil kielel sie [[name]] lapsenkel pagižet?

In which language you speak with [[name]] child?

6

Minä? Veńäjäkse enimmät aegu.

I? Most of the time in Russian.

7

Patamušto siel tuatto tože veńäjäkse pagižou, kaikin veńäjäkse paistah, brihaččut siel paistah vel’l’et karjalaks, oih, veńäjäks.

Because there father also speaks Russian, everyone speaks Russian, the boys, brothers, speak there Karelian, oh, Russian.

This excerpt is a good example of the ambivalence regarding language use and ethnicity in Tuuksa. It is not certain if the neighbour’s wife is Karelian or Russian. Everyone is Karelian, to some extent, but there are Russians, too. Lines 4 through 7 illustrate how Russian is becoming the language that everyone mainly speaks. However, when we examine families like this more closely, it appears that there are often no Russian monolinguals within the family network. Nevertheless, the use of Russian is often experienced as the only appropriate choice. Later, when we continue discussing language use, the informant mentions the following: Da, da, karjalakse pagižen, karjalakse, kudamat on minun vozrastua. A nuorembienkel kańešna veńäjäksi pagižta pidäy, kuda mie en tiijä ga veńäjäkse sanon. Yes, yes, I speak in Karelian, Karelian, with those who are of my age. But of course with the younger people one has to speak in Russian, also to whom I don’t know, I say in Russian.

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

39

It seems that Karelians do not always speak Karelian to other Karelians, but rather Karelian is spoken to people in one’s own age group and with whom one is familiar. Our data show that the attitudes and circulating discourses position different members of the speech community as Karelian or Russian speakers, a fact that in itself is not tightly connected to the language skills of the individuals. In Tuuksa, Karelian ethnicity and language seem to be strongly associated with the village itself, so that the village and region are described as Karelian, and the other regions as Russian, despite the fact that there is actually a large rural area of Karelian speakers surrounding the village. Further, within the local population, there is a distinction between the old inhabitants and those who have come to the village from the outside, and this seems to correlate with the idea of who is a speaker of Karelian. In reality, though, the situation is quite blurred, as many ethnic Karelians have moved into the village from other settlements and some Russian speakers have lived in the village for the majority of their lives. Further, the ethnicities were perceived very differently by different members of the community. Several younger informants who were described as Russian by elders identified clearly as Karelians in our interviews. Typically, those in one’s close family or one’s direct descendants were described as Karelians, but not other youngsters. This seems to follow from the model of thinking that Karelian ethnicity is passed down through families. It is a very common model of explanation that because the informant himself or herself is Karelian, of course the children are, too. The following citation illustrates this logic. A woman, born in the 1970s, interviewed in 2012 by Niko Partanen: 1

no, no sinu mužik

Well, well, your husband,

2

Mm

Mm.

3

sinula on mužikku?

you have a husband?

4

On

Yes.

5

ongo häi karjalaine libo

Is he Karelian or

6

venäläine?

Russian?

7

hän o-, häi on veńäläińe

He is, he is a Russian.

8

no kuspäi häi on?

Where he is from?

9

Tukselpiä

From Tuuksa.

10

Tuuksalt? kas hän on, onko sinu

From Tuuksa. Is he, are your

11

muž ikan tuatto da muamo, on häi

husbands parents, are they (Continued)

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12

tože veńäläž i?

also Russians?

13

ei, mm, hüö tietäh karjalan kieldü,

No, mm, they know Karelian language,

14

paistah karjalaks

they speak Karelian.

15

kuspäi hyö?

Where are they from?

16

no häi on karjalaińe no ei pagiže

Well he is Karelian, but doesn’t speak

17

Karjalaks

Karelian.

18

häi ičče?

He himself?

19

ičče ei pagiže

Himself he doesn’t speak.

20

gu vahnembat ollah karjalažet ka

As the parents are Karelians, so

21

häigi on karjalaińe

he also is Karelian.

We see that in Line 7, the informant mentions her husband as being Russian. However, from Line 16 onwards, she starts to correct this, clearly based on what has been mentioned about his parents and their ethnicity. The idea is explicitly stated in Lines 20 and 21. In Lines 16 and 17, there is a statement that the husband is Karelian, but does not speak the Karelian language. Thus, the identification of someone as Karelian or Russian is always negotiable and depends on the context. A local Ingermanlandian Finn gave the following account (in Finnish) about the ethnicities in her family. A woman born in the 1950s, interviewed in 2012 by Niko Partanen: 1

2

3

4 5 6

no onko sinun tytärten miehet, ovatko he karjalaisia, venäläisiä, inkeriläisiä? sanosin että niinkun heidän juuret kyllä on karjalaisia, koska [NAME1] on syntynyt ihan täällä kylässä [NAME2], no hän ei o-, hänen isä on syntynyt täältä, ja isä on tuonut tänne vaimonsa Udmurtiasta Udmurtiasta? joo onko hän, puhuuko hän udmurtin kieltä?

How about you daughters’ husbands, are they Karelians, Russians, Ingrians? I would say that their roots are Karelian, because [NAME1] was born right here in the village. [NAME2], well he isn’t, his father was born here, and his father has brought his wife here from Udmurtia. From Udmurtia? Yep. Is she, does she speak Udmurt language?

(Continued)

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

7

8

9

10

11

no vot, en ole koskaan kysynyt osaako hän sitä, mutta hän on minun ikänen niin voi olla, että osaakin, koskaan ei ole ollut huolla, mutta hän on tullut sieltä, vaimonsa, elikkä, kuitenkin niinkun nämä kaksi vävyä ovat, sanomme että karjalaisia, eivät kyllä nyt puhu karjalaa mutta isä, vanhemmat puhuu isä, isät ja [NAME] vanhemmat ovat valitettavasti jo kuolleet, mutta kyllä ne puhui keskenään aina karjalaa no se kolmas vävy, kyllä silläkin isä on karjalainen, ja kyllä, molemmat ovat karjalaisia, mutta en tiedä paljonko puhuu karjalaa. koska aina puhutaan venäjää heidän kanssaan, että ei ne no voi olla että kyllä ne osaa jos on tarpeellista käyttää sitä kieltä, mutta pärjätään venäjän kielellä niin en luulisin, että ymmärtävät vanhemmat, vanhemmat, mutta ei lapset, meidän lapset

41

Well, I have never asked if she knows it, but as she is my age it may be that she does know it, it has never been (???), but she came from there, his wife, so, anyway these two sons-in-law, as we say they are Karelians, though they don’t speak Karelian, but the father, parents speak … Father, fathers and [NAME1]’s parents have unfortunately already died, but they always spoke Karelian together. Well the third son-in-law, also his father is Karelian, and yes, they both are Karelians, but I don’t know how much they speak Karelian, because we always speak Russian with them so that … So it may be that they can if it is necessary to use that language, but we manage well with Russian language so I don’t … I assume they understand, the parents, but the children do not, our children.

Descriptions of the language skills of the sons-in-law and their parents are full of expressions like ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’, ‘I assume’, which shows that the speaker is not certain about their ethnicities or language skills. A clear explanation for this insecurity is that the language of their mutual communication has been Russian. However, older people from Tuuksa are explicitly assumed to know Karelian, again without clear experience of them using other languages than Russian. This ascribing of ethnicity is present in Lines 2 and 7, where being Karelian is first related to the village, and later it is assumed that the knowledge of a minority language, in this case Udmurt, would correspond with age groups, as it does in the Karelian context (although, in fact, it does not). This is repeated in Line 11. Despite the ambivalence in the ascription of ethnicity, there are some contexts where Russianness is portrayed as a default identification of people. The young people and their lifestyle are considered mostly

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Russian, whereas the older generations are seen as Karelian. This is clearly reflected in the language choices, too, as there are examples where an informant explains the use of Russian in a shop or other public place to be related to her (the informant’s) young age. Some informants mention that their families are becoming more Russian, but actually they are mainly local people marrying each other, so in principle all share some kind of Karelian heritage. The insecurity regarding the language and ethnicity grows the younger the people under consideration are and the further away they are in the family networks. The association of Russianness with young people can be further illustrated with the following examples. A woman born in the 1960s, interviewed in 2012 by a student group: Oligo parembi ennen libo nygöi parembi? Endizet ajat oldih onnuako parembažet. Minuh niškoi. I rahvas oldih toižet, vahnembat rahvas oldih toštu luadua niingun nuorižot nygöi. Were the times better in old days or is it better now? The old times were better. In my opinion. And people were different, the old people were of different sort than the youth today. In itself, this is not a unique discourse. The generation who still actively uses Karelian has grown up in a society in many ways different from the post-Soviet Russia. Education, working possibilities, higher mobility, popular culture, use of computers, social media, etc. – all this separates the modern world from the local agricultural communities of the older days. 1

Minä ruan johtajana ja minuu on, nygöi, naižet kudamat jo lähtettih eläkehel, hyö ruattih iänkaiken.

I work as a director and I have, now, the women [with] who [I worked] have already retired, they always worked.

2

Nygöi kaksi kolme hengie ruadau, no heijänke on ruadua hoijembi nigu nygöi nuorižot kudat tuldih ruadamah.

Now there are two or three persons who work, well it is easier to work with them than with young people who come to work.

3

Hyö ainos tullah vastah, ainos ellendetäh, heile taba on ihan toini, eigun nygöi nuorižol.

They always lend a hand, always understand, they have a different way of being, not like the young people nowadays.

4

Nygöi, älä koske, älä, älägä minuu, liigua.

Now [people behave like this:], don’t touch, don’t bother me. (Continued)

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

5

Lekahuta, koskehuta.

Don’t involve me.

6

Само по себе.

All for themselves.

43

Such discourse regarding the changing times and mentalities should not automatically be related to language and ethnicity, but in Tuuksa this is the case. The Karelian language is associated with the old village, while the modern world is Russian.

Explaining Language Shift and Maintenance: The Social Networks of Karelian and Russian Obviously, there is a large variety of patterns in which a language shift may occur within families and sub-communities, eventually laying out the overall pace of the language shift in a village. We have been mapping these networks within some families and in Figure 1.1, we model the progression of language shift in five generations of one family. In FinnoUgrian studies, such a network model has been earlier implemented by, among others, Aikio (1988), Grünthal (2009) and Sarhimaa (2009). Anneli Sarhimaa (2009) has suggested that social network analysis could be used as a research framework in cases such as the use of Karelian. She mentions that there are several methodological challenges connected to scaling and categorising different variables. We could add that there are also methodological challenges with data collection itself. We have been working in a very closed neighbourhood with a large number of close relatives, but still the connections we can draw between individuals are mere flashes full of uncertainties. All informants live in a compact region; we know how many of them are related, who are neighbours, who are friends, who went to school together. Still, the actual interaction that takes place in the neighbourhood every day is many times more complex than anything we have mapped. Informant 2 in the centre of the graph explained that his Karelian parents did not speak Karelian with him. Instead, he learned the language from his peers. Thus, we have early innovators of the language shift already in the generation born in the 1920s. In this case, the reason for the language shift was temporary work in another more distinctly Russian-speaking settlement while the children were small. In Soviet times, many Karelians moved to predominantly Russian communities and vice versa. After completing their education, students were typically sent to work away from their home regions for some years, and this policy (which officially was designed to strengthen the unity of the Soviet people) obviously had an effect even on the language choices within families.

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Figure 1.1 Model of language use in the family network of two informants. The lines between individuals correspond with the primary languages used between those interlocutors, a thick line indicating Karelian and a thin line Russian. The model is abstracted from two interviews conducted in 1968 and 2013.

