Over the past two decades, folk linguistic studies have explored perceptual approaches to different varieties of Finnish. The variety spoken in the capital region Helsinki, in Southern Finland, is generally negatively... [ view full abstract ]
Over the past two decades, folk linguistic studies have explored perceptual approaches to different varieties of Finnish. The variety spoken in the capital region Helsinki, in Southern Finland, is generally negatively evaluated with associations of “conceitedness”, “poshness”, “arrogance” etc. As indicated in several folk linguistic and attitude studies (e.g. Palander 2007; Mielikäinen & Palander 2014), Helsinki speech seems to be perceptually constructed with particularly few linguistic variables, often limited to certain pronoun variants, fronted pronunciation of /s/ and use of local slang words. Methods applied thus far either tend to limit access to first-order indexes (see Silverstein 2003), i.e. to stereotypical associations and features that the respondents are capable of commenting on or labeling, or, alternatively, elicit reactions to variables readily set by researchers (Vaattovaara 2013, Vaattovaara & Halonen 2015). By using an imitation task as a method, the present study seeks to explore the potential range of linguistic features that the Helsinki variety is imagined with (see also Schilling-Estes 1998; Bell & Gibson 2011). Our hypothesis was that imitative performances of “Helsinki speech” would reveal some additional features perceptually connected to Helsinki that are in the conscious awareness, but beyond the metalinguistic resources of language users. This was also confirmed by the present data.
In this paper, we present the main findings of imitation data collected in the north of Finland, in the city of Oulu among university students and staff members. We will deal with the range of linguistic resources that the respondents performed as “typical Helsinki speech”, as requested in a short interview-like situation. We also discuss the present research setting and the findings from the point of view of methodological relevance and development of language ideology research.
