At the nexus of language, ideology and identity: becoming and being a highly proficient second language speaker of Finnish

Researchers in sociocultural linguistics have long argued that the social and cultural dimensions of language are crucial to the way people use language and that it is important to understand the relationship between broader... [ view full abstract ]

Researchers in sociocultural linguistics have long argued that the social and cultural dimensions of language are crucial to the way people use language and that it is important to understand the relationship between broader social processes and individual engagement with language. Conceptualized as a ‘mediating link’ between social processes and language use (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994), the notion of language ideology has offered one particularly useful way of understanding this relationship, but reseachers have only recently begun to make use of its potential for exploring more deeply the junction of sociolinguistics and research on second language learning and use (e.g. Volk & Angelova 2007; De Costa 2011, 2016). Following these efforts, my work is set in the context of Finland and draws on research on language ideologies (Woolard 1998; Irvine & Gal 2000) as well as the concept of ‘fractals’ (Agar 2005) to examine how broader-scale ideologies of Finnish are refracted in narratives and lived everyday experiences of speakers of Finnish as a second language.

As a ‘marginal majority language’ (Saarinen 2012), i.e. a locally dominant but globally peripheral language, Finnish is still frequently framed in ethnonationalist terms as belonging to ‘the Finns’. Thus, adult immigrants who have become speakers of Finnish later in life, particularly those who have reached a very high level of proficiency, are often constructed as unexpected or exceptional. This paper presents findings from a study with 12 Finland-based, highly proficient second language speakers of Finnish and includes data from semi-structured and open-ended interviews, participant observation as well as autoethnographic observation. The data are analyzed drawing on tools from ethnographically oriented discourse analysis (e.g. Scollon 2001; Blommaert 2005) and narrative analysis (e.g. De Fina 2013), brought together in the framework of nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon 2004). Findings suggest that the participants’ culturally unusual position as highly proficient second language speakers of Finnish has ambivalent consequences, resulting in an ideologically regimented space for identity construction and language use, but at the same time enabling participants to employ some of these ideologies for their benefit.