Despite the early beginnings of language shift in the family, the informant had still learned Karelian from his peer network. The informant married a Russian speaker from another region, a fairly typical occurrence in the Karelian-speaking area in the 1950s, which had an impact on intergenerational language transmission. Informant 1 had told in 1968 that she took care of all eight grandchildren. This must have contributed to the Karelian acquisition of Informant 2, even though his parents already spoke to him in Russian. From Figure 1.1, one gets the picture that Informant 2 lives in a rather Russian-speaking environment. This, however, is not exactly true. He clearly uses Karelian with friends of his age who live in the same neighbourhood. He has some elder relatives with whom the use

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

45

of Karelian has been and remains the norm. However, the home environment is very strongly Russian speaking and there are no individuals in the household for whom Karelian would be the normal language of choice. Although Informant 2 himself grew up in a rather Russian environment, he can still be considered an active Karelian speaker in some domains. Therefore, we cannot really assume an inevitable connection between the home language and that which the child ends up acquiring and using. Instead, the general pattern of language acquisition within a community seems to be more crucial for language transmission than the language use at home. Intermarriage with a Russian speaker or the habit of speaking Russian at home was not enough to interrupt the transmission of Karelian. It can also be pointed out that there was some transmission of Karelian to the oldest children of Informant 2. This transmission nevertheless ceased when the grandparents died. Such a transmission pattern is also presently prevalent for Karelian. Almost all younger Karelian speakers whom we have met have grown up with their grandparents living in the same household, usually the grandmother. This can be explained by the general longevity of women in Russia in comparison to men. It would not be surprising if some grandchildren of Informant 2 would acquire Karelian from individuals such as grandparents from the other side of the family, who are missing from the scheme. It may be noted in this connection that Nancy Dorian has also described similar patterns with Scottish Gaelic speakers, wherein the presence of older fluent individuals in the household has an impact on the language maintenance. Similarly, she has identified patterns where the older siblings can have an active role in socialising younger siblings as majority-language speakers, despite the parental and grandparental generations maintaining their old patterns of language use (Dorian, 1981: 107–108). When it comes to language choices, it seems that people stick to their old habits. There is a mass of active Karelian speakers born up to the late 1960s. These Karelian speakers continue the use of Karelian with those with whom they have always used it. Those born in the 1970s and thereafter exhibit a more complex pattern of language skills and use, but the most frequently used language is typically Russian. The coexistence of several speaker types in the same household combined with the linguistic practice of early fixed language use makes it inevitable that even the young people living in the community will be exposed to the Karelian language to some extent. However, for this age cohort the context of Karelian narrows down to the home and in some cases rare school lessons. Some children still use Karelian with their grandparents. In principle, the majority of the population in the local community could potentially

46

Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

be a Karelian interlocutor, but many apparent forces diminish such a possibility. One reason must be that only a limited number of other persons are considered Karelian speakers in their community. Although in some families the acquisition of Karelian is still ongoing to some extent, the youngest cohorts of potential speakers have few peers with active skills in Karelian and their networks outside the home are increasingly Russian speaking. This rapidly leads to a situation where no young people have active skills in Karelian. The language community has broken up into several individual mini-communities restricted to the home domain, leading to the fragmentation of the habits of language use.

New and Old Variation: Preliminary Remarks The data collected within our framework differ from the traditional dialectological material that focuses on the perceived ideal speakers of traditional dialects, local rural population without higher formal education. As already noted, it also displays variation that differs from the mere areal variation discussed in traditional Karelian studies. In the following, we investigate this variation and its correlations with social patterns. We have encountered great differences in the ways that Karelian is used by different speakers in one community, something that cannot be described in the dialectological framework alone. There are elderly people using the inherited phonematic and lexical features of local dialects, but many younger people use Karelian with a restricted vocabulary and intensive code-switching with Russian. It also seems that some phonological features of Karelian produced by the youngest generation show strong Russian influence, a fact obviously related to restricted and rare use of Karelian. The variation can be accounted for by the changing social environment of the speakers. Many of them have received much more education in Russian than the earlier generations, their working environment is different and they are exposed to Russian-language media on a scale unprecedented in the earlier decades. Further, some elderly representatives of the language community have received schooling in Finnish and many younger people also know it for different reasons. The young and active part of the speech community has learned the emerging Karelian literary standards, which differ from the language use of the local communities, and the youngest age cohorts are currently learning them in school while simultaneously receiving fairly poor input of traditional dialectal speech. Similar sources for modern variants of a minority language have previously been described by Edygarova (2015) regarding Udmurt. The following two schemes model the old and new types of variation

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

47

discernable in the Finno-Ugrian minority language communities (Figure 1.2). Thus, the traditional variation of minority languages such as Karelian is, most often, bound to communities and their geography. There is geographical variation forming dialects within one language area, each of them representing a complex of phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic features. The dialects of a language typically form a continuum, in which a particular dialect is in contact with a dialect of the neighbouring language, which, in turn, is on the dialect continuum of another language. This kind of variation is typical of agricultural communities of Europe that represent relatively uniform language areas with sharp boundaries towards other language areas. It is now quite a commonly shared conception in linguistics that many other types of communities exhibit different kinds of variation. There is an established tradition of studying social variation based on variables such as gender, age, language attitudes, linguistic biographies, etc. There is notable evidence, especially from areas inhabited by hunter-gatherer communities, that mobile linguistic environments with many small communities typically represent a more widespread plurilingualism than stable and relatively large agricultural communities (cf. Lüpke & Storch, 2013; Saarikivi & Lavento, 2012). There is a school of scholarly work on code-switching in multilingual communication, and there is also an emerging sociolinguistic school that questions whether the people actually use full-fledged languages at all and notes that instead they communicate with bits and pieces of speech around them, and that many of those bits and pieces, may, in fact, derive from semiotic systems traditionally considered different languages (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007).

Figure 1.2 Traditional language variation

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Figure 1.3 Language variation in a (post) modern community characterised by intensive education and media use

To characterise the kind of variation typical of modern Finno-Ugrian language communities, the following scheme can be used. The arrows indicate the direction of influence (Figure 1.3). The kind of Finno-Ugrian minority language used in its traditional communities today represents traces of both traditional dialects and literary language use. The effect of the literary language may, in principle, be quite a considerable, because practically the whole language community is bilingual and the input of the spoken minority language may often be very restricted. This means that those members of the community still able to use the minority language may want to turn to the codified language to express themselves in it properly. Another factor enhancing the role of the literary standard is the linguistic purism characteristic of Russian linguistic culture (cf. Pischlöger; Edygarova in this volume). However, most members of the minority language community have very restricted access to the literary standard of the minority language. School teaching in the minority languages may be scarce or altogether lacking and the supply of media services in the minority language is very limited.

Intergenerational Variation and Language Change among Karelians: Different Spoken Genres of Karelian To illustrate the different pattern of variation described above, one can consider the following examples deriving from the same village of Tuuksa.

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

49

A woman born 1894, recorded in 1968 by Pertti Virtaranta. Archived in KOTUS with id 07570_1a 1

Ja tiällä on, mikä siun nimi on?

And here we have… what is your name?

2

Jevdokija Vasil’evna.

Jevdokija Vasil’evna.

3

Kui lähemmäkse?

and more closely?

4

Ka siun familija on?

What is your surname?

5

Algejeva.

Algejeva.

6

Ka sie olet syntyny, mih, missä kylässä sie olet syntyny?

In which village were you born?

7

Syndyny olen Tuuksele.

I am born in Tuuksa.

8

Kylä Bojassin.

In the village of Bojassin.

9

miehellä mänit?

Are are you married / where did you marry?

10

Miehele täh tulin,

I came here to live with my man

11

Hittoilah.

to Hittoila [another village name]

12

Mužik otettih minule ni kunne lienöy häi tyrmittih.

My man was taken away from me, he was sent who knows where, imprisoned.

13

Äijängö igiä siula on?

How old are you?

14

Nygöi сейчас?

Now, you mean (Russian)?

15

Nygöi on minul seiččekymmenviizi vuottu roiheze marttakuul, viijez vuozi menemäs.

Now I am 75 years old in March, it is my fifth year,

16

On jo igiä äijän on.

oh no, I am already quite old.

17

[[epäselvä]] [[epäselvä]].

18

Sinägö yksin elät?

Do you live alone?

19

Minä yksin elän.

I live alone.

20

Poigu voinal tapettih.

My son was killed during the war.

21

Oli poigu, tapettih. Voinal, tälle.

I had a son, but he was killed, during the war, that war.

22

Minä yksin jäin.

I was left alone.

23

Muida lapsia?

Do you have other children?

24

Muita lapsii kaksi sain, toini kuoli pikkaraine.

I got two other children, the other one died when he/she was small. (Continued)

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Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

25

Da. Ei ollu häi [[epäselvä]].

Yes. He/she was not [unclear].

26

Poijas penzietty annetah kakskymmenkolme rublua kuuks.

From the lost son I am given 23 roubles allowance in a month.

27

Niilöil eliä pidäy.

I have to live with that money.

28

Mužik otettih da sinne meni.

The man was taken away and he went lost.

29

Poigu otettih da tože ni midä.

My son was taken away and that is it.

30

Poijas net d’engat annetah miule.

From the boy they give me this money.

31

Kakskymmenkolme rublua annetah kuus.

23 roubles a month.

32

A mužikas saa?? ni midä.

And from the man I do not receive anything.

33

Vieläkö siula lehmä on?

Do you still have a cow?

34

Ei ole minul ni kedä.

I do not have anybody.

The language of the informant is traditional pure Karelian. There is only one short code-switch, when the informant asks whether the interviewer really wants to know how old she is at the moment (the informant first asks the question in Karelian and then translates it into Russian). The informant uses Karelian even in numerals and is able to use relatively infrequent derivative and conjugational types (roiheze ‘comes’, a reflexive conjugation form) correctly. She uses numerous Russian borrowings (penzie ‘allowance, pension’, familija ‘family name’, marttakuu ‘March’, etc.), but these are phonematically fully integrated into Karelian. Although there has been no detailed investigation on the topic, there is reason to believe that many such borrowings are, in fact, quite old in Karelian, some of them even centuries old (mužik ‘husband’, voinu ‘war’). A woman born 1948, interview in 2012 by Leo Jäppinen and a student group (the Russian code-switches are underlined): 1

Aa, no mittumiibo kielii sinä tiijät, karjala?

Tell me, what languages do you know? You know Karelian, and...

2

Minä karjalan ja venäjän kielen nai, hyvin ńikuda nastojaššu, en muga karjalan kieldy nastojaššu en muga venäjän kieldy.

I know both Karelian and Russian like this, I know neither one correctly. I can not say I would know Karelian appropriately. But neither I know appropriate Russian. (Continued)

Fragmentation of the Karelian Language and Its Community

51

3

Mm, mm.

Mm, mm.

4

A školas öö, suomen kielt?

Did you learn Finnish at school?

5

školas po-russki,

In the school everything was in Russian,

Venäjän kieles?

In Russian?

ei ollut finskoidu,

there was no Finnish.

Ei ollu siihen.

It wasn’t to that.

6

nygöi minun vunukat kaččo opastutah karel’skoidu, finskoidu, angliskoidu, a meil ei ollu učitel’jua.

You see, now my grandchildren learn in the school Karelian, Finnish and English. But we did not have a teacher.

10

Mm.

Mm.

11

Opettajua ei ollu meile, hieruloihe eihä enne tuldu.

We did not have a teacher in general, you see, they did not want to come to the villages in the old days

13

Da. Mm, ja sinun tuatto da muamo pagiži karjalaks?

I see. Did your mother and father speak Karelian?

14

Tuatto da muamo paistih karjalakse, tuatto oli učastnik voiny.

Yes, father and mother spoke Karelian. My father was a war veteran.

15

Mm.

Mm.

16

Kačo kakskymmenviizi vuottu tagaperin kuolinu.

He has been dead now for 25 years.

17

Do Berlina, Berlinaspäi toi maman siepäi toi Berlinaspäi, do Berlina [[..]].

To Berlin, they said, he took my mother from the military campaign at the Berlin theatre.

18

Sit tois hänen tänne, muamo tože oli karel’ka, vasta śemnadcatovo fevral’a kuoli.

And he took her here. Mother was also Karelian, she only died now, on February 17th.

19

Mm, mm.

Mm, mm.

20

Vośemśetśem let oli mamala, a tuatto kuoli šestśatčetyre.

When she died she was 87 years old. And the father was 64 when he passed away.

21

Mm.

Mm.

22

Hänel oli raneinii vača, vačah ol ammuttu, da konttui siidä.

He was wounded in the stomach. [During the war] he was shot in the stomach, and therefore he limped (Continued)

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23

Mm.

Mm.

24

A muamo da tuatto oli tuuksalaižed, oli Tuuksas rodinu...

Were both your mother and your father from Tuuksa? They were both born here in Tuuksa?

25

Molle oltih tuuksalašed, mollei tuuksalašed, tuuksalašed.

That is right; both were from Tuuksa

26

Aa...

Aa...

27

Poigu minu tiä Tuuksel eläy, tože koin stroii. Siel loppul hieruine, lienöy loppul ollutto, sie ruskei čoma kodi moine on, poigu eläyny.

My son lives here in Tuuksa, he built his own home here, it is there at the other end of the village, I do not know if you have been there, a red nice-looking house, that is the place where my son lives.

28

Täs lähel eläy, läššä?

So he lives quite close?

29

Ei ei, tänne, do-, astua pidäy lopussah sinne.

No no, not that close, you have to walk all the way to the end that way.

30

Mm.

Mm.

31

Valloila, možet kuulitto hieru, Valloilas et ollut vie? Kun vot siepäi pienu on siepäi eläy, no hänel tože on akku karel’ka.

Valloila, did you hear that village name? You have not been in Valloila yet? That is were he lives. He also has a Karelian wife.

The language of the informant is fluent Karelian, but it includes several Russian incursions and only partially integrated borrowings. Borrowed constructions are used, for instance, when speaking about calendar dates (śemnadcatovo fevral’a kuoli, ‘died on the 17th of February’) and languages (po-russki, in Russian), when emphasising something (ńikuda nastojaššu ‘not at all appropriate’) or when using frequent Russian compounds (učastnik voiny ‘war veteran’). Many frequent Karelian words (that the informant probably knows in Karelian as well) are replaced with their Russian counterparts (hänel oli ranenii vacca ‘he was wounded in the stomach’, karelka ‘Karelian woman’). In many cases, these kinds of citation borrowings replace the corresponding derived Karelian words in her speech. It is interesting to note, for instance, that the informant is able to produce Karelian numerals (kakskymmenviizi vuottu tagaperin kuolinu ‘died 25 years ago’), but she still uses Russian numerals more frequently (Vośemśetśem let oli mamala, a tuatto kuoli šestśatčetyre ‘Mother was 87 years old when she died, father died at 64’). A woman, born in 1995, interview by Janne Saarikivi and Niko Partanen:

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1

Ja mistä vuuesta olit...

In which year were you born?

2

1995

1995

3

A täs Tukses rod’it?

And you are born here in Tuuksa?

4

Da

Yes.

5

školas kävelet?

And you go to school?

6

Da. Kymmenen luokas opiskelen.

Yes, I am in the 10th grade.

7

Mm, A ko-, sanele, koissa, koissa karjalakse opastuit pagižemah, tässä koissa?

And say, did you learn to speak in Karelian here at home?

8

Koissa, koulus myö emmö opiskele karjalan kieltä, a, kois muamankel pagižen, buabo, pagižou.

Yes, here at home, in the school we do not learn Karelian, but here at home I speak in the mother tongue, my grandmother, she speaks.

9

Da veńakse muga pagižet kois?

And you also speak Russian at home?

10

Da.

Yes.

11

A maltatgo viel toizii kieliih?

Do you also know other languages?

12

Mm, ingliš, kieli. I suomen kieli.

Well, English language, and Finnish.

13

Suomen kieldy muga maltat, školas opastuit suomen kieldy?

So you also know Finnish, did you learn Finnish at school?

14

Da, с первого класса.

Yes, from the first grade.

15

Kaigen aigu opastutah suom-

So, you have been learning Finnish through...

16

Да, вот у нас как бы был выбор либо карельский либо финский, но так большество, карельский. Не знаю по-русский у нас, у меня классы, вот, и решили что будем и финский изучать.

Yes, you see, we had to choose between Finnish and Karelian. And most of the children at our class do not know Karelian, so we decided that we would learn Finnish.

17

Mm, mm.

Mm, mm.

18

Da.

Yes.

19

А muamo da tuatto siun toine toizekel karjalakse paistah?

So your mother and father speak Karelian with each other?

20

Da.

Yes. (Continued)

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Mm, da, toičči venäjäkse muga paistah? Ну как, они с бабушкой разговоровать по-карельски, и самый между собой, мне могут сказат по-карельски так, я понимаю карельски хорошоо.

And sometimes they also speak Russian?

23

Практический всё понимаю.

I could say that I understand everything.

24

А говорю малый, я им этому скажу именно [[epäselvä]] что-нибыдь, а [[epäselvä]] так.

I do not discuss too much.

25

Mm.

Mm.

26

Не очень много, разговорю.

I don’t speak very much.

27

У тебя старше сестра так…

So you also have an older sister?

28

Da Она луче тебя понимает по-карельски или так?

Does she understand Karelian better than you?

22

29

How to say, you know, they speak in Karelian with the grandmother and also together, also they say something to me in Karelian, I understand Karelian well.

Yes.

30

Она всё хорошоо понимает и говорит, но она [IDENTIFIABLE DATA].

She speaks and understands well but she is [IDENTIFIABLE DATA]

31

A ćikonkel sinä kaigen aegu veńäjäkse pagižet?

With your sister you always speak Russian, do you?

32

Da.

Yes.

33

Mm.

Mm.

34

How old is she?

35

A äijängö hänelä on vuottu on? двацет три

36

Mm.

Mm.

37

No kus häi, häi täs eläy?

Where does she live here?

38

Täs elau.

She lives also here.

39

Teijjänkel?

With you?

40

Kezäl buabolas, lähtel.

In the summer time she is at my grandmother’s place, here in the vicinity.

23

The informant belongs to a relatively small number of speakers in her age group. Her peers speak mainly Russian, and she also admits to using mostly Russian with her sister and parents. She is able to speak fully

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understandable Karelian, yet in the discussion she frequently switches to Russian, especially when speaking about more complicated things. As a result, most of the discussion is conducted in Russian. When forced back to Karelian by the interviewer, she is able to use it again, however. Sometimes she hesitates when declining or conjugating Karelian words and she does not use complex derived words at all. Her Karelian also includes some traces of Finnish, likely due to attending Finnish classes in school. However, she has no problem understanding Karelian, and could, quite probably, rapidly develop into a fluent and full-fledged speaker if there were a social demand for Karelian speakers. The three examples above describe well the ongoing language change and shift situation. The first example was recorded in the 1960s. That generation of the speakers has already passed away but it has been in close interaction with present informants. This is easily confirmed by asking whether the current inhabitants recognise the pictures of the informants with whom Erkki Ala-Könni worked in the 1960s. It is also important to note that all those speaker types present in the examples still exist today, and there is, thus, very notable variation in the Karelian of Tuuksa that is not confined to traditional dialectal variation.

Any Chances of Survival for Karelian? It seems clear that with interview-based methods it is not possible to gather all nuances of the language shift. The self-reported language use points to a rapidly diminishing role of Karelian in all environments, and an intergenerational language shift in the 1970s, after which the young people and children have mostly been identified as Russian speakers by the older members of the community. However, during our fieldwork in Tuuksa, we met several young people and children who had varying degrees of competence in Karelian. There are also occasional mentions of children who have later learned Finnish with considerable ease. This has been attributed to something they ‘got from home’. It may be possible to analyse the situation through the concept of communicative competence introduced by Dell Hymes. He stresses that being a speaker of a language does not consist only of knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, but also depends on participation in the life of the speech community. It is only through participation that a child learns the social dimension of a language (Hymes, 1972a: 277– 278). Clearly, the children are not participating in the community as Karelian speakers. In our domain analysis, we presumably do not see the direct changes in language acquisition, but changes in children’s social networks and roles, and the ways they participate in community life. The older generations reply that the young do not know the receding language, but it is not so certain how these assumptions correspond to

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their actual skills (cf. Kulick, 1992: 204–205). However, it is the way that these assumptions influence behaviour and language choice that comes to drive the language shift. Self-evidently, the rapid modernisation of the community in the 1960s and the 1970s has caused a tremendous change in the lifeways of the generation born thereafter. This again is perceived by elderly speakers as a lack of the relevant cultural skills of the old village life and thus interpreted also as lacking language skills, even if this would not be the case. There seem to be some rudimentary forms of language acquisition taking place as long as the language is used by someone in the community. We conducted one longer interview with a girl in her late teens. She herself has not been studying Karelian, but has instead taken Finnish as a school subject. Her situation is similar to many other young people her age. The pattern is repeated in which the grandmother has acted as the primary transmitter of the Karelian but in this family, the parents also use Karelian with one another. However, the home would seem to be the only place where one could use Karelian, and since everyone understands Russian there as well, Karelian is of little or no use.

1

A ongo vielä toizii moizii ristokanzoi kenenke karjalaksi pagižet?

And are there still another people with who you speak in Karelian?

2

Ei ole.

There aren’t.

3

Täs kois vaiže pagižet?

You speak only here at home?

4

Kois.

At home.

5

A kai näide sussiidoin da toiziin vahnoin ristikanzoinka jo veńajakse pagižet?

And with all these neighbors and other old people you speak already in Russian?

6

Ei… Minä veńäkse.

No… I (speak) in Russian.

7

Mm.

Mm.

8

Ainos.

Only.

The same pattern also includes contact with other children: 1

a ongu školas mostu što lapset toine toizeke toiče karjalakse paistah?

Does it happen that the children speak Karelian with one another in the school?

2

m-m

Mm. [[negatively]]

3

Kaigen aegu veńakse paissah?

They always speak Russian?

4

Я не разу не слушала что дети у нас на карельском разговоривать.

I have not heard once that children here speak Karelian. (Continued)

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5

a onko moštu što sanotah mitäńi karjalastu sanua, kuspäi tiijetäh što kai, tiijetäh što tämä on gu moińe karjalaińe d’ielo?

Are there some Karelian words, something that is known as a specifically Karelian thing?

6

Бо- бывают вот.

It happens, well.

7

Боваетам праскажувают, говоришь, говоришь на русском и праскажувают карельского слова, вот это.

When Russian is spoken, there may be Karelian words in the speech, well, like that.

8

Мм.

Mm.

9

Мм, так.

Mm, like that.

10

У нас вoобще в школе один класс только карелький изучают.

All in all here only one class in school learns Karelian.

The same pattern is repeated from interview to interview: The children speak Russian with each other. However, this should not be interpreted as though they would not know Karelian at all. Also the informant cited above said: ‘Я вот сама по себя знаю, иногда могу и ответить маму на карельском’. ‘I know it also myself, at times I can answer to mom in Karelian’. This is the passively bilingual learning pattern that we examined earlier as a consequence of different types of speakers living together. In principle, a large segment of the population could be Karelian interlocutors, even young people. Yet, the situation where Karelian is used by children is described as taking place only in unusual circumstances. There are examples of children reciting poems in Karelian or singing in Karelian. Another example: Который у нас в Туксе живут, учителя, они разговоровать по-карельски между собой, есть у нас, на меня разговоровать на карельский. Иногда там тоже бывает, на уроке скажу что-нибыдь, но так, в чутку чё-нибыдь. The teachers who live in Tuuksa, they speak Karelian with one another, we have, they speak Karelian to me. It also happens at times that I say something during the lesson, well, as a joke or something. The use of Karelian may have a role in jokes, greetings and songs among children as it is still relatively commonly known. Some Karelian resources are thus available to the young generation, but they do not use them for everyday communication with their peers (cf. Blommaert & Rampton,

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2011: 5). This sort of minority language use seems to be in every instance a marked choice, something that has also been reported elsewhere (cf. Kulick, 1992: 218). It is continuously mentioned by the older Karelians that in their school time, one was not allowed to speak Karelian and many recall personal experiences of punishment and humiliation for using Karelian with other children in school. This resurfaces at times as a kind of cynical narrative where Karelians were first told not to speak Karelian, and now they are told to speak it again. Interestingly, in both discourses, the actual actor behind these commands is relatively abstract: the Soviet Union, the times, the government, the institutions (cf. Puura & Tánczos in this volume). This contrasts with the experience of the youngest Karelian-speaking generation, who state that attitudes are positive and respectful towards the Karelian language. For example, when asked directly whether non-Karelians find it amusing if someone speaks Karelian, the informant cited above answered that this is not the case. Later, she continued: - A toižed lapset mitä duumaitah tän karjalan kielen da… - And the other children, what do they think about Karelian language and... - Но они уважают наш язык как бы, даже если не знают. - Well they respect our language, even when they do not know (it). There has been a clear transition from the earlier hostile to the currently neutral and positive language attitudes. However, when the language is not significantly used outside the private sphere, the question of how someone reacts or thinks does not really arise as a daily encounter. Similar conditions also surrounded ethnic identification. The apparent neutrality of the topic now may also be simply the result of earlier suppression followed by decades of ambivalence.

Discussion In this chapter, we have investigated the pace of language shift, language attitudes, ethnic stereotypes and social networks of language transmission in one Karelian village. Most of the people belonging to minority speech communities are not ideal speakers, but nevertheless use some fragments of the minority language in restricted forms of social interaction. Due to their imperfect knowledge of the traditional variants of the language, such speakers have often been left aside in linguistic studies, and many of them are typically considered majority language speakers by the local community, in population statistics and even by the scientific community. It can be assumed that in many minority

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language communities around the globe, such ‘invisible’ speakers form the main bulk of the speaking community, especially in the younger age groups (cf. Anhava, 2013). The younger generations in Tuuksa are becoming less and less Karelian speaking. The fact that there is ambivalence regarding the ethnic affiliations of the members of the community and even among family members favours the use of Russian beyond necessity. However, the domain analysis provided apparently misses some aspects in the way that the speech community changes. A language does not disappear rapidly, but during the process of its disappearance new variants of the language emerge and new social meanings are attached to their vocabulary and structures. Meanings of language as an ethnic emblem (together with other aspects of ethnicity) are reinterpreted and some new needs for knowledge of the language appear, even if they are less complete than those domains in the old community. Even presently, with the language shift advanced very far, the acquisition of Karelian has not stopped completely. In this context, we probably should not even speak about latent speakers, but speakers whose networks of language acquisition and use are extremely narrow and who therefore are obliged to create new ways of speaking to express their Karelian identity. We stress the fact that the changes in the social networks in which Karelian is learned and used can also be seen in the new varieties of Karelian that have emerged during the last decades. As Russian becomes the more customary and also the more fluent language choice, the amount of Russian vocabulary and structures increases in Karelian and code-mixing becomes commonplace. The limited acquisition of Karelian lexemes and complex structures is compensated by use of borrowings and expressions taken from Russian, or the abruptly learned new Karelian standard or Finnish. Especially older sociolinguistic research has investigated language shift from the point of view of the mother tongue and paid a lot of attention to language transmission in families (because the concept of mother tongue was equated with that of the home language). While revitalisation studies have often paid a lot of attention to language transmission outside the home in language nests and other immersion environments, less attention is paid to the fact that some minority languages are actually widely learned outside the home even in their traditional communities. Such a situation has been described, for example, on Easter Island, where predominantly passive speakers later activate their skills if they integrate into social networks and subcultures in which the Rapa Nui language is valued (Makihara, 2013: 446). There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence of a similar process taking place in some Finno-Ugrian language communities as well. Especially those languages associated with particular working environments often live with

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a particular segment of population practicing the relevant livelihoods. In Finland, North Sámi was practically lost as a home language in some communities, but survived as a language of reindeer herding. Stadin slangi, the Helsinki working-class vernacular, was seldom learned as a home language but was, nevertheless, acquired from peer networks, especially among young men (Paunonen, 2005). The Võru variant of South Estonian is currently probably in a somewhat similar situation. Our material proves that also in Tuuksa the language of one’s peer network has been a decisive factor in developing or restricting functional language skills and creating opportunities for language use (as far as it is possible to divide these two aspects of language acquisition from each other). The home language has been a substantially less important factor, and the intergenerational language shift has actually occurred mainly in a peer network of young people in the 1970s. We know the approximate context of this shift (changing forms of livelihood, increased mobility and mixing population, increase in popular culture and more intensive media use), but we still do not fully understand the social dynamics of the shift as it happens. The Karelian language community is now more diverse than ever. However, it does not seem likely that the new diversities will last long. The linguistic culture of Russia, guided by linguistic purism, does not celebrate code-mixing, code-copying, borrowing and different types of speakers living simultaneously and representing a variety of Karelian spoken genres. Instead, it pushes the community towards the language that is perceived as cultural and uniform (although, in fact, it is not), Russian. Understanding this and taking these dynamics more into consideration can also potentially benefit attempts to revitalise the Karelian language.

References Aikio, M. (1988) Saamelaiset kielenvaihdon kierteessä: kielisosiologinen tutkimus viiden saamelaiskylän kielenvaihdosta 1910–1980. (Sámi People in the Spiral of Language Shift: Sociolinguistic Study of the Language Shift in Five Sámi Villages in 1910–1980). Finnish Literature Society. Anhava, J. (2013) In search of the hidden languages. In T. Hyytiäinen, L. Jalava, J. Saarikivi and E. Sandman (eds) Ex oriente lumina. Festskrift tillägnad Juha Janhunen på hans 61. (pp. 1–6) födelsedag 10. 2. 2013. Studia Orientalia 103. Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society. Anttikoski, E. (2003) The problem of dialectal differences in the creation of a unified Karelian literary language: The experience of the 1930s. In E. Anttikoski (ed.) Developing Written Karelian. Papers from the Karelian Session of the 11th International Conference on Methods of Dialectology (pp. 29–36). Studies in Languages 38. Joensuu: University of Joensuu. Blommaert, J. and Rampton, B. (2011) Language and superdiversity. Diversities 13 (2), 1–21.

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Dorian, N. (1981) Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Edygarova, S. (2015) Едыгарова С. В. Этнический идентитет и использование удмуртского языка. In Sbornik statej posvjascennyj 70-letiju V. Kelmakova (pp. 223–228). Izhevsk: UdGU. Gal, S. (1979) Language Shift: Social Determinants of Linguistic Change in Bilingual Austria. New York: Academic Press. Grenoble, L.A. (2011) Language ecology and endangerment. In P.K. Austin and J. Sallabank (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages (pp. 27–44). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grünthal, R. (2009) Kieliyhteisön rapautuminen ja kielellisen identiteetin muutos: 2000-luvun ersämordvalaiset ja vepsäläiset. (Erosion of Language Community and Change in Linguistic Identity: Erzya-Mordvians and Vepsians in the 2000s) In A. Idström and S. Sosa (eds) Kielissä kulttuurien ääni (Voices of Cultures in Language) (pp. 265–289). Finnish Literature Society. Hymes, D. (1972) On communicative competence. In J.B. Pride and J. Holmes (eds) Sociolinguistics. Selected Readings (pp. 269–292). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Kallio, P. (2014) The diversification of Proto-Finnic. In J. Ahola and Frog (eds) Fibula, Fabula, Fact: The Viking Age in Finland (pp. 155–170). Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Studia Fennica Historica. Kilin, J. (2001) Suurvallan rajamaa. Neuvosto-Karjala Neuvostovaltio politiikassa 1920–1941. Studia Historica Septentrionalia 39. Rovaniemi: Pohjois-Suomen historiallinen yhdistys. Kulick, D. (1992) Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction: Socialization, Self, and Syncretism in a Papua New Guinean Village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, M.P., Simons, G.F. and Fennig, C.D. (eds) (2014) Ethnologue: Languages of the World (17th edn). Dallas, TX: SIL International. See http://www.ethnologue.com. Lüpke, F. and Storch, A. (2013) Repertoires and Choices in African Languages. Boston/ Berlin: de Gruyter. Makihara, M. (2013) Language, competence, use, ideology, and community on Rapa Nui. Language and Communication 33, 439–449. Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2007) Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Partanen, N. (2013a) Kielenvaihdon tarkastelua Vuokkiniemellä ja Viteleellä: Vuosien 2004 ja 2010 kenttätyöaineistojen analyysi [Observing the language shift in Vuokkiniemi and Vitele: Analysis of the fieldwork materials from 2004 and 2010]. Unpublished BA thesis, University of Helsinki. Partanen, N. (2013b) Kahden suomalais-ugrilaisen yhteisön kielenvaihdon vertailevaa tarkastelua: Tuuksa Karjalassa ja Koigort Komissa [Comparative examination of the language shift in two Uralic speech communities: Tuuksa in Karelia and Koigort in Komi]. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Helsinki. Paunonen, H. (2005) Helsinkiläisiä puhujaprofiileja. Virittäjä 109 (2), 162–200. Saarikivi, J. and Lavento, M. (2012) Linguistics and archaeology: A critical view of an interdisciplinary approach with reference to the prehistory of Northern Scandinavia. In J. Saarikivi and C. Damm (eds) Networks, Interaction and Emerging Identities in Fennoscandia and Beyond: Papers from the Conference Held in Tromsø, Norway, 13–16 October 2009 (pp. 177–217). Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 265. Helsinki: Finno-Ugrian Society. Sarhimaa, A. (1995) Karjalan kansat ja kielet kontakteissa: asutushistoriallista taustaa ja lingvistisiä seurauksia [Karelian peoples and languages in contact: Settlement history and linguistic consequences]. Virittäjä 2, 191–223.

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Sarhimaa, A. (2009) Social network theory as a framework for studying minor Finnic languages with special reference to Karelian. In J. Ylikoski (ed.) The Quasquicentennial of the Finno-Ugrian Society (pp. 161–191). Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia = Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 258. Helsinki: Tiedekirja. Sarhimaa, A. (2010) The Karelian Language in Finland: An Overview of a Language in Context. Working Papers in European Language Diversity 3. Publisher is Research consortium ELDIA. Schiffmann, H. (1996) Linguistic Culture and Language Policy. London: Routledge. Virtaranta, P. (1958) Vienan kansa muistelee. Porvoo: WSOY. Virtaranta, H. (1999) Ahavatuulien armoilla: Itkuvirsiä Aunuksesta. Helsinki: Suomalaisugrilainen Seura. Yli-Paavola, J. (1993) Kynällä kylmällä, kädellä lämpimällä. Helsinki: SKS.

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Appendix Questionnaire model used in 2012 and 2013 fieldwork in Karelia, conducted for the University of Helsinki Personal information Full name: Karelian name: Birthyear: Birthplace: Earlier places of residence: Place of residence: School: Profession: Language learning, use and domains Which languages does the informant know: When the informant learned Karelian, Russian, Finnish, others: Which languages the parents spoke in childhood (free description): Which languages were/are used by: Grandparents: Parents: Siblings: Spouse: Children: Grandchildren: Great-grandchildren: Which language informant uses in/with: Home Spouse Children Other people Neighbours School Work Shop Around the village Celebrations Pets/household animals In which language the informant thinks and dreams

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Language use and attitudes Are there places where informant speaks only in Karelian/Russian? Does one have to know the Karelian language in order to be considered a Karelian? Are there Karelians who speak to the informant in Russian? Why does the informant think that this happens? In which language do the children speak with one another? Why does the informant think this is the case? Will the children start speaking more Karelian when they grow up? Is it important that the children know the Karelian language well? Is it important for there to be Karelian lessons in school? In which language does the informant speak the best? Which language does the informant prefer? Is there some topic about which it is easier to speak in Karelian or in Russian? The future of the language How does the informant view the future of the Karelian language? What kind of dangers might there be for the Karelian language? Who is to blame for this? What does the informant feel has been done for the Karelian language? What should be done to improve the situation of the Karelian language? Who is responsible for doing this? Minor questions How many Karelians are there in the world? In which places do they live?

2 What’s Up Helsinki?: Linguistic Diversity Among Suburban Adolescents Heini Lehtonen

This chapter will explore linguistic diversity in two Helsinki junior high schools, where the pupils speak some 20 different first languages in total. After Finnish, the biggest linguistic groups in the schools are Russian, Somali and Estonian. Also Turkish, Arabic, Dari, Kurdish, Chinese, Vietnamese, as well as the languages of former Yugoslavia (such as Croatian, Serbian and Albanian) are present. I will compare eastern Helsinki’s linguistic diversity of the 21st century with what is known about the historical urban linguistic diversity of Helsinki. Here, the development of the old Helsinki slang in the late 19th century and early 20th century offers an especially interesting point of comparison. The study falls into the fields of linguistic ethnography and interactional sociolinguistics. My theoretical framework builds upon the sociolinguistics of globalisation, on the ideas of language as languaging and on the theories of social indexicality and enregisterment. I gathered the data mostly during one school year and they consist of (1) field notes and a field diary; (2) interviews with 37 adolescents; (3) several audio and video recordings both during the breaks and the lessons; as well as (4) so-called retrospective interviews, where I played the recordings to the participants and we discussed them. I will describe the linguistic biographies of some adolescents. The biographies are characterised by multilingualism, immigration, transnationalism and processes of spontaneous language acquisition. I will analyse the linguistic and stylistic practices of the adolescents focusing especially on the social meaning of linguistic resources: how do the adolescents employ their diverse semiotic resources in positioning themselves and each other in local social categories?

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My analysis deconstructs the essential relationship between language and ethnicity: I will show how ethnicity, gender and participation in local stylistic practices intertwine in negotiating the ‘ownership’ of language. Finally, I will discuss the essence of diversity now and before: when talking about superdiversity, does it refer to a new kind of diversity or rather to a new kind of starting point for conceptualising linguistic diversity?

Aims and Structure of the Chapter This chapter discusses linguistic diversity among adolescents living in the suburbs of Helsinki, the Finnish capital. I wish to (1) describe the characteristics of the linguistic biographies of eastern Helsinki youth; (2) demonstrate how the social indexicality of linguistic features can be approached in interaction; (3) discuss what is ‘new’ in the current linguistic diversity in Helsinki in comparison with the ‘old’ diversity in Helsinki, prior to the era of globalisation. I will first briefly discuss my theoretical framework (Section 2), and then give a short description of the socio-demographic context for the chapter and shed light on linguistic diversity in Helsinki throughout the centuries of its history (Section 3). This will serve as a point of comparison for the discussion (Section 7). I will highlight the characteristics of the linguistic biographies of eastern Helsinki youth, using some biographies as examples (Section 4). In the fifth section, I will show how ethnicity, language and representations of styles (in this case hip-hop style) intertwine in the social positioning of self and others (Bamberg, 1997; Davies & Harré, 1990; Day & Kjaerbeck, 2013; De Fina, 2013; Depperman, 2013; Georgakopoulou, 2013; Pöysä, 2007, 2013). In this context, I will demonstrate what kind of social indexicality (Agha, 2007) a single lexical item (in this case waryaa, ‘hey you (to a male)’ in Somali) can carry in a community of practice (a notion established by Lave & Wenger, 1991, cf. Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992; Meyerhoff, 2002; Wenger, 1998) and how it can be analysed in the theoretical and methodological framework of linguistic ethnography (see Blommaert, 2007; Creese, 2008; Hammersley, 2007; Rampton, 2007) and interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982a, 1982b; Rampton, 2006: 23) (Section 6). Finally, I will compare my analysis with what is known about the historical linguistic diversity of Helsinki and discuss what is new in late modern diversity – if anything.

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This chapter is based on sociolinguistic ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two eastern Helsinki junior high schools during the years 2006–2009. The fieldwork data consist of (1) field notes and a field diary, (2) recorded interviews with 37 adolescents, (3) several audio and video recordings both during lessons and at breaks, as well as (4) so-called retrospective interviews where I played the recordings to the participants and we discussed them together. The adolescents who took part in the recordings speak 16 first languages in total, including Finnish. For all of them, Finnish is the language of schooling as well as the common working language in the communities of practice of the schools.

Theoretical Framework Over the last 20 years, the language of late modern youth and representations of ethnicity in urban contexts have been studied from different sociolinguistic perspectives, and there is a body of research literature on different aspects of multi-ethnic youth language in Great Britain, Central Europe and the Nordic countries (see e.g. Kern & Selting, 2011; Quist & Svendsen, 2010; Rampton, 1995). I will discuss my data within the frameworks of the sociolinguistics of globalisation (Blommaert, 2010), language and superdiversity (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011), languaging (Jørgensen et al., 2011) and the theories of social indexicality (Agha, 2007; Eckert, 2008; cf. social meaning, Eckert, 2005, 2012; Ochs, 1992; cf. Piippo, 2012: 81–85; Silverstein, 2003). The so-called superdiversity paradigm as well as the sociolinguistics of globalisation stresses the idea that diversity should be taken as a starting point for linguistic analysis rather than be seen as an exception. This is not to say that all phenomena described are new (cf. Blommaert, 2013). The superdiversity paradigm strongly leans on Michael Silverstein’s (1985: 220, see e.g. Blommaert & Rampton, 2011: 12; Madsen et al., 2013) total linguistic fact: ‘The total linguistic fact, the datum for science of language is irreducibly dialectic in nature. It is an unstable mutual interaction of meaningful sign forms, contextualised to situations of interested human use and mediated by the fact of cultural ideology’. This declaration may be of special importance in our time, where we see that the national identities created by the 19th-century nation-state ideologies do not explain the world around us anymore (Heller, 2008). Superdiversity and/or the sociolinguistics of globalisation have been regarded as a new paradigm within sociolinguistics. They have also faced critique from different standpoints. Some of the critics raise the points that multilingual phenomena described by the superdiversity paradigm are not new an sich, and that the superdiversity paradigm has been ignorant towards the existing multilingualism research and its concepts. I have come across this critique through a discussion in the UK Linguistic Ethnography

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Forum e-seminar, to which Blommaert (2013) wrote a reflective answer from his point of view. Another type of critique focuses on the concept of language, claiming that the new paradigm undervalues the importance of language as a concept that is central for the identity of its speakers (cf. Saarikivi & Toivanen, 2015). The focus of this chapter is not the theoretical discussion – or scholarly argument – about superdiversity. I do think, however, that there is often some misconception concerning these ‘new’ approaches. To me, their main point is not that late modern linguistic superdiversity was somehow fundamentally different from other types of linguistic diversity. The point is that they take diversity as the starting point, as the ‘normality’ of sociolinguistic analysis and look at it in its own terms as a part of all social interaction. The alternative ways of looking at multilingual interaction as languaging (Jørgensen et al., 2011) or metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2007) have mainly been developed for urban contexts and they have concentrated on languages with a relatively large and stable number of speakers. For these reasons, questions of language minorities, language shift or endangered languages have not been in focus. I do not see, however, that the concept of languaging would deny the importance of language for anyone’s identity. Jørgensen et al. (2011: 28) write, ‘This does not mean that sociolinguistics can not work with the concept of separate “languages”. There are good reasons to account for the ways in which “languages” are constructed, and what the consequences of the constructions are’. In other words: a person can affiliate himself or herself with the Inari Sámi, and this affiliation is of political, personal and sociolinguistic importance, but still, the label Inari Sámi is an ideological construct and a stage in a socialhistorical enregisterment process (Agha, 2007) just as any label for a linguistic variety would be: the linguistic features that get to be associated with a certain register label (such as Inari Sámi or Finnish) are negotiated – both institutionally and in everyday practices. This negotiation takes place not only in official language planning and normative standardisation, but also in the speakers’ everyday metapragmatic evaluations concerning language. Enregisterment processes are socially and ideologically driven. For the purposes of this chapter and my work in general, the superdiversity paradigm, the sociolinguistics of globalisation as well as the concept of languaging offer some crucial ideas. First of all, that linguistic borders are not structural, but social. Theoretically, any semiotic sign, including linguistic features, is there for us to use for communication and self-expression, but in practice, our linguistic biographies as well as the social organisation of the communities of practice (Eckert & McConnellGinet, 1992; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Meyerhoff, 2002; Wenger, 1998) we take part in prevent us from accessing some linguistic resources or keep us from claiming ‘ownership’ of them (about ownership see e.g. Higgins, 2011; Norton, 1997).

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Secondly, our linguistic repertoires do not consist of whole ‘languages’ or varieties, but rather of ‘bits of language’ (Blommaert, 2010: 8; Blommaert & Backus, 2011). We do ideologically and historically organise bunches of linguistic features under different registers (Agha, 2003, 2005, 2007), and all of our interaction contributes to the enregisterment processes, whereby linguistic features gain social indexicality. That is, the linguistic features get interpreted as belonging to cultural modes of action, registers, and they are associated with certain social personae, the relationships between these social personae or with attitudes and stances that these personae represent (Agha, 2007: 14, 55). These social personae can mostly be thought of as stereotypical ideas of a certain kind of people with certain attributes, such as ‘a Finn’, ‘an immigrant’, ‘a foreigner’ or ‘a hiphopper’, for instance. My discussion on Example 4 in the sixth section will illustrate this. Thirdly, when analysing a single use of a linguistic feature, it does not serve my purposes to take varieties such as ‘Finnish’ or ‘Somali’ as a starting point, but it is rather in my interest to answer the question of which enregisterment processes this use of a given feature contributes to in this context. In other words, my focus lies not in describing (only) linguistic structures, but in the social indexicality of linguistic features. Fourthly, I think that late modern diversity has characteristics that did not affect linguistic diversity before: not only people but also ideas travel faster, in larger quantities and for a larger variety of reasons than ever before. This is so especially because of the growth of social media and the technological possibilities of our times. In my own data, this can be seen, among other things, in the significance of global flows of popular culture that are locally appropriated (such as hip-hop style; see Alim, 2009; Androutsopoulos & Scholtz, 2013; Pennycook, 2010; Westinen, 2014) as well as of transnational networks. With the help of modern technology, the Finnish Somali can take part in the virtual community of the Somali diaspora worldwide.

Context: The Multilingual Past and Present of Helsinki The myth of Finland being ethnically extremely homogeneous has been strong until recently (Nuolijärvi, 2005: 283). In reality, Helsinki in the late 19th century was – as it is now again – an ethnically colourful city. The most prominent aspect of Finland’s multilingualism has been the changing relations between Finnish and Swedish. Helsinki was founded under the command of Gustav I of Sweden in 1550, but it remained a relatively insignificant Swedish-speaking fisher town up to the mid-18th century, when the sea fortress Sveaborg (Suomenlinna) was

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built on the islands offshore of Helsinki. The construction work brought Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking workers to Helsinki from different dialect areas. The Swedish soldiers commanded to Sveaborg brought their Swedish-speaking families as well as their amusements from Stockholm with them. The building of Sveaborg and the cultural and societal life in the fortress were crucial for the development of Helsinki (Paunonen, 2006: 19–20). In 1809, Sweden lost the so-called Finnish war against Russia as the ‘invincible’ sea fortress Sveaborg surrendered practically without a fight. Finland became an autonomous grand duchy of the multinational Russian Empire, and Swedish remained the official language. In 1812, the emperor ordered the capital of the grand duchy to be moved to Helsinki. Following the great fire of the former capital Turku in 1827, the university was (also) moved to Helsinki. In 1863, the Russian emperor Alexander II gave an order bestowing status on Finnish comparable with Swedish in all issues considering the Finnish-speaking population. The Finnish-speaking upper class was consciously created. Following the global flows of nation-state ideologies (Paunonen, 1994: 224), several Swedish-speaking upper-class families decided to start speaking Finnish at home and enrolled their children in Finnish-speaking schools. The Helsinki upper class learnt its colloquial Finnish from books (Paunonen, 2006: 26–33; Tandefelt, 1986, 1994). The changes in the official status of Finnish resulted in the conscious development of standard Finnish, but even up until the 20th century, there was a disagreement within the upper class on whether Swedish should remain the dominant language of the society. Alongside Swedish and Finnish, Russian, Yiddish, Tatar and the Roma language were also spoken by the inhabitants of Helsinki. In the administration and societal life, Russian, French and German all played a role (cf. Paunonen, 2006). During the latter half of the 19th century, Helsinki went through an extensive boom of industrialisation. People moved to the capital from different areas, and Helsinki became a melting pot for Finnish dialects. In 1889, the number of Finnish-speaking university students exceeded that of the Swedish speaking for the first time. However, in the late 19th century, the upper class, the bourgeois and craftsmen as well as the working class were prominently Swedish speaking. Due to industrialisation, and also to the ideological trends of the time, the relation turned upside down within 100 years. In the 1950s, the proportion of Swedish speakers was less than 20% (Paunonen, 2006: 22–36). An interesting point of comparison for linguistic diversity among late modern youth can be found in the old Helsinki slang, (vanha) Stadin slangi. The old Helsinki slang has been considered a mixed code (Muysken, 2007) based on Finnish and Swedish vocabulary. There are also several words in the old Helsinki slang of Russian origin, some of which have survived through the centuries into the contemporary Helsinki youth slang, for instance, voda ‘water’, mesta ‘place’ and lafka ‘company, shop’ (Paunonen, 2006: 59).

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The old Helsinki slang emerged and flourished in the late 19th century in the working-class neighbourhoods where Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking families lived next to each other, sharing the same courtyards. Adolescent groups were not formed according to language, but rather the youngsters of the same neighbourhood banded together into one sakki, or gang. The old Helsinki slang was a kind of lingua franca of these groups: the core vocabulary was shared, but it could be spoken with either Finnish or Swedish syntax. The slang met the communicative needs of multilingual interaction, but it also had a symbolic function: it was a language created by second-generation city dwellers, and it differentiated them from their parents’ countryside roots (Paunonen, 2000, 2006: 50–59). The old Helsinki slang has come to symbolise original Helsinki and it is still kept alive by many enthusiasts (see e.g. http:// www.stadinslangi.fi). Social and historical changes changed the course of development of the old Helsinki slang. The more recent Helsinki youth slang has significantly more Finnish influence, but it still rests on the foundations of the old slang. It might not be a direct heir of the old slang, but no clear gap in the transition from the old slang to the slang of our times can be found (Paunonen, 2006: 56–59). Helsinki’s linguistic diversity now has a different face than it had 20 or 30 years ago. In 1983, only 11,347 people spoke a first language other than Finnish, Swedish or Sámi; in 1993, the number was 53,254; and by the end of 2013, it had reached 289,068 (about 5.3% of the population; Statistics Finland 20131). These changes are relatively new: Finland did not see a flood of Gastarbeiter in the 1960s or 1970s (on the contrary, Finnish workers left for Sweden) nor did it open its borders to a remarkable number of immigrants before the 1990s, as did neighbouring Sweden, for instance (Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 2012; Hansen, 2003). Since the 1990s, global political changes have increasingly affected ethnic and linguistic diversity in Finland. In the 1990s, the first significant waves of refugees arrived from the war zones of Yugoslavia and Somalia. 2 In the media, the arrival of the Somalis was referred to as the Somali shock: they arrived in relatively large numbers and were visibly different both culturally linguistically as well as ethnically (Somalis in Helsinki, 2013). The Somalis became – and still remain – somewhat the stereotypical representatives of ‘an immigrant’ or ‘a refugee’, which does not help them settle in Finland – even though the second generation was already born in Finland (cf. Suurpää, 2002: 115–116). The disintegration of the Soviet Union as well as the enlargement of the EU also changed Helsinki’s linguistic diversity: the number of Russian and Estonian speakers has grown remarkably. Currently, the largest linguistic groups in Finland and in Helsinki – after Finnish and Swedish – are Somali, Russian and Estonian.

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The demographic and linguistic changes do not affect all parts of Finland – nor Helsinki – equally: most immigrants settle down in the biggest cities and in the capital area, and in Helsinki especially in the eastern and north-eastern suburbs. In some suburbs, the number of those who speak a first language other than Finnish or Swedish is up to 20% (whereas the average in Helsinki is about 12%), and in schools the number of pupils with some kind of immigrant background can reach 50%.

New Kids on the Block A speaker’s linguistic repertoire can be described as ‘bits of language’ (Blommaert, 2010). The repertoire reflects – or rather, is formed by – the speaker’s linguistic biography: during the course of our lives, we have access to certain linguistic resources while others remain inaccessible and foreign to us. I will demonstrate the characteristics of late modern eastern Helsinki youth by giving a few examples of some adolescents’ linguistic biographies. I call the adolescents Ronya, Aziza and Ervin. All three took part in my recordings and went to school during my ethnographic fieldwork. All of them have at some point in their lives received formal Finnish as a second language tuition, and all of them learn English at school, some also Swedish (as the second national language of Finland). Ronya was born to a Kurdish family in Iraq. At home, the family speaks both Kurdish (Sorani) and Arabic. As a child, Ronya moved to Turkey with her family. She started school there, in Turkish. The family made friends with an Iranian family, and Ronya told me that she picked up Persian so well that she could converse in it. Around the age of 10, Ronya moved to Finland. She now goes to school in Finnish, and her main common language with her friends is Finnish. I once observed her commenting on a Russian discussion in school. I describe this in my field diary as follows: Sergei puhui puhelimeen venäjäksi, ja minäkin ymmärsin sen verran, että hän sanoi: ‘Mitä teet kotona, sinun pitäisi olla koulussa’. Tähän Ronya kommentoi jotain ‘Miks se on kotona?’ tai ‘Miksei se oo koulussa?’, ja suomalainen tyttö kysyi, osaako Ronya venäjää. Ronya sanoi: ‘Voi kulta pieni, mä oon kolme vuotta ollu venäläisten kanssa, niin kyl siinä oppii.’ Hän selitti vielä minulle: ‘Kyl mä oikeesti ymmärrän aika paljo, mä oon ollu niin paljo venäläisten kaa.’ Kysyin, että kavereiltako Ronya vain on oppinut. Niin kuulemma. Sergei was talking on the phone in Russian, and even I could understand as much as ‘What are you doing at home, you’re supposed to be at school.’ Here, Ronya commented something like ‘why is he at home’ Or ‘why isn’t he at school,’ and a Finnish girl asked if Ronya knows Russian. Ronya said: ‘Oh honey, I’ve been hanging around with

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Russians for three years. One learns.’ To me she explained: ‘I understand quite a lot actually. I’ve spent so much time with Russians.’ I asked if she only learnt from her friends, and she said yes. That is, by the age of 14, Ronya has mastered Kurdish and Arabic as home languages (probably also some of the religious uses of Arabic), Turkish and Finnish as languages of schooling and colloquial resources of Finnish and Persian (at least). She has also learnt to understand and to some extent even use bits of the languages of her closest friends: Russian, Estonian and Somali. Ervin was born in rural Finland to a Kosovo Albanian family. He only moved to Helsinki when he was of school age. At home, he speaks both Albanian and Finnish; however, he says he cannot speak Albanian that well. He regards Finnish as his strongest language, and indeed it is the main language of both his schooling and his free time. Ervin affiliates with the multi-ethnic friends’ groups of the schools and as part of their styles he has learnt and started to use expressions that are originally associated with the Somali language and ethnicity (see Sections 5 and 6). Aziza was born in Helsinki to a Somali family. She speaks Somali at home but might switch to Finnish with her younger siblings. When asked about languages she has learnt, she claims to have learnt German and Italian from the television and claims that she uses them as a ‘secret language’ with her siblings at home. Aziza went to a Finnish-speaking kindergarten and now goes to school in Finnish, and Finnish is the only language of her schooling, apart from weekly Somali lessons. With her friends, Aziza mostly speaks Finnish and Somali. I would like to highlight a few points here, first some that characterise the Finnish Somali community – and possibly the Somali diaspora in general. First of all, immigration brings together different regional varieties of Somali, and the language taught in the Somali classes might not be the one spoken at home by the parents. Thus, many Finnish Somali have access to different kinds of Somali resources (and different from those they would have had in Somalia). Secondly, most Finnish Somalis attend Somali classes at school and thus have access not only to colloquial (Finnish) Somali but also to the (relatively young) written standard. Nevertheless, I have observed that adolescents of Somali background use not only Somali in their everyday communication but they also employ many Finnish resources, even when all participants know Somali. Somalia is far away from Finland and the circumstances in the country have been unclear and messy for decades. Due to this, many adolescents with Somali background have never been to Somalia. For many, Finland is, practically speaking, their only home country. Nevertheless, the Somali diaspora forms a transnational community: the Somali youth has cousins and family all over the world, in the USA, in Central Europe and in other

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Nordic countries. Modern technology enables communication, which is carried out not only in Somali, but also among the second generation in English, Swedish and German. Along with their participation in the Finnish schooling system and Finnish youth cultures and leisure activities, the Finnish Somali youth also has access to this transnational Somali diaspora. So-called new ethnicities are born (Hall, 1989; Harris, 2006): Helsinki is the (only) home of these Somali adolescents, but they have access to and affiliate with linguistic and cultural resources that were not previously regarded a part of Finnish adolescents’ lives. New combinations of these form new representations of ‘Helsinkianness’ that cannot be understood as mere mixtures of ‘old’ Finnish and ‘old’ Somali ethnicity. The Somalis are one of the largest linguistic and ethnic groups in the schools, and they also happen to be the largest non-white ethnic group. Because of these facts, the Somalis have a special impact on some local youth styles (see Section 5). Other points I would like to raise related to the linguistic biographies of the adolescents consider the ways in which they have acquired their diverse resources. First of all, many of the adolescents who took part in my research have multilingual homes to begin with: for example, Kurdish and Arabic, English and Swahili and Finnish, or Russian and Estonian are spoken in the families. Secondly, the journeys of the refugees have often brought them to many countries, and thus, the adolescents have possibly already mastered at least one language other than those spoken at home and have received schooling in it before arriving in Finland. Thirdly, I would like to stress the importance of the local stylistic affiliation: the linguistic resources that the adolescents have access to and that have a chance to become their ‘own’ strongly depend on their friends, as well as e.g. the popular culture they consume and the practices they participate in. Here, ethnicity, language and style intertwine in significant ways. I will now concentrate on that.

Ethnicity, Language and Style The dichotomy between ‘the Finns’ and ‘the foreigners’ (suomalaiset and ulkomaalaiset) comes up in my data, as the adolescents position themselves and others with regard to these categorisations. However, these categories are constructed not only based on ethnicity. Whether you are called a ‘Finn’ or a ‘foreigner’ depends not only on your ethnic, cultural or linguistic background, but also on whom you hang around with and how you spend your free time. In many contexts, ‘the foreigners’ refers to a local style. In other words, in the communities of practice of the schools, the category term foreigner is used differently than in public discourses.

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‘The foreigners’ hang around in multi-ethnic groups that show an affiliation to hip-hop and rap and participate in certain activities such as playing cards in the school lobby or playing basketball in the school yard. The school area is ethnically and stylistically divided (cf. Buchholz, 2011: 42–43): the pupils would know which parts of the school premises belong to ‘the foreigners’. ‘The Finns’ and ‘the foreigners’ also dress a certain way – and use certain linguistic resources. The categorisation also works the other way around: if you do not hang around in these multi-ethnic groups and do not participate in these practices, you are not really ‘a foreigner’ – and you also would not claim ‘ownership’ of the linguistic resources associated with ‘the foreigners’. The Russians are referred to as ‘not real foreigners’ on several occasions: in both schools, there are groups of Russians that mainly keep to themselves and converse in Russian – and only in Russian – whereas the common language of ‘the foreigners’ is Finnish. Here I use the sociolinguistic concept of style as a holistic gestalt, a bunch of semiotic resources that are associated with and employed in certain stylistic practices (Auer, 2007; Coupland, 2007; Eckert, 2008, 2012). Styles are the result of enregisterment processes and, as such, registers in Agha’s sense (Agha, 2007: 186–187; Eckert, 2008: 457). When certain kinds of people participate in specific practices and in doing so repeatedly use certain linguistic features, these features become associated with these people, their styles and the stances they express (Jaffe, 2009; Kiesling, 2009). If a style is registered enough, the linguistic resources can be used (by anyone) in interaction to express a certain stance associated with that style (see Section 6). The following excerpt comes from an interview with Croatian-born Antun and Finnish-born Jani. It represents one of the many formulations that associate hip-hop and rap with ‘the foreigners’. The boys do not position themselves nor each other as part of ‘the foreigners’ nor do they affiliate with hip-hop style. Example 1. Interview. Antun (A); Jani (J); interviewer HL (H). Before the excerpt there has been a discussion of whether the people who get associated with different styles are more typically ‘Finns’ or ‘foreigners’. 01H: 02A: 03H: 04A:

entäs nää,(.) räppärit tai hopparit. how about these, (.) rappers or hoppers. joo noi< [tollasii< yeah they< kind of< [näis voi ollaj joo. ((ulkomaalaisia)) they could be. ((foreigners)) kongolaisii ja somaleit. Congolese and Somali.

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05J: 06H: 07A: 08J: 09A: 10H: 11A: 12H: 13A: 14 15 16H: 17A: 18H:

£mhe£ [ai. oh. [tiätsä kaikki melkeir räppäreit [vaim mitä. you know almost all of them (are) rappers right. [nii. yeah. kaik[ki. all. [mistä te luulette et mistä se johtuu. what do you think why could that be. em mä tiiä. I don’t know. liittyyks se kuiteskij jotenkis sii[he< does it have to do with< [ku kaikki ne, ’cause all of them, räppärit, (.) niiku, (.) joku Snuup Dogi ((Snoop Doggy)) rappers, (.) like, (.) Snoop Doggy for instance ne on kaikki mus[tii sit nää kuuntelee they’re all black and then they listen to it [mm. ni itter rupee käyttää [sellasii vaat[teit niiku ja. so they start wearing that kind of clothes like and so on. [mm [mhyhy

In this interview not only ethnicity, but also race or phenotype comes into play: hip-hop and rap are seen as a black style. This is not new or extraordinary as such, but is stated and shown throughout hiphop research: whites have to prove themselves in order to gain street credibility in the hip-hop scene (cf. Cutler, 2009). In my data, a Kenyanborn hip-hop lover goes as far as to state that she has never seen a true white hip-hopper, and that white people cannot really be hip-hoppers. In the excerpt above (Example 1), skin colour is given as a reason for the Somalis and the Congolese to affiliate with hip-hop style. Here, the question of blackness is interesting as such: black is a term used to refer to a positive perception of one’s colour especially in the context of hip-hop culture (Rastas, 2005: 157–158). In Example 1, the Finnish expression musta seems to be an appropriation of the American black. However, in Finland it has not gained positive connotations: the adolescents do not refer to themselves as black but as tummaihoinen ‘dark-skinned’. Furthermore, blackness is constructed – and not biological or essential – as any ethnic-stylistic label: in London, the Somalis are not referred to as black, whereas in Finland, they are the largest ‘dark-skinned’ group and they, if

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anyone, represent blackness. This gives them greater ‘ownership’, rights and influence in the local representations of hip-hop (cf. Buchholz, 2011: 31). In Example 2, I interview Xasan, a boy of Somali origin. He is a central person, if not a leader, of the school’s hip-hop groups. He wears extravagant caps and clothes with a lot of ‘bling’, controls the school lobby with his loud voice and gets into confrontations with the teachers and occasionally also with his fellow pupils. One could say that he is a bit of an ‘anti-establishment’ character. He repeatedly uses the categorisations ‘the Finns’ and ‘the foreigners’, and positions himself as a ‘foreigner’ and a hip-hopper. In the following excerpt, he talks about learning and using the languages of others. Example 2. Interview. Xasan (X); interviewer HL (H). 01 H: sullaki on niiku-(.) kavereita you probably have- (.) your friends 02 niiku- (.) aika monenkiälisiä varmaa eks nii. like- (.) speak many different languages right. 03 X: mm-m. 04 H: ooksä oppinut yhtään niittem muitten kiäliä tai have you learnt any of those other languages or 05 jotain sanoja. some words. 06 X: ei. no. 07 H: etkö; really not; (.) 08 H: entäs onks ↑kukaan- (.) sum miälestä semmonen joka ei and how about has ↑anyone- (.) what do you think a person who is not 09 oikeastaan os somalinkiälinen nin actually a Somali speaker if they have 10 oppinuj jotain somalinkiälen sanoja. learnt some Somali words. 11 X: aij joka ei ole somali[nkiäline. you mean who’s not a Somali speaker. 12 H: [nii. yes. 13 X: on on. (.) [kaikki oppii. oh yes. (.) everybody does. 14 H: [joo. yeah. 15 H: kaikki oppii(h). everybody learns(h).

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16 X: 17 H: 18 19 X: 20 H: 21 X: 22 23 L: 24 H: 25 26 X: 27 H: 28 X: 29 H:

m. joo-o, (.) millasii sanoja esimerkiks ne oppii, ootsä yes I see, (.) what kind of words would they learn have you noticed. huamannu. no(h) kirosa[noja sillee tai kiitos tai jotai si< well swear words like or thank you or something l< [kirosanoja. swear words. [mitä kuuluu how are you. [mm. tälläsii. words like that. joo-o, (.) onks joku semmonen sana jonka jotenkin niikuk yeah, (.) is there a word that somehow like everybody kaikki tiätäis. (.) et jota aika paljo käytettäis. would know. (.) that would be used a lot. öö joo? ehm yeah? joo? (.) mikä esimerkiks. yeah? (.) which word for example. no waria eli [se on sinä. well waryaa so it means you. [ö joo? ehm yeah?

This excerpt demonstrates the special role of the Somalis and their linguistic resources in the local style: whereas Xasan denies having learnt any expressions from other languages, of Somali words he says that ‘everybody’ learns them. He mentions the expression waryaa (waria ~ woraa) ‘hey you (to a male)’. This and the expression wallahi ‘(I swear) in the name of Allah’ (originally Arabic) are mentioned in most of my interviews as expressions that cross ethnic and linguistic boundaries. If defined ethnically, they are mainly associated with the Somalis (cf. Lehtonen, 2011). Rampton (1995: 207–208) has pointed out that in multi-ethnic groups the first crossings are often these kinds of attention markers, used to get someone’s attention in a crowd. This would be the primary use of waryaa. Waryaa can only be used to male recipients; in interviews, it is sometimes translated as ‘boy’. For girls and women, the equivalent would be nayaa. However, this expression has not developed into a social index as strongly as waryaa, which can be used to index Somali ethnicity and a local hiphop style and stance (see Section 6). Here, the masculine character of hiphop can be observed (Alim, 2009: 15; Buchholtz, 2011; Cutler, 1999, 2009;

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Newman, 2009: 205–208): there is a tendency for resources expressing masculine solidarity to become social indexes of hip-hop affiliated styles and stances they carry (Lehtonen, 2015). In my data, another example would be the address term veli ‘brother’, which can be regarded as an appropriation of brother, bro. Even though in the interviews, it is repeatedly stated about wallahi and waryaa that ‘everybody uses them’ or ‘even the Finns use them nowadays’, this is not entirely true: there are social restrictions on who can use these linguistic resources as his or her own. Somali words are most of all used by those non-Somali adolescents who affiliate with the ‘foreigners’ and the local hip-hop style. This is illustrated in the following interview excerpt. Example 3. Interview. Eveliina (E); Peppi (P); interviewer HL (H). 01 H: 02 E: 03 P: 04 H: 05 06 P: 07 08 E: 09 10 H: 11 P: 12 13 14 H: 15

somalia ootteko op[pinu yhtää. have you learnt any Somali. [e. no. e:i(h) mhe no: (h) not us(h) ootteks te huamannu että joku muu olis oppinuj joka ei have you noticed that someone else had someone who oikeastaan osaa; (.) vaikka somalia; doesn’t know; (.) Somali for instance; siis noi ketkä- (.) liikkuu niis piireis et well those who- (.) hang around in those circles like [no Tareq kyl se varmaan nyt well Tareq he probably [mm. mmh. jotai somalia osaa .hh knows some Somali .hh joo. yes. pari sanaa sanoom mut ei sillee niiku< (.) kunnol mitää can say a couple of words but not really like< (.) properly knows nothing really. oikee. -mut entäs sit niistä ku te puhuitte just but how about these that we just talked about noist Tareqista ja noista .hh jotka liikkuu noitten Tareq and those .hh that hang around with

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16 17 18 E: 19 P: 20 E: 21 H: 22 23 H: 24 E: 25 26 P: 27 H: 28 P: 29 30 E: 31 P: 32 33 E: 34 H: 35 36 E: 37

somaleitten kans< minkälainen niitten tyyli on yleensä the Somalis< how woud you describe their style in general wh< teiäm miälestä mi< ne on semmosii hop< they’re like hop< hip hop oh [ho ho hip hop ((laughter)) [hoppareita. hip hoppers. joo. millasias ne hopparit on. yeah. what are these hip hoppers like. ? [( - - ) [mist sen tunnistaa. how can you tell. jou jou. yo yo. ((naurua, epäselvää päällekkäistä puhetta)) ((laughter and unclear overlapping talk)) lippis. he r(h)oikkuu(h) tai semm(o)set; the cap. ha h(h)angs(h) or like; mm. .h [isot housut ja:- (.) paita ja: .thh .h big pants and- (.) shirt and .thh sit semmone; and like; aina jotku skeittikengät. always like skater shoes. nii ja: >jotain sellasta< jou jou- (.) asenne. yes a:nd >something like< yo yo- (.) attitude. eh he he [.hhh [mm. jou. käyttääks ne myös< onks niil jotai omia sanoja tai yo. do they also use< do they have some own words or like puhetyyli tai; a style of speaking or; on niil varmaa jotain semmosii jenkeist otettui niitä well I guess they do like some that come ((‘are taken from’)) from America like; [niiku,

Here, the girls Eve and Peppi position themselves as not using Somali expressions. They recognise, however, that some non-Somalis would. As an

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example, they mention Tareq, who hangs around with the Somalis. These groups are then given a description that associates them with the hiphop style: certain kinds of clothing, globally recycled American stylistic resources – and a certain attitude or stance. In this excerpt, yo serves as a social index of this stance. In the following section, I will analyse a piece of interaction wherein a stance associated with the local hip-hop style is indexed with the Somali expression waryaa.

Diversity in Interaction I will now discuss an example where the lexical resource waryaa (waria) is used by a non-Somali speaker to create associations with a locally recognisable social persona and to display a stance towards the situation. Our focus lines are 1 and 4, but I will shortly guide the readers through the example. The participants include Ervin, who is a boy with a Kosovo Albanian background, the teacher whom I call Helena, and the girls Shadi and Mary. The girls are good friends and classmates of Ervin. Shadi is of Afghani background and Mary comes from Kenya. The class is already sitting in the classroom waiting for the lesson to begin, when Ervin comes in late. He greets the class with waryaa and gives a joking explanation for being late. Before the excerpt, Shadi has been complaining about being thirsty. In Lines 2–3 and 6–9, she playfully turns to Ervin saying she expected him to bring her some water. Shadi’s turns are not the focus of our analysis, but Mary does recycle her ‘I thought that’ structure (Line 2) in her turn ‘I thought that was Xasan’ (Line 4), which has a significant role in understanding the social meaning of Ervin’s waryaa. Example 4. Beginning of class. Ervin (E) comes in, as the others are already seated. Shadi (S); Mary (M); Helena. 01 E: 02 S: 03 04 M: 05 06 S: 07

waria, (.) (mä olil lähiöbaarissa.) waria, (.) (I was in the corner pub.) mä luuli et, (.) hei (-) tiätkö mitä mä luuli I thought that, (.) hey (-) do you know what I thought [oikeesti. really. [mä luuli et toi o Xasan. I thought that was Xasan. ((hälyä)) ((noise)) Ege, (.) hei Ege. (.) arvaam mitä mä Ege, (.) hey Ege. (.) guess what I luulin oikeesti. (.) et sä toit mullev thought really. (.) that you brought me

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vettä. (.) ihan oikeestim mä luulin niin. water. (.) I really thought so. 09 (.) mä oli, (.) oi miten kiltti sä oot. (.) I was like, (.) oh how nice you are. 10 E: voiks mä laittaak kiinni. may I close ((the door)). 11 ? hä, eh, 12 E: voiks oven pistää kiinni Helena. may I close the door Helena. 13 ope: ↑joo mielellään kiitos Ervin. ↑yes please thank you Ervin. Ervin uses the word waryaa in an exceptional way: it is normally addressed to one addressee (a male), but here, Ervin greets the whole class (and the teacher) with it. This alone raises the question of what is the function of waryaa in the situation. Ervin carnivalises his late arrival by giving an irrational and unacceptable reason for it (having been in the corner pub) and marking his turn as a performance: he shows that the voice (Bakhtin, 1986) he uses is not only his ‘own’. This is a classical function of code-switching (Gumperz, 1982a) and the switch to Somali here functions in that way. The social borders and the ‘effects’ of voice form the core of stylisation and language crossing research: Stylisation is a performance, where the speaker makes use of another’s voice (Bakhtin, 1981; Rampton, 2006: 227). The concept of language crossing (Rampton, 1995) especially refers to the use of linguistic resources that are generally not thought to ‘belong’ to the speaker. Both being late and Ervin’s inappropriate explanation for it, as well as the use of waryaa, express a stance towards the situation at hand: towards the fact that Ervin arrives late for the class. Ervin’s waryaa can be analysed as a case of Bakhtinian (1986) double-voicing: another’s voice brought into interaction is partly ‘disconnected’ from the speaker’s actions and thus guides the participants to interpret the actions from a slightly different angle. This phenomenon falls in the wider field of contextualisation (Auer, 1992: 4): the question of how different levels of context are brought into interaction. What is the point of view or the angle that waryaa brings in here? Where does it guide our interpretation of Ervin’s entrée? When analysing a stylisation, one thing to look at are the reactions it raises: that is, what happens in the interaction next, how do the participants treat the stylisation? Their reactions can be analysed as metapragmatic accounts (Agha, 2007) on the social indexicality (Agha, 2007) of the resources used in the stylisation.

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In other words, the reactions give us a hint of what kind of social persona might be associated with the linguistic resources. In Example 4, Mary names the voice in Ervin’s performance as that of Xasan’s (Line 4). Here, the question is what kind of social persona Xasan stands for. He is the central figure in the school’s hip-hop crowds, loud and noticeable, and constantly arguing against the authority of the teachers. Hip-hop style in general is associated with criticising the social order, exaggerated self-confidence, and taking control of the space and the situation. In the school, this stance is personified by Xasan, if anyone. This is the stance Ervin displays towards being late – instead of apologising in a conventional way (‘sorry for being late’, for instance). The fact that Mary comments on Ervin’s performance and even names the voice in it shows that she has noticed the performance and classified it as something exceptional compared to the routine flow of interaction (Rampton, 2006: 224). Ervin’s performance works, in a sense that the teacher does not ask for further explanation but proceeds with the lesson. I would like to shortly discuss the terms code-switching, stylisation and crossing, as well as languaging versus varieties. Should we analyse the above example as code-switching, we would presuppose two codes, between which Ervin switches (Somali and colloquial Helsinki youth language, for instance). The switch has functional explanations: it marks the border of two social spaces or change in action (Ervin moves from the break to the lesson) and serves for stance-taking in a problematic situation (coming late). When analysing Ervin’s waryaa as crossing, or stylisation in general, the focus is on the ‘ownership’ of linguistic resources and on their social indexicality: whose linguistic territory does Ervin enter, whose voice do the participants hear and is there an enregistered stance to go with that voice. The fact that it is Mary, and no one else, who reacts to Ervin’s performance is by no means irrelevant. Of all the people present, Mary has possibly the closest relationship with Xasan. She calls him brother and Xasan lets her borrow his headphones. Mary also shows a strong affiliation with hip-hop style. In the class there is also a Somali girl called Amina. She is a decent, hard-working girl who does not affiliate with the hip-hop style and dresses traditionally in a long dress and hijab. It is of importance here that it is Mary who reacts to Ervin’s performance, and not Amina, although the word waryaa actually belongs to the vocabulary of Amina’s first language, which Mary does not speak. Still, waryaa has more to do with Mary’s linguistic and stylistic territory than Amina’s. It becomes clear that Somali ethnicity is not all that important in the situation. When Ervin, born to a Kosovo Albanian family in Finland, uses waryaa in Helsinki, he does not evoke associations only to the Somali ethnicity. For him and for others in the same community of practice, waryaa has to do with certain social personae and their stylistic choices, with certain practices and stances: with the group of friends that is called

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‘the foreigners’ and affiliated with hip-hop and a relaxed, self-confident and masculine stance, for instance. All this has to do with Somali ethnicity in such a way that can only be understood in the space, place and time at hand (see Section 5). I will close the discussion on this example with some words on languaging versus varieties, as I think my analysis is only possible if one adopts languaging as a starting point. One can ask if waryaa is a Somali word in Example 4. One could also see it as a part of a local youth style that partly belongs to Ervin too. Both the index of Somali ethnicity and the indexes to local stylistic practices and stances are present in the indexical field of waryaa, and as can be seen above, the linguistic resources’ essentialistic connection to some national or ethnic heritage is not always prominent in interaction. This is why I find it fruitful to think of linguistic interaction as languaging when focusing on the social indexicality of linguistic resources: all speakers – languagers – make use of linguistic resources, bits of language that have a wide and ever-changing indexical field. Presupposing a variety to go with a bit of language and holding it as a background for all further interpretations in a given context simplifies the picture.

Discussion: What is New in the New Diversity? It is a fact that Helsinki is linguistically more diverse than it has been in centuries, maybe more diverse than ever, at least if we consider the number of languages spoken in the area. What is also new in the diversity of the 21st century is that there are now relatively big groups of speakers of non-European languages that were formerly fairly unknown to the Finns, such as Somali or Kurdish. It may be that the reasons for mobility are not all that different now than they were in the 19th or 20th century or even before: people have always moved and mixed because of work, wars, studies and love. What has changed during the last decades though, are the technical possibilities for immigrants to stay in contact with their families and friends all over the world, to receive information and news and to experience the cultural flows of their homeland and ethnic group transnationally. In general, people have greater access to different languages and cultures than before and possibly more general knowledge about languages that still some decades ago would have counted as ‘exotic’ for them. I do think that a part of both the social phenomena of our times and the ways we look at them result from the questioning of nation-states: if 20 different languages are spoken in a school, the situation necessarily leads to re-evaluations of Finland and Finnishness. Nevertheless, I do not see how one could claim that the basic mechanisms for expressing and constructing

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social belonging are different now than they were in the 19th or the 20th century, for instance. New types of data, or at least the growing technical possibilities of data gathering, have affected the field of sociolinguistics. The methodologies of conversation analysis have influenced interactional sociolinguistics, and instead of simplifying and quantifying the relationship between linguistic variables and social groups, sociolinguists now seek out mesolevel links and mechanisms between micro and macro. Many have spoken for the combination of careful interactional analysis and ethnographic methods for understanding how global and local resources are interpreted and employed for social positioning in interaction (Depperman, 2013: 63–64, 78; Rampton, 2007: 591). Sociolinguists now get to see the micromechanisms of interaction – and they have started to see them and their importance, when describing the relationship between language and social identification (cf. Rampton, 2006: 23). Let us take the old Helsinki slang as a point of comparison once more: it is traditionally described as a mixed code (Muysken, 2007), a variety that has evolved in a language contact situation. There is nothing wrong with this description, but if we had interactional data from the late 19th century working-class quarters of Helsinki and eventually ethnographic data with the same participants, the picture or at least our focus points might turn out different. We would probably see different linguistic resources, later associated with the register label old Helsinki slang, used in stylised performances to index masculinity, class, ethnicity and a certain style, as well as stance associated with these. The old Helsinki slang was not associated with just any working-class youth, but with the so-called sakilaiset, a masculine working-class style. In the sources from the early 20th century, we have detailed reports of their clothing style, and also their gestures and general attitude, which are described as aggressive and somewhat careless (cf. Koskela, 2002). The slang is unambiguously associated with this style by the pen name Sakinkielen professori (‘Professor of the saki language’) in the paper Kurikka in 1915 (mentioned by Heikki Paunonen in a public speech: http://koti. mbnet.fi/joyhan/H217.html). He writes (translation HL): ‘Just as in foreign metropolises, the Apaches AKA the sakilaiset of Helsinki have a language of their own’. The linguistic literature has focused on the linguistic characteristics of the slang and has stressed its lingua franca nature, its communicative function as the mediator between the Finnish speakers and the Swedish speakers. But if we had spoken interactional data from those days, we would probably see that the stylistic functions of the linguistic resources were just as important as they are among late modern youth. The old Helsinki slang has later come to symbolise old Helsinki, and it has become an artefact with cultural – or even national – value. There

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are fellowships devoted to taking care of its heritage. But in 19th century Helsinki, an 18-year-old Finnish-speaking boy using a word of Russian origin to a Swedish-speaking neighbour was not about creating a nostalgic picture for the generations to come. It was an act indexing urbanity, masculinity, affiliation to certain styles and stances – an act just like Kosovo Albanian Ervin’s, when greeting his Finnish classmates with the Somali expression (Example 4). I wonder what kind of social index waryaa might carry in Helsinki in 200 years.

Notes (1) (2)

In Finland, it is only possible to register one (and not more) language as one’s mother tongue for the official register. Thus, multilingualism of individuals does not appear in the statistics. In the 1970s, some refugees arrived from Chile and Vietnam, but the numbers are relatively small.

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Part 1: Language Communities or Networks of Communication?

Appendix: Transcription Symbols . falling intonation ; slightly falling intonation ? rising intonation , slightly rising intonation level intonation [ utterances starting simultaneously (.) a short pause (